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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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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).

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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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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.

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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.

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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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Quick tip – How to light subjects with glasses for photos or video

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We’ve written about how to avoid glare on glasses here on DIYP before. It’s a topic that many of us face at some point or another, whether it be for photography or video reasons. Photographer Joe Edelman has shared some excellent tips in the past on how we can avoid glare and reflection in glasses when photographing others, but what about when filming yourself?

While he doesn’t go quite as in-depth into the physics of it the way Joe did, this video from Kevin The Basic Filmmaker explains the basic problem and how we can quickly and easily solve the issue of reflection in glasses when filming ourselves or shooting video of others talking directly to the camera.

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Leica joins the club and drops “Master” and “Slave” terminology

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After the killing of George Floyd on 25 May, Black Lives Matter protests have been arising all over the world. Some camera companies have given their contribution by dropping “master” and “slave” terms from their flash systems, and Leica is the latest one to join the club.

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Nikon dropped “master” and “slave” before it was cool, about twenty years ago

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During the recent Black Lives Matter protests, the terms “master” and “slave” seem to have suddenly become problematic. After Canon, we now find out that Nikon has changed the terminology in its products as well. Only it was actually long before Canon did it – way back in the early 2000s.

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