Flash Tips, On and Off Camera

So you got a flash, because all the best photographers you see almost always have one, but you DON'T want that "Flashy Look"? Also you've realized that a flash gives you a hard light, and that's almost never attractive, so you need to soften your light. Have no fear, I will help you with a few well-chosen tips.

The best flash is...Off-camera Flash! This eliminates Red-eye, and allows you to control the angle of light and the distance to your subject for a better look. Of course you need a flash trigger, the best ones are wireless, and some are quite affordable (like $25!)

Off-camera flash techniques

A book-long subject, so just get Scott Kelby's "The Flash Book". You can find it on iBooks and Google Books. This will teach you everything you need to get great flash shots, on or off-camera. Read this book (I can wait...you done?) OK, you can stop reading this blog post! But if you want to keep reading for some quicker on-camera flash tips, read on!

On-camera flash techniques

Tip #1: You need to shoot in manual mode, it makes dialing in the amount of light easier, the crucial "blending of the ambient and flash" exposure, so that you don't get blown out faces in a black room.

Tip #2: Get a couple of good diffusers, each one serves a different purpose:

Samples on Amazon

The top row are in the below $20 range, (Fomito diffuser on the left) and are OK for many situations. The Flashbender will give you the softest light ($40), but it's not terribly convenient for carrying around a crowded event in a "run-and-gun" scenario. The Fomito or the Insstro Flash Diffuser are much more compact and will soften your light considerably. The Insstro is a less expensive magnetic version of the Mag Mod System, the cadillac of flash diffusers, but $$$!

Tip #3: It's your SHUTTER SPEED that determines your Ambient Exposure. Before you're ready to actually take the shot, take some test shots in the space you'll be shooting in. If you are shooting indoors and you set your shutter speed at the Flash Sync speed (the maximum speed you can set with a flash on, to freeze people moving), usually somewhere between 1/160 to 1/250 of a second, you will (probably) not have enough ambient light, and you'll get a dark room with too bright a subject. Your flash will freeze the action, so you don't have to worry (too much) about that. LOWER YOUR SHUTTER SPEED to bring up the ambient, down to 1/125, 1/80, or even 1/60th of a second and see how the room looks behind your test subject. Good? OK now dial up or down the flash power (on the back of your flash, you read the manual, right?) to get a proper exposure at the aperture you've chosen. You want to blend the amount of Flash power with the room's ambient light, so that it looks natural, not flashy, so use the minimum amount of flash that will give a natural looking face in a properly exposed room.

Tip #4: Aperture. Your aperture is the last consideration, because you can turn the flash up and down to get a proper exposure, but you should have the proper depth of field, which increases as you narrow (stop down) your aperture. Aperture ƒ stops are a fraction, so ¼ is of course bigger, or wider, than 1/16, so to stop down go with a smaller number (fraction), like f/16 or f/22, got it? You want to set your aperture at least ƒ/5.6 if you're shooting a group of 5 people, from say, 10 feet away. Try ƒ/11 if you're shooting 25 people from 20+ feet away, so that they're all in focus. One person can be shot with as wide open an aperture as you want, to get the background out-of-focus, but this is harder to do with flash, where your main goal is to make it look natural!

That's the basic info, but the real secret is, like the guy said in the old joke about how to get to Carnegie Hall, "Practice, my boy, practice!"