When you’re first starting out photographing people with flash, it can be a bit overwhelming. Even if you’re used to shooting with natural light, the pieces don’t all click into place right away and it’s easy to make mistakes and not be entirely sure how to rectify the problem. So, here’s Francisco Hernandez with three of the mistakes he sees new off-camera flash photographers making and how to resolve them.
This is the one simple thing you need to know about working with bounce flash
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Sometimes, as much as we might hate it, we’re forced to stick a flash on the hotshoe. Perhaps it’s something not too important and we just want a bit more light on things. But maybe it’s something very important and you really need to not screw it up. Whatever the reason, getting great light out of an on-camera flash isn’t that difficult. There’s just one thing you need to think about.
In this video, photographer Neil van Niekerk explains that one important thing and how it affects your photos in very simple and easy to understand terms. Yes, I’m going to spoil it now, but that one thing is the inverse square law. But don’t worry, there’s no maths or charts here. Just a simple practical demonstration that’ll make it easy for you to get decent shots when using on-camera flash.
This photographer thinks Godox isn’t a brand for professional photographers
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All the photographic groups and forums have been vaguely on fire in the last 24 hours due to an inflammatory video posted on YouTube by a pro photographer giving his opinion about Godox (and other similar level) lights.
As you can imagine, opinion was quickly divided with the Godox supporters getting their knickers in a twist and those that can afford the more expensive brands feeling delightfully smug. I watched the full 23 minutes and 57-second video so you don’t have to. You’re welcome!
The real difference between flash and Natural Light
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Many photographers often like to pick between flash or natural light. For some reason, they avoid mixing the two. It actually goes to the extent that some photographers will declare themselves as either a natural light or an artificial light photographer. It almost seems like these two are separate worlds that have little in common. Yet, how different is a flash from natural light after all? Isn’t light just light no matter the source? Let’s find out.
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.
Canon ST-E3-RT Version 2 trigger is basically the original but with 3 new features most can’t use
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Canon has announced a new Version 2 of their ST-E3-RT trigger for controlling Canon speedlights off-camera. If you were hoping for some massive upgrade, though, you’re in for a little disappointment. According to what I can see, it basically only adds only three new features over the original ST-E3-RT released in 2012. And not for everybody.
The first is that you (finally) get to be able to shoot rear curtain sync with your wireless Canon speedlights (if your camera is 2020 or newer and not an 850D/T8i). You get a minimum power setting that now goes down to an insane 1/8192 power (but only with the new EL-1 speedlight). And you get a new FE memory feature, allowing you to lock in E-TTL flash exposure levels (with everything).
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.
Stop asking photographers what flash power they used – it’s irrelevant
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It’s a question that’s often seen in photography groups. For some reason, people want to know all of the technical specs and exposure settings of every photo posted to those groups. In flash groups, people even want to know what flash power level you were at – as if it was actually a useful question to know the answer to.
Photographer Rob Hall sees this question all the time, so he’s decided to respond with a video. But this isn’t just a rant about why it’s a dumb question – well, not completely. Rob also tries to inject some knowledge to explain why the answer to the question is irrelevant and suggests some questions that you should be asking instead.
Profoto has launched a $300 light stand bracket for its $1,100 speedlight
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When Profoto first announced the original $1,000 A1 speedlight, I thought they were just having a laugh. But it turns out that it wasn’t April 1st and no, they weren’t kidding. To its credit, the Profoto A1 ended up being a pretty solid speedlight. Still a little overpriced for many, but decent with the obvious perk of doubling up as a backup flash trigger for existing Profoto users.
Then they brought out the A1X and most recently the $1,100 A10. And if you didn’t think these prices were high enough already, Profoto has just announced the new Profoto OCF adapter to go with them. It’s $300. Yup. Three hundred bucks.
High Speed Sync vs Neutral Density – Does it really matter which you use?
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It’s the age-old question. If I’m shooting outdoors in bright conditions and I want a shallow depth of field with flash, should I go high speed sync or just stick an ND filter over my lens?
This time, it’s Gavin Hoey’s turn to try to answer the question. In this video, Gavin shoots a series of identical images using both 3 & 5-stop ND filters as well as the Godox AD400Pro strobe to see how the methods compare and what the advantages and disadvantage of each are.
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