Photography - The Ultimate Guide to Using Off-Camera Flash

In this whole series of lectures, i'll only be using the Manual mode on both the camera and flash. No Aperture priority, no Shutter speed priority and no TTL.

Manual mode is easy to understand and do, and is another 'string to your bow' when it comes to exposure.

The aperture settings is one of the 5 aspects of off-camera flash exposure settings. Although it controls both the ambient and flash light, in the world of indoor off-camera flash, it's generally used mainly to control the flash exposure.

When we increase the ISO, we increase our camera’s sensitivity to light, and so it becomes more sensitive to both the ambient light and the flash light together.

So how and when should you use it for off camera flash photography?

You can almost think of flash power as being like a domestic dimmer switch, except that instead of the light output changing smoothly like it does with a dimmer, the light output jumps up or down, by whatever power setting you’ve chosen.

You would think that if you moved the flash twice as far from the subject, that you would halve the light.

But you'd be wrong, in fact you'd lose a whole lot more light than that. This video explains in simple terms, the effect it has when you change the distance from flash to subject, especially on the background.

This lecture is from my other course, Become a Better Photographer - Part II

What is flash sync speed exactly, why is there a maximum sync speed, and what's the way around it?

Maybe you're already aware that your camera's shutter speed is limited to (usually) around 1/250th of a second when using flash. But why is that, and what happens if you ignore it, (assuming your camera allows you to ignore it?) There is a way round it using High Speed Sync, but it's not a perfect solution.

This film includes some focal plane shutter animation to explain in detail what it's all about.

Great results with a simple one-light setup, and you can get vastly different results by simply moving the light around the subject.

Now that you've learnt how to control the light spill on the background, you can start thinking about lighting it.

You can easily change the look and feel of the background using readily available gels.

The dramatic type of light seen so far isn't suitable for everyone, here's how to flatter your subject a little by using a fill light.

Here's a great lighting setup for flattering your subject, commonly called Clam shell lighting

We've been using a quite soft light so far in these videos, but sometimes you can get a more 'edgier' feel using a hard light

The patterns of light and shadow on your subjects face will change depending on the position and height of the light and also the angle of the face.

You can make terrific looking backgrounds by firing a flash through various objects that find lying around the house This lecture demonstrates some great examples.

Sometimes, the less you light something, the more interesting it becomes. Honeycomb grid attachments for speedlights are great because they produce a small shaft of light. They can give a really cool look, terrific for a little extra creativity.

White backgrounds won't normally appear white, they can be anything from off white to black depending on your lighting setup.

This video demonstrates the technique for making a whiter than white background.

We saw in a previous video how to create a glamour / beauty light using clam-shell lighting.

Here's another way of achieving a similar kind of light with just one 1 flash, but it does require a more expensive product.

With careful use of off-camera flash, you can get dramatic images by using the sky as the background. When using manual triggers, this is much easier to do when light level are lower, i.e dusk or early morning.

Outdoor photo session at dusk

Outdoor sessions are much easier when you shoot at dusk or in a shaded area because the lower light levels allow more flexibility regarding wider apertures.

Not only are larger aperture easier on your flashgun, but they are great for blurring the background.

On a bright day, typical exposure settings for off camera flash might be 1/250th at f8 or f11, ISO 100, so at your maximum sync speed it's impossible under normal circumstances to shoot with wide apertures in order to blur the background or do selective focusing.

There a couple of solutions, neither is perfect, but they do work. you can use either High Speed Sync (HSS) or a Neutral Density filter. There are pros and cons of each and this video explains them, I also carry out a simple experiment to compare the two solutions.

Demonstration of the benefits of High Speed Sync

So far in these videos, i've been using manual triggers, and they work just great. However, they restrict you to the maximum sync speed of your camera, and that becomes a problem when shooting outside in bright conditions. In bright conditions at your max sync speed, you're forced to shoot at small apertures like f11, but sometimes it's great to be able to blur the background using wider apertures.

If you've watched some videos on my other courses you'll know I like to use graphic or grungy or backgrounds, here's the first of several shoots using these type of backgrounds

Another idea for creating great backgrounds, this time it's the use of graffiti, here I use High Speed Sync to blur the background

I just love these grungy backgrounds, especially when you can throw them out of focus, which I've done here using High Speed Sync.

Also, I tried a little experiment with blue gels, I'll leave it up to you to decide whether it worked!!

This video describes an easy to do method of taking professional product photos on a budget. Get terrific results that belie the nature of the method used.