The Wide Lens- Photography Stories

If you’re seriously considering going into some action photography- an external flash will provide a serious upgrade to your photography abilities. A remote controlled (wireless) flash will expand that even more, as you can see from my experiments with the Olympus FL-36R external flash.

Several posts on The Wide Lens will reveal the fact that I’ve spent the last summer in Morzine, France. My time there was dedicated amongst other things to mountain biking and to photographing the sport and scenery.
As I was descending on the Pleney run- a fine Downhill trail leading to Morzine center, I came to a short resting stop. Looking up, the afternoon sun was hiding between the tree tops, and just below it a dramatic root section (fairly easy to ride, but very mean looking).

Taking a picture of a rider crossing the root section with the sun in the background seemed like a great idea, and a photographic vision was born. The problem was simple- the environment is a dark forest, and the object will be a fast moving object (mountain bike rider). The solution is simple: get the right exposure for the forest, and use the flash to light up the object.
Ah, but what about the original vision? the composition places the camera about 5-6 meters from the object, and the flash won’t have a serious effect from that distance.

Here’s the final image:

And here is how it was done:

Once I understood the problem- I went online to look for a solution. Since I own an Olympus E-420 D-SLR, I started with the brand website, and quickly found an interesting solution. The FL-36R external flash, ‘R’ standing for Remote control.

This flash, coupled with a matching camera, can be placed a few meters away from the camera- aimed and used in automatic synchronization with the camera. There is an option to place a few flashes and set up to 3 flash groups- for now I’m sticking with one, a simple and effective setup.

The flash can be placed on the ground using the supplied stand. I also purchased a small version of the gorillapod, which enables to hang the flash in strategic placements, such as tree branches or railings.

As I will become more advanced with using the external flash, you can expect to see here a detailed article on how to use one correctly. For now, if you have the budget and the time to play around- I recommend finding out the wireless flash configuration for your camera. Once you’re set up, simply go out and play, that’s what photography is all about- you can’t really go wrong.

Special thanks to Pedro for modelling!

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