Improvised lighting with the X100 for a portrait of Lou

I really could have done with my Canon DSLR + off-camera flash guns or Lencarta lights for this shot. However, I had my Fuji X100, the little EF-20 gun and a Canon off-camera cord that happens to work with the Fuji.

I tried direct flash and the lighting was horrid and harsh with deep shadows cast on the wall behind. I couldn't really mix flash and ambient because the background lighting was so low.

Solution? Tape a sheet of A4 paper around the flashgun and use that to soften the light. Lighting softness is dependent on the effective size of the light - by bouncing off the paper, the light gets softer. As you'll see in future posts I could position the light to get different effects as well!

The result is some nice soft shadows around the nose and on the background. I removed some of the saturation to give a colder feel to the shot.

FUJIFILM FinePix X100, f/4 @ 23 mm, 1/1000, ISO 400, Flash

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