Flash Made Easy

Click to Enlarge

Sophisticated flash-master Joe Sales went all-manual to get the picture at left. He even took his Canon Speedlite 580EX off the camera, using a wireless trigger to fire it.

Sound too complicated? It's not. Sales could've gotten the same exposure easily by setting the camera on manual and the flash on TTL. And to fire the flash when it's out of the hot-shoe, you don't need wireless -- just an off-camera (TTL) shoe cord.

By freeing the flash from the camera, a cord gives you better control over the angle and distance of the light while you keep the benefit of TTL and all its automatic control. Because the cord lets your gear communicate, you can point the flash from any direction without losing your camera's TTL metering.

First, Sales had to figure out the settings for the background. He started by choosing a shutter speed of 1/20 sec, slow enough to let him twitch his Canon EOS-1D Mark II N slightly to add some blur to the background. This blur does double duty: It adds vibrance to the picture and smudges the background, which, at his f/11 aperture, would have been distractingly sharp.

He held the Speedlite in his left hand, crossing it over his right to get the dramatic side light.

Still, there was one last problem to solve. Since his subject has very fair skin, holding the flash that close, and set to TTL, would have overexposed him.

Fortunately, this had an easy solution, too. All you have to do is get your flash to put out less light. Most DSLRs let you control the output of a flash (whether pop-up or hot-shoe) with flash exposure compensation. In smaller DSLRs, you're likely to find it as a menu item; sometimes there's a button.

Either way, simply dial flash exposure compensation down incrementally until you like the effect you get. (If you need more power from your flash, you can dial the compensation up.)

Sales shoots a lot, so he knew right away he'd need less flash to get this shot. And with a bit of experience and the help of exceedingly smart equipment, you'll be ready, too.

Try This Shot:(1) In the shade during the day, set your camera to manual exposure and your meter to evaluative. (2) Try ISO 200, a shutter speed of 1/20 sec, and an aperture of f/11. (3) Take a shot; adjust your aperture until the background exposure is good. (4) Tether the flash to the camera with a shoe cord, and set it to TTL. (5) Shoot. If the subject is too bright, use flash exposure compensation to dial it down.

Subtle portrait

On-camera flash can be just the ticket for shots where the bright, straight-on flash adds drama, but for an indoor portrait, more subtlety is often in order.

How did photographer Michael Soo get such pretty light from a flash? First, using an off-camera shoe cord, he took it off his Canon EOS 5D to change the beam's direction. Then he bounced the light off another object to soften it. (Many flash heads not only pivot upward to bounce off the ceiling but also swivel for a side bounce, so you don't necessarily need a cord.)

Soo chose his background carefully. The restaurant was lit, typically, with incandescent light, which is very warm (yellower) in tone. The flash produces daylight-balanced light, so it's much cooler (bluer). If there were too much incandescent light in the background and the flash were lighting the foreground, the background would have appeared glaringly yellow in comparison with the daylight-balanced flash's light. Soo didn't want that effect, so he placed his subject in front of a darker area that wouldn't compete with her.

The flip side of the underlit background was that he'd need a fair amount of exposure for it to show up. The answer: ISO 1600. This gave him a shutter speed of 1/8 sec -- short enough that his model didn't have to freeze her pose for too long.

Because the ceiling was too high to bounce the flash off, the creative photographer improvised. He draped a dinner napkin over a tall water glass, placed that ad-hoc reflector at about a 45-degree angle from his model, and pointed the flash at it.

The result: a softly lit, warm portrait that never would have worked without a flash.

Try This Shot:(1) In a dimly lit indoor scene, set your camera to manual exposure and the meter to evaluative. (2) Try ISO 1600, 1/8 sec shutter speed, and f/4. (3) Take a shot, and play with the aperture until you get a background you like. (4) Set your flash on TTL. Use a shoe cord to turn the flash away from your subject, and aim it towards a white surface like a wall or even a napkin.

• Print
• Stumble It