Angkor Wat and small flash.

Angkor Wat in Cambodia is one of my favorite places in the world. The 1100-year-old temples are the jungle ravaged remains of the mighty Khmer Empire. I have been lucky enough to visit Angkor more than two dozen times and it seems I always find something new.

This shot of the apsara relief in the central gallery of Angkor Wat is a good one to demonstrate the need for off-camera flash. It was early morning
and the golden sunlight was streaming in and painting the carvings with nice sidelight. I setup on a tripod and composed the shot with 20mm lens.

I exposed for the golden squares of light with the camera’s spot meter, which meant that the shadows were going to go black. This included the carving in foreground, which had almost no light falling on it. To supplement the ambient light I connected a Nikon SB-28 speedlight on manual power to the camera with an SC-28 sync cord. I wanted to mimic the natural light direction with the flash to give the shapes and shadows some consistency so I held it off camera right. To determine the flash exposure I used a Sekonic L-358 light meter.

Gear specs: Nikon N90s camera / Nikon 20mm lens / Nikon Sb-28 speedlight / Nikon SC-28 sync cord / Sekonic L-358 meter.

Exposure: approx. F11 1/30th on Kodak E100VS slide film. I’d guess the flash was around ¼ or ½ power.

As always, click any image for the large version. TR