Taking your flash off camera
This post will be more technical info for photographers. Let
me know if you enjoy this, and if you do I’ll write more for you.
Too few photographers take their flash off the camera. With
flash on the camera the photos usually do not look good. The flash is small
which results in hard light, the light source is close to the lens which
results in very small shadows. There is simply no way to get the shadows in the
right place with the flash on the camera.
The alternative is available light, and that often looks
great. But sometimes you want something different or the light in a location is
not what you need. Then it’s time to take your flash off the camera.
To get it to flash at the right time you need some way to
sync it with your camera. Nikon has CLS for this built into their modern
cameras and flashes. It works with pre-flashes, which may cause your models to
blink at exactly the time you’re making a photo. I rarely use it, I usually use
an optical trigger, or radio trigger. Both have their pros and cons:
Optical trigger: simple, cheap, uses no batteries but you
need a flash from the camera to trigger it, which does cause a certain amount
of fill light, which you may like or dislike. In bright sunlight or at a
distance from the camera the optical trigger may not see the master flash and
it may not flash.
Radio trigger: more complex system, needs batteries, needs
no master flash. This means you have to introduce the fill light separately if
you need it, they work at a longer distance than optical triggers, and they
have no problem with bright sunlight.
Once you take the flash off your camera, either on a stand
or handheld by an assistant, you can move the light source, and with it the
shadows. This introduces an infinite number of interesting options, and with
more than one off-camera light you can make complex set ups that give
interesting effects. For a beginner I recommend to start with one off-camera
light to not over complicate things.
Simply put: the wider the angle between the camera angle and
the light angle, the bigger the shadows will be. If the light is close to the
camera (frontal lighting) the shadows are small, if the light lights the
subject from a wide angle compared to the camera, (side-lighting, or in extreme
cases back-lighting) the shadows are big.
Once the flash is off-camera you can modify the light: an
umbrella or soft box will make the light soft. This means the shadows will have
soft edges, and usually the shadows will be less dark but that does not always
go: in a very big room or a room with dark walls, or outdoors at night it does
not fill the shadows with light. A few quick examples to show the effect. (Nathan of FD Communicatons posed for these demonstration photos.)
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bounced off a white umbrella:
soft edged shadows on the right, that are not very dark
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hard light, with deep shadows, you eve see a shadow on the wall in the back. A very strong reflection off the face is visible. This can be prevented with makeup (powder)
A different use of direct flash. Here the flash is all the way to the left side with no umbrella: big, deep shadows, hard edges to the shadows. This way I like the hard light, it gives a bit of a mysterious effect. IMO this photo is more successful than the previous. It is very different from the first, but both have their merits.
