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Quite often the short-hand descriptions of the fundamentals of flash photography become\u00a0misleading ‘facts’.\u00a0 I frequently see the following statements repeated on\u00a0the various photography forums and in\u00a0questions that are emailed to me:<\/p>\n
Even though these descriptions are half-right, they are also half-wrong and\u00a0will obscure a proper understanding of how shutter speed, aperture and ISO interconnect for ambient light and flash photography.<\/p>\n
But first, for the love of all that is good on this planet, if your camera has the ability to set 1\/2 stop indents for shutter speed and aperture, please take it off<\/strong> that setting and change it so that your camera has\u00a0 1\/3rd stop indents for everything.\u00a0 This is essential.<\/p>\n This becomes\u00a0important in situations where you already\u00a0have correct exposure, but you want to change any of your settings in tandem.\u00a0 Then you can change\u00a0either\u00a0your shutter speed or aperture or ISO (or any combination of them), simply by counting clicks.\u00a0 Eg: If you want a full stop more shutter speed (ie 3 clicks), then you can count 2 clicks wider on your aperture, and 1 click more on your ISO, to still give you correct exposure for your new shutter speed.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n The topic of TTL flash vs manual flash<\/a> has<\/span><\/strong> been covered here before. However, this time I want to concentrate specifically on those two statements mentioned earlier:<\/p>\n This depends on whether you are shooting manual flash or TTL flash. There are distinct differences.<\/p>\n With TTL flash<\/strong>, if you are within the range of what your flash can put out, then your choice of aperture and ISO in effect becomes transparent.\u00a0 (Please re-read that statement until the implications become clear.)<\/p>\n With manual flash<\/strong> however, aperture does have a direct influence on flash exposure … Shutter speed has no effect on flash exposure (below max sync speed), For example, the reason why we choose max flash sync speed when working in bright ambient light, is that at max sync speed we have the widest possible aperture (while remaining outside of High-Speed Flash settings), and therefore have the most range from our flash.\u00a0 Which is also the reason\u00a0why it makes most sense to shoot in manual exposure mode on our cameras when doing this, even when using TTL flash.<\/p>\n So in the case of mixing flash with available light, the shutter speed does<\/strong> dictate the aperture, and therefore affects our flash exposure, or how hard our flash has to work.<\/p>\n Now, about the other comment:<\/p>\n This is true.\u00a0\u00a0 But it neglects\u00a0to mention the two other players here –\u00a0aperture<\/strong> and ISO<\/strong>.\u00a0 This somehow slips by quite often in descriptions of balancing flash with available light, and it becomes another misleading short-hand description.\u00a0 And as explained earlier, choice of shutter speed actually often does have an important bearing on flash photography.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n The theme of this post has been extended by a subsequent article, explaining it\u00a0with some images: <\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Flash exposure is controlled by aperture … but only for manual flash Quite often the short-hand descriptions of the fundamentals of flash photography become\u00a0misleading ‘facts’.\u00a0 I frequently see the following statements repeated on\u00a0the various photography forums and in\u00a0questions that are emailed to me: flash is controlled by aperture shutter speed controls ambient light. (This is Read more inside…<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":31946,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[15],"tags":[56,318,701],"yst_prominent_words":[1265,9723,9732,9726,9724,1416,9720,1199,9712,9728,1417,9730,1198,9714,8050,9696,9705,1415,9709,9700],"class_list":{"0":"post-156","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-flash-photography","8":"tag-flash-photography-tips","9":"tag-ttl-flash-photography","10":"tag-ttl-flash-photography-tips","11":"entry"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/neilvn.com\/tangents\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/156"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/neilvn.com\/tangents\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/neilvn.com\/tangents\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/neilvn.com\/tangents\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/neilvn.com\/tangents\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=156"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/neilvn.com\/tangents\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/156\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":48983,"href":"https:\/\/neilvn.com\/tangents\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/156\/revisions\/48983"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/neilvn.com\/tangents\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/31946"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/neilvn.com\/tangents\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=156"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/neilvn.com\/tangents\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=156"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/neilvn.com\/tangents\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=156"},{"taxonomy":"yst_prominent_words","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/neilvn.com\/tangents\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/yst_prominent_words?post=156"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}TTL flash vs Manual flash<\/h2>\n
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\nbut so does ISO<\/strong>.\u00a0\u00a0We should not leave ISO out of the equation with manual flash.<\/p>\n
\nBUT … with ambient light<\/strong>, any chosen\u00a0shutter speed (at a chosen ISO), will dictate a specific aperture. Therefore your choice of shutter speed clearly does have\u00a0an indirect influence on your flash exposure.<\/p>\n\n
Summary<\/h2>\n
\nwhen aperture does not control flash exposure<\/a><\/strong>.\u00a0 This might help to make it even more clear.<\/p>\nRelated articles<\/h2>\n
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