hi guys welcome back thanks so much for joining me it is part two today
of flash photography 101 and in today's video we're going to go through settings
of our flash and our camera to make them talk to each other nicely
if you haven't already please do remember to press the subscribe button and also if
you haven't already don't forget about part one which was pretty good so i'll link that above if
you haven't seen part one go ahead and watch that before joining us back here we're going to look at
the different settings and things that you'll most commonly see when using speed lights and strobes
what they mean how you can control them and how you can get all of it to talk together to take
the perfect photo so the first thing to note usually is that the vast majority of different
flash units whether it's speed lights or strobes whatever it is the vast majority will work with
power in fractions so one one is full power and then it will go all the way down to usually
one over 256 i think which is the lowest power so if we were to turn on a speed light you should be
able to see on the screen there that you've got a power as a fraction so that means basically this
is going to fire up half power half of its full power and usually the power is measured in watts
so let me turn that off so your speed light will have a total power value that is half
of it the same is true exactly the same for a strobe so with a strobe you have exactly
the same principle in action so if we turn this one on hopefully you guys can see on the screen
and the fraction there so that is half power of this strobe so because this is a 600 watt strobe
that theoretically will mean that every time that that flash pops it's going to be throwing
out at 300 watts because it's half of the power as you change the power of your flash usually
it goes up in fractions all the way through and it also has mini steps in between most of the
time those are in thirds which goes up to plus 0.3 and then the next one is actually plus 0.7
sometimes on different lights you can pick whether you want to go up in tenth of a step instead in
which case you will then have plus 0.1 0.2 0.3 0.4 and so on until you hit 0.9 and
then it will knock up to the next fraction of a power that's the most common thing that you
will see so all you need to remember from this section is that to reduce the power of your light
make the fraction smaller so what about the modes out of the box most lights speed lights
and strobes both have what's called a manual mode manual mode just means that i as the photographer
are in full control of the power of that light it is my job to dial it in and decide whether i want
it brighter or darker in terms of its strength that's coming out of the flash the other mode
and the other option is ttl ttl literally means through the lens that's the t the t and the l
through the lens through the lens it means that actually the photographer doesn't have control
over the power of the flash and what is in control there is the camera's metering so the camera meets
the scene and goes okay flash i need a bit of help here please give me x amount of power
to fill this scene so that means that really you've got very little control over the amount
of flash that is added which can be useful in really busy situations where you have to be fast
such as in events events weddings things like that even sunset for example ttl can be really useful
because it takes the pressure away from you from having to do test shots to get the right exposure
you can override ttl a little bit by using flash compensation and exposure compensation on the
flash and camera respectively to either dial up or down different values which will then give you
your ideal exposure balancing the ambient light the natural light in the scene and the flashlight
the artificial light that you've added so using those two things can control that that is ttl i
would recommend practicing so the next thing to be aware of is that you can mix your light
sources so although in the last video we discussed the triggers transceivers receivers whatever you
want to call them we did discuss them but what if you have got a strobe like this and then your only
other light is a speed light but you want to use two lights in your setup well you can actually do
that it's completely doable and we've done it before in the black background video where we
had two strobes there were two ilux strobes at the time and a speed light because i didn't
have three strobes all you need to do is put one of your lights triggers on the camera that's gonna
still connect with one of the lights and say hey look flash now that's the point of them right
so you will have one that's talking to it so if i use this trigger with this light i will my camera
will tell this light to fire but nothing's telling this light to fire because this trigger isn't on
the camera i can't have multiple triggers set on my camera you don't actually need this one so you
can just kind of chuck it you don't need it and what you can do is then set this to what's called
slave so most lights all of them that i've used have what's called a slave mode so let's go in
hopefully you guys can see the screen and if you tap it it should have moved from m to s s means
slave so this slave what that means it's a nasty word i don't appreciate the word but never mind
what slave is is basically it's going to be continually watching the environment and as
soon as it sees a flash from this one it will immediately flash as well so this doesn't actually
need to have a trigger connected to it at all because as long as it's on slave if it sees a
flash it too will flash so what we've got here is this is connected to this this would be atop
your camera and this has got nothing connected to it at all but it's on slave mode so what this
is doing is it's constantly the front of it the infrared receiver there it's constantly
surveying the environment for a flash okay so if our camera did flash this too would flash
flash warning here guys so that flashed and lit the ceiling above here because this is pointing in
the complete opposite direction so with that split second which i'm really hoping we've captured
we should be able to see the ceiling illuminated and also something over here and that's because
this is seeing that flash and firing as well so by using that theory you can technically mix and
match any strobe you want to do and speed lights whatever you've got to be able to build your light
in the scene there's one exception for that though that is important to note is that if it's really
bright this won't be able to see a flash at all so you can't use this theory in bright daylight
outside because it won't be able to see the flash you also need to make sure that the area that's
receptive to the flash in the scene is pointing at or towards something where it can see the flash
so then you have your actual camera settings and there's another thing that some lights
have that we need to discuss now because they all kind of merge together at this point and
that is the sync speed every single camera has a sync speed so you just need to look in
the manual for what your flash sync speed is it depends on the brand of light that you're using
whether the sync speed is slightly higher or lower but the general range is usually between
1 125th of a second and 1 250th of a second that's kind of your maximum range that you'll
be able to go to in terms of your shutter speed before the camera cannot see the flash anymore
you'll know if your shutter speed is set higher than the sync speed because you'll get this weird
dark black bar coming over your images that means that you're past your sync speed
and that black bar is the shutter of the camera so what do you do if you need to increase your
shutter speed past the sync speed for example you're working outside in bright sunlight and you
want to use a super wide aperture and therefore you need to increase your shutter speed to be able
to compensate for that extra light well what you do is you can enable on your light what's called
high speed sync high speed sync reduces the power of the light that it emits in that moment but what
it does is it elongates the flash duration so that that period of time that the shutter can see the
light is lengthened and therefore you can increase your shutter speed to whatever you want to
and you will still be able to capture the flash in the scene i personally tend to use my lights
without high speed sync on because that's just how i was trained that's how i know how to use my
equipment and i'm quite happy with that but there are times that high-speed sync comes in handy
so it's worthwhile knowing exactly how it works so with the knowledge of the shutter speed kind of in
the bank there we can let's say for example we're at a shutter speed that is the sync speed because
we're going to use that theory moving forwards now so if you think of your exposure triangle for your
camera and if you're not aware of your exposure triangle definitely go ahead and watch the
exposure triangle video because that is essential to understanding what we're going to discuss
and with the knowledge of that exposure triangle there if you've locked off your shutter speed
right and because you're able to control how much light is coming into the scene you can
therefore reduce your iso right down most studio photographers will not shoot at an iso above 400
so 100 to 400 is kind of the normal range there so you've got those two locked down so then your
last one that you've got to play with in terms of your ambient light usually is your aperture it
doesn't always work like that but ambient light is usually best controlled using your shutter speed
so now we're getting a little bit confusing here what the important thing is to know is
just get your ambient light exposure dialed in before you add and start to look at your flash
always do ambient light first then add your flash to create whatever other look you want so most
situations for me especially indoors in studio i want no ambient light hitting the scene at all
outside very very different i want to mix the ambient light with the flash so my ambient
exposure is going to be completely different there ambient light first flash second so what
controls your flash exposure well you've got a few different things that change the brightness
of the flash within the scene number one you've got the flash's power value you can just dial
down or up that fraction to control the power of the light personally that's the best way to go
about it that's what i would do the second one is moving your light closer to the subject will
obviously increase the amount of light falling on it and therefore it will appear brighter
that's not the best way to change the brightness of the light because that changes the softness of
the light the closer the light is to the subject the softer the light because the bigger the light
source is and the bigger the light source is the softer the light so don't move your light forwards
and backwards to change the exposure if you need to change how bright the light is just turn down
the light power or increase it whichever one you need to do you then have your aperture
shutter speed and your iso which also impact the brightness of the light in the scene so iso
if you increase your iso you increase your sensor the camera sensor's sensitivity to light so both
the ambient and the flash will be increasing their exposure okay because the sensor is becoming more
sensitive to light and that's any light doesn't care which light it is it'll take what it can get
okay the shutter speed has zero impact at all on the brightness of the flash nothing doesn't
make a difference but it will impact your ambient light but keep in mind the whole sync speed and
high speed sync situation that leaves us with aperture so aperture does impact your flash and
it's one of the quickest ways without having to go back to your light and change the power
to dial up or down the exposure of the flash it has very little effect on the ambient light but
it does have quite a large effect on the flash so just keep those things in mind so you've got
your exposure triangle for your ambient light and then you've got your exposure pentagon triangle
with extra bits for your flash and as long as you are aware of what controls what then everything
afterwards will be quite straightforward i'm going to leave that there because i think this is long
enough so that's part two of flash photography 101 and i hope this has been helpful if it has
and it's explained a few things for you i know it's been a bit confusing please let me know in
the comments box below and also let me know if you want to see more of things like this because
it's useful to get your feedback uh thanks for joining me and i'll see you again soon