Hi Guys!
Welcome back to my channel.
I'm Joy Michelle.
I make photography videos every single week.
This week we are starting a whole new series.
The series comes from a question that I got from a girl Eugenia, she asked me when and
where to use off camera flash and if I could make a tutorial series for beginners.
And that is what I'm doing for you guys today!
so be sure to subscribe so that you don't miss out on the upcoming videos and so that
you can finish this series right along with me.
I'm excited!
As I said before This is really geared toward someone who is just starting out with off
camera flash.
Maybe you've used a flash on your camera, and you're ready to take it to a next level.
But you don't wanna go crazy and have 5 off camera flashes or get super complicated.
So I'm going to keep this super basic.
I really believe you can do a ton with just a two flash system.
I first want to answer Eugenia's question about when and where we're using off camera
flash, cause that is a really interesting question.
When I'm using off camera flash, I'm either at the reception or photographing people in
a portrait setting where I don't have a lot of natural light, so I'm not using flash most
of the time when it's bright outside, when it's light outside, it's just not my jam.
I love natural light so I'm going to work with natural light when I can, but for weddings,
when I no longer have the sun, or I'm in an extremely dark church, I'm going to use off
camera flash.
The reason for that is, to maintain an ambiance and make sure I don't get that black background.
I don't know if you've ever taken a picture, where you have an on-camera flash and your
subjects are lit, but the background is just an abyss of black and you lose all of the
ambiance.
So particularly for dancing, receptions, and all the important events that go on at a wedding
at the reception, I want to make sure that I can capture the room and what it felt like.
And people in the back ground.
And I can do that really well with off camera flash.
So that's why I started using off camera flash, and I think why many photographers go ahead
and add flash to their system in the wedding world.
First lets just go over the gear I use.
and What you will probably need to get started with off camera flash.
So, first thing you need are some strobes.
I use the Nikon SB910's and you can really use anything, it doesn't have to be canon
or nikon it can be any of the other brands as well.
What you'll need is two flashes.
I use one flash on my camera, of course.
And I use one off-camera.
I also use triggers.
So I use radio triggers so that I can talk to my flashes when they're off camera.
So what I'll do is I'll have 1 camera with me, I'll put a trigger on top of that camera,
and then I'll put a flash on top of the trigger.
So this is the set up for on-camera.
The reason I use triggers is so that I can change and controls the flash power from across
the room.
So I don't have to go changing them wherever my flash is.
So I know that canon actually has a built in system in their flashes.
As far as I know, this isn't a built-in system with nikon.
This is just how I started off camera flash so it's a system I'm very comfortable with.
I'm able to change my flash settings across the room.
For instance, I have 1 flash across the room and maybe a Bride & groom are about to have
their cake cutting, I can go ahead and turn it down or turn it up and make adjustments
without going and physically changing those settings on the flash.
That's what I'm able to do here.
Once I have this set up, I go ahead and set up the off camera flash.
I have another trigger (that is a receiver) it's a little bigger because it's receiving
transmission.
This guy will go off camera.
So once I turn these guys on, if I trigger this camera, both of the flashes will go off.
So you can play around and you'll have so much more control over what kind of flash
results you'll get.
So what I do typically is put this on a stand.
And I'll have the stand throughout the room wherever I see fit to light the situation
best.
The cool thing about this as well is that you can just slide it off the stand and it
has the trigger built in, and I'll have an assistant or my second shooter hold this behind
my couple or I can set it on a table somewhere for outdoor shots.
So, I also like to get an end-of-night shot of my bride and groom if I can, weather permitting.
If you are just starting out with off camera flash, you should start with just 2 flashes.
1 of them on your camera and 1 of them off camera.
That way you can play around with the different powers, you can play with your settings and
start to figure out what you like to see in your images and how you're going to achieve
that.
Once you are more comfortable with that, you can add more flashes to the room, and kind
of grow from there, but I really feel that this is a good starting point when you are
first starting with off camera flash.
So we've covered the gear that I use.
How I set this up - how one of them goes off camera and one flash is on camera.
For this particular system, I have to turn it on top to bottom.
So I'll turn on my flash, turn on the trigger, turn on my camera.
Turn on my flash, turn on my transmitter.
And then I'll press the little side button and it says test/learn.
and that button will sync them up.
So then they're talking to each other.
I fire a few test shots, I look at my off camera flash and see that it's firing.
and I'm good to go!
If it's not firing, I check the batteries, and I check that it's properly in the hot
shoe.
Those are the two things that are usually going wrong if you're playing around and it
doesn't seem to be working.
Obviously, this is just this system.
You have to read the manual for whatever triggers you buy or if you're just using the internal
systems for your flashes.
Once you understand the system that you have then you can get creative and you can play
around with it.
Sometimes it just takes the reading and the boring part but it's totally worth it once
you have it all synced up and it's doing exactly what you want it to do.
So once they're synced you can start to use them.
Now I'm going to talk to you guys a little bit about the settings.
It completely depends on the situation.
I'm always shooting in manual on my camera and manual on my flash.
I don't want my flash and my camera to decide my settings for me because then they are going
to vary a lot because it's using an internal metering system.
so sometimes your flash is going to be great and then you turn and it's going to think
"oh this situation is kind of darker over here" and it overcompensates.
So the best thing you can do is put your camera on manual - put your flash on manual and learn
from there.
Your shots are going to be more consistent and ultimately you're way more in control.
So what I do is when I'm in manual, I'm going to look through my camera and I'm going to
meter this situation.
And I'm probably going to meter a little bit dark because I know my flashes are going to
come in and fill.
So that means I'm not going to meter at 0.
I'm going to let it be a stop too dark or play around a little bit lower.
Typically my ISO is around 800-1600.
I'm going to throw some pictures in here - I have to go find some, I will record and show
you all the data and all the settings for the pictures.
So it should be kind of interesting to see what the shutter speed is, what the aperture
is and that kind of thing.
One thing to keep in mind about the shutter speed is that you are a little more limited
in shutter speed when you use flash.
So your sync speed is the highest shutter speed that you can use while still maintaining
a sync with your flashes.
You are going to have to stick around 1/200th of a second, or slower.
When you take a picture with flash, the flash freezes the motion if that makes sense, so
normally I wouldn't want to shoot at 1/25th of a second but when I'm using flash, I can
actually get a away with it more even at the reception, just for the way that flash freezes
motion.
As a rule of thumb, I'm typically shooting at 1/16 power or 1/8 power.
Sometimes I'm using my on-camera flash as the main flash, and I'm just using the this
as a little bit of a key-light or fill, I play around with it honestly, sometimes I
want the back flash to kind of cut my subject and make a ring around them and really make
them appear 3D.
Sometimes I want that to be more powerful.
So depending on where I am in the room (which we will talk about next week)I'm going to
have different flash settings.
I hope that this was useful for you guys to see the flash set up, how I use 1 flash off
camera, see a little bit of my settings.
Next week we are going to be talking about how to soften your light that comes from flash
to just give it a softer look, where I stand in a room in relation to where I put my flashes,
and MORE.
so be sure to subscribe so that you don't miss out on the rest of this series.
I would love to answer your questions if you have any questions about flash or photography
in general - leave them in the comment's section below.
I will be sure to get back to you!
I'm so excited about this series guys and I hope you are too.
I'll see you guys next week!
bye guys!