How to Use Flash: Lighting for Digital Photography

1. Introduction: [MUSIC] We've all been there, you're at a party and you put your camera, the flash comes on, you take that photo and you think, yes, this moment is perfect, and you look at the back of the camera and suddenly you have red eye everywhere, it's too bright and too dark and your perfect moment is ruined. Let's make sure that never happens again. Hello and welcome. My name is Fynn Badgley, I am a commercial fashion and portrait photographer based out of Toronto, Canada. Today I'm going to walk you through the different levels of flashes, so that way that scenario never happens. In my photography, I use flash a ton. If you were to look at my portfolio, 90 percent of the images are lit with some type of flash, but it didn't always start out that way. When I was learning how to use flash photography, it took me years acquiring different gear, watching a bunch of long tutorials, and trying to piece together what information I could find. That's why I've taken those years of information and condensed them into this one class because this is what I wish I had access to when I was learning how to take control of my flash in photography. The amount of time I lost due to trial and error and figuring it out would have been so simplified if I just had this one class walking me through all of it. It doesn't even matter if you're new to photography and learning how to best use the flash built-in on your camera, or if you're a seasoned photographer looking to take control of artificial light. I have a lot of friends who are primarily natural light photographers because they are actually intimidated by flashes and don't even know where to start. It's a light that you cannot see so I understand why that's intimidating. That is why I am here to demystify all of that and allow you to really take control of the power that you can get from flash photography. Throughout this class, we're going to look at the different modes and models of flashes from your built-in flash on your camera all the way up to your studio photography strobe. That way, no matter where you are, you can figure out how to use this type of light to get the best images possible. Even if you've never taken an image using a flash before, by the end of this class, you'll be able to understand how to confidently create a full studio setup. If you want to take control of your flash and learn how to confidently light your images in any scenario so that way you can use your camera at anytime of day or night, then let's jump in and I hope to see you there. [MUSIC] 2. Project: First of all, I wanted to thank you for enrolling in this course, and I hope you find the information presented here very valuable to you. Now, jumping right in. You're going to be creating a project at the end of this class and don't worry, I'm going to be chiming in down below to see all the great images that you take. The project for this, it's pretty simple. All you have to do is take one photo using a flash. It doesn't matter if it's your standard pop-up flash built-in on your camera using something like a speed light or a full studio strobe. As long as it's lit using some type of flash, that's all you need. Now, even though the project's scope is simple, I did that to allow a lot of you room for creativity. How are you using the flash? Are using on-camera direct? Are you balancing it with the natural light in your environment? Are you taking that flash off-camera? Which we'll get into. Are you using a full studio setup with multiple lights going off? Or are you using some DIY techniques to create a different way to modify the light coming out of your flash? There are so many ways to harness the power of this. And throughout the material that you're going to be presented with today, I can't wait to see how you implement it into your photos. But before we get there, let's discuss what these flashes even are and how they work. 3. How Does Flash Work?: What even is a flash, and with all these different constant light sources, do you need to use one in today's environment? Well, basically what happens is all of these different flashes that you see across the table and on the stand here, they all work in the same general idea. Basically, you have your light, and it has a power source. What it does is it draws a bunch of power from the battery, if it's plugged into a wall, and it stores it. Then, when that flash goes off, it fires it all off in one quick burst, so that way you get a lot more power as compared to if a light was constantly on, constantly putting out that amount of light. So this is how you're able to get a lot brighter of a light source in a lot smaller of a package. If this were an LED, the size of this, it would not be near as bright as the flash that comes out of this. This makes a very strong light source, very portable, and actually inexpensive in comparison to the amount of light you would need to replicate something like this. Basically, a constant source is anything you're traditionally used to. Basically just a light that stays on all the time when you turn it on, and it turns off when you turn it off, rather than a light that flashes whenever it's set to do so. Now, even though they all work on the same principles, not all flashes are created equal and there's different ways that they work to create a different look. For example, this little guy right here, this built-in flash, although it works the same as this, it's drawing power through the camera itself. It's not powered externally, so it's not going to be as bright as a speed light like one of these guys that has their own battery source built-in and has a larger bulb inside of it. Now you can't see the bulb it's behind this lens here, which modifies the light, but it is a larger source than this. Therefore, it has more power because of that. Then we move over to something like this guy here. This is a studio strobe. This is called a mono light because it's all built-in. You don't need to plug it in. There's a battery here, and the light takes power from the battery and fires it all out at once, like you're about to see here. So what happens is all that light is stored in and when you press that button, it goes off, and you have your actual flash tube here. It's a little spirally light tube in there that is extremely bright when it goes off as you just saw. To recap, a flash is a light that stores a bunch of power from a power source, whether that be batteries or if it's internal from the camera itself, and releases all of that power at once, creating a very bright light, whereas continuous lights are constantly on and because of that are less bright for the size of light. Now that you are aware of what a flash is and how it works, we're going to go through the different types and some settings in which you would use the different ones that you see here. 4. Types of Flashes: Across this table, you are seeing a bunch of different types of flashes. Each one has a different purpose, but where and why would you want to use certain ones? First off, we have what I'm going to call the pop-up flash or built-in flash. Those two I'm going to be using interchangeably. If you hear one of them, that's what I'm referring to is these little pop-up ones here. If you have a smaller mirrorless camera, they might have a little pop-up flash on the side or something still small like that. It's built into the camera. It takes power from the camera and fires it out towards your subject. Now, this guy, it is smaller, so you're going to get less light out of it. Because it's directly on the camera, it's going to be quite harsh. Now when you think of flash, you're probably thinking more along the lines of something like one of these. This is what we would refer to as an external flash, also known as a speed light. If you hear me talk about a speed light, I'm talking about one of these little guys that mount on the hot shoe of your camera. The hot shoes just up top here. There's a little connector there. It just slides on and you have a lock there. This one has a little band net amount locking mechanism where some just twist down for the tension there. Now, speed lights, there are a ton of different ones by different companies. For example, this one here is made by Canon. It is specifically a Canon speed light. Because of that, it works best with Canon cameras. As you can see, all my cameras here, our Canon that's not me being sponsored or anything like that. That is just my personal preference and what I shoot with as a professional photographer. Now, this one is made by Godox, which is an independent company not tied to Canon, Nikon, Sony, any of those. The thing about this guy here is it can work pretty much the same across the board with all your different camera brands. The reasons that some of these differ is that the hot shoes across your different camera brands are slightly different, so they'll communicate with a flash, slightly different. Now, this is both good and bad. Let me explain because something like this guy here will work perfectly with a Canon camera. You're not going to have any hiccups or anything like that. If you put this on a Nikon, probably won't even work. You'll take the photo and it just won't fire. It's pretty much dedicated to any Canon camera because the hot shoe is meant to communicate in that way. Now, whereas this guy here, the Godox, there are other brands like newer and a whole bunch of other brands that make similar speed lights to this one. This is also powered by AA's as is the Canon here, you can get ones with lithium-ion rechargeable batteries. They just cost a little bit more. Now, with this guy, you can use this across any different camera across the board. You're pretty much going to have the same results. To further illustrate this point, I've used this on my Canon cameras. I've also used this on a couple of different 35-millimeter film cameras that I have, and it works still the exact same way. I have a Nikon film camera, I have a Rico film camera. It works the same with both of those as it does with any of my Canon gear. This is pretty much your versatile flash. Whereas if you know, you're just shooting with one brand and you want to get the best results, then something like this guy is going to give you that result. Now the other thing worthy of noting is the dedicated speed lights that are brand specific. Are typically going to cost you more, for example, this Canon 1 at the time that I got it was roughly $300 Canadian, about $250 or so US. Whereas the Godox was about $50 or $60 US. This is quite a bit more powerful than the Canon 1. Now if you are somebody who likes to keep things more brand-specific, then going with the flash that it is the same brand of your camera might be the way to go, but there are options, especially if you want to keep things more affordable. I know as well as anyone, the photography industry is not exactly a cheap profession to get into. If you can pick something up like this for pretty cheap, then that might be the way to go. The other thing worthy of noting between these two different speed lights is on the back. You get a lot more control with the Godox versus the Canon. The Canon version of this guy will run you anywhere about 450 to $600. Which by that price point, you start getting into the territory of something like this. But you get a lot more control because this only has one power setting. If you have this directly on the camera, it's going to be very powerful. You're not going to be able to dim it down unless you put something actually in front of the flash here, which we'll get into in the upcoming lessons. But if you want to actually have more control over your flash, something like this might be the way to go because on the back here, you can actually adjust the different power levels. It's not super bright. This is a great way that you can use to actually balance with any ambient natural light in your environment. Again, another thing we'll get to later on in the class, and then going all the way down the line, we have this guy right here, the mono light strobe. There are also larger ones that you can have in a large power pack. Then you just have the flash head itself connected by a cable. That's like the big brother to this guy. But that's more for a dedicated studio setup, whereas something like this is more portable. You can take it on the road on location, which I've done quite a lot. Now the thing about this is you might be asking yourself, so you have this light here, and has a flash in it. How does it go off? Well, you will notice on my one camera here there is this little guy here. This is something we're going to get into of how it works later on in the course. But basically, this transmitter here sends a signal to the light here that tells it when an image is being taken and tells that flash when it should fire. But we're going to get into more of just how that actually works in our upcoming lessons. These are the different types of flashes you have. You have your pop-up built-in flash. This is the same idea as the flash on your phone or built-in to a point and shoot camera, anything like that. This is the same idea. You have your brand-specific speed lights, you have your more generic speed lights with your different controls. Some of them don't have power adjustments, some of them do. Then you go all the way up to your studio strobes. These are all flashes. There's just different names for them. Speed lights, strobe, built-in, pop-up flash, whatever you want to call it. To recap, there are a couple of different types of flashes. There are built-in flashes that are attached to your camera. You have external flashes, also known as speed lights, that can be mounted on the camera or taken off-camera. Then you have studio strobe flashes as well, which are typically the largest and brightest. Now that we know what all of these different things are, let's actually get into how you can use them to the best of your ability. 5. Direct Flash: We know what a flash is. Now, how do we use it? How can we use it to take better images? Now the way most of you are going to get started taking flash images is simply using the flash that is built-in on your camera or using an external speed light, simply using it directly where your subject is. Just like so. Here's the thing about the built-in flashes, because they're drawing power from the camera. You're not getting a lot of power output out of them. If you're taking a photo and need just that little bit of extra light to fill in some of those shadows, this can do the job. If you're in a dimly lit scenario trying to light it mainly with the pop-up flash, you're going to have some difficulties. You're going to have to open up your shutter speed more, open up that aperture, raise that ISO. Even then if there are any other lights in the scenario, you're going to be getting some cast from those, and it's just not going to be a great look overall. That is when you would want to step up to something like a speed light. You would just put that on the camera there, turn it on, point it at your subject. Then from there, once it's fired up, you'll get a little indicator on the back here. It depends on how much juice you have left in your batteries and the more shots you take, the longer it will take to actually charge up. Then once it's ready to go, I'll just point it at my subject that being you guys and take a photo. When you compare this to the previous image, you can see the amount of power difference you're getting from something a little bit bigger compared to the pop-up flash. That's just because it has its built-in power source, bigger light source itself. You're getting a image at first with the pop-up flash that was substantially underexposed. You just can see a bit of that light coming off the reflection of the camera. Then when we attach the Speed-light, you can see suddenly the image is completely overexposed and now it's too bright, just further illustrating the power of the Speed-light. I took a couple of self-portraits, some heads-hots style where you can see the difference that this makes. Even though this is a direct flash, you can see the difference here. I'm going to be putting the settings as well so you can gauge how drastic the difference is. If I were to take the same photo with the pop-up flash. If I use the same settings for that. That I used for the Speed-light, suddenly that photo is going to be completely white. You're not going to be able to make out anything. That just shows you how much power you're getting when you use something externally. Now, if all you have is the pop-up flash and you want to get started playing around, by all means, don't let that limit you. You can actually take some great images using this. You just need to be aware of the limitations that has. How you can use that to the best of your ability? Now, situations in which you would want to use this if you're getting a lot of dark shadows and you're taking some photos of your friends or anything, and it's harsh sun, you're getting those shadows and it's just not super flattering, if you bring up that pop-up flash, you might be able to bring a little bit more light and lift up those shadows, so it's not so drastic. You can use a Speed-light in the same way. It's just going to be more dramatic of an effect. Now, these are a very white light. If you look at a lamp that is a regular color temperature and you see it's to that orangey color that isn't going to match with the light that's coming out of your flash. You're going to have a really white light coming out of the flash and a really orange light coming out of your regular incandescent bulb. Now there are ways to fix this which is what we'll get into later on. But this is just something to keep in mind when you're out. If you're out in broad daylight, this will match fine. You won't really have an issue. Or if your lights are more of that cool white color, you won't have as much of a problem there. All of the photos that you're seeing here are all taken using direct flash. That means it's at standard red carpet like you see that flashes directly on top of the camera and you just take the photo like so. But that's just the entry point with flash photography. To recap, your flashes are typically putting out a white light that's best suited in daylight scenarios. Or with any light that doesn't have that orange glow to it. A pop-up flash can definitely help you fill in some of those shadows. But it will not be as bright as an external speed light, which will give you a lot more power and versatility. Next up, we're looking at using the built-in flash on your phone. 6. Phone Flash: You have a flash built-in in your back pocket, but how can you use that to the best of your ability? Even for DSLRs, mirrorless cameras, point and shoot cameras that have a built-in flash, there are also ones that you have in your back pocket, or front pocket, or purse, or handbag, or wherever you keep your phone. You see right here we have our flash and we've all seen it where it's on auto flash and sometimes we'll get really good photos out of it and sometimes we won't. It's hard to tell when to use it in and when not to, but it can be useful even though it is a small light source on your phone. It can actually lead to some good photos and improve what would otherwise be unusable image. For example, me and a couple of friends recently took a trip to Niagara Falls and here's a couple of photos from that that were taken on a phone similar to this one here. Without the flash you can see these you wouldn't post them to social media, you wouldn't do anything with them because we are totally in black. We get that nice blue backlight, but that's all that's going on here. This is the perfect scenario because it is so dark where you would want to use the flash on your phone. You can see the difference that that flash made and these photos actually turned out really good because of it. Now just like the built-in flash in your point-and-shoot cameras or DSLRs, the built-in flash is not that strong even on your phone. But because this was at night, it was actually just the right amount of output that we needed to fill in those shadows and get us an actual great-looking photo. Now, obviously you wouldn't always want to use this and sometimes you would get that weird flash look from it. But sometimes it can be actually useful. It's these situations where usually the front of your subject is in shadow and you just need to raise that up a little bit. Something else that you can do if the flash is coming out too dark if it's not quite powerful enough is when you open up your phone if you just drag upwards and raise the exposure of your photo., before you take it you can actually bring up that exposure level a little bit and get your subject exposed properly. Now, another way to do this is interact with the ambient light. As you can see from the photos that I showed earlier we were being really backlit by this bright blue light that was over powering at first, but we're completely in shadow because the light was behind us. But having that flash in front of us photos in nicely. But knowing how to actually work with the light in your surroundings can help you to use your flash better. For example, if we had part of the blue light on half of our faces we might get a weird flash blue light look and it wasn't all that great. But because of that light behind us we're still getting a bit of that blue backlight and it actually worked to create a nice overall photo. You get the sculpture behind this and it looks really interesting, but if we were to the side of it, it wouldn't really work quite as well. These are ways that you can use that flash to your advantage. If the sun is behind your subject and you just add a bit of that flash to fill in those shadows, it can actually work quite nicely. You might get a bit of that party flash look, but it can be really interesting and one done right it can look really good. If you just want to add a little sparkle to somebody's eye or if the lighting is a little bit weird and you just want to enhance it a little bit. For example, if you're getting a lot of overhead lighting from pot lights or something like that if you're taking photos or your friends, you're going to get a lot of raccoon eye going on. Sometimes the flash in those settings is going to be more beneficial. Now, I don't recommend having auto flash on your phone because pretty much when you want it on it won't come on, and when you want it to not go on it'll come on. It will really end up messing up a lot of your photos. I recommend being more intentional about it and actually going into your phone. I'm on an iPhone currently. If I just swipe up from the bottom, you can see the flash icon on the bottom here. We can see flash auto on or off. If I just tap at the top it's just going to go between auto flash and off. But here I can have it on or off, so it knows when I want it to and when I don't want it to be on. That's just the way you don't accidentally end up ruining photos by having the flash accidentally go off. Or having it not go on when you want it to go on because I've definitely been there. You're like, "Okay, the flash is going to come on." When you take a photo and it doesn't, you're like, "Okay, I thought it would come on in this setting, but it doesn't." This is a great way. It's super quick to do and then you won't have to worry about if you're going to get the shot the way you want it. This can work for whether you're taking photos of your friends, whether you're doing a proper photo shoot just using your phone. Whatever you're doing, it can actually create a lot of better images. If you're ever in doubt take a couple of shots with the flash off and then look at it, see if you need to adjust anything. If you need to turn that flash on, then do so like those photos that I took on vacation. To recap, the flash on your phone is going to be similar to a built-in or pop-up flash on a DSLR or mirrorless camera. It's going to be not as powerful as something independent, but it can bring up shadows in poor lighting conditions and give you a photo that would otherwise be unusable. Now, that we've talked about how to get the best results from your flash on your phone there are so many more ways to harness the power of this, and that is exactly what we're about to talk about. 7. Bounced Flash: We've seen the results of what direct flash looks like, and it can definitely lead to some very interesting images. But there are ways that we can use our speed lights and our flashes to create a very different look that will oftentimes be more pleasing to the eye. What you want to do, when you take your speed light, you can see that it starts out in this right-angle position, directly facing whatever you're taking a photo of. But you can see there's a lot of different ways that you can move it, you can turn it up, you can turn it to the side, et cetera. What you really want to do there, especially when you're indoors somewhere, if you look up and the ceiling is white. White is always a reflective surface, so black as a surface absorbs light, but white actually reflects it. If you take your speed light and you point it directly up into the ceiling, what that's going to do is it's going to fire that light into the ceiling and then create a larger light source. It's going to fill the entire room with a flattering light because it's huge now, rather than being just about this size, it is a large bounce to surface, creating a softer and more flattering light all around. Now, the trade-off here is it's not going to be as bright because it's not super direct. It's going to be a flatter light, it's not as harsh. You're going to get softer shadows under the chin of anyone that you're photographing. It's not going to be those harsh lines and you're going to get a wider spread. The actual amount that is going to be lit in the photo is going to be a lot more rather than just one specific part being really, really bright. This is also how you end up with photos where your photo is really, really bright and really, really dark. If I was taking a photo of somebody, their skin might be super bright, but the background might be super dark and you can't really make out all of what's going on. That is what can happen when you use direct flash pointed right at the person. But if we fire it up into the ceiling, you're going to get a lot more flattering of a look. If we compare just the photos here, you can see suddenly, we're getting a loss of light, but it's a lot more flattering of an image. Even with a portrait setting, it's that same type of thing. It's going to be more flattering and it's just going to look better and light the room better as well. This is also how if you're taking interior photos or if you're say photographing an event, this is how you get everything nicely lit and a better image overall. You expose for the way the room is, so you get some of that natural light coming in there, whether it's from any lamps or light sources in there or some windows outside. Then you just add that pop with the flash to really fill out that room. Now, the one thing that this flash does not have, that this one does, is you get a couple added benefits here. At the back, you can pull up this little diffuser that goes in front of the light and it breaks up the light coming out of here and makes it overall a little bit softer and more flattering of a look. But also the thing about firing your flash directly into the ceiling is you're not going to get that little bit of light in a person's eye. We call that a catch light and that helps to show that little bit of life and spark on somebody's eyes. Seeing that light in there is how you get that. But if you're shooting direct flash, you're probably not going to get as flattering of a look. But if you're shooting into the ceiling, you're not going to get that catch light. How do you do it? Well, this has a little white card in here because we know white is a reflective surface, suddenly if you point this into the ceiling now, you're going to get this little bit of white that casts that reflection into the eye creating that flattering catch light. Suddenly, now you have a really standout image that not only is more flattering to the room and the overall environment that you're in, but it's also going to make the person in front of your camera look great. But you don't just have to bounce it into the ceiling. If your ceiling is 30 feet up, your flash isn't really going to reach that. But say you're standing beside a wall that is neutral or white in color, you can simply turn the flash to face that way. You'll get another bounced look that way. If you're shooting vertical, whenever your camera is tilted, all you do is just tilt that up. Now me personally, what I really like doing is whenever I'm using a speed light on top of my camera, there's been times I've been photographing events or just want a little extra pop in the room. What I'll do is I won't have it pointed straight up like that, I'll have it directionally a bit on an angle so it shoots forward. Also, it helps it just illuminate the face in front of your lens a little bit better and it casts a light in front of the camera rather than just everywhere. It's a little more directional, but not super direct like a straight-on flash would be. This is how I really get those images to pop. It's something that I suggest you do with your flash photography. Now, sometimes the direct flash look can actually be a interesting look. For example, this image was taken just a natural light and this image was taken with direct flash. Now, I was using this speed light here for this particular image on the camera. But the reason I use this one and not this guy here, is because I can adjust that power level. Because if I just use it at full power, my model here would be really, really bright and the background would be really dark, and that's not what I wanted to do. I wanted to create a nice ambient exposure, getting that natural light in there and just give her a little bit of extra punch to herself. Because if I had this at its full power or if I couldn't adjust the power like this speed light here, I wouldn't be able to actually dial it in and my image will look completely different. What I did here is actually exposed for the natural light and just added that little pop of flash in there. This is a great way to just create a little more pop to your images and it's a bit of a different look. Sometimes for my fashion images, I think this can look really cool to a really dynamic look, but it's one of those things that you definitely need to know when to and when not to use it. Basically, if you want a more dramatic and punchy look, go for it, use direct flash, but if you want something a little more softer or something maybe a little more feminine, then perhaps direct flash isn't what you want to go for. Now, we've talked about the differences between direct flash and bouncing it. Bouncing it, you can get a lot more flattering of a look. Direct flash can be a little punchier and can lead to some really interesting images, but it might not always be what you want to go for. Now, let's actually talk about how you can modify your flash to get better, more flattering, and more interesting results overall. 8. Modifying Light: Now that we've seen the different ways that you can use a flash, let's actually talk about what we can put in front of the flash to entirely change the look of it. Basically, this is what we call modifying our light and there's a lot of different ways that we can do this. So the light coming out of this flash, it's very hard and it's very direct. Basically, a hard light source is anything that will create those harsh shadows and you'll have really bright spots and really dark spots. Because relatively speaking, this is a small light source, it's going to be even harder. Basically, the softer and more flattering the light, you're going to have a larger light source. The smaller your light source, the more harsh and direct it will be leading to those hard lines on shadows rather than those softer shadows that you would otherwise get if the light were softer. How can we change the look of this to do that? Basically, there are a couple of ways we can do this. What you want to do is either put something in front of this to make that light larger or to break up that direct look from it. Now, there are different modifiers that you can buy for your different speed lights, like these, which we are going to get into shortly. But if you don't want to spend the extra money, especially if you're just experimenting with flash, there were a bunch of different options that you can actually find around the house with a little ingenuity that can create the same effect. For example, here we have this fancy frosted dome. Now all this does is it goes [NOISE] in front of the light and spreads it and diffuses it. Basically, when we say diffusing, we mean creating a softer light. It does take a little bit of that power away, so it won't be quite as bright, but it will also lead to a more flattering look over all. Now, a lot of these fancy modifiers are inspired off of what's called the Gary Fong dome. Basically, this is created by the photographer Gary Fong, who would take Tupperware, cut holes in them, and put them on top of the flash to create a more flattering look. But he just turned that into a branded product. Now, these can get quite pricey. Upon hearing his story, I decided to do the same thing. So this is one of the first diffusers I ever made for this flash right here. It was a very simple process to do. This is just a plastic container [NOISE] that you would use for storing any type of food or anything like that. All I had to do for that was just set it down on a table, take my flash, tip it upside down and all I had to do is take a sharpie, draw it out, and then cut it out with a knife or scissors. I do advise you be careful when you're doing this though, especially if you're using a knife as opposed to scissors. [NOISE] I know I'm very accident-prone. So if you take this route, definitely be careful. This is actually a great option because what it does is you just fit it on top of the flash like so. What happens is the light will bounce against this frosted dome here and this will now become a nice big light source because it's now bigger than just that little bit coming out of the flash and its still going to bounce off the ceiling. So you're still lighting the room, but now you have this little globe of light that's even bigger than the white card out of something like this, to really create a nice flattering look on your subject. To give you an idea, if we take a photo like this, [NOISE] you can see it's a really much more flattering look compared to just the regular off the ceiling bounce that we'd get because you're getting a little bit more light off the front, filling in those shadows really nicely. If you look at any photographers for any events, red carpets, etc, oftentimes you'll see the photographers with something that actually looks a lot like this on their camera. You can even turn it like this to get a vertical image. You have a lot of versatility here. This emulates the same look that you would get [NOISE] from this more fancy contraption here. This cost me all of maybe $0.05 if that, and this cost me quite a bit more. Now, the thing I like about this system is you have a ring that attaches here to the actual flash here and you get a circular look, which is sometimes a little more flattering, but it's also magnetic. So you can attach a lot of different modifiers to it. You don't just have a little globe. [NOISE] You have in this little bag here, [NOISE] a bunch of different tricks up your sleeve. You have what we would call barn doors, which is a way that you can use to create little slashes of light and really direct the light [NOISE] to where you want it. So if you want that really direct hard line through your image, you just turn those like so, and you're going to get a more dramatic look that way. Also, you have something here [NOISE], like a snoot, which is basically just a way that you can create a nice little spotlight on your image and really focus on your subject there or a particular part of a subject. I love doing stuff like this to highlight the label of a bottle or something like that whenever doing product photography, but there's a lot of options that this allows you. You also have these little colored cutouts. This is something like a photography gel, which is something you put in front of the light and something that you can actually use to make it so you can use your flash around any type of light source. So if I'm in a room full of incandescent bulbs, I might slide this in front of my flash, so that way the light coming out of it is actually going to match the color of the light in the room. The other thing is, these are actually stackable [NOISE], so I can have that on there [NOISE] and then put the dome on as well. Now to compare this, if I take a shot using this flash here with that gel in there, we can see how it compares to [NOISE] the flash without the gel. Suddenly everything looks a lot more uniform and you're not getting that weird mixed lighting look. Now, you don't need to use expensive little gels that you can put behind this guy. You can actually just take any kind of colored film, anything like that. Put it in front of your [NOISE] flash to get that look. [NOISE] I've even taken a colored plastic bag before. Oddly enough, I just had an orange plastic bag hanging around, cut a piece out of it, and put it in front of this and that worked perfectly. Another great solution that I love for this is actually tissue paper. It's something that's just transparent enough, that will allow enough light through, but it's not going to distort the look of the light that much. It's going to give you the effect that you're looking for especially without breaking the bank. On the note of DIY solutions, you might be sitting there with your camera that has a pop-up flash thinking, I can't really modify this at all. Honestly, I would challenge that theory because you have a light here. You can manipulate it in ways to get a similar effect. All it takes is a little creativity and ingenuity. So that same thing. If we want to put some orange tissue paper in front of the flash here, suddenly it's now going to be perfect for, if you're in a room full of incandescent bulbs, then you're not getting that mixed lighting look. But you might be saying, okay, sure, I can change the color of it, but what if I want to bounce it? What if I don't want that hard look. Well, I implore you to go in your kitchen, stay with me here. Go in your kitchen, grab some tin foil. I know you probably think I'm insane right now, but all you need is a little bit of it. [NOISE] So I'm just going to take a little piece like this. All you have to do is just wrap [NOISE] it around the flash to point it upwards, and if you need to use a little tape here, you can. All you got to do is just wrap this around your flash to actually point it into the ceiling, because what's going to happen, you have a shiny surface here. White reflects light, but any shiny surface, if you've ever been blinded by the sun, of the reflection on a building or off of a metal pole or anything like that, this is the same thing. All it's going to do is bounce that light up into the ceiling. You can even soften this more by creating that nice little tube here and putting some tissue paper on top of it. Suddenly, now you're getting that frosted look to create a softer and more flattering light. Now, because we're using the pop-up flash, I'm going to adjust my settings a little bit here. So previously, you can see the settings that I had for these images, and now I'm just going to drop my shutter speed a bit, open up my aperture and maybe raise my ISO, and I'm just going to take a photo like so. [NOISE] You can see it just adds that little [NOISE] bit, where if I took that off, suddenly, it's a lot more direct and it's not as flattering of an image, you're getting more of that hotspot on there whereas this bounces up into the ceiling and creates a little more flattering of a look. All it takes is a couple of cents worth of tin foil, something that you probably have in your kitchen cabinet right now. You can use as much or as little of it as you want, create a larger light source. You can even wrap it to create a large cone. Then suddenly, you have a built-in diffuser, you can just quickly pop on to your pop-up flash, and suddenly you're not just stuck with a direct flash look. All it takes is a little creativity and you can really work wonders here. Now, if you want a more direct light, but you also want it to be nice and diffused, you don't always have to go with one of these little globe style diffusers. We have this guy in the back here. This is a smaller version of what we call a softbox. Basically a softbox is a big white box with diffusion material on front of it. Basically, diffusion material is anything that breaks up the light similar to tissue paper, just typically more expensive, and specific to film and photography. But this guy just has a little band like so that you would put at the front of your flash, and then you would connect the softbox to it. Now, to really illustrate this point, I'm going to take a photo with the direct flash and then I'm going to put the softbox in front of it so you can see the difference there. [NOISE] So you can see the direct flash look, it's everything that we talked about earlier, it's really harsh, really direct. But now, you notice this white material is going to break up the light and it's a larger light source. You can see suddenly, it's as big as my hand compared to a much smaller light source that we had before. So now, if we take a photo, [NOISE] we can see it's a lot more flattering. Sure, it's still that direct look, but it's a lot softer, the shadows are nicer. I even took some portraits using these two different ones so you can see the difference that it lends to on my face and how those shadows are a lot softer and a lot more flattering. It does cut the light quite a bit, but you can adjust your settings accordingly, and because here we're using the flash that is manual and you have the manual controls, all you have to do is up your power level of a little bit to compensate for that, if you need to. Basically, this softbox right here is a smaller version of something like this. Now, this is what we would call an octabox, because it's an octagonal shape and leads to a nicer looking light in the eyes versus a big square. Now, this is something that we would mount on this guy right here, so that we would get a really nice soft flattering look. This actually has two layers of this material in it so it can really diffuse that look. I can pull this off, and you can see we have the external diffusion, the internal diffusion, and you get all of this nice silver material here, just like if we wrapped it in tin foil to really accentuate that light and push it out the front of this softbox. This is a super standard and versatile modifier to soften your light, especially on something like a studio strobe, because right now I have this in a seven-inch reflector, and the light coming out of here will be very harsh and direct leading to a lot harsher shadows. But if I want it softer, I can use something like a softbox or you can also use something like a shoot through umbrella that will soften the light and lead to a lot more flattering of a look on your subject. Now, I know that's a lot of information and this is just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to modifiers, but just know that anything that you put in front of your light can change it to get the look that you want. Put colored material in front of it to change the color. Even get weird, put some reds or purples in front of there to really get a colorful look, and take some creative photos that way or just put some tissue paper in front of it to get a softer look. There's a lot of things that you can do to change the look of the light coming out of your flash, so you're not just stuck with this direct harsh look all the time. To recap, there are a lot of different ways you can modify the light coming out of your flash to give a more flattering look. You can create some DIY modifiers out of Tupperware, tin foil or tissue paper to create an entirely different look. Think outside the box and use what you have around you. It doesn't have to be anything fancy, and you don't have to spend a lot of money to achieve a completely different look with your flashes. Now that we've talked about how you can modify the light on your flashes, we're going to take it to the next level and really harness the power of flash photography. 9. Taking Your Flash Off-Camera: Now we're getting into my favorite part which is really harnessing the power of your flashes and that is taking it off the camera. Because up until this point, your flash has been tied wherever your camera is. Wherever you point that camera, that flash follows you, that means that your light is going to be right there. Now this is very convenient. That is why a lot of event photographers have the flashlight built on their cameras, so that way it is as mobile as they are. They have that light wherever they go. But to get a completely different look, you really want to be able to take that flash off the camera. But how do you do that? Well, there are a couple ways. The first way is using what we would call an optical receiver. Now this has previously been called an optical slave, but has recently been updated to reflect more modern times. Now basically what the optical receiver does if a light fires on very quickly. This is going to see that light come on. Then in that split second at the exact same time, your flash is going to fire. You can actually take a camera. It doesn't matter what camera it is. I've used these optical receivers with a polaroid camera. That way I can get a completely different look. I just have that little tiny flash on there fire it, and these actually see the flash go off and then I get a completely different looking polaroid. It's really a quite versatile solution. To illustrate this, I have my Canon speed light here. There are three modes. There's off, slave and on. Because this flash was made before the updated terminology, that is why you will see the slave mode on there. If you ever look up any information about your particular flash and it mentions a slave. It's talking about the optical receiver to see the light. I'm just using that term so you know exactly what I'm talking about and that way there's no confusion between the two. They mean the same thing except just one is more updated. I have my flash here, it is completely separate from the camera. I want my pop-up flash because what this will do is it will see this flash and then this light will fire itself. If I line up my shot here and take the photo [NOISE], we can see when I do, this flash goes off too at the exact same time. Which is a great way that you can have a lot of versatility with your lights as how you can get more flattering images have different looks, get silhouette images, get some different lighting setups going on. You can put the light anywhere you want. Now, something worth noting about these speed lights in particular is that the optical receiver doesn't work with every flash, because it is specific to Canon. What I have learned is that it only responds to that pop-up flash going off. Or if I had another Canon flash it would respond to that. But if I turn on my GoTalk speed light, and I fire it. There's a little test button at the back here. If I fire that, you can see only this goes off. This doesn't go off as well. This is a brighter flash than the pop-up flash, but because it's not communicating like the camera in this flasher it won't work in the same way. Now, if I go into the menu here, and go over to my OS optical receiver, and turn that to S1 suddenly. Now, this will watch for any light that goes off and it will fire. Now if I take another photo using the pop-up flash here [NOISE], suddenly it goes off too. It's something quite interesting to see because this pop-up flash will trigger a non-brand specific speed light, but the brand specific speed light will not go off when it sees the flash of this. Definitely that's something to keep in mind as well. Because something like this can give you more versatility. But again, if you want that brand specific factor to it, you might just not have it be as flexible depending on the situation. Now, there is another way to fire these without using that optical slave mode. Now, even this studio strobe does have an optical slave. If I turn this on, I have my speed light turned on and I fire that. [NOISE] Suddenly this sees the light as well because it has an optical receiver. When the speed light goes off, the strobe goes off. You can use all of these together. If I add the pop-up flash on and took a shot, all these lights would go off at the same time. Now here's the thing. What if you don't want to use a pop-up flash or what if you don't have a camera that has one in it? What if you're using something like this camera here? For reference, this is the Canon 6D. Any higher end professional camera will not have a pop-up flash because they pretty much assumed that if you're using a flash you're using something like an external speed light or a strobe. How can I get these to go off if I don't have a pop-up flash? Well, that is my favorite part. 10. Wireless Triggers & Transmitters: Earlier you noticed this on the camera. We've talked briefly about this guy. These are versions of the same thing. Basically, this is a transmitter and what it does is it goes onto the hot shoe on your camera and it communicates when your camera takes a photo to know when the light should go on. This guy here is the receiver to this transmitter. All you'd have to do, for example, with this guy, and now, because it's getting the signal from the camera, it's no longer just going to fire if I'm taking a photo with the pop-up flash. It will receive the radio signal from this guy and that was to tell this to tell the flash to fire and then it will go off. Now, certain transmitters and receivers, you need to get the same one that is the same brand for your camera. For example, these, even though they're made by the manufacturer aperture, they are made for Canon. We mentioned earlier how different brands have different hot shoes. They're going to be slightly different and to get them to work properly, you want the right one for the brand of camera that you're using. Because I'm using transmitters and receivers, otherwise known as triggers, so if you hear about a wireless flash trigger, that's what they're referring to. Because I'm using these triggers, that is the same brand as my camera same brand as my flash, they all communicate together and then I can get the light to go off without the need of a pop-up flash or the optical receiver mode. Now, I can use these with the GoTalk slide as well. Even though these are made for Canon, they're made to communicate with the hot shoe, but I can use them with any brand of flash. Except for that I would need a flash sync cable to come out of the receiver and go into the light. That's where we get into this guy here. Now this is actually a Godox transmitter. It's made to work with strobes like this, which is a Godox brand, and this speed light here, which is a Godox brand. This is the same thing if you were to use a Profoto system. You would have your Profoto wireless trigger that would communicate with your Profoto light or your Profoto speed light. Now, here's the other thing. Because these two are the same brand, I don't actually need this if I didn't want to. I could have this on top of the camera and without using the optical receiver mode, I could take a photo with this and it will actually transmit to my studio strobe. Because they're all the same brand, they communicate together, the flash doesn't even need to go off here, this will work as the transmitter which is a great way to have a backup if your triggers ever stop working, if you forget them worst-case scenario. Now, what I really like about this is I can adjust the power of the light on the go. You can see there's a little control panel at the back here and what it does is it breaks the lights down into different groups and channels. I can have this on Channel A, this light on Channel B, a third light on Channel C, etc. I can have as many lights as I want and group them together accordingly and then adjust those without having to go up to the light and manually dial in the power because that is the worst thing. When you have a light 15 feet up in the air to bring it back down every time, adjust the power, put it back up, with this, all you have to do is slide it on the camera and as you're photographing, all you have to do is adjust using the wheel here and you can change the power settings of your flashes on the go. It's incredibly powerful and lots of modern strobe and studio lighting manufacturers have this and you don't even need a studio stroke to use this, you can use this. If you want to put this light on the light stand and have it 50 feet away, you can still communicate between the transmitter and the flash, which would be in that case your receiver, because the receivers are built into these when they communicate with this particular transmitter because they're all the same brand. But if I were using a different transmitter, I would need the separate receiver to connect to them separately. Now to further illustrate this point, I'm going to stick this guy which has a little hot shoe mounted stand here. This has a quarter 20 thread in the bottom of it, which is the thread length and amount that is standard on most camera bottoms for the tripod plates, et cetera, and goes on most standard light stands. Because this is a smaller light, I can get away with a smaller light stand, then something like my studio strobe here, which is on a heavy duty C-stand, as they call them. That way, nothing is going to really push this over, it's a very heavy duty stand. Now, all I've got to do is just spin that guy on there and then suddenly, I now have these two lights that I can put wherever I want. This allows you to create a really dynamic setup. If I turn these two on, you'll see I have my trigger on now and I'll go to take a photo [NOISE] and suddenly both flashes go off at the same time, but each one has a different power level because this is group A and this is group B. Say I want group A to be a higher power, all I do is come here, select it, increase the power of it, and then take [NOISE] another photo. That beeping is what you hear when the flash is recycling. Now you can shut this off but myself, I really like having that beep on because it tells the model when the flash is ready to go, when that next photo is ready to be taken, because a lot of my work, I tell the models to change up a bit of their pose every time the camera fires. But if they don't know that this has recycled yet, if they don't know that that power has been sucked out of the battery and is ready to go yet, they might be feeling like they're waiting on me. Meanwhile, it's just the power being ready to go in the light. Because the higher power output you select for it, the longer it's going to take to absorb that much power. For example, if I take a photo at its lowest power setting [NOISE], you can hear it's ready to go right away. But if I bring it up to its highest power setting [NOISE], it takes a couple of seconds to fully recycle. That is something that's super important that I like to communicate whenever I'm photographing people especially. To recap, there are two different ways you can take your flash off your camera and really harness the power out of it. You can either use an optical receiver mode, which sees the light in the area of a flash going off and sets that separate flash to go off at the same time. Or you can use a wireless transmitter and receiver system, otherwise known as a trigger, to wirelessly send a radio signal to your lights to tell them when to go off. Now that we've talked about how to take your flash off camera, let's actually get into the power levels of these flashes and how they work with your exposure triangle. 11. Power Levels Explained: Now from there we've talked a lot about power levels, but how do these actually implement into your photography? We're adding something to the exposure triangle here. You have shutter speed, ISO, and aperture, but now you're adding a power level into that equation. These power levels are measured in increments of what we call stops. A stop of light basically is a relative measurement where if I wanted to increase the amount of light by one stop, I would double the light output. For example, on these, if I was at a power setting of 1 over 2 and I wanted to add a stop, I would increase that to full power, which is 1 out of 1, and if I wanted to go down to stop from 1 over 2, I would go to 1 over 4. Now these particular models allow for more finer adjustments in thirds of a stop. When you see on the back here, you will see if I'm decreasing my power level from 1 over 2, at first, it'll go down a third of a stop to 1 over 2 minus 0.3, then 1 over 2 minus 0.7, and then it goes to 1 over 4. That's a way that you can find or tune the actual adjustments of your power levels there. Now what I like to do personally is dial in my settings for aperture, shutter speed, and ISO, and then dial in my power level to accommodate for that. Now this isn't always perfect and sometimes they need to play around with settings. But this is a general rule of thumb is, exposed the shot for the amount of ambient light that you want in the frame. If you want it completely black, then adjust your settings accordingly and then change the power level to meet the amount of light that you're going to need. This is also when we get into something called TTL. This means through the lens metering. A lot of these different flash systems have this built-in. This is why a lot of these flash triggers and flashes are brand-specific is because they communicate through the lens of the camera, knowing the settings that you have for your image and it automatically adjusts the power level to get you a properly exposed photo. Let's say you want your ambient surrounding to be darker. You adjust your settings to be like that and then the trigger or flash will analyze the settings that you have and automatically change the power level of your flash to accommodate for that. It's almost like putting your flash in auto mode so that way you get a perfectly exposed photo every time. This is a great way to help you understand how all of this works. You can change whether one light is a stop brighter than the other, and different setups like that if you have more than one light. Now, me personally as a photographer I like to be in control of what every individual light of mine is doing and know exactly how it's supposed to be and I don't want any surprises. I have used TTL flash before and forgot that it was on TTL mode, set it manually, take a photo, and then suddenly the power level isn't what it should be and then I'm trying to figure out what's wrong and it was just switched to TTL mode. This is something that for a lot of photographers can work really well. But me personally, I like to dial in everything manually, which is why all my flashes if there's the option for manual only or manual and TTL, I just go with manual only because I know I will never really use TTL. If anything, it might actually get in my way, those odd times where I forget that it's on or if I'm working with an assistant and we're resetting gear and they accidentally turn on TTL mode, something like that. A lot of things can happen and that's how I personally avoid anything like that. Now something to note is that TTL settings do cost more. If I were to get this same flash in a TTL mode, it will cost quite a bit more than just a flash itself same with this particular model here. Now some do offer Just manual control, which is what I'm using here and some offer manual with TTL. You can go interchangeably between the two. Now, I will leave it up to you to find your own personal preference. This is just what I like to do because I like to know what each of my lights is doing and really dial in that power level to meet the rest of the exposure triangle that I'm working with. But especially if you're newer to flash or if you just want to add a bit of fill light into your subject, then TTL can be really great for you. If you're unsure, you can always rent a piece of gear, especially if it's something like a speed light for a low cost, play around with it, and then figure out what you like before actually making a purchase decision. I always love renting gear to really play around before actually going through and buying that particular thing to make sure that I'm making an informed decision. I personally like manual modes, but you may not find out what works for you and implement it as best you can in your photography. Something worth noting is even when you're adjusting all the different power levels, each light has a different max output for it. For example, just as this speed light is significantly brighter than the pop-up flash on this camera here, this speed light because it's larger and takes more power from the batteries, is going to be significantly brighter at full power than this light is here. A lot of these speed lights are somewhere between 50 or 60-90 watt-seconds. A watt-second is how we measure the rough light output of a flash rather than just pure watts. It's measured in watt-seconds because it is a flash that's going off. This would be something closer to 90 watts-second light, and this would be lower down the list, something like a 50 watt-second light. Now, this at full power is going to be significantly less bright than this at full power, because the battery for this alone weighs about as much as this speed light here. This light in particular is 600 watt-seconds, the equivalent of about six or seven times the amount of light output as something like one of these speed lights here. This allows you for that flexibility to actually have this light be brighter than the sun in your image, because the power level out of this is so high. You can dial your settings down to actually darken the sun enough to have your subject to be brighter than the amount of light that is coming out of the sun itself. They even make brighter ones than this. There is a 1200 watt-second version, and some of those larger battery pack studio strobes go up to 2400 watt-seconds and even higher. The possibilities with these lights are absolutely endless and you can choose which one based on price settings and overall output to match the style of your photography. To recap, the power level of your lights is measured in stops. A stop is relative to how bright or dark you're making that light output in terms of doubling or halving that output. Each light is going to have a different max output based on the amount of watt-seconds that it's measured in. The larger the light will typically have a higher maximum output than a smaller light. Now that we've talked about the light output from these different flashes, let's actually get into some of the different nuances about these flashes and what exactly a sync speed is. 12. What is a Sync Speed?: If you're at all familiar with flash photography, you may have heard the term sync speed thrown around, but what exactly does that mean? Basically, each camera has a shutter speed that is ideal for flash photography, anything higher than that, and you're going to start running into some problems, anything lower than that and you're pretty much fine. Nothing will change, but that's the max speed that you can go to before you run into issues. Now what happens in a traditional DSLR or mirrorless camera, is that the shutter has curtains to it. There is a top and a bottom curtain. The shutter speed is how long those curtains are open for. How much time there is between the first and the second curtain. They typically will come down like so if you have a slow shutter speed, you will have one curtain and then the other. If you have a fast shutter speed, you will have a very small window between the two that comes down in front of your image sensor. Now because of this, when you have a larger amount of time, a slower shutter speed, your flash will illuminate the full image. Thus, shutter opens, flash goes off, shutter closes, everyone's happy. But if you put your shutter speed higher than that sync speed, that is when your flash actually won't be captured in the full image. If you've ever taken a photo using flash and say you had a shutter speed higher than a 400th of a second, let's say. You notice a black curtain, or just half of your image is exposed and half of it is just pure black. That is because your shutter speed is faster than the flash is actually output for and it's not catching all of that light. Now, each camera brand is different. For Canon, in my personal experience, the sync speed is anywhere from 1/160th of a second to 1/200th of a second. Certain brands can go up to 1/250th of a second. But it depends on each camera. But generally, I don't like to go above 1/200th of a second. In fact, what I noticed with this particular camera here, the T5i that has the pop-up flash built-in. If I tried to raise my shutter speed above 200th of a second, it won't let me, because that is the maximum sync speed. Otherwise I'm going to start getting black shadows in my image, which is definitely not what we want. The bright side is camera and lighting manufacturers have actually found a way to navigate this issue. What they do is they have created something called high-speed sync. If on any of your speed lights or flashes, you see a little button that has an H with a little lightning bolt beside it, that refers to high-speed sync. What that does, is allows you to actually raise your shutter speed higher than the maximum sync speed. That light is just going to output for that brief second with as much power as you've told it to give. That will allow you to have a higher shutter speed because nothing is worse than when you're photographing you're in broad daylight and you want to shoot wide-open, you want to be at an f-stop of 2.8,1.8, 1.2. You want that nice creamy blurry background, but it's so bright out, you don't want to change your aperture. Your ISO is as low as it'll go and you're at your maximum sync speed. But your image is overexposed. You up your aperture and then you can see all the background. You don't get that background blur. This is how you fix it, up that shutter speed to get that image properly exposed and your flash will still go off and you'll capture it in the image and it won't have any weird black bars going off. It's such a game-changing technique that is just come to light in the past couple years. It's something that has been an absolute game-changer for photographers. This is also how with a light like this that I can set this to high-speed sync and actually overpower the sun. I bring this close to my subject, light them up beautifully, raise my shutter speed as high as I need to, and I can bring that ambient light down as much as I need to to get the overall effect that I want. Now, different lights have a maximum high-speed sync that they will go to some are 1/4,000th of a second. Few of them are 1/8,000th, but generally it's an idea to check with what particular light you're using, just to know so that way you don't end up over cranking it and then you end up with those black bars again. To recap, a sync speed is the highest you can set your shutter speed to before you're not able to capture all the light coming out of your flash. High-speed sync is a relatively new mode that lighting manufacturers have come up with to navigate this problem, allowing you to raise your shutter speed higher and still capture the amount of light necessary. Now, with all that said, let's actually talk about how you can step up from each level of flash photography and really level up your game. 13. Flash vs Constant Light: Now we've touched on the difference between constant light and flash, but when would you want to use the different ones? Basically, constant light is something that you would want to use if you're doing video primarily or video with stills as well. It's a one size fits all solution. The issue is the constant lights usually aren't as bright and if they are, they're quite a bit more powerful and you do usually have to have them plugged into the wall versus something like this, you can just use on its own with a battery and get a lot of power out of it. To get the same amount of power you're going to be looking at a larger, more expensive LED. But there are solutions for that. This is something that is rapidly changing and does actually work. The only thing is you are paying a premium for it. Now if we look at the difference in broad daylight between a constant light source battling the ambient light versus the flash battling ambient light, we can see the flash handles it a lot better. Now both of these are battery powered, the only thing is for the size. They are roughly the same size, but at full power, we can see the difference in light output between the two of them, and it is quite drastic. It's something where you're going to get a lot more power and versatility out of a flash, whether it be something like a speed light or something like a studio strobe as compared to an LED video light. Now these lights are obviously handy because, quite frankly, I'm using a bunch of them to lighten me right now in this shot. But they are not necessarily what I would go to first if I were doing specific types of photography, especially if I was in an environment where I needed a lot more light output or needed to light more of a full room. Basically there are two different, but similar types of lights that you can use in different settings depending on what you're actually using them for. If you're more of a hybrid video photo-shooter maybe LED lights are more the way to go, just keep in mind to get that same amount of power you will be spending more of a premium versus if you're primarily stills in photography focused than a flash is going to be great for you. For me, I have a bunch of flashes because primarily I am a photographer first, but I also do some film and video work. That is why I have the LED lights as well. But whenever I am looking to do a lot of photo shoots, my first thing that I go to is always the flash. Unless of course I am balancing in an environment that has a lot of constant lights in there that I want to be the same level of ambient brightness, then I can dim down and dial in my light how I want it. For example, some of these photos were actually taken using constant light. Now because of the environment that we were in, I did have to pump up my ISO, so there's a bit of grain in there, but I feel like it worked for these images. It's really a case-by-case basis, but this is one situation where constant lights really can be useful as opposed to flash. Because even if I were to use something like a speed light, I would have to heavily diffuse it and heavily try to bring that power down to get the same effect. Whereas a lot of these video lights you can use in a little more versatile settings, especially if the lighting is lower. That's why for these darker, more moody, cinematic night photos, they worked quite well, created that vibe. The other thing about constant lights is you can see them and you can actively see in real-time what that light is doing versus a flash that you're going to need to do a bunch of test flashes to actually getting the right spot. It can be a little trickier in that regard, but with time, you learn how to work with the light and how to actually get it to be the way that you want. For example, these cinematic night photos. If I wanted to use more flash with them, I could have taken something like this and because it has the adjustable power levels, I could've brought it way down to almost its minimum brightness. That would probably work for the setting and throw on some different gels and stuff like that. It would get me basically the result I was looking for. But this is one of those things if you use the right tool for the right setting, so even me as a photographer, sometimes I'll still use constant light, but know that my go-to is always going to be flash. To recap, they were use cases for each different type of light. If you're primarily a video shooter, constant light sources might be more your speed, but they will cost more for a larger light output, and you'll usually have to have them connected to a wall outlet or hard power versus flash that can give you a lot more power in, sometimes a lot more portable of a package for a lower cost. Now if you need the power output for your photos, flash Is the way to go. If you do some video as well like me, then you can also have LED video lighting options as well. But having two independent systems can get a little pricey. But if that's the camp of that you're in, there are some budget options that you can find for both. Next up, let's actually get into some cases in which you would and wouldn't want to use flash. 14. Knowing When to Use Flash: Knowing how to use your flash is incredibly important, but also knowing when to use your flash is almost just as important. Now, like I said earlier, I use flash in just about every single one of my images. Now primarily, I'm using one or multiple of these studio strobes. If I'm in a studio, I'll be using a bunch of these. Sometimes, I'll add in the speed lighter too, if I need to just create a full multiple light setup. If I'm outside, usually, I'll use one or two of these and balance with the ambient light, or sometimes, if I want more of a direct look, like we talked about earlier, I'll throw a speed light on the camera and get that direct flash look. Now, for me and my style of photography, this is something that really allows me to take the photos and make them the way that I want. But not every photo actually needs flash. For example, this photo right here hung up behind me, actually was taken in completely natural light settings. Because it was so dark, I had my ISO very cranked. This is a very slow shutter speed, aperture of 1.8 and ISO of, I don't even remember. But if I use the flash for this, I would have actually too much lighting power there, and the photo would be completely overexposed, and I wouldn't get the ambient detail in the background that I otherwise wanted, those nice city lights and whatnot coming from the window. It would completely overpower the light coming in on her face, and it just wouldn't be a good look all around. That is a time where I wouldn't use flash. But if I were taking a photo of her and wanted the room, really well exposed and there was no light coming in, and I had to raise all my settings like a crazy amount. Then what I would do is I would light the room with one light into the ceiling, and then have a separate light on my subject to actually light them up appropriately for that scenario. But for this type of photo, I wanted that more cinematic and grainy look. That's why I did not like them using flash for this. Another thing is if you have studio strobes, usually, you need light stands or an assistant, or sometimes, both. That can be sometimes hard to do in certain settings. Some spaces won't always let you use stands. Sometimes, people aren't available to assist you and it's just you and whoever is in front of your camera. But you can get away nicely with just a speed light on top of your camera, using some creative bounce or direct flash. The benefit about something like this is you can just take your camera and take a photo, holding it like so. It's going to be a bit of a balancing act, but it can be done and give you some really cool results. Now, while I am primarily a flash and artificial light user, there are sometimes where I will use natural light. These times, I actually need to really feel out what the natural light in that environment is like, where the sun is coming from, what is the cloud cover like? All those factors are things that I take into consideration of whether I'm going to use flash or not. Usually, my default answer is yes, absolutely, I'm going to use flash. But every so often, the natural light will be just perfect enough that I won't add anything to it, especially if it's more of a lifestyle vibe. A lot of my fashion work, it's a little more punchy and dramatic. I want that flash there. But if I'm going for more of a natural lifestyle feel, I really have to look at what I'm doing and see if I need flash or not. Also sometimes, if you're getting a super wide shot, flash just won't reach that far, or to do so, you would have to have a lot of power out of it, and you just would not get as much power because of what we call the inverse square law, which basically means the farther away your light is, exponentially, the amount of light that will illuminate that subject is decreased by more than you think. Because of that, artificial light is great, especially the closer you have it to your subject, or if you have it farther away, you just need a much brighter light source. To get a super wide shot if the natural lighting is working for the environment, then sometimes, I'll actually go without. It really depends on a case by case basis. But usually, my personal default is always to go and light the scene that I'm creating because I love taking natural light as a nice base and sculpting it with my flash, with my artificial light to create more of an overall look and feel. Because all these images that we are creating are all based on light. Photography comes from capturing photons of lights. That's all it is. Knowing how to work with that light will completely change the look of your images. If you want more of a dramatic and moody look, this is a great way to do it, or if it's really bright outside and you want more of a delicate look, bringing somebody into the shade and lifting that exposure with some flash, filling that in, is a great way to create that as well, just with a softer, more diffused light coming out of your flash, putting something in front of it there. To give you the used cases of both of these scenarios, recently, I was doing some lifestyle photos, active where active lifestyle vibe. The natural light, it was foggy that day, it was overcast. [NOISE] What I did for these is the majority of the photos that were more close up or stationary, I used a couple of flashes for them. I believe I was using a speed light as well as one of my studio strobes in a two light setup. One acting as a key light and one acting just either as a back or a fill light, depending on the shot that I was going for. But in here, I also wanted to get some really nice wide shots. For those, I couldn't really use the flash as well because I, myself, was hundreds of feet away, zooming in. To have a flash going off, I would either need an assistant who would be panning the light with my subject, and I would need a super bright flash at the same time. Because the natural light in this setting worked so well for what we were doing, it actually worked that I didn't need to use flash for these particular images. Then to create a cohesive look, I just went in post-production and did a little bit of dodging and burning to actually shape and mold the photo to have a similar look to the flash images that I was creating. That way, everything had more of a cohesive look to it. That's something too, if you mix the two different types of light in editing, you can shape the highlights and shadows to be a little more uniform. Everything makes sense when presented as a series of images if you're shooting anything like that. To recap, there are some settings in which you would and wouldn't want to use flash. In the majority of settings, flash can be a great asset and can completely change the look of your images. But in certain settings where you're going for a particular look or you have some dim ambient lighting that you want to be a key part of the photo, or if the natural light in your environment is just picture perfect, then those are some scenarios that you may not want to use flash. But just about every scenario, other than that, you can use flash to drastically change the look of your images. Now, with all that said, let's actually talk about how you can step up from each level of flash photography and really level up your game. 15. Levelling Up: Let's say you start off with something like this. Believe it or not, this was the camera that I actually started on. I learned how to take photos with this camera right here, the Canon T5i. Now, when I started getting into flash photography, I [NOISE] would use the pop-up flash, modify it as I needed to, and then I really got into how I can light things differently, and that is when I picked up this Canon Speedlite, and at first, I used it on top of the hot shoe. What you can do is you can play around with your pop-up flash, modify it how you need to, play around, put some tin foil on it, throw some tissue paper on it, modify it however you can to get a different look. They even sell little adapters that you can click on to your pop-up flash to change the look of it if that's something you're going for as well. But play around, use it as a fill flash outside. Try a whole bunch of different looks and see what you learn from it, then you can upgrade to something like I did like this speed light here. Start using it, get some direct flash photos to see how that looks, bounce it into the ceiling. Maybe create some DIY diffusers or pick up a couple ones, just to see how that changes up the look. Then because you already have your pop-up flash, set that to its optical receiver mode and harness the power of off-camera flash. That's really going to change up the look of your images and is going to really start setting your photography apart. This is when I noticed a huge jump in the quality of photos that I was taking, and I started to understand light so much quicker, as soon as I started doing this. This is a great way to really level up your photography. Now, you don't always have to shoot with that off-camera, there are some times that I'll be taking photos in an event or something, I'll still have my flash on top of the camera, taking photos, running around, lighting up that room beautifully. If I'm taking some interior photos, I can put that flash on top of the camera, bounce it in the ceiling, and create a nice, beautiful look across the entire image. If you don't want to go brand specific, just spend $50-60, get something like this guy here that has a ton of power, a ton of usability. If you're using something with a pop-up flash, you can still use this off-camera with that optical receiver. Because of that, you can really dial in the power. If you're taking those interior real estate style architecture or photos, you can dial in that power to get it set how you want. Or if you're taking photos outside, you can change the power level to match with the ambient light. That way, you can just add that little pop in there and really balance out those shadows. Then from there, you can get into using some wireless triggers and really add in a couple lights. Why not pick up a couple of these, and then you can start creating a multiple light setup? You can have a front light and backlight, or you can have them in different spots across the room. Then from there, you can upgrade even more to a full studio strobe, but they work the same way. It's just a larger light that is only going to be used off-camera. But because you've been using your speed light off-camera, you already have the foundation of how you can use that to get the best photos possible. Then once you've got comfortable with the studio strobe and you can use different modifiers, soft boxes, umbrellas with it, you can start implementing more of these lights to get a complete different look. You can create a three-light setup. Or, say, if you have two of these, you can have one as your key light on the main face of your subject. Then you can have your speed light, which you learned how to use, you can use that to light up the room and fill in those shadows. But then you have a third one of these, so you point it at the background, creating that nice solid white background, and then suddenly you're using that to create a beautiful headshot. Then you can start charging for your photos, taking headshots for actors, for businesses, and then you can start really making money with photography. This is pretty much what I did and I oriented it to my commercial work, fashion work, I've shot headshots, I've done real estate, I've used these even for weddings when I was starting out, because I can put them in different parts of the room and I have it lit no matter where I go and it's super versatile. You can just take these little steps to get from where I started on this using only the pop-up flash, and now I'm able to use as many lights as my heart desires because I have gone through the foundations of all of these to make them work for how I want my lighting to be. Now to recap, if studio lighting seems intimidating, just start with your pop-up flash, work your way up to an on-camera speed light, then take that off using the optical receiver. Add speed lights in, and then once you get comfortable, add in studio strobes. But now with all that said, let's actually get into some more advanced techniques of how you can really use the features in these flashes to add that extra spice to your photography. 16. Advanced Techniques: Everything we've talked about so far has been building up. Now we're going to take that last step and get into some advanced style lighting here, using these flashes to create different techniques to give you an entirely different look. Now, I mentioned balancing with ambient light. This is something that I love to do all the time. What I'll usually do is expose for the ambient light or sometimes underexpose it just by a little bit. Then I will dial in the power of my flash or my studio strobe, and then fill in my subject as I need to. Now, you can do this with one light, you can do this with three lights, you can do this with 10 lights. A great simple foundation is just using one light, and what I love doing is backlighting my subject with the sun or putting windows behind them, get that nice, glowy backlight and fill in the front of them with these lights. Now I don't like it straight on usually, I'll have it a little bit off to the side, it's usually the way that I go for but sometimes I'll go direct. Then the light coming in, I can dial it in so it's either a little bit brighter or a little bit darker than they are. So if I want more of the emphasis on them, I can have it that way. Or if I want more of the emphasis on the background, I can have it that way as well. But this doesn't have to just be for portraits or for interior photos or anything like that. The thing is, with these flashes there's something incredible about them that makes them an absolute game changer for photographers and that is the actual flash duration. Now we've talked about sync speeds in terms of how long that flash is actually on for, and how it can be cut off by your shutter. When you see a flash go off, you know it's only there for a split second. But did you know that the power level changes how long that is on for? This is how you can implement this into your photography to create a really interesting look. We've all seen those really interesting splash photos, where you see a product or something and there's water or paint or something going everywhere and it's super, super sharp. But how do they get it to look that way? Well, you're about to learn just that, because the lower the power setting on your flash, the shorter that flash is on for, and you don't need to use high speed sync for this. So let's say I were taking a photo of a bunch of water splashes. Let's say I had my shutter speed is set to my maximum sync speed. Let's say in this case it was one over 160th of a second. Now, if I were to take a photo of motion using this regularly, it's going to be really blurry. You can see from this demonstration, the water droplets that I'm trying to photograph are all blurry, they don't really look great and there's a little bit too much light coming into the camera and it's just not an overall great look. I also like to boost my other settings quite a bit to compensate for this. I had to open up my aperture and I had to raise my ISO, meaning less is going to be in focus and there's more grain that's coming into the image, but I want to be shooting with flash so how can I have those water droplets actually be in focus and not this motion blurred mess that I'm otherwise looking at? I'll turn the flash on and I'm going to take a couple of test flashes to see where my settings should be. So I'll drop my ISO making for a cleaner image and maybe up my aperture a bit so there's going to be a little bit more in focus. Now, I'm splashing the water as I'm taking the photo and I don't have this on high-speed sync remember. I'm at one over 160th of a second. But we can see from these images that these water droplets are coming out tack sharp, just like they should be. Now, why is that the case? Well, we can see when we look at our power levels on this flash here, as we decrease the number, it's actually giving us a readout of how long the flash is on for. For example, I'm going to go down to a power level of 1/16th, that's the power level readout on this. Now the flash duration here is 1/3448th of a second. Meaning this is the equivalent of if I had my shutter speed at roughly 1/3500th of a second. Meaning this is only on there for such a short, brief period of time. If I do a test flash, [NOISE] it's so fast that it actually freezes that motion. If you're photographing dancers leaping, this is how you get them perfectly in focus without having a super high shutter speed. You can have the exact same settings here, have your light at a slightly lower power level, get enough light out there because these have enough light output, and your subject is going to be tack sharp every time. Because if I take a photo without the flash, my frame is suddenly black. Meaning all the light coming into that frame is just coming from this flash. This is overpowering any other sources of light. In fact, my settings are such that even if I have lights on in the room, like you can see during this demonstration I have lights on right now, but you can't tell because the flash is so strong it overpowers all of that and it's only on for such a small portion of a second that it freezes that motion. If I go down even more in power level, like say I go down to 1/64th of a second. Now suddenly I'm over 1/6000th of a second, which is so lightning fast. Let's say I go down even further to 1/128th power, suddenly, my flash duration is 1/8000th of a second. That is so blazing fast, that is higher than some camera's shutter speed even goes to. Most tap out at 1/8000th of a second, if not 1/4000th. So this is so incredibly fast that anything you're photographing is going to be tack sharp every time. This is a great technique that you can use to freeze any motion, anything in front of your lens when you fire those flashes is going to be tack sharp. This is even a great way to get some really cool effects. Let's say in your scene, in your setup, you have a bunch of lights on, and you open up your shutter speed to half a second and you're taking a photo of somebody leaping in the air or somebody running, you want them to still be super sharp. What you can do is because the duration of this is so short, when you take that photo, they're still going to be tack sharp, but when you do it as they're running or as they're leaping, you actually get this really interesting looking trail based on seeing a bit of that light coming through that are already on, and then that flash freezes them in that split second. It's really an interesting look that you can get that you otherwise wouldn't be able to get because this is freezing the motion, but you still get that blur of what's happening in the scene. It really conveys a lot of motion and it's such an interesting look. These are some ways that you can really use the features in flash photography to get a look that you would not get otherwise. If you're using just constant sources, you would need such a bright light to be able to raise your shutter speed to freeze these water droplets. Or to get that light trail, with that frozen motion, you just wouldn't be able to get it with constant light sources, which just really highlights the power of speed lights and studio photography strobes. To recap, expose for the ambient light the way you want to, and then add in flash to properly expose the rest of your scene. Change up the different ways that you have lights and use them to create drama in your image. Try backlighting your image and then filling in the front of your subject with flash. How does the power of flash duration by photographing objects in motion to really create a tack sharp look? Well, having them be super well lit and keeping your ISO super low. Remember you can also use this to create some really dynamic looks that you can just not get with constant light sources. 17. Conclusion: Well, that is years of information, studying, playing around with a whole bunch of different flashes and studio setups to create this one package to take you from where I started on the Canon T5i with a pop-up flash to now using multiple speed lights and studio strobes on a daily basis. I hope you enjoyed this class as much as I did making it. I can't wait to see the images that you create down below. I love flash photography and I can't wait to see what tools and tricks you pull out of this class. Make sure to drop down in the projects down below. Ask any questions you have as well. I'm more than happy to chat with you guys and discuss about how we can all take some great images together. Additionally, if you want to learn more about lighting or different types of photography, posing, models, etc. Check out some of my other classes on Skillshare. If you want to see some more different behind-the-scenes content, I'm uploading a bunch of that over on YouTube. If you want to learn more from me, check me out both of those places. Also feel free to chime in on my Instagram as well where I share a bunch of the flash photography images that I'm regularly creating. Even if you post any tag me in them, I would love to see what you guys create. Thank you so much for your time in watching this course. We taking all the knowledge that I have learned throughout my photography career with flash photography and creating for you the course that I wish I had when I was getting started into this beautiful wild world. I hope you gain some value out of this and truly enjoyed it. Thank you so much for watching. Work hard rest often. I hope you have a super creative day. 18. BLOOPERS!!: [MUSIC] Hello. Focus. The reason [NOISE] I'll pop up thing. [MUSIC] I forgot it was on the timer. [NOISE] Inner. [MUSIC] The things we do to get the shot I tell you. The things we do. Also don't want to wear socks during this. Because your feet will get wet. Unless you do it in a bathtub, in which case you're smart. We still get a bit of blue, black light. That is a tongue twister, bit of blue, black light bloopers. That's what this will be. [NOISE] [MUSIC]