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Home >> Learning >> e-Book on Photography Table of Contents Photography e-Book Chapter 9 - Flash
Flash is sometimes called the portable sun because most portable flashguns are referenced to noontime light. The quality of light can be measured and we use the Kelvin scale to indicate the color temperature at a given time of day. Noontime light in sunny conditions measures 5500 degrees Kelvin and that is the reference for portable flashes. There is just one problem, as you may have guessed, most photographers eschew the lighting conditions in noontime light due to its flat, harsh, and contrasted nature. Why have we accepted our portable flashes to be referenced to a quality of light temperature that few would choose to photograph in? Many photographers attempt to modify the light by using warming filters on their lenses or portable soft boxes and other flash accessories, trying valiantly to avoid or modify the 5500K color temperature.
Filters can be bought for flashes but it would be nice if flash manufacturers could produce flashes with different color temperatures suited for the healthy skin tones many photographers desire but perhaps better the devil we know now than one we do not. Now that I have that beef out of the way, let us talk about flash equipment. Simple advice, buy the best flash from the same company as your camera brand. As a Nikon user I have the SB 28, the most advanced and powerful flash in the Nikon line. Brand flashes are more expensive but worth the money to avoid compatibility hassles and to ensure that all the features of your camera's flash capabilities are allowed. Brand-mate flash and camera communicate with each other and provide access to all the advanced features made available by the company, such as rear-curtain sync, high-speed sync, slow-speed sync, and stroboscopic mode among others (the Canon EX550 for example, has advanced slave capabilities that cannot be copied by third party flashes).
If you cannot afford your brand's first or even second flash gun and are interested in third party flashes, there are some features to watch out for to allow you some flexibility. I do not know much about third party flashes so do not expect detailed comments on the likes of Lumidyne or Quantum or more appropriately for the budget conscious, Sunpak or Vivitar. I do own a flash from Metz and I also own two of Vivitar's venerable 283 flash, the de facto standard for flashes before the age of dedicated automation (around the time Nikon introduced the F801 and SB24 flash). These flash units were purchased more for my medium format Bronica SQ-Ai kit than for the Nikon kit and it is with the Bronica that I use the flashes with most often but I have started to dabble with the Metz 45 CL-4 with the Nikon F100 since the purchase of the Metz SCA adapter for Nikon. The Metz 45 CL-4 and the SCA 345 Nikon flash adapter are limited in features and only provides TTL flash control as the Metz 45 CL-4 is an old flash model using non-current technology. Old but still quite capable and provides plenty of power when I require it. The Vivitar 283 was/is a very popular flash from decades ago. The original 283 flash guns had lethal voltages that would fry the electronics of modern day cameras but the current Vivitar 283 is quite safe to use on today's high tech bodies. The 283 is now made in China and is quite affordable for such a capable Auto flash but I would certainly want to check out the offerings from Sunpak too before putting down the hard cash for a third party flash unit. The old Vivitar 283 is now limited in use with today's popular ultra-wide angle lenses. Once you have used your flash unit for some time for a variety of shots, you will probably come to despise the flash despite its necessity. Direct flash shots can be abhorrent in quality and painfully obvious that the subject has been flashed. We all want that natural look of a subject in ambient light but truth be told ambient light can be trying for portraits (low light levels or contrasty light) or macro photography (subject matter moving or being moved by the wind and low light levels). You need that pocket sun to blast the subject and freeze it at speeds measured in the 1/10,000ths of second. Photographers have tried to work around the limitations of direct flash and its quality of lighting. Certainly, I have tried some accessories and techniques myself to get away from the horrible results of direct flash.
There are certainly many more techniques and accessories than what I have listed but few have pleased me enough to use on a regular basis. The compact size of the portable flash is also the problem as the flash head is more point source than diffused, hence the tricks used by photographers to adapt to an unpleasant reality. When researching about portrait photography or for that matter, many other types of photography, you will often find reference to overcast days being the best for soft diffused light. The clouds act as a gigantic soft box that spreads out the sunlight, which is normally a point source of light during the hours between sunrise and sunset. The more point source your light, meaning narrow and confined, the harsher and greater the contrast the light is due to the beaming nature of it. Shadows are short and dark and light is directionless. Your subject is either in severe backlight or facing harsh light. Only in sunrise and sunset conditions does the light change and become directional, creating long shadows that add contours over the landscape. Spreading out the light, either the clouds with the sunlight or a flash bounced into an umbrella or through a soft box, acts as a diffuser to broaden the point source of light. The light is now more evenly distributed and the quality is attractive to human subjects and in fact, for many still life subjects. Suffice to say that my short comments here on flash are rudimentary and more detailed use of flash is beyond my basic knowledge. I marvel at how corporate and advertising photographers can create amazing images in the studio and use direct flash in such ways as to bring out the nuances of the subject while keeping certain sections in shadow to create drama. This is the stuff of gobos, scrims, and snoots among others and far beyond what I actually desire to know about studio flash techniques. There are a few books available that explain the concepts and techniques in the studio should you wish to learn more.
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Correspondence & About this website Copyright © 1998-2008 Edwin Leong |
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Flash
is sometimes a weird thing to understand. As much as we wish to capture
the world around us in its natural light, we cannot always do so due
to the conditions of the scene and what it imposes on the film we use
to create the image. Flash provides us with a supremely portable burst
of sunlight that provides us with an opportunity to adjust the contrast
range of a given scene and try to equalize it to a degree.
The
dedicated hotshoe contacts for Nikon flashes at right
If
you can afford the top-level flash from your camera company, do not
stop there. Spend a little more and buy the off-camera TTL cord too.
This TTL cord will allow full functionality of the flash and camera
while providing you with additional creative options for your flash
work. 
