Well, this is an exciting bit of news. It looks like Profoto will soon be announcing their first hotshoe flash. Yes, that’s right, a Profoto speedlight. It’s a bold, but inevitable, move, I think. The existing flash companies have to do something to survive and compete, or they disappear. There’s so much more gear available now, and a lot more pressure on companies to innovate and really deliver what users want instead of what the company simply wants to sell.
Yongnuo’s YN686EX-RT Li-Ion flash gives 750 full power flashes on a single charge
Well, it looks like Yongnuo finally jumped on the Lithium Ion battery powered flash train. Releasing its first Li-Ion powered speedlight, the YN686EX-RT, the new Yongnuo is designed for the Canon RT system. The flash was first mentioned a couple of months ago, but now it’s available to buy.
The YN686EX-RT features a 2000mAh Li-Ion battery, capable of producing over 750 full power flashes on a single charge. It integrates a 2.4Gh transceiver that can act as either a master or a slave for Canon’s RT system. But, it will also work as an slave in Nikon’s CLS/AWL optical system.
Three modifiers to improve your light when working with on-camera flash
The camera’s hotshoe is generally the last place you want to place a flash as your main light source. Sometimes, though, it can’t be helped. It’s common at weddings and events where you’re constantly walking around looking for the shot. It’s more about the memory than the quality of the light. Although that doesn’t mean we should neglect it entirely.
This video from photographer Ed Verosky shows us three ways we can modify the light coming from a flash on top of our camera. Ed admits that none of these solutions is ideal, but then putting a flash on the camera isn’t ideal, either. But these can go some way towards reducing that harshness of a bare, direct on-camera flash.
Photographer uses drone mounted strobes to put light in impossible places
Sometimes, it’s just impossible to set down a light stand, especially on location. Your stands might not be tall enough to get the light where you want. Perhaps the ground is just completely uneven. There may not even be any ground there at all. These days, though, we have other options.
For Chinese photographer Fuyan Liu, that option was to mount Godox AD200 flashes to DJI Inspire 2 drones. We’ve seen similar before, from both Nikon and Canon. And even Elinchrom. But it’s still been a little out of reach for most photographers. With today’s more capable drones, and powerful lights decreasing in weight, it’s starting to become more of a reality.
Godox begin rolling out native support for Fuji, Olympus and Panasonic cameras
Recently, we showed you a somewhat expensive option for using Godox flashes with Fuji, Olympus and other brand cameras. There’s also been a rumour floating around that Godox were working to add native support for some of these brands. Now, though, it seems that support is starting to come quicker than anybody had anticipated.
Fuji and Olympus/Panasonic versions of the Godox TT350 TTL speedlights are now available for preorder, at least through Adorama. They’re Fuji and Olympus/Panasonic compatible versions of their Flashpoint Zoom-Mini TTL R2 Flash (AKA, Godox TT350).
The Strobist is back with a free flash lighting course focusing on colour
David Hobby, aka “The Strobist“, was the original Internet trailblazer when it came to using small hotshoe flashes. At least, if you wanted to use them for more than just giving your subject red eye. Inspiring photographers to get their speedlights off the hotshoe, David created a free Lighting 101 course way back in 2006.
I learned so much from that first course. So, when David released Lighting 102 the following year, I dived right in. Speedlight technology and variety has come a long way since 2007, so David updated Lighting 102 this year to reflect some of those changes. Now, David has announced an all new Lighting 103 course coming in January 2017, which takes things even further.
Photographing a dancer in New York City and faking big soft window light with speedlights
I’ve found the dancers often make the best subjects in front of the camera. Even if they’re not actually dancing, they often have amazing body awareness. They know exactly where each part of their body is. They know how to show off tone and definition in their muscles and limbs with effortless grace.
In this behind the scenes video from Joe McNally, we’re taken on a tour of New York City. Photographing a dancer new to the big city to create a portfolio. At least, that’s the premise of the assignment. Joe uses this scenario to show off the capabilities of the Nikon D500 and SB-5000 flash units. He also offers up one or two tricks along the way that you can apply to any camera or flash system.
If you’re shooting flash outdoors, your colours are probably wrong. Here’s how to fix it with gels
Shooting on location with flash is one of the fun parts of portrait photography for me. But, depending on the lighting conditions where you’re shooting, your flash may not be putting out the same colour as the ambient light. This means that while your subject may appear perfect, the environment can appear very cool or warm.
In this video, photographer Robert Hall explains the problem how it happens. It’s an easy problem to fix, all you need is a few gels, and Robert shows us how.
How to cheat at high speed sync and shoot in bright conditions with studio strobes
High speed sync (HSS) has taken off in a big way the last few years. A relatively new technology, high speed sync has largely been limited to speedlights. The lack of power has put many people off using it. Unless you have a bunch of them, you just can’t usually get the shots you want.
HSS features have been appearing in many new powerful studio strobes lately, but what about your old ones? Are they useless now? Absolutely not. In his latest video, Jay P. Morgan is here to show you how to get high speed flash capabilities with studio strobes.
Did Canon just release a Nikon ad remake?
I will say, right off the bat, the photography itself is pretty amazing, but this video recently released by Canon is eerily similar to a D500 & SB-5000 promo video Nikon put out with Keith Ladzinski back in April.
Canon’s “The Shot”, with Krystle Wright takes some speedlights and mounts them on drones in order to be able to get the flashes where no light stand can go, just like Nikon did. In fact, the videos are so similar they even used the same company, Falkor Aerials to fly the drone-mounted speedlights.
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