Use flash when there is not enough light or when there is none at all. When a scene is already well-lit, add light from a flash to fill in harsh shadows. Did you ever shoot in a venue with direct downward lighting? Downward lighting creates raccoon eyes on your subjects — eyebrows shade the most photographically important part of your human subjects. A flash can greatly improve your subject lighting in these cases.
The answer to the why do I need an accessory flash question may be obvious to owners of camera bodies without a built-in flash, but not so clear to those using bodies with a built-in flash.
The built-in flash will add light to the shadows and add catchlights sparkles to the subject's eyes — at short distances. The problem is that the range of the built-in flash is very short and the benefit of that flash is minimal in terms of overall image quality because it lacks an important feature — the ability to tilt and swivel. I'll come back to this point soon. A flash can also improve the spectrum quality of the light reaching a scene.
Not all light is created equal and some light is quite lacking in regards to its spectrum profile. The color quality coming from accessory flashes are optimized for photographical purposes and can overcome the color deficiencies found in ambient light sources when used as the full lighting for a scene. When including ambient light in the exposure, the flash will need to be gelled to match the color of that ambient light so that white balance can correctly be obtained. A huge benefit of an accessory flash is being able to change the size and shape profile of the light reaching your subject.
Using the tilt and swivel feature of the better flash models, light can be bounced from an appropriately-colored reflective surface. The color of that surface ideally will be light dark colors absorb more light and neutral enough that a strong color cast is not introduced into your image.
A wall or reflector is commonly used for on-camera bounced flash. If used off-camera, the flash output bouncing off of a white umbrella can provide simple but excellent soft lighting for your subjects. An off-camera flash can also be fired through a softbox, shoot-through umbrella, snoot, gobo, Light Blaster or diffuser.
The bounce and diffusion options can result in a larger light source relative to the size of the subject for a generally much-preferred soft look to the lighting.
Light fall-off across your image can also be controlled by varying the distance between your flash and your subject. Yes, my beautiful model moves a bit between each comparison shot — she thought she needed a sip of tea during each flash change. The model is sitting on a stool in a simulated corner of two white walls the wall to camera right is actually a very large reflector. A single flash is the only light used for each of these shots.
At even this relatively short distance, the 50D's built-in flash required ISO and full power plus. Aside from power, the shoe-mounted flashes aimed directly at the subject do not offer much if any image quality improvement over the built-in flash.
As the flash height increases on the hot shoe, the shadows lengthen — which is not a benefit aside from sometimes reducing the red-eye effect. The EX II's auto-zoom feature would have directed more light onto the subject - and less would have bounced off of the side wall to fill the shadows. Of course, I could have manually chosen a wider angle flash head setting on the EX II, but the cup of tea was empty by then. All of the direct-flash images would appear nice compared to a flashless capture in this scenario the subject was in very low light.
Nice, that is, as long as you had not seen the bounced flash examples. When the flash is close to the axis of the lens, the light appears unnatural. The reason for this is because we rarely view the world with a bright light emanating from our foreheads spelunkers are an exception to this rule. Start bouncing the flash and everything changes. The source of the light becomes the object the light is bounced from.
The reflective surface is typically something very large — and white in color is usually preferred. In the bounce example above, the flash was aimed into a white reflector held up to the back of camera left the edge of a wall and ceiling often works well. The large size of the light source delivers a softer light, wrapping around the subject.
The harsh shadows below the jaw line right side in examples above and on the background are greatly softened. As the EX III-RT shares the same Guide Number power rating as its predecessor, this example should give you a good idea of what kind of camera settings you'll need when shooting in similar circumstances.
In the specific example above which is often be encountered in the field , I needed the EX II to rotate into its dead rotation zone for optimal positioning. I'll pay a lot more attention to off camera flash use later, but I think you'll agree that the umbrella example above is the winner in this competition. A shoot-through diffuser is another optimal light modifier. Shoot-through diffusers include things such as softboxes, umbrellas, commercial diffusers, bed sheets and even transparent shower curtains.
Accessory flashes allow the use of a great abundance of direct-attached light modifiers. These modifiers range from complete gimmick to must-have in their usefulness. To be used for direct flash applications, a modifier must be very significantly larger than the flash head and sufficient internal diffusion must be incorporated to allow the flash to adequately and evenly light the entire front surface area of the modifier.
There is a lot more flexibility in size when some or all of the modifier's light will be bounced. One of my favorites is the Sto-Fen Omni-Bounce diffuser. This small, rugged, inexpensive accessory creates a bare-bulb effects that sends light in all directions.
You end up with a combination of direct and bounced light on your scene. Note that any flash accessory counting on bounced light is only going to be effective when a reflective surface wall, ceiling, etc.
You are simply wasting battery life if using these devices on an open beach, in an open field, in a large arena, etc. While devices like these were sometimes used to reduce flash output long ago, modern flashes are capable of reducing their output to low levels without this help. Providing a focus assist light is another advantage that flashes provide. While built-in, low-end and compact flashes can help with focus acquisition in low light, they use a series of very distracting quick flashes to do this.
The higher end flashes including the EX-RT project a much less intrusive red grid pattern when focus help is needed. Eliminating motion-blurred images is another challenge that flash can help you overcome.
Stopping fast action can be challenging under all but under the brightest lights. And holding a camera still enough to capture sharp, motion-blur-free images can also be challenging. Because the light output from a flash happens with such short duration, a flash is able to freeze even very fast motion, making sharp photos much more attainable if correctly focused of course. A very significant percentage of photographers find at least one accessory flash to be an important part of their kit for one or more of the reasons listed above.
Power is one of the features you are looking for in a flash. By power, I am talking about how much light the flash can generate. Manufacturers rate their flashes for power output using the "Guide Number" spec, indicating the max distance a flash can light a subject. Unfortunately, this spec is difficult to use for comparative purposes. One of the primary differences between the EX and the EX is the amount of light each can provide.
The EX is not under powered for many uses, but the EX's significant power advantage can become important when using a flash modifier such as an umbrella, softbox or diffuser - or bouncing light off a high ceiling.
The other primary difference is that the EX can be used as a master to trigger remote Canon wireless slave flashes while the EX can only act as a slave flash.
The EX can then be used as a remote flash. Those using Canon bodies with 45 focus points 1-Series boies should take note that the EX's AF assist covers up to 9 focus points. You can still utilize the EX's focus assist, but need to know that all focus points are not covered as in the EX. The fact that the EX can be powered from an external power source will be important to photographers expecting heavy flash use.
The EX does not have this capability. Instead of a dial for adjusting settings, the EX utilizes rounded parenthesis-shaped buttons. I can understand making buttons safe from accidental changes, but these buttons are narrow and require an excessively deep press to make changes. The dial is much easier to use. The EX does have some advantages over the EX. Size and weight are the most obvious physical advantages. Actual EX dimensions are 2.
Actual EX dimensions are 3 x 5. Without batteries, the EX weighs It works very nicely. A nicer padded nylon vs. Lower cost is a EX advantage we can all appreciate. You can just flip it with your thumb. And the newer model, you have to go into the menu system, push a button and change the settings and lock the settings in, which takes a lot more time and more attention.
If you're in a fast shooting situation--say a photo journalist or wedding photographer--some of these kind of photographers like that ability to put the older version into slave mode without even having to look at the thing. You can just flip it and it's in slave mode. So if you're one of those kind of shooters you may want to consider the older one. Now there is one big caveat though. If you ever intend to use this flash with radio triggers, like the Pocket Wizards or the little Hong Kong triggers that you can buy online, then you're going to want to go with the EX2 because the EX is known to be noisy in the radio spectrum--the older model.
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