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I'm really getting into photography lately, and finally got myself another accessory, which many people consider one of a must-have things - an external flash.

The one I got is Canon Speedlite 430EX II, and I have also got an Off-camera Shoe Cord (OC-3E) for situations when having flash mounted on top of the camera is not very good (think outside photos where you don't have any walls to bounce off, and still want to have some non-flat-looking images).

So that's how flash module looks mounted on the camera. The camera suddenly became pretty heavy :) But yeah, that's the price you have to pay.. Near the camera is the off-camera shoe cord.

Having knowing near nothing about flashes, how they work and how once is supposed to shoot with them, I found a very good article describing how speedlites actually work. You should definitely give it a try at this link.

And as it was said in one of flash training videos I have (one from Blue Crane studio - google it up) - I moved out to make my first set batteries go dead over some flash testing. I share some of my findings below. So even if you don't have an external flash, these images will probably help you in making decision of wether you should get one :)

External flashes are basically your portable suns, you can point them at target directly, you can make the light bounce of walls and ceilings, you can fight with very bright backgrounds and still take great photos with shallow depth of field, by using hi-speed sync, and much more! I go into bouncing and hi-speed think with this blog entry. So let have a look at sample photos, with some short comments where applicable.

Light direction.

Basically, there are several options for using flash with your camera - you can either use built-in flash or don't use it, and you can use external flash, pointing it do various directions - making light go straight to you target or bounce from one or multiple surfaces.

(all images taken in Aperture priority mode, with f/4 and iso 400 - other parameters were controlled by camera)

Of course you can click on a thumbnail to have a look at a bigger picture!

That's how everything looks without using any flash at all.

Same with built-in flash. Looking pretty flat, doesn't it?

With  430EX II speedlite mounted on camera, pointed directly at the car. Flat-looking image.

This one is taken with 430EX II mounted, but I have bounced the light from the white wall about 1.5 meters to the right from me. We're getting better textures now, I'd say. Also, controlling where our artifical "sun" shines from :)

This one is taken with 430EX II again, but the light was bounced from the wall about 2.5 meters to the left from me.

For some reason, I have decided that the light on the previous picture was too strong, so I have lowered the power of speedlite one step ( to minus 1 ) and re-took the shot.

And this one is taken with 430EX II mounted on the camera, pointed directly at the car, but with the "WIDE" thingy pulled out. Looks like brightness went way up. Don't really know where this wide thingy is supposed to be used though :)

Now, to hi-speed sync feature!

Hi-speed sync

What's that? Well, the thing is - when you try to take a picture against the sun, you are supposed to light up your subject with filling light, so that it won't become dark. And you usually are supposed to do metering against the background (so all these beautiful skies and mountains are visible, for example). In case of very bright backgrounds, your camera will need to use pretty high shutter speeds - in 1/2000 to 1/4000 seconds range, even with ISO set to 100. However, there's a problem - when you use built-in flash as a filling flash, your minimum shutter speed will be fixed at 1/200 second. So with very bright backgrounds, you will get over-exposed pictures, because camera just won't be able to cut off the excessive light with this relatively long shutter speed.

You can lower the required shutter speed by using bigger aperture values - say, f/20 or something like that (so that opening in your lens will become smaller, letting less light thru). But when you use apertures like f/20 or something big like that, you effectively making your depth of field very deep. What if you don't want that to happen? Say, you want to take a portrait photo on the beach, having background stuff a little (or pretty much) blurred?

Well, that's the case when only external flash unit will help you. When using external flash, you are not limited to fixed 1/200 shutter speeds, and can use any values which your camera allows. So you can get those shallow depth, bright background photos! The feature is called Hi-speed sync. Just turn it on on your flash unit, and you're off to some better beach photos!

So, here are some samples (everything taken with ISO100).

Baseline photo. Exposure metering set by the (very bright) outside background behind my window. f/4, 1/4000 sec, no flash. Nothing to write home about.

This one taken with built-in flash, exposure metered by outside. Check out the total lack of details on the carpet. That's because camera wasn't unable to cut off the light at the fixed 1/200 sec shutter. ( f/4, 1/200sec, built-in flash on)

So, as I wrote above, I have decided to try and play with aperture a little - making it higher, limiting amount of light which enters the camera. I set aperture to f/20 in the following shot:

This sure looks much better, but check out the background - it is not blurred at all! That's not what I'm after. (f/20, 1/200 sec, built-in flash fired)

And now, I have attached the EX430 II Speedlite, set it to hi-speed sync mode, and tried to take with f/4 again, metering by bright background and using hi-speed flash sync (which allows very fast shutter speeds, at I wrote above). Check this one out!

So now we are almost there! Carpet got its texture back, background is blurred, no hot spots at all, according to my camera. (f/4, 1/2000, 430EX II Speedline in hi-speed sync mode fired directly at the car)

But.. may be just a little bright? So here's how it looks with even faster shutter speed (1/3200 sec)

(f/4, 1/3200, 430EX II Speedlite hi-speed sync mode)

So, there.. I'm by no means can consider myself a pro or something. Just learning stuff. But hopefully, this blog entry will help somebody to understand external flashes a tiny bit better :)

This entry was posted on Sunday, February 15th, 2009 at 12:05 am and is filed under Photography. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.