Flash 101

[Not4wood]

Evening everybody..

There has always been a Hot Discussion on the use or actually Trouble with the use of Off Camera Flash. A lot of people don't like it, say its extremely hard to use and as well that its not Natural.

Truthfully, using an Off-Camera Flash to help your image and make it a point so that the Audience can't tell if you used a Flash or Not is what makes the image more Natural.

Here is a Great Discussion on using Flash and I would say just about all aspects of one thing or another to help everyone understand and use the practical applications of Off Camera Work.

This is one of the members of the Camel, that has so generously posted his discussion and I'm linking over to his site.

Ciaran has a great site, so for information please go here:
http://www.thewonderoflight.com/articles/?page_id=114

[Codebreaker]

A helpful link indeed.

I use many of the techniques in the article quite successfully - but these work well when you have a nice static subject like good old teddy.

The biggest problem I have is with subjects that just won't stay still - my grandchildren for example. ;)

Then its a case of trying to find a combination of shutter speed, aperture and flash exposure compensation that works. I tend to get a lower success rate in this case.

If motion blur isn't present then Lightroom can make up for some of the deficiencies but I'd rather have better images to start with.

Colin

[Not4wood]

It all depends on your equipment, sorry I don't remember what your using.

In our old Wedding days, we would set the aperture to f:8 and the shutter speed to 60th of a second. Then both lights were to be f:8 and you could always change your fill on or by your camera apropriately.

This way your fast enough to stop people action especially to capture the great expressions on your grandchildren. Using the flash and camera for f:8 makes it a great depth of field and also to get softer bokeh for the bg.

Also, using 60th of a second is OK for ambient light as well. To get more ambient light you could go to a slower shutter speed but that would also make you not be able to capture the children in movement. This is the problem with the give and take for the ambient light. On a non active subject (sitting and holding the children maybe) then you could go slower in the shutter speed and then you call that "dragging the shutter".

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