If you're just getting into flash photography this is by far the best
way to make your photographs look so much better
the problem with on-camera flash is that it's aimed in the same direction as you're shooting
so it will give a very flat appearance as that light will hit everything that you see through the
lens so the way around this is to get that flash off camera and this gives you the opportunity
to angle the light in different ways to give the image a more 3d feel by utilizing highlights and
shadows for off camera flash photography you'll need a flash a trigger a light stand now this
can be a person or an actual light stand a light modifier and a bracket and obviously the camera
now if you have a built-in flash and a speed light you can just take your speed light set
it to slave mode and set your on-camera flash to its minimum amount so it doesn't affect the shot
the speed light will then fire as soon as it sees the flash on the top of your camera firing as well
and it happens in a millisecond nowadays you can use a trigger to fire your flash and this
will give you the ability to control the remote flash from your camera without having to go back
and forth to your flash until you get the settings right and you won't need a flash built into your
camera either both work in a similar way it just takes longer with the slave mode now some flashes
say they do off-camera flash but you might have to buy an additional trigger for your camera
so just be careful in what flash you do buy today i have the godox v862s with my a73 and for this to
work off camera i did have to buy the x1ts trigger for it to work now you might be thinking that
there's a wireless flash setting in the camera so why doesn't it just pair up with that the trigger
basically talks the right language to that flash and then it kind of translates it to your camera
i think a few of you asked about this with the sony hvl series of flashes this can be
a master and a slave with multiple flash heads but for just one flash off camera system with
a camera like the a7 iii with no built-in flash to trigger it you will need the fa
wrc 1m which is around about 350 dollars which is a ridiculous price for a trigger
all the trigger needs to do really is to let you control the settings of the flash and sometimes
let the flash know what the camera settings are but that's it like i've already said i have the
v862s in a bowens bracket the ts trigger the 60 centimeter softbox from newer which includes
a grid and then just a cheap light stand i got everything for under 350 which is the same price
as just that sony trigger on its own and this is why the godox speedlights are really popular
and they're a really good system they offer a budget-friendly flash system for a fraction of
the price now for the settings indoor is pretty straightforward as you won't have too much
ambient light to mess around with those settings and you can control it with things like curtains
or picking a room without any windows at all and then it's just going to be flash today i do have a
big window to my left which is letting in a bit of light but that shouldn't be too much of a problem
now if you're on a page shoot you do have to have your settings dialed in before the client gets
there but if you're shooting a family member and you're just learning just get them to chill out
whilst you get the settings you want now i've got my camera i'm going to get the settings dialed in
before i even put the trigger on the camera i'm going to set the iso to 100 the aperture between
5.6 and f8 i think today i'll probably go with f 5.6 and then i'm going to work
out how i want that background to look now if you want the background completely black move
as far away from the background as possible to give as much room behind my subject as possible
then i'm going to set my camera to the max sync speed if you don't know what that is
for your camera you need to google it for my a7 3 it's 1 250th of a second and if i take a shot
it is completely black so now i know those settings aren't going to let any ambient light
into my frame i'm going to attach the trigger so this is going on i'm going to screw it into place
and i'll turn that on and then just check my flash yep that's working
and it's always good to fire off a test shot before you start using the flash just so you
know they're communicating with each other if the trigger and the flash aren't talking to each other
just make sure you have the flash in the right mode and as the same channel as that trigger
with the v860 mark ii press the button on the right hand side until it's in the wireless mode
which is the orange screen with the wireless logo in the top left hand corner and then i just switch
my flash to manual mode with the channel you just need to make sure it says the same channel number
on the flash as it does on the trigger i have them both set to channel one and group a once it fires
with a test button on the top of the trigger i know they're communicating right come on get up
what you'll find with the sony cameras is the back of the screen will go from being completely black
to you being able to see what's going on in the environment so it basically turns off live view
if it's a third party flash or if it's a manual flash that doesn't work with this system the back
of the camera will stay black and you will have to turn off live view display now one of the great
things with using one of these triggers is that i can control the power of the flash from the back
of this trigger so it means i don't have to run backwards and forwards to the flash this might not
seem much when the flash is right next to you but if you have three different flashes set up this
works really well and you can control all three of them from this trigger also if you're wondering
why i'm not using ttl mode check out my flash for beginners video series i've linked it again
in the corner and in the description i just prefer using manual flash as i get complete control over
my flash and over the power it produces and i have the camera in manual mode as well so everything's
manual i control everything instead of the camera taking some of that control away from me now
getting the flash off camera is the starting point but you also need to change how the light looks
soft light is always good and you have these big light modifiers to help with that all that does
is it changes from that flash being a tiny little square to being this huge square and this soft box
that i've got is 90 centimeters by 60 centimeters so it really does spread the light and it's really
flattering light especially when you're taking portraits to position your flash head and softbox
because it's free from your camera you can put it pretty much wherever you want now what you want
to do is experiment with this and try putting it around your subject at different angles you'll be
surprised at how much you can change the look of the shot with small movements of that flash i tend
to put it at around about 45 degrees from the angle that i'm photographing from and then i'll
tilt it down between 20 and 40 degrees you might have to play around with this to get the angle
that you like the most and it also depends on your subject as well different lighting positions work
for different height of people and also different shapes of faces as well also to stop any spill
light i am using this grid on the softbox now with the flash i'll set it to one quarter power
and i'll start dialing in the settings from there i'll get them around about right and then start
to fine tune everything as well so i'll set that to quarter power and then i'll just try a shot
so that's really underexposed still so what i'm going to do is move the flash closer
and then just play around with those settings
so straight away that added a bit more flash power because i've brought the flash closer
but i still need a little bit more so i'm going to go full power with this v860 just to see what
it looks like that's a bit better but it is throwing a lot of flash into the background
that's a bit better and with this grid on what it does is it stops that light from going right
into the background it's really good for that now remember shutter speed will change the amount of
ambient light coming into your camera flash power will change the amount of flash in your shot
and then aperture and iso will change the overall exposure now to give a more interesting
portrait you can introduce a reflected to bounce the light to the back of the head
to achieve this just put the reflector just out of the shot along the same plane as the flash
so basically where the flash is looking this will give a little bit of a backlight to your subject
and if you don't have a reflector you can use a white sheet or a pillow case if you have a second
flash you can use that as well now if you want to include some of the background set the shutter to
1 30th of a second and see what happens so i'll do that now i'm going to take it down to 30
and take another shot so that's introducing a little bit of light
but i am going to have to open that aperture quite a bit so i'm going to take the aperture to f 2.8
that's really brightened up that background but that flash is really overpowering the shot so what
i'm going to do is change the flash to about 1 8 power and i'll take another shot and that
is looking really natural and really nice for the light that i have in here again the trick here is
to add enough flashlight so it adds to the ambient light but doesn't overpower it you don't want it
to look like a flash shot you want it to look very natural so you can see the need to juggle
your settings until you get it right so basically what i just did was bring the shutter speed down
to introduce some of the ambient light and then i changed the overall look to the shot by opening up
the aperture so i went from f8 to f 2.8 and then i reduced the flash power from full power so that's
1 over 1 to 1 8 power so i really had to drop that power when i opened up that aperture now another
way you can include the background is to put a window behind your subject this will add to the
shot in two ways one it'll give an interesting background and the second point is the ambient
light can act as a backlight and if you balance out that ambient light and flashlight again
this can look very natural now if you want the background to be blurry shoot with wider aperture
and if you want more of that background in focus so you might be doing like an environmental
portrait i'll close the aperture down and increase the iso instead when you are shooting outdoors
there'll be a lot more ambient light if you have a small flash like the tt350 you will have to go
out just after sunset then as that ambient light drops the flash will work better in your photo
but if you have something like the godox v860 that i'm using today this should perform well in that
daylight and even under bright sunlight cloudy days are better as this will give you less ambient
light to compete with and therefore less power needed which means more flashes per battery pack
we're out in the backyard and it has been pretty sunny today it was too hot to film earlier on but
i did get a few shots in the midday sun to show you that the v860 can compete with the sun even
in this 90 centimeter softbox the sun has actually just gone behind the mountain in the distance now
and have a lot more power to work with so if you are struggling with flash power not being able to
compete with the sun just wait until later in the day towards sunset now as that ambient light has
dropped a little i can underexpose the background even more than i would normally be able to
and then get good light on my subject with this 90 centimeter softbox and again because the flash is
off camera i can get that flash angled i can have it in a soft box and i can have really nice soft
light on my subject now when you are outdoors you do need a flash with a lot of power and high speed
sync so you can use faster shutter speeds the v860 has both one thing to note is that with the high
speed sync once you are over that max sync speed on the a7 3 that is 1 250th of a second it won't
follow those normal flash rules of shutter speed changing the ambient light when in high speed sync
mode as the flash duration is longer the shutter speed will start to affect the amount of flash
getting into your camera so for my a7 3 this will be anything over 1 250th of a second if it's windy
you'll also need to weigh down the bottom of your light stand i use my camera bag if it's safe to
leave it on the ground or a sandbag if i've got one handy or sometimes i'll just carry the light
with me and hold it at 45 degrees to my subject all depends on what's going on in the environment
for the settings i keep the flash off and set my camera up for the background exposure
so i'll do that now i'll switch the flash off and then i'll just get my settings so first of
all i'll just take a shot of the background with no one in it so if i do that i can get a good
exposure with the settings at 1 125th of a second f 1.8 iso 100 so i've got plenty of space to work
with in those settings because that ambient light has dropped all right if you'd like to get up cool
so once i've exposed for the background i'll then turn the flash back on with the trigger i'll make
sure it fires and then i'll take some shots so all i need to do in theory is just change the power
of the flash so i'll just take a shot now so what i'm going to do is drop my power down a little bit
so it was at full power but that's too much because it's chucking in so much light
so i'll try it at a quarter pound
that's a little bit better and then i'll try it at 1 8 power
that's good still quite a lot of flash in there so i'm going to try at 1 16 power now
that's much better so 1 16 1 125 of a second f 1.8 iso 100 getting a really nice shot so you can see
outside it's very much the same process as inside you expose for your background then you turn the
flash on and then get the flash power to where you want it you may have to juggle with those settings
a little bit or you may want more flash and less ambient light or you want more ambient light and
less flash you've just got to juggle with those settings now if the person is squinting a lot
get them to look at a bright wall or a bright part of the sky not the sun but something brighter than
where you are stood so say i'm stood here this sky up here is really bright so i'd get them to
look at that bright sky and then look at me and as soon as they look at me their eyes will have kind
of adjusted to that brighter part and they'll have less of a squint on their face so this is a nice
little tip if your subject is squinting now if the sun's out you can use that as a second light
source almost as a hair light so just play around with those settings and see what you can get
you can even try your flash without the softbox to see if you like the hard flash look better
now this tends to work better for sports than portraits but it's a look that you might want
to go for now i'm just giving you the basics here and i've shot these self-portraits really quickly
but you do need to give yourself time to dial in those settings to get the look that you want
and hopefully your model will be a little bit prettier than mine now with flash photography you
can really go in deep from massive modifiers and more powerful flash units to multiple flash heads
but how far you take it is up to you but know that you can get a decent headshot with just one flash
and a little bit of ingenuity the main thing is to keep practicing as much as possible now before
kovid i had so many corporate head shoots that i could pretty much walk into a room and work out
how to shoot it before it even set up but now i am a little bit rusty so keeping on practicing
is so important now if you're unsure of what settings to use or all of the different settings
just confuse you completely when it comes to flash photography you need to watch this next video now
in it i go over exactly how i set up my camera and flash from scratch and how you can gain control
over your flash instead of it looking really unnatural and like a very much a flashed shot