Mastering Flash Photography

Sample This Course and See What’s Inside

Aperture Controls Flash Exposure F/stop or aperture on the other hand DOES controls the amount (or rate) of light allowed to expose the picture. This means that by changing your f/stop, you control…

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Self Assignment 1) Photograph someone who is backlit by the sun and you have filled them with flash so they won’t be silhouetted. 2) Create a nice still life setup such as…

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Swivel heads Most of today’s flashes allow the head to be swiveled and this allows you to point the flash in a variety of directions. If the photo is a…

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Many flashes have built in white cards next to the wide angle attachment. Most photographers assume this is a bounce panel but they are really more for creating catchlights in…

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This magazine cover was photographed using a diffused flash right next to the camera on the right. The flash was a key light while the ambient was the fill light.

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Summary Flash Key is when you want flash to be the main light. Flash fill is when you want flash to be the secondary light. To make Flash Key effective,…

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Auto Fill Reduction Many flashes automatically apply Auto Fill Reduction when photographing in bright light. This basically means that the flash is doing the work for you by not over…

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While I was out scouting locations for place to shoot with my students during a Utah workshop, I discovered this rock with holes in it. I thought if I wait…

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More color tips There are some color techniques you cannot achieve with your AWB in camera and the photo right is the perfect example. When I shoot landscapes at sunset,…

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More fun with colored gels Rosco also makes colored gels that are for coloring a light rather than correcting light as in the previous section. I use these all the…

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Mixed Lighting Summary If you took the picture now in tungsten light everything would be off color. To correct the photo you now need to go to your camera and…

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Here is an example showing Kelvin temperature color relationship: Amber    warmer     warm    Daylight     cool      cooler   blueish     blue 3200K     3800K     4500K   5500K       6200k     6800    7500K     8000K

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Using Flash in Mixed Lighting So your boss knows you are a good photographer and wants pictures from in the warehouse of a group of employees. You know you need…

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I have always enjoyed the idea of hide-a-flash in places that create light and result in a cool effect.

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Stop Action The idea here as previously mentioned, is to stop or freeze the action WITH FLASH and not necessarily the shutter speed and there are two ways to do…

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In this image of a mountain biker, I set the camera at -1 EC to darken the background and make the flash stand out better. Then I just panned with…

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These two photos below are a perfect example of panning with the subject and flashing to put an edge on the subject. If you look at the blurry background and…

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In previous lessons, we have explored the many ways to use flash both on-camera and off. For our last lesson, we’ll look at fun ways to continue to get creative…

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REAL JOBS You will notice in my descriptions that none of these jobs were photographed using ETTL and were all on manual flash. I want total control! If you consider…

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My strategy is to set the flash to manual output and set it to full power as a start. I take a test shot usually by just ‘guesstimating’, a skill…

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BIGGER FLASH UNITS Depending on what you shoot, you may also find you need a much bigger and more powerful flash unit. I am not talking about studio strobes, rather…

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USING REMOTE FLASH FOR EFFECT The next step beyond wireless flash is using wireless remotely by placing flash in more distant locations. This is putting light in out-of-the-way places to…

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Rear Curtain – cont To enable rear curtain flash to work, you have to make adjustment either on the camera or flash and it depends on the make and model….

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 Portraits using Flash There is no difference between shooting portraits with studio strobes versus flash units as far as the approach to lighting. The advantage to flash is the compact…

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Radio Remotes Triggers There are numerous methods for triggering flash using wireless radio technology. There are a number of third party systems designed for wireless triggering and originally most were…

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SETTING THE CHANNELS

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Dedicated Wireless Some of today’s state-of-the-art flash units come with wireless flash ability built in. Canon’s 430EXII and 580EXII are three of them while Nikon’s SB 900 and SB700 compliment their line. They have the ability to trigger…

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Optical Slaves – cont. Most older, yet state of the art flash units do not come with a PC sync socket on them to plug that slave into with the…

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When using the flash off-camera, you need to trigger the flash to fire from your camera. In the previous pictures, I am using a Dedicated Flash Cord that allows me…

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Off Camera Flash So far we have covered many different ways you can use your flash on-camera such as bounce and diffused flash and hopefully you have mastered those. Now…

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Flash Fill Flash fill is a very useful tool for photographers. Both film and digital cannot record the range of contrast in a photo scene like our eyes can. In…

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How to use flash key If you are in Manual shooting mode and flash is set to ETTL, you meter the scene. Next, adjust your shutter speed to a setting…

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Here is an example of flash key. The flash is the brightest light on the subject. They would silhouette without the flash.

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When to use Manual Flash? The reason to set your flash on manual output is to maintain a consistent output each and every time the flash fires. You are at…

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Keep in mind that 1/1 is full power; ½ is ½ power; ¼ is ¼ power, and so on. What is nice about the flash’s manual output ability is that…

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While you are shooting in Manual, you have to do these calculations in your head or by testing to make sure your exposures are correct. Wedding photographers usually have their…

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Flash on Manual Mode Up to now, we have covered all the options available for using flash in an automated capacity. There are however, many advantages to using flash in…

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Another method is the red eye reduction features of your system.  The camera, as you are pressing the shutter release, fires a small flash-type light to get the pupils in…

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Exercise: To test your flash and camera system, place the focus point on the subject and take a fully flash image. Take a second exposure by placing the AF point…

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Using the flash, step by step Now that we have covered all the details of flash and how it works, here is the step by step approach for simple flash…