[Kombisaurus]

I was at a BBQ the other day with my camera, and we started a face-pulling competition to keep the daughter of one of my mates amused (of course us adults were far too mature to be entertained by something so childish ).

These shots were all spontaneously shot in a fairly dark room at 50mm, f/1.4 and 3200iso. From the photos the room looks well lit, but in reality it wasn't.
I had just enough time to attach a flash and rotate the head to bounce it off a wall, but it was mostly ambient light lighting the scene. Most of the faces pulled were fairly poor, but I was stoked with how the photos came out at 3200iso.


1. Maddie and her dad, Chris.


2. Maddie didn't know many face-pulling tricks apart from poking her tongue out. Never mind.


3. Tina on the other hand is a seasoned pro when it comes to pulling faces. Classic.


4. Maddie was allowed to use props when pulling her faces.


5. A poor effort from Chris. He did do a better job aferwards but I mis-focussed when I took it. :/


6. The winners (Maddie and Tina) got up and did a little victory dance.

[shuttertalk]

Haha, great shots they look great - especially for such high sensitivity!

I reckon you should have done a few faces yourself...

[Rabid Penguin]

Awesome. What's with the pink spot in #5?

[Irma]

Very nice pictures Kombi.
What I like the most is the light and colors. I love when indoor pictures taken with flash have still some of the environment light. They look so natural.

Wouldn't you mind to share your settings in the camera and flash?

Thanks for sharing...

[Toad]

Funny series of snapshots - they add a little brightness to the day.

[Kombisaurus]

Thanks.

Jules, I think I prefer to stay on the side of the camera with all the buttons on it, not the side with the big tube pointing out.

Rabid, I'm pretty sure the pink dot is from the house alarm IR sensor in the corner of the room (you know how those motion sensors have little red LED's to indicate movement in a room). It is a bit distracting though.

Irma, I agree with you that bounced flash using as much available light as possible gives the most natural look. I'm happy to suffer a bit of noise if it means much better colour.

Toad, I'm glad these can bring a smile to someone's face.

In this situation I was shooting in Av mode with the flash set to auto, mounted on-camera but the head pointed backwards diagonally over my left shoulder. Assuming there is a wall/ceiling for the flash to bounce off, in a medium-sized room this can gives a nice large diffused light that is similar to light coming through a window. I try to put the light slightly to one side (usually the left) to give a bit of shadow on one side of the face, but not too far to make the shadow a harsh one. If you look at the catchlights in Maddie's eyes in shot #2 you can see the flash reflected off the wall.

With this setup, I can balance the exposure of the "bright" and "dark" sides of the subject's face independently by adjusting the FEC (Flash Exposure Compensation) and EC (Exposure Compensation) respectively. I think for these examples I had the FEC set to 0 (ie no compensation) and EC set to -0.3.

[Irma]

Thanks so much for the info Kombi..

Yes, the light in Maddie's eyes in #2 caught my attention. Very nice light in her eyes.

[matthew]

Great shots, and they must have been fun to take. #3 has some Christmas-card potential to it.

[Wedding Shooter]

Fun Adrian - and I think that is the worst picture I have ever seen of Tina's face - worthy winner.

[Keith Alan]

Besides being fun, a nice tribute to cameras that don't stink at high iso.