flash options for canon S3

By virtue of taking lots of nice outdoor photos, my wife has decided I'm competent to take my niece's senior portrait picture... Anyways, I'm wondering what my lighting options are with the S3.

Continuous only? Got some nice bright (and HOT!) 1KW halogen shop lights that oughta work, but in playing around with a home-made reflector, it seems they've got to be uncomfortably close to the subject to be bright enough for my taste. I haven't actually spent any money yet, I'm sure an umbrella would waste less light than my foil on cardboard rig...

Slave flashes? The S3's built-in flash isn't exactly aimable, though I suppose I could tape a card to it that would redirect it.

Thoughts? Available light is good during the day, but my niece's schedule never seems to cooperate.

kfrank said:

By virtue of taking lots of nice outdoor photos, my wife has
decided I'm competent to take my niece's senior portrait picture...
Anyways, I'm wondering what my lighting options are with the S3.

Continuous only? Got some nice bright (and HOT!) 1KW halogen shop
lights that oughta work, but in playing around with a home-made
reflector, it seems they've got to be uncomfortably close to the
subject to be bright enough for my taste. I haven't actually spent
any money yet, I'm sure an umbrella would waste less light than my
foil on cardboard rig...

Slave flashes? The S3's built-in flash isn't exactly aimable,
though I suppose I could tape a card to it that would redirect it.

Click to expand...

Canon sells a slave flash unit for the S3.

kfrank said:

By virtue of taking lots of nice outdoor photos, my wife has
decided I'm competent to take my niece's senior portrait picture...
Anyways, I'm wondering what my lighting options are with the S3.

Click to expand...

Many options depending on personal preferences, but here are some basic points for pleasing portraits.

Arrange lighting to create a modelled face rather than a single straight-on shot that creates a flat looking face.

Use a focal length around 90-110 mm (eq) so you frame will be proper at a subject-to-camera distance that makes an average face appear pleaing - nose not flat against the face nor protruding too far.

If you use a non-flat wall background try to get a shallow DOF to not be distracting from the subject. Actually that's difficult for the S3 because of the small sensor, etc. So you migh be better off with a flat wall, but avoid shadows.

--mamallama

The lighting tecniques forum has many photographers that post their senior pictures for comment. You should be able to get some ideas and answers there.

Many of these photos are taken outdoors using fill flash and/or various reflectors.

****

You got some good advice so far. I love to use fill flash with my S2, you could conside that. If you want to diffuse the flash of your S3, you could use a transparent film can (if you have any of those left), seems to work pretty well. Use maximum flash output, in that case.
--
bdery

Québec city, Canada
C A N O N S 2
C O O L P I X S Q
http://www.aperturehead.com/main.php?g2_view=core.ShowItem&g2_itemId=54

Richard A. Victor said:

The lighting tecniques forum has many photographers that post their
senior pictures for comment. You should be able to get some ideas
and answers there.

Many of these photos are taken outdoors using fill flash and/or
various reflectors.

Click to expand...

Yeah, I've been avidly reading that forum the last week or so. Already took some outdoor pix earlier in the summer, that my niece is happy with, but she wants a more formal/traditional one as well.

Slightly off-topic, but I wish more cameras had built-in bounce flash capability like some of the Leicas and Panasonics have:





Probably be too expensive to implement, though...