Being faced with the prospect of using off-camera flash sends many new photographers running for the hills. Learning to use flash effectively can be overwhelming, and it may seem easier to painstakingly seek out perfect, natural light for every photo shoot. However, gaining fluency with artificial lighting increases a photographer’s versatility. Flash allows the photographer to carry out his or her vision in any lighting situation, and, contrary to popular belief, it doesn’t take long to master the basics. Watch Syl Arena’s guide to using Canon Speedlites for a quick introduction to getting started with off-camera flash:
Topics Covered:
- Importance of Off-Camera Flash
- Control Speedlites Using Your Camera’s LCD
- Flash Modes and When to Use Them
- Sync Speeds and Sync Modes
- Quality of Light
- Positioning Speedlites
- Triggers
- Light Modifiers
- Lighting with One Speedlite
- Lighting with Multiple Speedlites
Even photographers who think they’ll never need flash will benefit from this crash course. It delves not only into lighting equipment, but also into general concepts of lighting photos artistically and how to use flash in combination with ambient light. Arena’s guide simplifies the complexity of flash photography to get even the most reluctant photographer off to a successful start with Speedlites.
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Great technical explanations in the video. The beautiful part about off-camera flash is that it’s not brand-dependent. If you use wireless radio triggers in manual mode, you can even mix Canon speedlites and Nikon speedlights in the same scene!