First Flash - Help?

gazedd

gazedd

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Gary Eddleston
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Hi guys,
Today I was a given a Canon 430 exII, Now I've never looked into flash so am completely clueless into guides etc.

I have RTFM and It made a little sense but I would like to see some working guides online to show me actual results rather then what the Manual explains. (something I can try to replicate to understand the flashgun better)

So, I here about Strobist all the time but I think thats more to do with Softboxes etc???!!!???

Any online guides or even tips for yourselves would be awesome!

I have used the search button, but as I'm completely blind as to what I'm loking for, I dont want to confuse myself over guides that are not specific to my learning stage.


Thanks for any help in advance!

Gaz


P.S, I would like to do a self-portait, You know the ones... Dark lite on one side and very moody. Tips on this would be Great.
 
Hi Gary,
I use a canon 580exII. When I first got it and RTFM, none of it made any sense to me at all. I still have trouble with setting it up to get certain types of shots.

So firstly I sat down put the camera in AP switched the flash on and took some shots. Sometimes it worked better than others. AP+flash basically gives you fill in flash. The camera will set the exposure based on the ambient lighting, and give you a burst of flash to to fill in.

If you are shooting in low light conditions this isn't going to be very useful as either your shutter speed will be too slow to stop motion blur or your aperture may be so big you will have limited depth of field.

So now you find some low light conditions and set the camera to manual, and start taking images and adjusting the settings on both the camera and the flash, checking the histogram for each exposure to see what is happening.

You will soon begin to see what is happening. When you've done this for a bit and it is starting to make sense, going back and RTFM will also make more sense.

best two basic things to remember I think are

1 enough light to use AP? use flash to fill in shadows etc.

2 too little light to use AP then switch to manual, take a few test shots to get the exposure right and stick with that. If you are good at mental; arithmetic you can do the calculations using the guide number and subject distance etc to calculate exposure, but to be honest after a while you get a fell for how much you need to adjust exposure depending on how the subject distance has changed.

The great thing about digital is that you can experiment as much as you like and it doesn't cost you anything
 
Thanks for taking your time to reply, I am going to have a play about with it later (and Probally blind myself at the same time)
I'm currently on Youtube looking for videos, (none have been successful as of yet) looking for Flash guides etc.

I guess with everything, I'll work it out eventually.
 
Also, Is there different types of flash set ups?

I hear, Fill-in, bounce etc... is this just the different ways to set the flash up, Or is this settings withing the camera? (i'm thinking its more the way it is set up)
 
Fill flash just throws some light into the shadows, usually set some negative compensation on the flash but otherwise the exposure will be the same as without.
e.g. 1/60s, f/8 ISO100 could be properly exposed, add some flash and the highlights look the same but the shadows are lifted a bit.

Bounce flash is where you angle the flash head at a wall or ceiling and the light bounces about so you don't get harsh shadows.
 
LOL awesome.
Luckily your "advanced" camera and flash take care of most of that video for you.
Just whack it on, make sure it's in TTL and fire away!
 
My flash will not set to TTL, It will only flick between ETTL and M, The manual suggests to stay in ETTL
 
Yes, ETTL it'll be, sorry I don't speak Canon, it's i-TTL on my Nikon flash but I knew TTL would be in there somewhere.
 
"Also, Is there different types of flash set ups?

I hear, Fill-in, bounce etc.."

With the flash head pointed directly at the subject you are likely to get very harsh lighting. This can be altered by adjusting the flash exposure compensation up or down. An alternative is to put a diffuser over the flash head. This can be anything from a handkerchief, tissue paper to a custom made plastic push-on device by, say, omnibounce.

Bouncing the flash is another option. To do this you angle the flash head so the light is bounce of ceilings or walls. This will often give a better light because the flash is more diffused. It does however have a downside.

1 If the walls are painted, you may get a colour cast,
2 because the light has further to go and is more diffused the exposure you set for the flash pointing directly at the subject will now almost certainly lead to an under exposed image. To compensate you can

1 increase the aperture
2 increase the flash power

(note that in low light conditions where you are almost certainly NOT using AP, and you have set you exposure manually, and the flash is the major source of illumination, adjusting the shutter speed will make no difference as the duration of the flash is much shorter than the shutter speeds you can set).

selecting the correct exposure is frequenjtly a compromise in daylight photography, this is even more the case when using flash, and I have found that just doing lots of it is the best way of learning, then the theory and the books begin to make sense, but trying to learn from books right from the beginning is just plain confusing.

A couple of books I have used are

"Canon Speedlight System Digital field guide" by J. Dennis Thomas
and
"lighting" by David Prakel in the BASICS series.

I found the latter book extremely useful as a good basic introduction to all lighting, it only has a small section on flash
 
maybe get some ebay triggers and play around with having it away from the camera, that would probably be the best way to get a sidelit face (not sure how well bouncing off a wall would work
 
Greywolf said:
"Also, Is there different types of flash set ups?

I hear, Fill-in, bounce etc.."

With the flash head pointed directly at the subject you are likely to get very harsh lighting. This can be altered by adjusting the flash exposure compensation up or down. An alternative is to put a diffuser over the flash head. This can be anything from a handkerchief, tissue paper to a custom made plastic push-on device by, say, omnibounce.

Bouncing the flash is another option. To do this you angle the flash head so the light is bounce of ceilings or walls. This will often give a better light because the flash is more diffused. It does however have a downside.

1 If the walls are painted, you may get a colour cast,
2 because the light has further to go and is more diffused the exposure you set for the flash pointing directly at the subject will now almost certainly lead to an under exposed image. To compensate you can

1 increase the aperture
2 increase the flash power

(note that in low light conditions where you are almost certainly NOT using AP, and you have set you exposure manually, and the flash is the major source of illumination, adjusting the shutter speed will make no difference as the duration of the flash is much shorter than the shutter speeds you can set).

selecting the correct exposure is frequenjtly a compromise in daylight photography, this is even more the case when using flash, and I have found that just doing lots of it is the best way of learning, then the theory and the books begin to make sense, but trying to learn from books right from the beginning is just plain confusing.

A couple of books I have used are

"Canon Speedlight System Digital field guide" by J. Dennis Thomas
and
"lighting" by David Prakel in the BASICS series.

I found the latter book extremely useful as a good basic introduction to all lighting, it only has a small section on flash
Click to expand...

Thank you for your advice, I will try and put this into practive shortly.

david1701 said:
maybe get some ebay triggers and play around with having it away from the camera, that would probably be the best way to get a sidelit face (not sure how well bouncing off a wall would work
Click to expand...

I'm wanting to get some triggers for it, Off camera flash is how the images I have in mind where created.
 
using a single speedlight off camera is my current favorite toy, couple of lights works better for other things
 
Been taking images today trying various things, Nothing is yet to scream out as wow.

I've my eye on those ebay triggers (Cactus V2s) and think that potentially because you can control the light much more (direction etc) It may help my flash learning...


I know its probally a dumb question, but are there any basic settings I can at least try to stick around?

AP, F7.1 ISO100 flash set to ETTL Bounced of ceiling at 45,70(what ever the middle one is) and 90 degrees, doesn't seem to like my ugly face.



Also, Is it best to take an image in Daylight or Night?
I know (again) that might sound silly but I was watching Youtube videos earlier and gus where set up with 2 lights and fireing in mid day but producing nice dark edged images.


I've had a quick scan over strobist work but that is aimed at pure off-camera work.
 
erm for ttl if your bouncing try a better bounce card (google it) to get light on the face more
 
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