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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...

How to set up wireless flash with the pop-up flash

April 30, 2018 Neil vN Leave a Comment

How to set up wireless flash with the pop-up flash

In starting to use off-camera flash, there are some minimum pieces of gear we need. Such as this gear list – starting out with off-camera flash. We don't necessarily need to buy radio triggers immediately. Many new cameras with a pop-up flash, has the ability to have the pop-up flash be a master to optically trigger a slave flash. This is especially helpful if you are on a budget. Later on, when the limitations of optical slaves start to hamper us, can we look at buying radio triggers. Radio controlled wireless triggering of a  Read more inside...

Video tutorial: Manual flash settings

April 29, 2018 Neil vN Leave a Comment

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Video tutorial: Manual flash settings

One advantage that the larger speedlights have over the smaller speedlights - aside from more power - is that they show the distance the flash can reach for the specific settings. This video is a continuation of the off-camera flash tutorial series. What is described in this video is also written out in more detail in this article: Practical tutorial: Controls for manual flash exposure. If manual flash seems confusing, then I would recommend checking that article out as well, and then look at this video tutorial on manual flash settings again.  Read more inside...

Off-camera flash tutorial – Balancing flash with ambient light

April 26, 2018 Neil vN Leave a Comment

Off-camera flash tutorial - Balancing flash with ambient light

In the previous off-camera flash tutorial, we started at the elemental level where we did not have to consider ambient light. This helped us in understanding a few of the basics. Ultimately though, where off-camera flash will be used most, is on location where you have to consider the ambient light as well. With this tutorial video, we look at how we would go about balancing flash with ambient light. With this segment, we cover the essentials such as: ·  Using maximum flash sync speed. ·  Flash exposure  Read more inside...

How to position off-camera flash

July 28, 2015 Neil vN 4 Comments

How to position off-camera flash

How to position off-camera flash

One of the most frequent (but easily corrected) mistakes I see when photographers use off-camera flash, is that they didn't position the flash in relation to their subject. They simply place the flash to the side (and often at a too-extreme 90 degree angle from their own position), with the flash too low in height. Your subject's pose and their position most often dictates how you should place the flash. We perhaps instinctively expect a light source to come from above somewhere, because that is where the sun is, or the light is coming from a  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...

High-speed flash sync (HSS) with the Profoto B1 flash

January 25, 2015 Neil vN 35 Comments

High-speed flash sync (HSS) with the Profoto B1 flash

The already impressive Profoto B1 flash (B&H / Amazon) became even more awesome in Dec 2014 when high-speed flash sync (HSS) capability was added through a firmware update. The photo above was taken at 1/2000 @ f/1.4 @ 100 ISO. I wanted that super-shallow depth-of-field, and I wanted the light to be more flattering than you'd get from a bare speedlight. In this case, I used a Profoto RFi 1'×3' softbox (affiliate), with the Profoto B1. (I kept both baffles on the softbox.) The summary: it  Read more inside...

Off-camera flash – Two speedlight setup for back-lighting

October 1, 2013 Neil vN 34 Comments

Off-camera flash - Two speedlight setup for back-lighting

Once you're comfortable using a single off-camera light-source, such as a softbox (or un-diffused flash), there's an easy next step to add a little bit of zing to the image. Rim-lighting! I most often work with just a single softbox when photographing portraits on location. Having the sun behind your subject, creates a natural rim-lighting. This helps separate your subject from the background. It's not just the shallow depth-of-field that helps create that near-3D effect where your subjects just pops out from the background  Read more inside...

Photo session: Urban ballerina – Viktoria

September 9, 2013 Neil vN 5 Comments

Photo session: Urban ballerina - Viktoria

Late afternoon in New York, with the sun-light glinting off the glass buildings - dramatic light for a ballerina in an urban setting. However, the sunlight that was reflecting off the buildings wasn't consistent, and did not necessarily fall in a place where we could use it. So I created my own with an off-camera speedlight just out of the frame - but positioned so that it intentionally flared, and also gave beautiful rim-light on Viktoria. The pull-back shot shows how the speedlight was set up, and my own position, low down on the ground,  Read more inside...

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