The past few weeks, I've dedicated myself to lighting. After all, it's the key to good photography. I've been studying lighting solutions and setups. I found a great tip for the manual modes on a camera. I've seen that my Canon 550EX has many manual modes, but I never really understood why it had a manual control for the zoom ratio when it can simply read this from the camera, even when it's attached via a synch cable.
This trick involves mismatching the zoom setting on your flash with the zoom setting on your lens. For this example, Shoot with a 50mm lens and crop tight on the face. Set your flash zoom rate to 105mm (or highest zoom setting for your flash). Connect it with a synch cord to get a directional light and cast a sort of "Rembrandt" lighting technique. With the flash set to 105mm, the angle of the lighting will be more focused, thinking it's going to be working with a 105mm lens. This will allow the light to focus in a smaller area in the center of the face and have some dark shadow fall-off.
It doesn't give you a full snooted effect, but it can help to control flash fall-off in the background. I have only tested this with a 50mm and setting the flash to 105mm. I'd assume if I got the flash closer, or used a wide angle lens, the effect would be more pronounced.
This trick involves mismatching the zoom setting on your flash with the zoom setting on your lens. For this example, Shoot with a 50mm lens and crop tight on the face. Set your flash zoom rate to 105mm (or highest zoom setting for your flash). Connect it with a synch cord to get a directional light and cast a sort of "Rembrandt" lighting technique. With the flash set to 105mm, the angle of the lighting will be more focused, thinking it's going to be working with a 105mm lens. This will allow the light to focus in a smaller area in the center of the face and have some dark shadow fall-off.
It doesn't give you a full snooted effect, but it can help to control flash fall-off in the background. I have only tested this with a 50mm and setting the flash to 105mm. I'd assume if I got the flash closer, or used a wide angle lens, the effect would be more pronounced.