Canon Flash Gun's

Kryptix

Kryptix

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I bought a 580EX II off my friend before I knew anything about flash guns. I never used it and in the end sold it as £280+ just sitting there is a lot of money.

But now, I want to start nightclub photography and I've got a few dates booked. I'll be using my 10-20mm as I love the effect it gives, but the on-board flash doesn't clear the lens!

I had no-idea what all the settings did on the 580EX II -- it was wasted on me.

Can someone please summarize the different models of Canon flashguns and how they vary from each other so I can make a decision on what one to go for?

Many thanks guys.
 
Flash In The Pan said:
If you buy a flash and mount it directly on the hotshoe then you'll end up with exactly the same problem with a 10-20....
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Really? I've read a few times it solves it as you can point it slightly upwards and so on... :(
 
I have a canon 10-22mm and have the same problem with the on-camera flash being blocked by the lens and creating a shadow at the bottom of the images, having my 580EX mounted solves this problem easily so can't see how this should be a problem, and as has already been mentioned, you could point the flash up slightly too ... but it works perfectly pointed at 90 degrees.


Cheers,
 
I use the 580exii with a Canon 10-22 with no problems. Drop the wide angle attachment over the flash bulb and it's supposed to work down to 12mm.
 
So is Flash In The Pan wrong?
 
Kryptix said:
So is Flash In The Pan wrong?
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I wouldn't say wrong, just that he may have been doing very very close up shots and in such circumstances, there could be a slight shadow cast by the barrel of the lens... but really for nightclub stuff it'll be fine. Although you'll probably want something a little long as well.

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Kryptix said:
So is Flash In The Pan wrong?
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He may be talking at cross purposes. The on-board flash is often blocked by big lenses and hoods. And many flash units will not cover the very wide angle you need at 10mm focal length.

However, Canon 580EX is obviously much higher so clears big lenses and hoods, and if you flip down the wide panel it covers a 14mm lens on full frame, which is 9mm on crop format. Either way, 580EX sorts it.

You will also find a StoFen diffuser very useful for nightclub photography. The popular technique is slow-speed sync (dragging the shutter) often with quite long shutter speeds - like down to 1/4sec or so, depending on the ambient light and how much movement you want.

Don't believe that using second curtain sync does something magical and mysterious to exposure levels though - it's a myth. Although the apparently double-flash that you get with this technique might get you some kudos. (It's not a double flash of course, it's one pre-flash for metering followed by the main flash. With normal first curtain sync the two are so close together they appear as one to the naked eye.)

Apart from the power that you get with a 580EX, which you will probably need with the StoFen, it has a high-speed sync mode for fill-flash in bright sun, manual flash output down to 1/128th power and 1/35,000sec flash duration, and it can command multiple other flash units. If you don't need all this, then maybe the 430EX will do, but with flash bigger is better in every respect. Sigma also do a decent power gun for Canon, but I don't know the details.
 
I was assuming you would be using the set up for the sort of nightclub portrait shots that seem to be in vogue at the moment, in that case it wouldn't be a good combo imo, for various reasons, but.... :shrug:
 
HoppyUK said:
He may be talking at cross purposes. The on-board flash is often blocked by big lenses and hoods. And many flash units will not cover the very wide angle you need at 10mm focal length.

However, Canon 580EX is obviously much higher so clears big lenses and hoods, and if you flip down the wide panel it covers a 14mm lens on full frame, which is 9mm on crop format. Either way, 580EX sorts it.
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Obviously I haven't used the 580EX, but I did try my SB-600 on a Nikon body with the 10-17 fisheye and there was still a shadow, even with the diffuser, (14mm on the SB) down. I realise that the fisheye gives a wider fov than the Sigma, but I'm still not sure whether the Sigma would be any more successful...
 
Flash In The Pan said:
Obviously I haven't used the 580EX, but I did try my SB-600 on a Nikon body with the 10-17 fisheye and there was still a shadow, even with the diffuser, (14mm on the SB) down. I realise that the fisheye gives a wider fov than the Sigma, but I'm still not sure whether the Sigma would be any more successful...
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I wondered about the flash coverage as soon as I wrote that, seemed too good to be true, so I thought I'd check it. Canon 40D, EF-S 10-22mm and 580EX gun. With the wide panel down, it just about covers acceptably at 10mm. It's certainly not perfectly even, but apart from the corners it's okay, and better than I expected. The coverage was actually more even than bouncing it off the ceiling! I'm impressed, frankly.

Fisheyes do wierd things to focal lengths and angles of view. I think Canon is only talking about rectilinear lenses here.
 
If push comes to shove then one of those Chinese stroboframe clones and a ttl cord would sort the problem, in fact that would be my choice from the off for the sort of stuff the op is wanting to do, it would only add £30-40 to the total bill...
 
I've got a Canon 430EX for sale if you wanna get back into some flash work :) and don't want all the knobs and whisles of the 580EXII :)
 
Kryptix,

The more that you discover about nightclub photography, your more than likely going to come across the option of front and rear curtain sync.
Admittedly I don't network with every club photographer under the sun but the few that I have had the pleasure of working with all utilise rear curtain sync when using flash on camera or off camera, as do many journalists and editorial photog's.

Why?

Well, let's take front curtain sync first. Imagine you have a dance floor with your stereotypical whistle blowin glowstick flexing clubber, sweatin it up and going for his/her life all night long.
During your slow shutter exposure (dragging the shutter or slow sync), the flash will fire as soon as you depress the shutter release, so if Mr Glowstick dancer moves forwards, on a lateral plane, the light trails from his glow sticks will appear backwards, as if he/she was dancing backwards.
Unless this is the effect you want, it's not much use to be fair.

Rear curtain means that the flash fires as the shutter closes, at the end of the exposure, so if Mr Whistle blower does the same kind of movement the light trails will appear to flow in the correct direction, the same appearance applies to say a car at night, headlamps a blaze moving forwards. (Try it our with your new car rig sometime (y))

There is of course, another argument, what if the dancer was bopping on the spot facing the camera? Are his/her movements in rear curtain sync going to be any different if one is to chose a front curtain alternative?
Me, personally says yes.
Front curtain always runs a risk of having that unwanted, non chronolgical order to it depending on the direction of movement, so why gamble?

There is no myth that rear curtain effects exposure, just misunderstandings of users who choose a front curtain only approach. ;)
 
Thanks for that!

How do I do rear curtain or whatever then?
 
Kryptix said:
Thanks for that!

How do I do rear curtain or whatever then?
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No problem (y)

I'm struggling to remember how I did it with my Canon gear, custom functions menu maybe? :shrug:
Have a butchers in yer manual, it should have the instructions to enable rear curtain or second curtain as it can be called.

If you camera has an onboard flash, you can have a mess about with rear curtain using that too while your waiting for the new gun to land. (y)
 
One thing I don't get with this rear curtain is, what sort of aperture you should be using. If it's going to be pretty dark then you might be around f/2.8 but does that not run the risk that the subject will be out of the DoF by the time the flash fires?

And if the you are photographing someone dancing, then surely they'll just appear all ghostly? So it is best used where movement is going on in the background, but the subject is actually stationery?

This confuses me!
 
i tog nightclubs using a 430 ex II

for portrait shots i use rear curtain sync, using somehting like a 1/2 sesond exposure.

by doing this you can get the light trails to get the arty approach, yet the person is still sharp and non gostly as the flash blows at the end.

using the flash on normal settings it will fire at both the beggining and end of the exposure, this is bad bad news when using a 1/2 second or more as the people see the first flash then come straight to you to see the image, then the flash goes again and not only blinds them (theyr'e normally too ****ed to notice) but you get the ghostly effect.

Club togging is mainly trial + error, iv'e done about 15 night and i'm still getting to grips with the set up!

for the really art farty stuff, if you can't use a tripod (which makes you look like a goon carrying it round) grap a napkin off the bar, place your camera on the napkin on a shelf or ledge (as found in most clubs) and put a phone/lighter/fag pack under the lens so you don't get too much self in the shot, either using remote shutter (or cable type) or self timer have a go at 15sec exposures!!

Hope this helps!!
 
also one thing, 10-22 may not be long enough, i use a 24-135 (my only lens) and this is not wide enough, on the hunt for a tokina 17-35 (i think thats it) f/2.8

never use the flash at 90degress for portrait shots in a club, fire it at 45 minimum iv'e found
 
IMO, its far more predictable to use front curtain sync in a club than rear sync. There is no magic get out of jail card to prevent ghosting. If you're going your typical tillate portait shots, where the subject and background is relatively stationary, it really isn't going to make much (if any) difference but will be far more predictable.

I would ONLY use rear sync if (as mentioned above) the subject themselves are waving/wearing lights/glow sticks and moving, dancers etc... (I've seen a chav with a LED mouth guard before...can't quite imagine asking your dentist to make you one of them!)

c_robinson said:
i tog nightclubs using a 430 ex II

for portrait shots i use rear curtain sync, using somehting like a 1/2 sesond exposure.

by doing this you can get the light trails to get the arty approach, yet the person is still sharp and non gostly as the flash blows at the end.
Click to expand...

Surely even with rear sync if you do the light trails, theres a good chance of overwriting someones face with real bright light trails when dragging the shutter (happened to me in the past...so stopped doing it!)
 
Cheng said:
IMO, its far more predictable to use front curtain sync in a club than rear sync. There is no magic get out of jail card to prevent ghosting. If you're going your typical tillate portait shots, where the subject and background is relatively stationary, it really isn't going to make much (if any) difference but will be far more predictable.

I would ONLY use rear sync if (as mentioned above) the subject themselves are waving/wearing lights/glow sticks and moving, dancers etc... (I've seen a chav with a LED mouth guard before...can't quite imagine asking your dentist to make you one of them!)

Surely even with rear sync if you do the light trails, theres a good chance of overwriting someones face with real bright light trails when dragging the shutter (happened to me in the past...so stopped doing it!)
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Cheng is right. Second curtain sync does not reduce ghosting one bit, and makes no difference to the relative exposure levels of flash and ambient light. If your subject is moving, the only way to reduce ghosting is to place them againt a dark background, or at least try to frame them against a dark area of the picture. But if you have stuff like light trails going on, these will show through regardless of first or second curtain technique.

One way of making the background darker, and thereby minimising ghosting, is to use a shorter shutter speed so that the background is underexposed, but then of course you get less of the movement blur you want. You have to balance the two.

The main downside of second curtain sync is that it makes the timing of the flash exposure less predictable. When you see the right expression or gesture in the viewfinder and press the release, that's when you want the flash image recorded - not half a second later when anything could have happened. If people are moving anyway, then something unpredictable will have happened.

Furthermore, with second curtain sync you get two visible flashes (although the first one is only a pre-flash for metering, and happens before the shutter opens). When the pre-flash fires people immediately think the picture has been taken and then move forward as c robinson has posted above (although he seems to have got his first and second curtains mixed up!). With first curtain sync, the two flashes are so close together they appear as one - many photographers don't even realise that there are are actually two flashes happening.

The only time second curtain sync is useful is when it is important for the light trails to move in a certain direction, such as in the fireworks image in the link from CT in post #20. For nightclub shots, does it really matter if the light trails appear to be moving up rather than down, or left rather than right? Probably not, and since the whole scenario is very unpredictable, you don't really know what has happened until after the event anyway.

I can't see any benefit to using second curtain sync when dragging the shutter for nightclub pics, but at least first curtain sync makes a very unpredictable process a little less hit and miss.
 
i agree but the site i supply to want people to know that their customers are in a club, not a room full of people, hence lighttrails sneaking onto the face aren't too bad, but yes some get scrapped for being a touch excessive!

i would post some examples but i'm just leaving for a 700 mile round trip of a weekend rallying in the rain :(
 
Cheng said:
Surely even with rear sync if you do the light trails, theres a good chance of overwriting someones face with real bright light trails when dragging the shutter (happened to me in the past...so stopped doing it!)
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Thats an element that can't be avoided, regardless of syncing preferences when opting for slow sync flash.
If motion blur from slower shutter speeds was an unwanted side effect in my frame, I'd increase the shutter speed and sacrifice some ambient.

Each to their own I guess, I never come out of rear sync, it's pretty much permanent unless I want a backwards effect to movement, even static portraits I opt for rear curtain when dragging the shutter out and never had a single issue, pre-flash or otherwise.
As mentioned, after increasing the shutter speed whether front or rear curtain is enabled makes no difference, hence why most seem to go for a rear curtain anyway, in case of movement, if motion blur is undesirable, increase your shutter.
 
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