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 :

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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:

• choosing your direction
• my choice of flash modifiers

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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.

I enjoy shooting destination weddings- and I’ve been fortunate to photograph weddings in Aruba, Miami, and St Augustine (in Florida).  Later this year, I’ll be photographing weddings in Las Vegas and the Bahamas.

These are weddings are often in exotic locales.  (Well, nearly everything will seem exotic outside of New Jersey, but I digress.)  Even even though it sounds exciting to photograph in faraway places, there is a challenge that comes along with that -  packing enough of my gear and getting it safely to my destination.  It is even more of a challenge with restrictions placed on air travel.

Since I frequently get asked via emails to show what I have in my camera bag, I thought I’d post some of what my camera bag looks like when I travel. (It is slightly different than when I photograph weddings locally, and can drive there in my van.)

For me it was an  easy choice for a camera bag - the Think Tank Airport Security. This roller case is sturdy, protects all my gear inside, and has roller wheels that just glide ever so smoothly.  It is also surprisingly roomy inside for a case that can be taken on-board an aircraft as carry-on luggage.

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There are a few pockets on the outside.  These are handy for phones, and an iPod and airline tickets and various bits and pieces and papers.

But let’s have a look at what I keep inside …

As you can see, I don’t pack my roller-case super-tight with an overload of gear.  I still need to be able to pick this baby up when it is loaded.

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Firstly, the inside of the roller case ‘lid’ in more detail …

Lots of zipped pockets for goodies, but mostly I keep this to stick various items onto the clear fronts of the pockets.  This is where I stick the CTS and 1/2 CTS filters that I use to balance my flash with Tungsten light.  There are also a few strips of gaffer tape. (Very handy stuff!  I never go without.)  And the white/grey/black card you see there is the Qpcard, in case I need it to easily correct the white balance in post-processing, for something I photograph in strange lighting.

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The main compartment is where it gets more interesting …

… and here it is with the top layer of items unpacked outside the case :

Looking at the smaller items that I unpacked as the top layer …

The rows from left to right, (top to bottom):
  -  Visible Dust - Arctic Butterfly.  
      This is a handy device to clean my cameras’ sensor if I need to.
  -  two Canon CP-E4 battery packs, which I already have loaded with rechargeable batteries.

  -  two zip-lock bags with 8 rechargable NiMH batteries for the CP-E4 battery packs.
  -  two Tamrac memory card wallets.  
      Each wallet contains four 8Gb SanDisk CF cards, and four 4Gb SanDisk CF cards. 
      Each camera also has an 8Gb SanDisk SD card in them.
      (I use the SD cards to record medium JPGs on, as a safeguard against any of the CF cards failing.
      As an aside, I only shoot in RAW, other than the back-up JPGs.)

  -  Canon ST-E2 wireless TTL transmitter
  -  two Stofen diffuser cups, of which one has a hole cut in the top.
  -  a business card holder.  (It is the aluminium case with the red ends.)
  -  one spare battery for the Canon 1D mkIII bodies.
  -  two pieces of black foam which I use as my light modifiers,
  -  on top of this I have displayed the cord and plug to recharge my iPhone and my iPod.
  -  black hair bands.  (I use this to keep items in place such as the black foam light modifiers.)

  -  iPod, loaded with cool tunes.  (An essential item for travelling.)
  -  iPhone.  This is also essential in that I have my Calendar and Contacts close on hand.

If you’re interested in any of these items, check out these pages listing all my photo gear -  all which link to B&H’s website where these items can be purchased. 

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And now, the larger items at the bottom of my roller case :

Firstly, the two cameras are both Canon 1D mkIII bodies.  They are currently my camera of choice.
The two flashguns in the front are Canon 580EX II Speedlites.

The lenses are,  in the back row, from left to right:
  -  Canon 16-35mm f/2.8L II
  -  Canon 24-105mm f/4L IS 
  -  Canon 70-200mm f/2.8L IS  (on the lens hood you can see another piece of filter stuck.)
The two lenses in the front are, from left to right:
  -  Canon 35mm f/1.4L
  -  Canon 85mm f1.2L II

As you can see, I favour zooms over prime lenses, but I do hedge my bets by adding two superb primes.

And again - if you’re interested in any of these items, they can be purchased via these pages listing all my photo gear, which all link to B&H’s website.

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Perhaps as interesting, are the lenses I leave behind.
Two lenses which are covered (nearly) by the superb 16-35mm f/2.8L II, are:
  -  Canon 14mm f/2.8L  
  -  Canon 20mm f/2.8

Two other primes that I leave behind, are: 
  -  Canon 24mm f/1.4L
  -  Canon 50mm f/1.2L
This is a specific choice, in that I feel that the 35mm and 85mm primes make an excellent pair for their focal length and perspective. 

A zoom that I leave behind, is the Canon 24-70mm f/2.8L - and the reason for this is that the range is already covered by the 24-105mm f/4 optic.  And since most destination weddings tend to be in areas where light abounds, I don’t need the extra stop that the 24-70mm lens offers.  Besides, I am covered with the other zooms and primes should I need a faster lens than the 24-105mm f/4 optic.

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Other items that I take with me, but don’t put inside this roller case, are various bits of minimal lighting gear, and my battery chargers.  I place them in my check-in luggage.  Should my check-in luggage be misrouted, I still have my core equipment to photograph the wedding shoot to my complete satisfaction.

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As can be seen, I travel with a fair amount of gear, but carefully chosen.  There is back-up of everything, and redundancy in case of failure.  Since I’ll be far away from home and my usual resources, it is essential that I am self-contained, and can meet any challenge head-on.

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. 

.. than it will hurt me.

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.

There is a fundamental principle in lighting :
the larger your light source, the softer your light.

Using any of the myriad of flash modifiers that are on offer, helps in achieving that - spreading the light from the on-camera Speedlight much wider, thereby creating softer light that direct flash would’ve given.  However, (and this is a big however), these flash modifiers also throw light forward.  Ultimately all flash modifiers do the same thing - they disperse a lot of light around the room, while throwing some measure of light directly forward to lift shadows under the eyes and bring a sparkle to the eyes.

That is a huge step up from using direct flash - (or poorly bounced flash.. ie, flash at 45′ or 60′ forward) - but won’t be as good as directional light.  Directional light falls onto your subject from a specific angle.  This direction can very often be carefully chosen even when you use an on-camera flash indoors.

The image at the top is from a wedding I photographed a few weeks ago.
I touched up the WB in RAW, and that’s that. Simple, and it looks just great.
The light is soft, and the baby wasn’t bothered by any direct flash … since there was NO direct flash at all.

[edited to add on Dec 15 : I originally  used the term 'scrim'. 
I have since changed it for the more correct description of 'half-snoot'.]

The way I achieve directional light from my flash is by adding what is in effect, a half-snoot to my on-camera flash.  The half-snoot will partially block the light, and also direct it.  I also very often when shooting in tungsten light, use a filter on my flash to bring the cold light of the flash closer to the warmer tones of tungsten light. 

I simply stick a piece of gel over the head of my Speedlight with some gaffer’s tape. It is low-tech, but it works.

By gelling my flash for tungsten I change the grungy orange backgrounds to a more pleasing warm tone.

The gel used in the image of the baby above, was full CTO.  I keep my camera’s WB to Tungsten.  And in post-production I fine-tune the WB, since by bouncing my flash, it picks up an additional colour from the walls and ceiling.  The gel shown in the illustration here is 1/2 CTS.  I then keep my WB of my camera to 3800 K, which is still much closer to Tungsten, than the 5400K of flash.

The black half-snoot that I add to my Speedlight is just as simple.  It’s a piece of thin black foam bought from an arts store, and then cut smaller.

I keep the piece of black foam tied to my Speedlight with a hair band that I stole from my daughter.  Yup, low-tech and simple … and it works!

This piece of black foam around my Speedlight has two advantages:
1. Directional light.  I can now much more precisely direct where I want my light to come from.
2. Less annoying to others.  In turning my flash to the side or to point behind me, I would risk blasting other people directly in the face with flash. This piece of black foam keeps that from happening.  I now direct my flash over people’s heads, and no flash hits people directly in the eyes.

And thatis the flash modifier I most often use. Total cost is less than $2.oo However, if you feel the need to splash some money on hardware that is custom-made for you, send $40 to my Paypal account.  I will cut a piece of foam for you, add the hair band, and even sign it with silver pen. Oh, go on, you know you want one. It will surely become a collectible.

The additional advantage with this light modifier is that you retain the cool all-black stealthy ninja-photographer look. This is Elisabeth, who often works with me as a 2nd photographer. She’s cool.

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The only other light modifier that I use, is a Stofen cup.  This I use when I am in a situation where I do need light thrown directly forward. I also use it in rooms where the ceiling is too high to successfully shoot with the black half-snoot.

However, I still want a measure of control over where I direct my light.  Therefore I cut a hole in the top of the Stofen so that the majority of light can still be thrown in a direction of my choice, instead of being scattered all around. (I do keep a spare Stofen on hand that is unblemished, as well as an Amber coloured Stofen.)

To be able to flip the Stofen in and out of position, I keep it down with a piece of gaffer’s tape.  So if I want to take a shot without it, I simply flip it over.

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And there they are - the only light modifiers that I use when I use on-camera Speedlights.
In my weddings and portrait work,  I often do use off-camera lighting, whether Speedlights or Q-flashes.  But with on-camera strobes, these are the only light modifiers I use.  And they are all I need.

Here are two photos that I trawled from the archives …

Firstly, I never used this set-up like this. No, really!
This was honestly all assembled just to see how crazy it would look.

And even I have a sense of proportion about things, and realise I would’ve looked like the photo-geek cousin of The Terminator if ever I slung this around. It does look truly hardcore though!

That’s the D2H with the WT-1A wireless transmitter.  The antenna sticking out on the side is the extended range antenna … and this is actually the reason why I slammed all this together.  When the extended range antenna arrived I realised that that there was no good way of attaching this to a camera, aside from attaching it to a flash bracket. So I used a Monfrotto ball-head to attach the antenna to the flash bracket. 

The radio transmitter (which only appears in the rear photo), is used to trigger other remote flashguns.

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I tried the WT-1A in the studio a few times (without the extended-range antenna), and it was pretty amazing to see the images roll in on the computer while I shot. I even had parents check out the photos of their kids on the laptop, as I was shooting. It helped with the proofing of the images, since the parents had already seen every image by the time I was done.

The downside of using the WT-1A is that I am not a network engineer … it just needed one tiny setting somewhere to be off, for the thing not to work. And it was a headache then to track through every step and figure out what had changed. In the end I sold the WT-1A and the antenna, and never actually used the combination on a shoot. So that took care of my problem of how to actually use the extended-range antennna on a shoot.

The bracket is a Custom Brackets bracket that I modified by lopping the extraneous bits off. Some of it with an angle-grinder. (Actually, I AM hardcore!) These days I don’t use a flash bracket that much anymore. (It depends though.) And mostly I just have the Quantum radio transmitter velcro’d to the top of the strobe.

A constant debate that I see online is whether a specific piece of equipment is justifiable.  And whether it is justifiable in terms of a business decision.  The discussion typically centers around something like the eternal, “What will the 85mm f1.2 give me that the 85mm f1.8 won’t? And is it worth $1000 more?”

But I feel that in phrasing the question like that, the real effects that equipment choice have on our style are disregarded. I firmly believe that:

Style should always be evolving, borne from our choices and not from our limitations.

And those limitations are quite often our equipment choice.  Indeed, f1.2 vs f1.8

So does it bring more business?  That I can’t say - but I do know that using the very very best equipment does affect how I shoot, and does affect my results.  It also directly affects my confidence during a shoot - and therefore during client meetings. I know I can pull it off,  no matter what is thrown at me during a shoot. I have the skills and the equipment.

So let me back that up with an image from a wedding this past Saturday:

… taken with the Canon 1D mk3 and the Canon 35mm f1.4

Yes, I could’ve gotten that moment with the mk2N and the 24-105mm f4 .. but it would’ve looked vastly different.

Using the fast optic and a camera that has a very usable high iso, I was able to change the way I use flash from before. I am now able to snoot my flashgun with black material and very carefully choose where I bounce my flash from. (I also gelled my flash for a Tungsten WB.)  With the mk3 I’m now able to integrate the way I use flash more subtly with the available light than ever before.

And in these choices, I was able to bring out an image that looks different than it would’ve with other equipment. I like this result much more than what I would’ve been able to get with equipment of lesser spec.

So the choice between the 50mm f1.4 and the 50mm f1.2  appears incremental when seen on paper.   (It’s a huge $1000 jump though.)  Similarly, the difference between the mk2N image quality, and the 5D image quality is incremental. And again, the difference in image quality between the 5D and the mk3 image quality is incremental.

Now add all those small increments up … and you will find the equipment now allows you to achieve results you weren’t able to before.

I know for a fact, and I can see it in the past three weekends that I have been using the Canon 1D mk3, that this camera is changing the way I shoot, and changing the way I use light. Incremental changes, but they are proving to have a profound impact.

The question remains however - does it bring more business? I don’t know if there is a direct correlation. In a sense the question becomes a trivial one for me … because right now, I am doing work I absolutely love, at a level I would never have dreamed of a few years ago. And if using the very best equipment adds to that enjoyment - well, I only have this one life to live.  It would be a sad waste in a way to have frittered it away in worries about f1.2 vs f1.8 and omygawd, it’s so much money!  Just give me the f1.2 already and let me see how much I can push myself in this endeavour.

This leads me to another point.  Right now, with an arsenal of f1.2 and f1.4 optics (and all the f2.8 zooms) at my side, the only limitations in my photography are my own.  I certainly can not blame my equipment … (ok ok .. aside from the error 99’s and backfocusing and the usual litany of Canon hiccups) … seriously, I can not blame my equipment and say that, “If only I had *that* lens, I could’ve pulled the shots out of the hat.”

Right now, my limitations are my own. And that is a challenging boundary to be at.

How is that for a business decision?

I had an email enquiry asking how easy it is to fix a hotshoe that is loose on a Canon 1D series camera.

Somehow the 4 little screws that hold the hotshoe to the camera body can wriggle loose over time, causing the flashgun to wobble.  This can even lead to poor contact between the flashgun and the camera.

Fortunately, it’s a very easy fix.  All you need is a set of jeweller’s screwdrivers.
This image should explain it all … 

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Since the 580EX has a plastic foot, it is very easy to snap it off in the camera’s hotshoe.
The repair is simple, and the cost of the part from Canon’s Service Center.
The part nr is: CY2-1227-000

This is typical of the damage sustained …

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