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Lesson Info

Speedlights

Alright, so if you do wanna get something a little bit better than your pop-up flash. The entry-level speedlights, I can't say that I really recommend. These are mostly designed for cameras that do not have any flash system at all. If your camera does not have a pop-up flash, and you need just a little bit of fill light, these are perfect ones for that. And so they do fill a particular need, but they're not that powerful, and they don't have very many features. I think most photographers who are doing a little bit of flash photography, somebody who wants to get into it, this is probably the best area to be in, and that's the intermediate category. And this is not the top of the line, it's not the bottom of the line. And these are gonna add in a few more features for you. For instance, they'll have a tilt and swivel option, so that you can shoot vertically, and you can bounce the light off of walls or ceilings around you. They'll have an infrared beam, that will help you focus under low...

light conditions which is something you can often turn on and off. Many of the modern ones today will have a wireless communication option where you can have the built-in flash communicate with this and have it fire remotely. So you could have a flash mounted up someplace else, shooting the picture, and have it automatically fire, which is a nice option to have. Now for the top of the line flash, this is gonna be great for someone who uses flash on a very regular basis. If you're a wedding photographer, and you're shooting in dark halls, you're probably gonna need this to illuminate your subject, or any sort of group photography, event photography. These can be very, very nice because they give you more power. You can shoot larger groups, And you can shoot faster because they're not firing at their very top 100% power all the time. In some cases they will give you ports where you can hook up external batteries that you can clip onto your belt, so that it has a constant power source that's more than the standard four AA batteries that most of these take. Many of them have little pull-out diffusers and bounce cards so that you can bounce the light or use wide angle lenses. They will also have more connections, so you can connect them up to different types of light. PC connections, for instance. As I mentioned, some of them have these little pull-out diffusers so that you can use them with wide angle lenses. And a lot of these also have wireless communication. But you'll also wanna take a look, if it has wireless communication, exactly what type of communication. Is it a line of sight system, or is it a radio trigger which works over a much greater distance. The strobe units are more the types of things that you're gonna have in the studio. Although there are some that-- I always loved these ones. They call them the potato masher flashes. And you watch movies from, well the 80s and the 90s, it seemed like all the Hollywood extras had these fake potato masher type flashes, because that was kind of the standard that photo journalists supposedly had for a long period of time. But if you see any movie with photographers using these type of flashes now, they've got some very old prop gear in there. Because nobody really uses these flashes anymore, they're not very common. So when you get into the studio, you can have either mono lights, which has the light and the power unit all built into one unit, or you'll have a flash head and either a power pack or generator depending on what name they wanna call it. Which gets its power from this other unit, which is basically-- It's not a battery in itself, but it does control the power settings for the flash. And so, we're only gonna just touch on these as we get into the rest of the class. And there are other types of lights. For instance, there's a ring light that you would actually mount on your camera and shoot straight through, with something that's often done with beauty photography and some fashion photography to get a very particular look. So let's step back and just start with the basic built-in flash that you might have on your camera. And so this is nice and easy to use, but it does have a number of problems with it. First, is that it's a very small light source. And small light source is going to give you very distinct and hard edges on your shadows. The light being very close to the lens, means you're probably gonna get red eye, if you shoot a lot of people photography. And we can't move this flash at all, in any way. And it's running off the power system built into your camera, so it's not very powerful. This is something that's only gonna reach just a short distance in front of you. This is whispering. If you can hear me whispering, I can probably shoot a flash photo of you. It's just not that powerful. And I will have to admit that I am very much lacking in my personal collection of built-in flash photos. A lot of my cameras don't have built-in flash, but it's just not something that I turn on because I know it doesn't work real well much of the time. I was down in Chile on a bicycle tour, and I was able to illuminate the grapes, because they're right in front of the camera. So this is a perfect situation, where a little bit of light-- And also the nice thing is that it kind of hides the shadows, just 'cause of the way I have the photo set up, you don't see where those shadows are. I need to-- My homework assignment is to go shoot more photos with built-in flash. I really don't like doing that homework. Okay, so built-in flash. The deer in the headlights look, okay. We're gonna try to avoid that by making some changes. One of the problems is shooting vertical pictures with this. Because you get this really awkward shadow off on the side. And so shooting verticals with a built-in flash is a recipe for disaster. If you absolutely must have a shot, you'll get a shot. It'll be properly exposed, but it's not gonna be beautiful lighting. One of the best places to utilize that built-in flash is outside where you already have a pretty good amount of light to start with. So under a cloudy situation, we can now add in some light to the eyes here. You remember in an earlier session, we were using a reflector to bounce light in. So it's a similar effect, but it's got a little bit, a little bit more kick to it here. A little bit more contrast to it. Now one of the things that you'll want to learn how to work with on your camera, if you are using flash, is something called flash exposure compensation. This is where you get to jump in and adjust the power of your flash. Now you were able to do this either adding more power to it, or you can take power away from it. In virtually all cases, you're gonna want to drop the power down, alright. The flash is firing at what it thinks is a technically correct amount of light. And most of us, and this is a bit of a personal opinion that you can have here. Most of us think images don't look good if we're slammed with too much light in the face. We call them the DMV, the Department of Motor Vehicle look. Flash with a lot of light, your passport look. It doesn't necessarily look good. It does clearly identify the subject, but it doesn't have a nice look to it. And so, I really think of light in this case like I do with my Indian food, which I love. I love a little bit of spice with it, but I don't want overwhelming spice that I can't even taste the actual food itself. And so we want a little bit of light, but not too much. And this is where you dial it down to your taste. I really like minus one. I think minus one looks pretty good. We can dial it down to minus 2, and this is pretty good. Kind of mild here. I think minus three has gone a little too far, and we hardly even notice the flash at this point. I need a little more spice on this photo here, you might say. So let's take a look at TTL-3, minus 2, minus 1, and your full-on full TTL. Now you can make your own decision as to what you think looks good. Now the fact of the matter is, it's going to change depending on your subject, their skin tone, your framing, the background, what they're wearing and everything. But if I had to give you a number, TTL-1 works pretty good most of the time. That's kind of a good default position to be at. Powering that flash down just a little bit. And that was in a cloudy situation. Alright, if we're gonna add on a flash. This is gonna be much more powerful than the built-in flash. So if you need to fire something that is further away, or larger in size, that's a good reason for going to this. Further from the lens means it's less likely that you're gonna get red eye. We have the option of bouncing that light off of walls and ceilings if we have something close by. And so we have to be aware of the environment we're working in, and where we're setting up our shots, because potentially we can get some really nice lighting with just an add-on flash. They also have a number of special effects that you may not get with the built-in flash. Relatively speaking, it's still a fairly small light source, and it's still pretty close to the lens. And so it is somewhat limited in what it can do. It's still gonna give you a fairly harsh look. It's typically a little bit better than the built-in flash. Depending on where your ceiling is, you can bounce it, and that light may or may not look good, depending on your particular subject. There is a little bounce card which helps bounce a little bit of light directly forward, which I think will help illuminate and get some light more into the eyes. In this case, you can see exactly where the ceiling is, and you can see the light bouncing off the ceiling. And this is a good situation where you have a very low ceiling, and you know that light doesn't have too far to go. Once again, turning your camera off to the side can be a little bit of a problem. But in this case, notice what I'm doing. I'm bouncing the light off of the wall right next to her. You can look at her eyes, and you can actually see. Let's enlarge that. There we go. Now, look at her eyes. You can see the main light, and you can see where it's reflecting off of the wall. We now have a larger source of light. Remember we talked at the beginning about this. How big is the light source, and where is the light source. And so the way that I'm setting up this type of shot, she's sitting on a stairway, in kind of a narrow hallway. A little bit of light is catching her directly, but most of the light is bouncing up against the wall, spreading that light out. Okay, working in a back lit situation. The camera fired a normal TTL flash, and did a horrible job here. Now what's going on from a technical standpoint in the camera, if the camera was trying to justify-- Well I fired the light and this is what it looks like. I did this because I was trying to illuminate this dark area in the background, and the dark top here. And I was trying to get all of this to middle tone gray. And so I just averaged everything here, so that it looked on average right. And this picture, from a technical standpoint, from a pixel exposure standpoint, is technically correct. But this is not aesthetically correct. I don't see anyone in here who loves this photo. I don't see that love in your eyes on this photo. And so this is going to be a good opportunity for powering down our flash, with the flash exposure compensation. And so we're gonna dial it down to minus one. That has improved the situation. Let's dial it down to minus two. Okay, now these skin tones almost look real here. And then we can dial it down to three, which I think is a little too far in this situation. So let's look at the series. Three, two, one, and full TTL. In this case, I'm liking TTL- Like I said in the previous example it depends on your subject, skin tone, background, framing, clothing. Lot of different factors involved here. Now remember, this TTL, this whole TTL thing means the flash, the camera, is in control of the power of the flash. You are not in direct control. It's automatically controlled, but I am guiding it at minus two and minus one. This is great for situations that are constantly changing. If you can think of the reception of a wedding, where everybody's at slightly different distances, in different groups and different backgrounds. Good time for automated flash. Alright, we're outside on a cloudy day, full TTL flash. Once again, this is a technically correct photo, but aesthetically, it's a little too bright on the skin tones. We go into exposure compensation, flash exposure compensation, and we dial it down a little bit. And as I misspoke there for a moment, that reminds me, this is not exposure compensation. This is flash exposure compensation. When you are changing exposure compensation, you are changing shutter speeds and apertures. And what we're doing with flash exposure compensation, is we're adjusting the power of the flash. Those are two separate features on your camera. The flash exposure compensation will have a plus/minus, but it will have a lightning bolt before it. Exposure compensation will just have a plus/minus. And you'll see usually two separate controls either on the dials and buttons of your camera, or in the menu system. Alright, so let's look at the series shot on a cloudy day, with an add-on flash. Once again, I'm liking TTL-1. Now you can also set settings in between this, like TTL-1.3, or 1.7. So you can dial in very exactly what you think looks best. Some of the best times to use flash, is when you would least likely think about it. For instance, on a bright, sunny day. Bright, sunny day in Africa, I'm using sun to fill in the shadows of my subject so that we can more easily see them. Almost any time that you are shooting people, if you do a lot of people photography, there's a good chance that having some sort of fill-in flash is gonna add and improve your photography. Now I could probably show this photo to a hundred people walking down the street, and not one of them would guess that I used flash. But I can tell you that flash helped this photo, enabled you to see their faces more clearly. And that's kind of one of the key things that I think about flash, is it's kind of like the fisheye lens, if you remember that section. If you can use it, and not have people even know that you used it, that's probably a pretty good application. And that means it looks pretty natural. I mean, did you know that I used flash? Well if you look directly in her eyes, you can see a little bit of catch light. And that actually adds to the photo, but most people aren't going to consciously pick up on that. They're just gonna think that's a nice lighting situation. Now the light source in your add-on flash is still relatively small when it comes to the world of photography. And so one of the ways to increase it is with some sort of bounce reflector. And there's a number of different companies out there that make these little reflectors. And I forget even who makes the one that I have. But this is what it looks like. And it increases the size of that area, which means your shadows are gonna be a little less harsh. And that's what we're trying to do, is we're trying to soften the shadows a little bit, so it doesn't have that on-camera harsh look to it. Now the problem is, is that when you stick those over on the side, you still get very, very harsh shadows. And so keeping that camera on the flash, it's really hard to shoot verticals. And when you shoot people, you end up shooting a lot of verticals. And so on-camera flash for people photography just has this inherent problem. So we're gonna have to dive in, and get that flash off the camera to really get the better quality light.