05 – wireless TTL flash

flash photography techniques
bouncing flash ~ wireless TTL flash ~ flash outdoors

wireless TTL flash

Wireless TTL capability in a camera & flash system, allows you to control a remote flashgun with your camera, or the flash on your camera. It allows you the freedom and control of TTL flash, but as off-camera lighting. This gives you much more flexibility right on the spot. If your camera and flash system have this capability, it really is worth your time and effort to figure out how to use it.

I use wireless TTL flash in a fairly simple way during weddings, though. I use it to expand from just a single on-camera flash. With wireless TTL flash I can shoot fast and get my flash off my camera for more control over the direction of my light than bouncing my flash might give me.

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

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.

next: onwards to fill-flash and flash outdoors …

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23 Comments »

Great information here!

Comment by Geoff Poitras — October 31, 2009 @ 11:54 pm
Hi Neil,
I am going over your blog all over again. I am practising a lot of your tips and it has improve my photography a lot, which would have otherwise taken me ages to get there. I consider myself very lucky that I stumbled upon your blog very early, which is keeping me instrested in my D90 which I got about an year ago. And based on your recomendation got a flash unit (SB 600). I mostly shoot my two little kids indoors. I have started playing with wireless TTL flash. I use my D90 in commander mode, and bounce my SB 600 mostly from one corner of the room facing the wall behind me. It give me a bit room to move around and keep up my pace, without worrying too much about rotating my flash head. Actaully that would be impossible. If I havent read your blog I wouldnt have tought of all these kinds of setups and experiments. I am getting lots of good results.
However my question here is, when I use my D90 flash in commander mode it seems it still contirbutes to the lighting up the scene. I couldnt find a way to completely disalbe it. so what I do is dial it down to -3EV. The results are not bad, but when reading above blog it seems it is possible to completely disable the flash at least with Canon system :). I presume this would be possible with Nikons too. Would you be able to share your knowledge on this. Probably something burriend under the menu. (Btw, I tried lowering the flash on my D90 thinking that the wireless communication was thru infrared, but it seems that it doesnt fire my wireless unit, if I do that).

Happy holidays to you and your family. And a Big thank you for sharing your knowledge to the world :)

Comment by Arun, Tokyo — December 26, 2009 @ 11:04 pm
Arun,
I get good result selecting in the camera the power of built-in flash at 1/128.

Comment by Alfredo Medina — December 26, 2009 @ 11:47 pm
Arun,

Go to custom function 22 on your Nikon D80.

Set built-in flash to ‘—’ which means it will control your slaves, but (in theory) not add to the exposure. In practice however, it does add to the exposure, but minimally so.

I still prefer using the SU-800 for this, since it doesn’t emit that annoying communication sequence where the built-in flash still gives out bursts of light (even if it doesn’t contribute to the actual exposure.)

Neil vN

Comment by Neil — December 27, 2009 @ 12:00 am
Hi Neil / Alfredo,
Thanks for both your suggestions. I have already tried it on my camera it works like a charm. (btw mine was D90 and it is under e2, in case anybody else is looking for this info)

Neil a special thanks for your for doing a wonderful job of sharing your knowledge. Which not many people do. I have learned quite a lot about photography from this blog than anyother source, in a shorttime and I really try them while shooting.

Thanks
Arun.

Comment by Arun, Tokyo — December 28, 2009 @ 8:55 am
Ooops .. you’re right. D90 .. how did I misread that?
But I am glad you got it sorted out anyway.

Neil vN

Comment by Neil — December 28, 2009 @ 11:00 am
Hi Neil,

I’ve just discovered your blog and I’m hooked. You’ve done a great thing here.
My question is how do I turn off the master flash. I’m using sb900 & sb600.

Thank you

Mikey

Comment by MikeyP — May 3, 2010 @ 9:35 pm
Hi there Mikey …

I assume you’re not asking how to switch the flash from master to normal? (via the switch on the back) ..
but instead asking how to disable the master from giving output?

Have a look at the back of your SB-900 …

Note the blocks on the left hand side: M A B C
M is for master. In this photo it is set to fire, giving a TTL output.
To change it so that the MAster flash doesn’t add anything to the final image, press the ‘Sel’ button until the ‘M’ is high-lighted.
Then press ‘Mode’ until the display changes to M: —

The master will now still appear to fire, but this is only the communication signals to the Remote / slave units.

Neil vN

Comment by Neil vN — May 5, 2010 @ 10:57 pm
Hi Neil!

If you just used one flash for this wonderful image, why did you use a wireless remote flash and not the flash on your camera, turning the head to where you put your assistant and – perhaps – zooming the head to 105mm – thereby bouncing it off the corner without directing direct light to the bride? According to your description of the scene this could have producded about the same light, couldn’t it?

Comment by Sulla — May 17, 2010 @ 2:25 pm
Sulla .. that might have worked.
At the time I wasn’t sophisticated enough yet to use the black foamie thing. ;)

Also, the light from the wirelessly controlled flash was easier to place specifically, compared to how bounce flash would’ve worked.

Neil vN

Comment by Neil vN — May 19, 2010 @ 4:12 am
Neil,

Love the site! I’m ready back through it all again as a refresher. After reading this page, I wanted to ask “why not just use the black foamie thingy?”, but I see that you just answered this question in your last comment. Guess this stuff is starting to sink in!

Anyway, thanks for all the great tips.

Comment by Steve — June 4, 2010 @ 1:35 pm
I was messing around with my D700 and SB900 off-camera yesterday trying to shoot a dressform. In the menu, my D700′s flash was set to Commander mode, and it was set to M: –, while my SB-900 is TTL. When I took a picture, the D700′s flash fired first and immediately followed by the SB-900 flash. The D700 flash is the pre-flash to communicate with the SB-900, right?

I was initially confused, because the D700 flash looks a lot like a normal flash (from a light intensity perspective), so I wasn’t sure if it was adding to the SB-900′s light. The shots seem to indicate that the SB-900 was the only flash, but I wanted to double-check.

Maybe I’ll get a SU-800, since it uses line-of-sight infrared instead.

Comment by Stephen — June 14, 2010 @ 12:12 pm
Hi there Stephen … the Master slave still needs to communicate with the Slave / Remote flash. It is this communication signals that you see. It is visible light, and not infra-red.

The Nikon SU-800 still emits visible light, but it is heavily filtered with the red filter over it. So it isn’t really noticeable to the eye. But it isn’t infra-red.

This is why I prefer using a Nikon SU-800 over using the built-in flash as commander. Those flash pulses from the pop-up flash is still annoying to the person being photographed.

It is also why I don’t see the existence of the pop-up flash on the Nikon D700 as being an advantage over the Nikon D3. I’d rather have the bigger brighter viewfinder screen.

Neil vN

Comment by Neil vN — June 15, 2010 @ 10:33 am
Neil,
Thanks for the clarification that the SU-800′s command signal isn’t infrared. I did not know that.

It looks like my choices are the SU-800 or waiting for the PocketWizard TTL remotes.

I can see why professional cameras like the D3 don’t bother with a pop-up flash. There are far better lighting options.

Comment by Stephen — June 15, 2010 @ 12:42 pm
Neil,
I apologize for a second post, but I wanted to clarify this as well. Does the SB-900 emit this filtered visible red light like the SU-800 if I set it to Commander mode with M: -? I don’t have a second speedlight, so I could not test this. (I’m basically debating whether to get a second SB-900 instead of the SU-800.)

Comment by Stephen — June 15, 2010 @ 1:08 pm
Neil,

I bought a set of Calumet pro series transmitter and receiver for my sb80 and sb900. Setting the sb800 TTl the flash fire but not on the sb900 but it fire if I set it on A or M. So my question to you is does TTl actually work on the sb800 or sb900 off the D700? Thanks!

Comment by daniel leong — March 21, 2011 @ 7:34 pm
Can’t tell you how much I appreciate your site and your book! I use your methods all the time and keep a black foamie thing in all my camera bags.

Comment by Galen — July 1, 2011 @ 7:39 pm
Neil, You’re photographs are incredible! I just want to thank you for all the help. Next paycheck, I will possess your latest book.

Comment by Michael — October 13, 2011 @ 7:16 pm
I upgraded my Canon T2i to get a 60d so i could use the built in wireless flash capabilities in the 60d. Love it. Do you recommend to use both off camera wireless AND Black foamie or just one or the other?

Comment by Stephen — March 4, 2012 @ 6:08 am
Stephen .. the black foamie thing is intended to modify an ON-camera speedlight, to give directional bounce flash.

Wireless flash is a much bigger step than that, allowing you better control over your flashes (which are now OFF-camera.)

There are occasions though where I’ve used the BFT to flag my off-camera flashes, such as shown here in my guest post on Frank Doorhof’s blog.

Neil vN

Comment by Neil vN — March 4, 2012 @ 5:30 pm
Hi Neil

Nice blog!
I need to create a setup of SB-910 and SB-600 both being used off camera (D600) though I will need to move the flash units around frequently).

My questions is – do I need to adjust the SB-600 output manually every time I change its distance to subject or the iTTL can somehow take care of calculating and configuring it?

As far as I understand if I set SB-910 as master then it doesn’t matter where it’s located the camera and the flash will always find the right exposure (aperture, flash strength) as SB-910 will be firing the pre-flashes, though I don’t understand how the flash strength of SB-600 is controlled.

Thanks in advance

Comment by Daniel — November 27, 2012 @ 10:09 pm
If you shoot in TTL flash, then the camera will automatically take the change in distance into account.

If you’re using manual flash, then a change in distance will affect your flash’s output, and you’ll have to change the power.

Check out this link: manual flash vs TTL flash

Neil vN

Comment by Neil vN — November 28, 2012 @ 12:19 am
Hi,

Came across your blog thanks to google and I really appreciate the time and effort you have spent imparting knowledge for novices like me. Its a great site and everything is clearly explained.

I have one question, though many years have passed and you may not now recall, how far away were you from the subject and the wall ( used as bounce surface)

Comment by Debi Sen Gupta — June 12, 2013 @ 10:29 am