bugguy wrote:
"thanks" for the breakdown of your example. What if I were to just slow my shutter speed down though? Would that preserve my narrow depth of view (bokah)?
You'd have to close the lens down to compensate for the slower shutter setting giving you more depth of field.
My example has us at ISO 100 which is rock bottom on some cameras.
You could use an ND filter on the lens to compensate too, but I like being able to
SEE what I'm shooting through the viewfinder.
BTW, Bokeh is the
quality of the blur, not shallow depth of field.
It's a
Quality, not a quantity.
There is good and bad bokeh, not more or less.
More
HERE.
The lenses I use have fairly pleasing bokeh so I really don't worry about it.
There are better lenses out there for that, but I'm not a full-time portrait photographer and can't justify the expense for one.
And there are more important things most people should think about (unless you have a real lemon of a lens) like lighting, pose, impending bad weather....
Back to flash... Your example using flash looks great for a flash newbie.
My biggest thing at the university where I work is shooting events.
When I use flash, I almost always bounce, but because of the way I use it, it doesn't look like flash.
I've bounced off of cement headers over doors, metal garage doors and 20' ceilings.
Neil van Niekerk has a lot of tutorials on bounce flash starting
HERE.
Also has some helpful books on his site.