Here’s a question that comes up often in emails I receive: Do I use a diffuser of some kind outdoors or do I just use direct flash, with the flash in the straight ahead position.
The simple answer is that yes, outdoors I most often shoot with my speedlight straight-on with no diffuser or light modifier, especially if I only use my speedlight for fill-flash.
But then again, the answer is not quite that simple - so let’s take this back a few steps:
Even though most of the tutorial pages here deal with on-camera flash, I don’t limit myself to just using on-camera flash. When I need off-camera lighting or when I need more juice from my flashguns than a speedlight can deliver, I use the Q-flashes made by Quantum.
For this wedding in Las Vegas, I decided to travel light and as an additional flashgun, bring along a single Quantum Q-flash in addition to the two speedlights I normally take along with me when I photograph a destination wedding. I also wanted the flexibility of wireless TTL control over the flash, and therefore I chose a Quantum T5D-R with the Quantum Freewire Wireless TTL set-up.
In the photo above taken at Red Rock near Las Vegas, I had my assistant hold the Q-flash up high on a monopod and triggered it wirelessly. This way I could fine-tune the flash exposure from the camera itself. This allowed me to work faster than having either me or my assistant manually adjusting the flash the whole time. (Anyone who is interested in my specific settings, the thought process is similar to the explanation here.) I had the Wide-Angle Diffuser over the Q-flash, to spread the light more widely.
The Q-flash’s flexibility and power really came in handy for this next image.
After the wedding we went to this famous landmark for a big group photo. I had to work fast to keep everyone’s attention since it had been a long day. Also, the cops had just stopped to move the two buses out of the middle lane … so I really had to shoot fast and nail the few images I took here.
I needed a lot of light, and I needed the light as even from left-to-right as possible - so I had my assistant hold up the Q-flash T5D-R with a Quantum wide-angle diffuser - and had her pointing this through a white shoot-through umbrella to get the light spreading more evenly. In the end I did have to go in to Photoshop to dodge the people on the left a little to bring them up to the same brightness as the rest of the group. But using a powerful flashgun in this way gave me a very good headstart on this image.
So I am showing this here as an example of something simple that you can’t do with a speedlight. When I need juice! .. and an even spread of light and a set-up that works fast, I revert to using Q-flashes.
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For those who are interested in the specific gear, here are the details of the exact equipment : __(’Read the rest of this entry »’)
I have substantially rewritten my original page on the use of flash brackets. Digital photography technology is steadily improving to the point where we now have cameras with fairly clean 1600 ISO settings, and very usable 3200 ISO. It is now ever more easy to get great results with bounce flash, and have all the light from the flash be indirect. With this, the need for me to use a flash bracket, has been greatly reduced.
Rotating flash brackets are cumbersome attachments between the camera and flash, which enables the flash to always be over the camera. Since the flash is always overhead of the camera with a flash bracket, regardless of whether you’re shooting horizontally or vertically, there is no sideways shadow … if you use direct flash to some extent, or a flash modifier on your camera.
It is now possible for me to get vertical images like these, using on-camera flash, with no trace of sideways shadows … because there is no light thrown directly forward from the flash itself. The light is all indirect. This means there will be no noticeable shadow regardless of how my flash is positioned on top of my camera.
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These two recent posts are also relevant to this:
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So these days I get by without a flash bracket, and I thought it pertinent to update the webpage to reflect this.
What are your settings? - a question that I am often asked about various images.
And quite often, the answer is surprising - it doesn’t really matter.
Sometimes the specific settings are of importance, but usually much less so than the method of getting to correct exposure of the ambient light and the flash.
This is the photographic equivalent of teaching someone to fish, versus just slapping a fish down on a dinner plate. Just telling my settings will reveal very little about the how. And yet, the how is far more important than just a listing of seemingly random figures.
Let’s look at this recent image from one of my workshops on flash photography - especially since it is exactly the kind of thing which I teach during the course of the day.
1/100 @ f1.6 @ 1000 iso
“Dragging the Shutter” is a term used to describe the technique of using a slow enough shutter speed to allow a measure of ambient light to register when using flash.
This term originates from an era when photographers would determine correct flash exposure for on-location photography by :
- setting the ISO speed according to the film used,
- setting the aperture according to subject distance (depends on flashgun’s guide number),
- then using the shutter speed as the ONLY way of independently allowing more ambient light in, slowing the shutter speed far lower than max sync speed when shooting in low light.
(This worked fairly well for colour negative film, because the labs took up the slack in exposure miscalculation when printing the images.)
However, with TTL flash on a D-SLR, you have more flexibility than this. And I’m of the opinion that the phrase “dragging the shutter” is archaic in the era of TTL flash photography.
As explained on these two previous pages …
- Manual flash vs TTL flash,
- juggling the three controls
… TTL flash exposure will follow your chosen aperture and ISO.
This means that your choice aperture and ISO effectively becomes ‘transparent’ to your flash exposure.
Hence you can equally well use your aperture and your ISO and your shutter speed, to allow more or less available light in, independent of your (TTL) flash exposure. (Obviously we have to work within reasonable ranges.)
So it would be of great benefit not to get locked into the idea of “dragging the SHUTTER” to control your available light, when you could equally well use any of the three controls when you use TTL flash.
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Many photographers seem to have a hard time wrapping their heads around this idea - that with TTL flash it isn’t only the shutter speed that you can control, but that you can now use all three settings (shutter speed, aperture, iso), to control how your available light registers .. and still not affect your flash exposure.
Let’s look at all of this in relation to some images:
1/100 @ f1.6 @ 1000 iso
Canon 1Dmk3 / Canon 85mm f1.2 II / Canon 580EX
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1/125 @ f1.6 @ 1250 iso
Canon 1Dmk3 / Canon 85mm f1.2 II / Canon 580EX
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1/100 @ f2.0 @ 1600 iso
Canon 1Dmk3 / Canon 85mm f1.2 II / Canon 580EX
If you look at my settings for all three images, my shutter speeds weren’t all that slow, BUT if you look at the images you’ll notice that the available light most definitely did register. And this was because of my choice of aperture and ISO. With a wide aperture, and a high ISO, I allowed ambient light to register, and give context to my photographs. And then I added TTL flash to it, and exposed correctly for my subjects, opening up shadows and controlling contrast and cleaning up skin tones.
I didn’t need to specifically “drag my SHUTTER” to get to this point.
What is at the very heart of this, is the idea that you get better results with on-location flash photography, when you make sure your ambient light registers to some extent - whether you use your aperture, ISO or shutter speed.
So in trying to understand this technique, don’t stare yourself blind against the idea that shutter speed is the only thing which allows you to independently control your ambient light, separate from your flash exposure. With modern (ie, TTL) flash photography, this technique has become a lot more interesting and versatile.
One of the important factors when we try to seamlessly blend flash with available light, is to be aware of the colour of the available light.
A speedlight’s colour temperature is around 5400 Kelvin, but the scenarios we photograph usually have a much different colour temperature than that. It then becomes important to try and match the (usually) cold light of the speedlight, with that of the existing light. For example, the blue-ish tones from a flashgun are often difficult to mix successfully with the much warmer tones of tungsten light.
To compensate for this, I quite often gel my flash to tungsten - and bring the colour temperature of the light from the flashgun closer to that of the tungsten light.
I recently discovered a neat little product - Sticky Filters.
Each fold-out pack contains two sets of 5 different filters designed to be used in specific lighting situations. This includes three different filters to compensate for fluorescent lighting.
The filters have a mild adhesive on one side. This makes it easy to just slap a filter onto the front of a flashgun, where the filter then stays in place. They can easily be peeled off again, and stored on the holder card.
So simple and so elegant a solution, that I wanted to be able to provide these to my workshop attendees. Thanks to the kind sponsorship by Kent Watkins of MPS, every person who attends one of my lighting workshops in 2008, will receive a set of these filters.
Anyone who wants to purchase a set of Sticky Filters, can order them directly from Midsouth Photographic Specialties for $49.95 a set.
The reason why I want (if possible) only indirect light from my on-camera flash, is that any direct flash looks too harsh.
Here’s a typical example:
As you can see, using the Stofen helps to disperse some light and is a huge step up from direct flash. But you can also see in the entire frame that the light from top to bottom is uneven. In the close-up you can see how there is a hard shadow on the bride’s face, as well as some specular reflection on her skin from the flash directly from the Stofen. And in some way, any time there is flash directly from the flash modifier on your subject, you get this kind of light. It is inevitable.
On the right-hand side images, I simply took the Stofen off, and pointed the flash over my shoulder into the rest of the hallway. As you can clearly see, having only indirect light from the flashgun, completely changes the look of the image.
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Remember : any time your subject can see your flash-tube you have direct flash.
This implies that if you are ”bouncing” flash with the flash set to 45′ upwards, you’re not doing anything to improve your flash photography.
There are occasional times to do that with specific intent, but mostly it just gives bad results.
The key idea here is that bouncing your flash does not mean simply putting a flash modifier on your flashgun and pointing it at the ceiling.
As to why I prefer not to bounce from the ceiling - in a studio set-up you would most likely never set up a soft-box directly over someone’s head as the only light-source. Similarly, why would you want to bounce flash from above someone, if there are walls and other surfaces around to bounce from ? Pointing the flashgun upwards is a poor choice compared to other possibilities when shooting indoors.
It is with this approach that I want to specifically choose where I want my light to come from.
There are times I do want to throw light forward from my flashgun.
But this is a specific choice, whether a short-cut or a specifically intended thing, or just a limitation of the scenario I am working in.
The obvious question that comes up when people see how I use flash when I am using them as on-camera flashguns, is … don’t they take a beating or even burn out?
I do hammer my speedlights, especially when I use the Quantum 2×2 battery packs. This doesn’t bother me greatly, since I regard my speedlights in a way, as consumable items. They will become unrepairable at some point. No real problem for me.
For this reason I have numerous speedlights, because there are inevitably at least one or two in for repairs.
My older speedlights tend to look like this:
Where they take a hard beating, is with events where there is a lot of activity in a short time. For example, with Jewish weddings and Bar Mitzvahs, you have events like the Hora which happen very fast and only for a short time. And you have to get the shots. The equipment matters less. Don’t fall in love with your equipment and be afraid to use it.
This example is from a recent wedding. My on-camera flash was used in the way I described recently in the posting on my choice of flash modifiers.
(btw, that’s a Q-flash lighting up the background there.)
Getting these images as sequences in the dark reception halls here on the East Coast, takes a lot of juice. (Or rather, the way I do it, requires a lot of juice.)
And no, I wouldn’t buy a used flashgun from me either. 
While the techniques described on these pages are heavily dependent on shooting indoors which provide places to bounce flash off … it wouldn’t seem possible to use these techniques outdoors. After all, you can’t bounce flash off the clouds. (Although we’ve all seen photographers attempt this outside. )
So while there are obvious limitations in applying these bounce flash techniques outdoors, there are times when these techniques can still be quite effective.
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As a start, an example that I show in the tutorial pages is of this image taken at a wedding that I photorgaphed in Aruba.
Here I had my daughter hold up the gold side of the Lastolite reflector. And hopefully this gives the idea of light from the sun setting over the ocean. (It had just gone down, and the light was blandly grey.)
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However, these bounce flash techniques do imply some kind of surface to bounce your flash off.
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But you shouldn’t feel limited by not having an obvious area to bounce light off.
Have a look at this sequence:
Nice evening light:
Settings of .. 1/125th @ f2 @ 1000 ISO .. exposed properly for skin tones and the dress.
BUT, the evening sky and the light from the lamp are lost.
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1/250th @ f2 @ 320 ISO …
Nice enough detail in the sky and the lamppost, but the couple is lost in murkiness.
So this is (for me anyway), the kind of opportunity where a touch of flash would work wonders.
So I turned my flash-head 90′ to my left, and bounced light into the shop displays.
Not any particular surface .. just off the general shop displays.
And here are the results, still at 1/250th @ f2 @ 320 ISO.
It works for me. 
And I know my client will love it when she sees it.
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To show you exactly what I was bouncing light from, have a look at the shop displays to the left in this test shot:
… and this crop from another test shot:
Yup, I bounced flash off that stuff. Nothing in particular .. but, enough light will spill back from whatever is struck by the light from my flashgun .. to give enough light on my couple to enhance the photo.
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Here’s another example :
It was really dark already. This was at 1/100th @ f1.2 @ 1250 ISO
Canon 5D and 85mm f1.2 II
I was really squeezing the last bit of light out of the setting we were in. I wanted to use the tree behind them with the last remaining autumn leaves, but the evening light was also coming from behind them. So their faces were shaded. Not good.
I therefore bounced flash off the brick wall of the temple. I’d guess it was about 10 meters from where I was standing. But enough light spilled back to register at that wide an aperture and high an iso. Because the light from the flash is now coming in from an angle, the foreground doesn’t have that typical on-camera flash look to it.
Here’s another image from the same sequence.
(I did edit this though for the dark rings under his eyes from lack of sleep. )
But in this example and the previous one that I show here, I got lucky.
There was some kind of surface or objects nearby to bounce light off.
So, would these techniques work outside ?
Maybe. Quite often not, but sometimes it will. It depends.
It will require some thought.
… aperture / shutter speed / ISO
Those are the three controls we have over our exposure of ambient light.
But depending on whether we are using manual flash or TTL flash, our control over our flash (in relation to our ambient light), changes somewhat.
To recap quickly from the previous posting where I went over the differences between manual flash, and TTL flash.
With manual flash, two (of the four) things that control our exposure:
- aperture,
- ISO.
With TTL flash, we have only one control over our flash exposure:
- flash exposure compensation.
The reason for this, as explained is that our two controls that affect manual flash, seemingly become transparent with TTL flash. And therefore we have to control TTL flash exposure with flash exposure compensation. The flip-side of this is … that we can now use aperture and ISO to affect our ambient exposure. This we couldn’t do with manual flash, because it would’ve affected our flash exposure as well, and not just our ambient exposure.
The point of this posting?
It’s just a correction to a lot of the mistaken advice I’ve seen on the photography forums,
where incorrect advice is given, such as:
- aperture doesn’t affect ambient exposure.
Yikes! Just because shutter speed is the only independent control you have over ambient exposure when using manual flash, doesn’t mean that aperture doesn’t affect ambient exposure.- your choice of aperture affects flash exposure.
Weeeell, it could be. As we’ve seen, this depends on whether you’re using manual flash or TTL flash. If you’re using TTL flash, you could use aperture to affect only your ambient exposure. ie .. you could affect your ambient-vs-flash ratio by controlling your aperture. (The same goes for your ISO setting.)
This and the previous posting have been very wordy, so perhaps it is time for some photos again …