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.

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.

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