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Tangents

05 – wireless TTL flash

August 23, 2007

flash photography techniques
bouncing flash  wireless TTL flash  flash outdoors 

Cameras which are capable of utilizing wireless TTL flash allow you much more flexibility right on the spot. If your camera and flash system allows for this, it really is worth your time and effort to figure out how to use it.

Have a look at Dave Black’s website to see what is possible with wireless TTL flash on location. He is a master at this.

I use it in a much simpler way during weddings, in order to shoot fast, but still have the ability to expand from just a single on-camera flash.

  Here I first tried a test shot, bouncing my flash to my right behind me. It looked flat, and I wasn’t happy with the way the wall was blown out in the mirror.

I keep two cameras on me at all times – each with a speedlight attached. And either of those speedlights are ready to be used as a master or slave.

In this instance I had my assistant stand in the corner away from the bride and me, and he had to point the flash (still on the camera), towards the wall and ceiling to the front and left of the bride.

I disabled the output from my own camera’s speedlight, but allowed it to trigger the slaved speedlight that my assistant was holding.

specific settings:
Canon 1Dmk2N w/ 580EX
Canon 24-70mm f2.8 L
1/100th @ f5 @ 500 iso
manual; eval metering
TTL flash: +0.3 exp comp

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An important thing here to keep in mind, is that using a diffuser cup over my speedlight would’ve thrown too much light forward – giving it a clearly artificial look. The way I used it here, the light looks natural – as if it might have been soft light from a large window.

In this photo, there is very little ambient light – it is pretty much all just flash. In fact, just a single speedlight as my light source – but I drastically improved my results by doing two things:
- bouncing my flash off a wall and ceiling, thereby softening the light, and
- moving my source of light away from the camera, thereby creating more directional light.

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And onwards to fill-flash and flash outdoors …

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Please feel free to e-mail me with comments & questions.
Neil van Niekerk

If you need more direct help or instruction on flash photography, I do present workshops and seminars, and I also offer individual tutoring sessions.

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