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How to get a good natural light look when using flash outdoors

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I’m always asked why I use flash outdoors and the answer is quite simple. The natural light doesn’t always give me what I want. Sometimes I want to complement or augment it and sometimes I want to override it completely. There’s nothing wrong with natural light and I use that too when it looks good, but yeah… It just doesn’t always look the way I want it to.

But how can you work with flash outdoors and still have it look natural when shooting things like weddings or portraits? Well, in this video from Vanessa Joy, we look at several different ways you can light a subject with flash, balancing it with the natural light to create a natural look. And, yes, there’s more to it than simply adjusting the power level to even out the brightness.

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Hard vs soft light – 5 portrait lighting setups broken down to show you when to use each

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When shooting portraits, the difference between hard and soft light on your subject makes a massive difference to the final result. There are so many ways we can use both, and when it comes to photographing people, the challenges of hard light can be particularly tricky to work around. But knowing when to use each allows you to make better creative decisions.

In this video, John Gress walks us through five different lighting setups using both hard and soft light to see how they come together and how the different quality of the light affects your subject and how it makes the final image look. You may even want to mix the two from time to time.

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What the heck is an optical snoot and how do you use one?

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There are two different types of snoot out there when it comes to flashes. You’ve got your regular snoots, which essentially act like a cylindrical flag around your light that blocks off any light not travelling directly ahead. Then you’ve got optical snoots, which incorporate some kind of lens, letting you project the light.

In this video, photographer David Bergman shows off how both types of snoot work but with the main focus being on optical snoots, using the Light Blaster – a popular optical snoot designed primarily for speedlights but that can also be adapted to studio strobes.

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Godox sets its sights on high end flash with the new P2400 pack & head system

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Godox has announced their new P2400 pack and head system. It’s the most powerful strobe system they’ve produced to date, which Godox describes as “a giant leap in the Godox innovation history”. And it sure does look the part, with Godox’s sights obviously set on brands like Profoto and Broncolor.

As with most of the other strobes in the Godox lineup, the H2400P heads to go with the pack are Bowens mount and feature a 60W LED modelling lamp (equivalent to a 300W halogen lamp). The flash power offers up to 10-stops of control (it goes all the way down to 1/512th power) in 1/10th stop increments. It’s also compatible with both of Godox’s 2.4Ghz and 433Mhz trigger systems.

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Here’s why you should upgrade your speedlight to a studio strobe

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I’d argue that nearly all of us owned a speedlight at some point before we owned a studio strobe. When we’re looking to dip our toes into supplemental lighting, strobes seem like a big investment. It just makes sense to pick up a cheap speedlight to play with right?

Like many others, I did the same thing. I bought a cheap speedlight (that was ultimately pretty crappy), then I got a proper one, but I was still unhappy, whereupon I quickly bought a strobe. I immediately wished I’d done it sooner. Here’s why.

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In photography, “Master and Slave” flashes is lazy language. We can do better.

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If you’re an avid photographer shooting with remote-controlled strobes, you’ll have come across this issue: One set of flashes is connected to your camera, and it controls all the other flashes in the photo studio.

Almost all of these systems use the same terminology: “Master” for the trigger that is doing the controlling, and “Slave” for the receiving strobe. It seems convenient because the language is so clear — until you pause for half a moment, and think about what that use of language does to normalize and casualize literal slavery.

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This beginner’s guide to using strobes will help you decide what to buy and how to use it

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Speedlights and strobes can be quite intimidating to new photographers who’ve never had personal experience with them before. Particularly strobes. They’re really not all that difficult to get to grips with. There is a learning curve, for sure, but it’s a fairly short one to get going with the basics.

Photographer Mark Duffy recently gave a tutorial on the basics of strobes in a live stream for UK gear distributor, Transcontinenta. Not wanting to limit the information contained within to just the live stream viewers, Mark’s also shared a copy of the stream to his YouTube channel for everybody else to enjoy, too.

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How to use flash if you don’t like photos to look flashy

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If I lay my cards on the table, in my personal and professional work I prefer to avoid the use of flash in favour of natural light. In an ideal world, I like nothing better than working with a fleeting beam of winter sunlight that glances across a face full of character, producing the type of photograph that would typically grace the cover of National Geographic.

The trouble is, as a busy corporate photographer, it’s much more likely I have to take a series of senior executive portraits from a basement office, generously artificially lit with horrible overhead fluorescent tubes, working to shoot directors who can spare about three minutes of their time and are itching to be off back to work.

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How to add flash to your shot to create portraits at night

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The night time can produce some wonderful colours, especially when shooting against a city skyline, or even within the city at ground level. The colours from the sky and clouds along with lights on buildings, in windows, signs and displays can make for some very compelling and colourful imagery. But what if you want to shoot portraits against that background?

In this video, photographer David Bergman talks about how we can add flash to our night time shots and mix them in with the ambient exposure to produce some great night portraits.

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What is flash recycle time and how/why does it work the way it does?

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If there’s one constant when it comes to flash, whether it’s speedlights or strobes, is recycle time. It’s the time you have to wait for the flash to charge back up between shooting one photo and the next. It applies to just about every type of flash, except for the recent array of hybrid flashes like the Godox FV200.

But what causes recycle times? Why do we have to wait? Can’t it just suck juice from the battery or the socket on the wall as it needs it? Well, nope. It can’t. And this video from photographer Mike Smith explains why.

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