Round Up of Off-Camera Flash Advice

For the month of January, the 2014 version of Boost Your Photography: 52 Weeks Challenge will be focusing on light and lighting. (Interested in joining the 52 Weeks Challenge? We are also starting a re-boot version kicking off from the beginning: click here to join in for 2015!)

So far, we have looked at natural light and the influence of directional lighting, and tips for mastering on-camera flash. This final lighting post of the month is a round up of resources about off-camera flash.

Off-Camera Flash Basics

Last week's post, tips for mastering on-camera flash, laid out some of the basic limitations of flash photography, including the impact of the inverse square law and the influence of the location of your flash. The inverse square law still applies when shooting with off-camera flash, but you are now more in control of the location and direction of where your flash and other lighting is located.

The post pinned above, How to Soften the Light When Using Flash, has great tips for both on-camera and off-camera flash photography. The reason I am recommending it this week is that it provides a few basic diagrams for how to set-up your off-camera flash, with particular attention paid to the angle and direction of the light.

Tips for Better Shooting with Off-Camera Flash

This post pinned above, A Beginner's Guide to Working with Flash Off-Camera, provides a great overview of the different pieces of equipment that you need for working with off-camera flash, including recommendations for flash units, remote triggers, light stands, and light shapers or modifiers. The second half of the post shows how to set-up a basic off-camera flash shoot, including a comparison of the different power values of the flash itself. This is a great place to start for getting comfortable with setting up and using your off-camera flash unit.

This next post, titled Off-Camera Flash for Your Travel Photography, is a great resource for any type of flash photography. This post also provides an overview of the equipment needed for flash photography, with a focus on portability and usability for the traveling photographer.

The author then goes into detail about two different strategies for using your off-camera flash: to balance the ambient light and to underexpose for dramatic effect. Both are explained in detail with diagrams of the lighting set-up, a discussion of settings, and inclusion of the final portrait. A great resource to study!

Try Using Your Off-Camera Flash

This is the week to break out your off-camera flash unit and give it a try! If you do not own an off-camera flash unit, try using lamps or other continuous lighting sources to see how changing lighting position and strength can impact your photography.

Share a link or a photograph in the comments below, or consider joining the BYP 52 Weeks Google+ Community (or the new 52 Weeks 2015) to share your weekly photograph and see what others are capturing.

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Boost Your Photography: Learn Your DSLR is available from Amazon. Get the most out of your camera with practical advice about the technical and creative aspects of DSLR photography that will have you taking beautiful pictures right away.

Tips for Mastering On-Camera Flash

For the month of January, the 2014 version of Boost Your Photography: 52 Weeks Challenge will be focusing on light and lighting. (Interested in joining the 52 Weeks Challenge? We are also starting a re-boot version kicking off from the beginning: click here to join in for 2015!)

So far, we have looked at natural light and the influence of directional lighting. This week I have rounded up a collection of posts to help you master your on-camera flash.

Limitations of On-Camera Flash

Before we talk about what on-camera flash can do, it is useful to know the limitation. The biggest limitation of on-camera flash is its location. The built-in flash with your camera is positioned in one location and will point only in that one location. You have more options with a separate camera flash unit attached to your camera, as they are generally adjustable and can be pointed in different directions, but they are still attached to your camera at a set position.

Distance is another big limitation with any kind of flash. The power of light is inversely proportional to distance. (For those of you who are not the daughter of a math teacher, that means that the power of light fades tremendously and quickly over fairly short distances. A light strong enough to illuminate a subject well that is one foot away will only work one-quarter as well at two feet away and one-ninth as well at three feet away.) This is why it is foolish to use your on-camera flash in a darkened auditorium, for example. Your light is just never gonna get there.

On-camera flash is also often criticized for being 'harsh' lighting or for causing your subject to cast extreme shadows. Later in this post we will discuss methods for diffusing your flash - allowing the light to better spread out and more evenly illuminate your subject.

Tips for Better Shooting with Your Built-In Flash

The flash that is built into your camera is most useful for being the flash that you always have with you. These quick tips below will help you make the most of your built-in or pop-up flash.

Get in close. We discussed the inverse square law above. If you are shooting a subject with your built-in flash, you need your camera to be fairly close to that subject. (Think, less than 10 feet away.)

Balance your light. With many DSLR cameras and even some point-and-shoots, you can modify the strength of your flash unit, which allows you to better balance the light coming from your flash vs. the rest of the light in your scene.

Diffuse or redirect your flash. Diffusing your flash is covered in more detail below, but you can hack some pretty DIY solutions to diffusing your built-in flash unit. My favorite is to use a piece of tissue paper and drape it over your pop-up flash. When the flash triggers through the tissue paper, it spreads out, becoming more diffuse and more pleasing to the eye. Now it will not create that shadowed, deer-in-the-headlights look common to built-in flash portraits. Other photographers recommend using a white business card to redirect the light - aiming it up and bouncing it off the ceiling, for example. Give it a try!

Tips for Mastering Your On-Camera Flash Unit

Upgrading from the built-in flash to an additional on-camera flash unit can make a big impact in your flash photography options. While many brand-name flash photography units exist, there are also many highly-rated flash units that can be had for much cheaper.

The Yongnuo brand of flashes from China are highly regarded by photographers on a budget. They do not offer TTL (through the lens). TTL allows you to operate and control your flash directly through the camera. With the Yongnuo flashes, you have to choose the settings on the flash directly and adjust your camera's settings accordingly, which means a lot of manual shooting. Popular flash units that include the TTL feature include Canon Speedlites and Nikon Speedlites, which are much more user friendly.

The biggest improvement with on-camera flash units is your ability to adjust the direction of the flash and to bounce your flash, rather than aiming it directly at your subject. You may have noticed that many wedding photographs aim their flash nearly directly up when shooting indoors. This allows them to bounce the flash off the ceiling, creating a less-directional and more even light. (Remember the inverse square law however - the higher the ceiling, the less light coming back to your subject.)

The video above from Adorama TV shares a hands-on look at using your on-camera flash and bouncing it off of different locations and pieces of equipment. This is a great introductory video if you are looking to get the most out of your on-camera flash unit.

This post pinned above, 8 On-Camera Flash Tips, is chock-full of super simple ways to hack your on-camera flash to improve your photographs, from adding a flag, smoothing out the light, and using different settings. These quick tricks can make a biggest difference in the quality, direction, and style of light coming from your flash.

Try Using Your On-Camera Flash

Flash photography is a whole different ball game from using natural light, and learning how to use and manipulate your flash will help you make the most of any photography situation. Whether you have the built-in flash on your camera or an additional on-camera flash unit, spend some time this weekend experimenting with what they can do for you! (If you want to really get fancy with your flash, try something like Slow Sync photography - read the how-to here.)

Share a link or a photograph in the comments below, or consider joining the BYP 52 Weeks Google+ Community (or the new 52 Weeks 2015) to share your weekly photograph and see what others are capturing.

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Boost Your Photography: Learn Your DSLR is available from Amazon. Get the most out of your camera with practical advice about the technical and creative aspects of DSLR photography that will have you taking beautiful pictures right away.

Make the Shot: Slow Sync Photography

A "slow sync" photograph is one where the length of the shutter speed is longer than that normally used with a flash (either external or on-camera). This allows more visibility for background objects or dimmer lights and can have many creative applications. This post will talk through the process behind making this shot using slow sync:

Slow Sync Apple Cutting - straight out of the camera (SOOC)

The shot above was created using a single exposure and without any digital manipulation. The critical elements of making this shot or a similar one is the use of slow sync and second curtain flash.

Second curtain flash means that the flash will fire at the end of the exposure, rather than at the beginning. Dig around within the settings on your camera, and you will find an option to choose second curtain. (On my Canon T1i, it is under flash control, built-in flash function setting, and shutter sync.)

In order to set a longer shutter speed and use the flash, you will need to use the manual shooting mode on your camera. Keep your ISO low (100 or 200) and use a wide aperture to maximize the amount of light gathered from the background during the portion of the exposure before the flash. The speed you select for your shutter will depend on the amount of time it takes for whatever movements or effects you want to try. The final settings for the image above were ISO 100, f/5.6, and 20-seconds.

Wide view of the set up for this shot (before turning the lights off)

The setup for the final shot was fairly simple: I needed an apple, a knife, and a cutting board. My end table / sewing machine acted as a stand-in for a wooden table, and a sheet strung up between the two curtain rods acted as a backdrop. I deliberately placed the end table a little distance away from the backdrop so that the backdrop would be outside the plane of focus.

Because I suspected that it would take me several efforts to nail the timing and get the shots of the knife spaced out the way I had envisioned them, I knew that I did not want to be trying to actually cutting the apple during the photograph. An extra touch of realism could be added by cutting the apple in half before and finding a way to keep both halves upright and slightly separated with room for the knife to move through.

Sample composition set up shot, taken with surrounding lights on

After getting all the parts in place, I set my camera up on the tripod and zoomed in to establish the composition I wanted. I used the apple to set the focus while all the lights were still on and then switched the focus to manual to keep it fixed at the apple. The 10-second countdown timer on my camera gave me enough time to start the countdown and get into place before the exposure started. I also turned off all of the lights around the set up, leaving on just the lights in the hall behind the camera.

Moving the knife smoothly through the entire exposure resulted in the picture above. (The astute among you may notice that I also had not finished moving the knife when the flash fired and the camera stopped taking the photograph.) While this smear effect has a lot of interesting applications, it was not the look I wanted for this particular image.

The real trick behind this kind of shot is in the timing. In order to have the knife visible in each of the different locations, I figured out that I had to hold it in place for about 3 seconds in each spot before quickly moving it down to the next position and holding. When the knife made it to the bottom, behind the apple, then the exposure would finish and the flash would fire, illuminating the apple, cutting board, and background.

There are lots of creative applications of slow sync photography and second curtain flash. This technique is particularly applicable to creating ghostly images by moving slowly or partially during the final exposure. Give it a try, and see what you can create!

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