in this video we're joining two portrait photographers to see how the canon
speedlight 470 EX Ai flash performs in a number of different environments. First
we're in the studio with John Keatley, known for his distinctive high concept
portrait work then we'll hit the streets with Chelsea Miller a professional model
and fashion photographer. Join us as we put canon's newest smartest flash to the
test. So we're at house studios in downtown Seattle and we've got the
canon 470-EX Ai flash. 'Ai' I thought stood for artificial
intelligence but it's actually Auto Intelligence so it's trying to
automatically figure out the best angle and the best output for the photo you're
taking. Come forward - big step for me so this is mostly meant to be used in a
room with a ceiling and obviously the ceilings here are quite high so we've
created this sort of false ceiling to bounce the flash off of. We would use
this a lot of times for a pretty similar approach you know we would use this for
a fill light and we would shoot lights through it today we're using this to
kind of give you the type of situation that people would kind of encounter on a
everyday basis. Alright let's see what happens let's do it. First we wanted to
find out whether the 470-EX Ai eye has what it takes in a high-pressure studio
environment. John is photographing
three models today in a concept inspired by 1960s air travel and later he'll
composite the images in post. Bouncing is the term given to directing the light
from a flash gun towards a reflective surface before it reaches the subject. By
bouncing the light you can avoid the stark unnatural looking portraits which
can result from direct flash. The 470-EX Ai uses a pre-flash to first calculate
subject distance then distance to a nearby reflective surface. It uses that
information to move the flash head into its optimal position for natural-looking
bounced light. Turning the camera from one orientation to the other and double
tapping the shutter rotates the flash head automatically to adjust the bounce.
So we just finished shooting these two different setups how'd it go? Quite
well the flash has pretty good spread it was pretty even.
Basically this small light is turning this really large ceiling into a large
light source. So now that we're on a little bit of a break I thought it might
be nice to actually get a portrait of John the photographer. Get comfortable
we've had a really high ceiling here so I'm gonna use the flash's
semi-automatic setting and bounce off this wall and use it as a reflective
surface to light John on this side of his face. So obviously a flashlight this
is a little different than what you use what did you expect going into it there
was a period of my career where I did use a flash like this like for events
and things like that and I do remember constantly changing my settings and so
it was actually surprising to see how it could read a room and the pictures were
all pretty consistent no matter how much I had moved away from the wall or the
ceiling. So that was that was actually pretty surprising. One thing I
noticed that's kind of interesting is the angle that it picks is different
than the angle maybe I would have assumed would be the best for light.
You know you kind of learn from the flash itself. A professional
studio portrait shoot might not seem like the 470-EX Ai's normal habitat. At
the end of the day after the main shoot was complete we took the models away
from the studio floor to demonstrate a more typical use case.
Next we're taking to the streets of Seattle with portrait photographer
Chelsea Miller - a self-described natural light snob.
we met Chelsea and her model Maddy at Unicorn, an eclectic bar and arcade on
Capitol Hill to start our shoot. I know you don't do a lot of flash photography
but you're also a photographer here in Seattle tell me a little bit about what
you shoot without a flash. I love shooting portraits, I did shoot weddings
I'm also really interested in fashion photography. Flash can have like a really
high fashion kind of look to it which I love. From the upstairs bar we made our
way down to Narwhal - the basement bar and pinball arcade.
I like the arcade a lot.
The flash really makes the colors pop. On the wall you can see it didn't fire here
so it's such a drastic change. Pleased with her images from Unicorn Chelsea was
eager to see how the flash performed outside. I've turned it down quite a bit
which is super easy to do and easy to play with it just gives a different feel
I really like. It's really just adding a nice fill.
In addition to its automatic
bounce function the 470-EX Ai can also be used as a conventional direct flash.
Shot using a mixture of bounced and direct flash Chelsey's images really pop.
So how did the shoot go? It went really well. I'm really surprised how much I
liked the photos. So I never really shoot with artificial lighting at all. So would
you say you're converted? Maybe! Well unfortunately I have
to take it back now but you can keep the camera
For DPReview I'm Barney Britton thanks for watching