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Video tutorial – High Speed Flash Sync (HSS)

January 13, 2020 Neil vN 17 Comments

Video tutorial - High Speed Flash Sync (HSS)

High Speed Flash Sync is a topic we have covered several times over time here. With this tutorial though, I wanted to visually run through the settings and discuss the implications of the settings, and what we see on the back of our flash. There is a certain consistency here that will help us evade guesswork, and that will help bring a systematic approach to our flash photography. So here it is -- a video tutorial on High Speed Flash Sync. As always, I welcome questions and further discussion in the comments. Two of the previous  Read more inside...

Flash photography tip – Start with the ambient exposure

April 1, 2019 Neil vN 1 Comment

Flash photography tip - Start with the ambient exposure

Continuing on from the article - best camera settings for off-camera flash - I wanted to show an example of just one set of choices we had in how we balance flash with the ambient light. And again, to reiterate that there aren't necessarily wrong choices, but that we get to decide on the final look. In that linked article we worked through several algorithms to what would help guide our choice of camera and flash settings. In that article I accentuated the idea that our starting point is invariably with the ambient light.  Read more inside...

Best camera settings for off-camera flash

March 30, 2019 Neil vN 5 Comments

Best camera settings for off-camera flash

With many of the tutorial articles on this website that deal with off-camera flash photography, I have attempted to make the explanation not only as straight-forward as possible, but also repeatable. When it comes to camera and flash settings, there is often a specific science at work here - a specific method , which should deliver similar results time and again. The artistic side to photography is open to interpretation, and that is what makes photography continually fascinating - there are always further things to explore. However, when it  Read more inside...

Improve your portrait photography: Lighting with bounce flash

May 16, 2016 Neil vN 22 Comments

Improve your portrait photography:  Lighting with bounce flash

For a straight-forward but effective portrait like this, there are just a few things that have to come together ... all within your control as the photographer: Framing / Composition  This is mostly as simple as looking at the edges of the frame in your camera's viewfinder, and then deciding how much head-room or breathing room you want to allow. Also look at the background, and exclude what doesn't add to your photograph. In this example, it was easy enough, working in my studio which has a grey wall. So often  Read more inside...

Softboxes with speedlights

February 21, 2016 Neil vN 43 Comments

Softboxes with speedlights for on-location lighting

Off-camera flash is the easiest way to create dynamic lighting - and using a speedlight with a softbox, is on-location lighting at its most elegantly simple. For most of my on-location portraits, I like to travel (fairly) light, and my lighting of choice is a speedlight, wireless transmitters and a softbox. The softbox is either held up by a light-stand (which I weight down with my camera bag), or held up by an assistant (with the softbox on a monopod.) I like TTL flash - it often gets us there faster than manual flash. But for  Read more inside...

Gelling flash for Incandescent light / Tungsten light

February 18, 2016 Neil vN 37 Comments

Gelling flash for Incandescent light / Tungsten light

The color temperature of the light from a flash / speedlite is around 5400K. While the actual numerical value might have little meaning to many photographers, it does mean that light from a flashgun will look a lot cooler than the light from an environment would with tungsten/incandescent light. That warm glow of tungsten light, which is around 2800K but varies a lot in actual value, makes the flash appear too cold, or too blue. However, if you simply adjust your white balance so that the flash appears neutral, your background  Read more inside...

When to use high speed flash sync (HSS)

September 12, 2015 Neil vN 11 Comments

When to use high speed flash sync (HSS)

Let's cut straight to it - there are only two reasons you would need to use high-speed flash sync: to have an appropriately shallow depth-of-field, to have a sufficiently high shutter speed to freeze action. That's it. Just those two things. When you need shallow DoF, or a faster shutter speed than max sync speed, then you go to high-speed flash sync. What HSS doesn't do - it doesn't allow you to overpower the sun. When you go to from normal flash mode (at or below max sync speed), into high-speed flash sync, then you lose  Read more inside...

Flash photography tutorial: Balancing flash & ambient exposure

May 22, 2015 Neil vN 47 Comments

flash photography tutorial: balancing flash and ambient exposure

Flash photography tutorial: Balancing flash & ambient exposure

This topic - balancing flash and ambient exposure - seems to one that many newer photographers struggle with. The big hurdle seems to be the basic starting point - how do you decide on the exposure for each? I'd like to explore this topic a bit with this post. The trigger for this was a question that someone emailed me regarding an image in one of my books on flash photography. Instead of answering the question directly, I thought that a wider answer might be more illuminating. We're still on that perpetual quest  Read more inside...

Flash photography: applying the Sunny 16 Rule & Flash Guide Number

March 17, 2015 Neil vN 29 Comments

applying the Sunny 16 rule and the flash Guide Number

Flash photography: applying the Sunny 16 Rule & Flash Guide Number

In essence, if you know the GN of your flash, then you could use (bare) off-camera flash to match the sunlight, without even metering! There is a super-useful shortcut built into those two simple values: Sunny 16, and the Guide Number. Now, I am pretty sure that when you hear mention of the Guide Number of a flash, you're most likely switching off already, thinking that it is just an arcane list of numbers - different apertures against different power settings. But hang in there - this is very useful stuff  Read more inside...

Various scenarios: Balancing flash with ambient light

September 16, 2014 Neil vN 11 Comments

Various scenarios: Balancing flash with ambient light

Adding flash to ambient light - its's a topic that can appear to be confusing. With advice that ranges from under-exposing the ambient light by a stop or two ... or dialing FEC down for fill-flash, or advice that you should be metering for the background ... it all appears confusing and contradictory. What we do, and the thought-process we step through, depends on the (lighting) situation we find ourselves in. There isn't one blanket do-all method. No single piece of instruction that will fit every occasion. So let's try to  Read more inside...

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