when to the naked eye the background is visible?

I am assuming you illuminate your subject with the flash (likely off camera) and shoot with a very high shutter speed.

If anyone has a photo like this, please share.

 

Yes, you'd use either flash or strobes to light the subject and use a high aperture. You can't use too high of a shutter speed (>250) with off camera lighting because of sync speeds. Typically, you'd want some light (could be reflector) coming from behind the model, too, to separate them from the black background.

I don't have any examples off hand.

 

I swear I've seen photos that were taken in daylight with a dark background...I don't see ss of 250 being high enough to darken the background.

 

Increasing the aperture has the same light reducing effect as increasing the shutter speed.

This can be done inside or outside as long as you have enough lighting to overpower the ambient light. However, you can only increase your aperture to a point while still keeping your SS low enough to sync with the lighting.

 

Yes, it's all about increasing the main light to ambient light ratio. Ideally, you want to start when the ambient light is as dark as possible because then it's easier to make your main light bright enough.

Because most SLR's have a max flash sync speed of 1/200 or 1/250, you're probably going to need to do more than just crank up the shutter speed. Shutter speed is the only exposure setting that won't affect your flash power, so start by maxing out your sync speed without going to high-speed sync mode, then dial up the aperture until the background is dark enough. Every time you increase your aperture by one stop, you need to double the power of your flash to compensate.

These examples were all shot at my house. I dimmed the lights but it was still bright enough so I could see what I was doing with the camera.

There are a couple more here: http://flickr.com/photos/acurazineda...7604193574534/

Once you have captured something close to what you want, you can crush any remaining background detail by increasing the black level in lightroom or photoshop. It won't take much to get it completely black.

 

I'm dying to try this shot. Too bad I don't have an off camera flash or cord.

 

Great detailed post Dan.

 

The ice cube shot is awesome Dan.

 

Just don't ask him how he made his hand and arm invisible to press the button on the iron.

 

I was wondering about that!

 

Awesome i knew i had some what of an idea of this but this cleared things up.

 

What has been posted is true. I tried darkening the background on a shoot I recently did with my GF. I didn't get it to go all black, but more of a darker gray. There wasn't much room to work with.

https://acurazine.com/forums/cameras-photography-44/tried-off-camera-flash-first-time-c-c-696870/
^sample pics are there

 

I know kinda but you can also do it in photoshop... been doing more and more of this lately myself. enjoyable results.

 

is this what you're talking about



hehe. sorry about the car!! it's too cold to do shots of mine :P