standard flash/flash guns pros/cons?

blade_922

blade_922

Messages
244
Name
Omar
Edit My Images
Yes
Hi,

okay so what are the advantages of getting an attachable flash gun for a DSLR than just using the standard flash on a DSLR?

I have a Canon EOS 550d at the moment, satisfied with the flash on the camera as standard for the moment. But when would you use an attachable flash gun apart from in very low light?

What does it offer apart from probably a brighter flash than the standard camera? and what situations would you use it?

What are the advantages and disadvantages of it?

Thanks
 
More powerfull therefore more chance of being able to overpower the ambiant light

Ability to bounce the light off of a wall or ceiling.

Not sure if the 550D has the feature but some of the Canon range can control Canon Flashguns off camera (7D does)

Someone more knowledgeable than me will probably be able to add more but those are the main reasons I bought a flash.
 
Hi Steve,

done some reading since i posted this, and i see it also allows more of a distance between camera and subject when using external flash gun.

Steve how did you find the use of a external flash gun compared to the standard flash in terms of being able to shoot subjects at a longer distance? Was it a huge difference and could you put it in figures? Like standard flash say 8metres and with external flash gun object can be further away, so how much further?
 
What are you trying to photograph? The biggest advantage of an external flash for most people is the ability to bounce it off a surface creating a much softer and less harsh picture. Once you try one, you won't ever want to use direct again for portraits/groups. Have a look at thhe picture here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Flash-Direct-Indirect.jpg The one on the left is directy flash and you get a harsh shadow.
 
Hi,

Im not photographing anything in particular YET. Im just looking to invest in a flash gun. Im going abroad in summer and would like to invest in a flash gun and get used to it before hand.

Can anyone also recommend me one or a few to choose from for a Canon EOS 550D? Looking to spend money on something decent and powerful and thats worth the money :D
 
Last edited:
Can't go wrong with the larger Canons (430/580 they will last you as you upgrade), although they will make your 550D unbalanced (weight wise).
 
blade_922 said:
Hi Steve,

done some reading since i posted this, and i see it also allows more of a distance between camera and subject when using external flash gun.

Steve how did you find the use of a external flash gun compared to the standard flash in terms of being able to shoot subjects at a longer distance? Was it a huge difference and could you put it in figures? Like standard flash say 8metres and with external flash gun object can be further away, so how much further?
Click to expand...

I have a 450D and originally bought a Jessops 360AFD flashgun which was Canon compatible. I bought it to do a christening and found that it was not 100% on my camera. Some of the shots were very dark as if the flash had not fired even though the exif data said it had. I therefore purchased a 430EX II and this has been superb.

Cannot give any figures as I mainly bought it to allow bounce flash
 
blade_922 said:
Hi,

Im not photographing anything in particular YET. Im just looking to invest in a flash gun. Im going abroad in summer and would like to invest in a flash gun and get used to it before hand.

Can anyone also recommend me one or a few to choose from for a Canon EOS 550D? Looking to spend money on something decent and powerful and thats worth the money :D
Click to expand...

Either the 430 EX11 or the 580 EX11 depending on your budget.The 580 is more powerful and has more refinements.
It is worth looking for a used one,you should pick up a used 430EX ( the old model) for around the £100 mark.
If you can run to a 580 its worth it.
 
hhhmm, had a look at the 430EX 11 and the 580EX 11. Now considering im not out snapping photos all the time, im contemplating going for the 430EX.

As much as i would like the 580EX 11 just because its more powerful, i cant see myself making full use of it and its features. Im mainly looking for something to provide extra flash and light and maybe occasionally be able to bounce light.
 
I am not a cannon user, but when I got my sb800 it really helped with shots of my kids, I do get some odd looks when I am out in the summer with it on the camera, but it just helps with adding a little fill to faces and getting rid of harsh shadow that summer light can bring, plus it adds a nice catch light to the eyes.
 
One advantage of a hot shoe flash is it will save you battery life as the onboard flas gun will use up camera battery power ,so you battery will run down faster .

another advantage ( in certain canon flash guns) is a larger infra red output from the flash gun enabling auto focus in darker light where the camera infra red light will not cope .
those were my main reasons for using a external flash gun on top of all the other advantages
 
devilnev said:
One advantage of a hot shoe flash is it will save you battery life as the onboard flas gun will use up camera battery power ,so you battery will run down faster .

another advantage ( in certain canon flash guns) is a larger infra red output from the flash gun enabling auto focus in darker light where the camera infra red light will not cope .
those were my main reasons for using a external flash gun on top of all the other advantages
Click to expand...

Not sure about that Nev! :thinking:

To the OP, get a decent gun, one that does high speed sync (430EX does) and learn to use it. It will transform your existing photography, and open up completely new creative areas.

There is no comparison with the pop-up at all. It's not just about giving light, it is about providing creative light, where you want it, as much as you need.

When you get it, try to never point it directly at the subject. Make it a rule. Either bounce it or use a diffuser accessory, just a simple bounce card, whatever. Then you'll see the difference :)
 
blade_922 said:
Hi,

okay so what are the advantages of getting an attachable flash gun for a DSLR than just using the standard flash on a DSLR?

I have a Canon EOS 550d at the moment, satisfied with the flash on the camera as standard for the moment. But when would you use an attachable flash gun apart from in very low light?

What does it offer apart from probably a brighter flash than the standard camera? and what situations would you use it?

What are the advantages and disadvantages of it?

Thanks
Click to expand...



If photographing people using the pop up flash is about the most unflattering light known to man.

Second is using on camera speedlight without bouncing it. It's a huge topic and I would say learning to use lights properly is the most difficult part of photography. But well worth the effort.
 
Consider the Nissin Di866, got one back in Feb and it performs great, although as with the Canon equivalent, a lot of the features aren't really going to be compatible with your camera.

Having said that, it's still a very powerful flashgun in it's own right ;)
 
lensflair said:
If photographing people using the pop up flash is about the most unflattering light known to man.

Second is using on camera speedlight without bouncing it. It's a huge topic and I would say learning to use lights properly is the most difficult part of photography. But well worth the effort.
Click to expand...

I agree with that Graham, which is why I always say 'learn to use it' because otherwise, if you just stick it on the camera and fire direct, it's not going to look any different to the pop-up.

And it can indeed be a big topic - there's a lot to learn! Flash sorts the men from the boys because when you take a picture, you have to create the light first, and it's not just a question of recording whatever ambient is already there.

The other thing is, I think flash guns themselves are not very intuitive to operate, and while E-TTL and iTTL are really amazingly capable and controllable, you have to know how to work them. Some people say auto-TTL systems are unreliable and you have to use manual. But when you look into it, they actually don't know how to control the thing properly and gave up at the first attempt of trying. Auto-TTL can do anything you want, and some things that manual working simply cannot. Manual is good though! I use that a lot too :)

Possibly one of the most creatively rewarding aspects of photography?
 
HoppyUK said:
I agree with that Graham, which is why I always say 'learn to use it' because otherwise, if you just stick it on the camera and fire direct, it's not going to look any different to the pop-up.

And it can indeed be a big topic - there's a lot to learn! Flash sorts the men from the boys because when you take a picture, you have to create the light first, and it's not just a question of recording whatever ambient is already there.

The other thing is, I think flash guns themselves are not very intuitive to operate, and while E-TTL and iTTL are really amazingly capable and controllable, you have to know how to work them. Some people say auto-TTL systems are unreliable and you have to use manual. But when you look into it, they actually don't know how to control the thing properly and gave up at the first attempt of trying. Auto-TTL can do anything you want, and some things that manual working simply cannot. Manual is good though! I use that a lot too :)

Possibly one of the most creatively rewarding aspects of photography?
Click to expand...


For sure, its one of the things that can really take your photography to a whole new level. I started out in the film days and avoided flash for years. Just when you think you know what your doing you chuck a flash on and everything goes to crap. So you spend the next few years trying to convince yourself that your a 'natural light photographer'. But eventually I decided to do whatever it took to learn. It actually improved my understanding of how to use available light too.

I also like TTL for bounce flash and the camera in manual mode, just ride the FEC and the results are great. For OCF I go manual.

I remember when I finally had that realisation of ambient and flash exposures being separate. It suddenly made sense, underexpose the background by about a stop or two and use the flash to bring up exposure on the subject :)

I would advise anyone learning to read some books on lighting and learn about the different lighting patterns for portraits, loop, rembrant etc. And get yourself a manicaan if you want to practice for hours on end without a model :)
 
lensflair said:
For sure, its one of the things that can really take your photography to a whole new level. I started out in the film days and avoided flash for years. Just when you think you know what your doing you chuck a flash on and everything goes to crap. So you spend the next few years trying to convince yourself that your a 'natural light photographer'. But eventually I decided to do whatever it took to learn. It actually improved my understanding of how to use available light too.

I also like TTL for bounce flash and the camera in manual mode, just ride the FEC and the results are great. For OCF I go manual.

I remember when I finally had that realisation of ambient and flash exposures being separate. It suddenly made sense, underexpose the background by about a stop or two and use the flash to bring up exposure on the subject :)

I would advise anyone learning to read some books on lighting and learn about the different lighting patterns for portraits, loop, rembrant etc. And get yourself a manicaan if you want to practice for hours on end without a model :)
Click to expand...

:thumbs: to all of that!

I salute you for persevering with film. It really is damn difficult balancing up two or three flash guns, even when you have a meter. Digital transforms that, and makes the almost impossible in practical terms, easily do-able :D

But that's in technical terms. There's no way that technology can help with how light works and what to do with it, which is what it's really about.

This is a very good book, best I've seen, by Syl Arena. Everything you need to know about light and Canon speedlites, modifiers and sync and all that. Very well written, tons of pictures, £18.50 Amazon http://www.amazon.co.uk/Speedliters...-Speedlites/dp/032171105X/ref=ntt_at_ep_dpi_1
 
Great advice. I may just pick up the 430 EX II later today.

Dont let the advice stop, any more tips and knowledge from those more experienced with flash guns is more than welcome and extremely helpful.
 
blade_922 said:
Great advice. I may just pick up the 430 EX II later today.

Dont let the advice stop, any more tips and knowledge from those more experienced with flash guns is more than welcome and extremely helpful.
Click to expand...

Okay then. All you need to know about light in 30 seconds.

1) The bigger the light source, the softer the shadows. Big brolly = soft. Small flash gun = harsh. Light sources get smaller with distance, relative to the subject.

2) Inverse square law says that when you double the distance, the brightness is reduced to one quarter - that's two stops. Basically flash falls off very quickly, especially when you're close.

3) Angle of incidence equals angle of reflection. Light bounces off a surface at the same angle it strikes it, like a snooker ball off the cushion.

That does actually cover the fundamentals, but there's a heck of a lot more detail in each point.

Get that Syl Arena book. Check out using a bounce card here www.abetterbouncecard.com - that guy's vids are a hoot :D Then get yourself a Lumiquest Quik Bounce for £40 - the single best flash accessory available. Good tutorials on the Lumiquest site too www.lumiquest.com
 
I take it flash can be used in many situations even in normal lighting conditions? The power of the flash is that strong that it can even eliminate shadows in normal natural light?

How about using flash outdoors? Say on a normal cloudy day shooting portraits. Would it work to eliminate facial shadows and body shadows?

How about in the evening? If shooting after sunset conditions, where the light is low. how would a picture of a few people around 10 metres away come out against say a background which is 60metres away when using external flash? Would the image look over exposed in the foreground and very underexposed in the background? Or can you get some good shots with balancing up all the settings?
 
blade_922 said:
I take it flash can be used in many situations even in normal lighting conditions? The power of the flash is that strong that it can even eliminate shadows in normal natural light?

How about using flash outdoors? Say on a normal cloudy day shooting portraits. Would it work to eliminate facial shadows and body shadows?

How about in the evening? If shooting after sunset conditions, where the light is low. how would a picture of a few people around 10 metres away come out against say a background which is 60metres away when using external flash? Would the image look over exposed in the foreground and very underexposed in the background? Or can you get some good shots with balancing up all the settings?
Click to expand...

Now you're asking!

Yes, flash can be used in many situations. It's basically to put light where there isn't enough, or to change or enhance what there is. Outdoors especially! In daylight for sure. That's when you'll need the high speed sync feature :thumbs:

One thing that flash is not good for is anything at distance. When used close it's very potent, but if you think about the inverse square law it runs out of puff very quickly. That, plus the fact that you can't control the size of the light source in any meaningful way - even a big softbox at 10m is going to look pretty small, and the light will be feeble. Don't bother.

In practise, there are very few pictures that a dash of flash will not make better, especially where people are involved. At worst, it will do nothing. Polaroid once made a range of cameras where the flash was permanently on.

Edit: if you're using flash outdoors, it's almost always going to be for fill-in flash, because a) that's what you want, and b) fighting with bright sun, like trying to over-power it, requires a small nuclear explosion. With fill-in technique, the power of the flash is secondary. It will transform the image, but when it's done well, it's almost invisible to the untrained eye because it looks so natural. Fill-in like that is just about the only time when on-camera on-axis direct flash is often best. The pop-up can be quite good for that, but it lacks power and doesn't do high speed sync so you're options quickly become limited. One of the things that Lumiquest Quik Bounce does particulalry well is to add a bit of softness to outdoors fill-in.
 
Last edited:
blade_922 said:
Great advice. I may just pick up the 430 EX II later today.

Dont let the advice stop, any more tips and knowledge from those more experienced with flash guns is more than welcome and extremely helpful.
Click to expand...


I think the best place to start if you want online info on flash is David Hobbies 'strobist' blog and one of my favourites Neil's Tangents blog. Sorry on phone and haven't got a link right now.

I haven't read Syl's book but have heard good things about it. Another good one is David Ziser's digital pro talk, he is an old school wedding and portrait photographer and his blog and book 'captured by the light' have some fantastic info in them, even if his style is a bit traditional for your tastes, he knows his stuff.
 
Richard if you dont ask, questions and doubts will always stop you from becoming better at what your doing! :D

Thanks for your advice. I understand the inverse square rule when using flash. Is it a general rule that doubling the distance means quarter the brightness? Or is there a numerical way of working out brightness depending upon subject distance?

Are there any other rules to follow or bear in mind when using flash?

Thank you for your help, much appreciated.
 
blade_922 said:
Richard if you dont ask, questions and doubts will always stop you from becoming better at what your doing! :D

Thanks for your advice. I understand the inverse square rule when using flash. Is it a general rule that doubling the distance means quarter the brightness? Or is there a numerical way of working out brightness depending upon subject distance?

Are there any other rules to follow or bear in mind when using flash?

Thank you for your help, much appreciated.
Click to expand...



Well you probably want to balance the colour temp. Of the flash with the ambient light if possible. So if your indoors with lots of tungsten lighting and you use your flash, the background ambient light can end up being very Orange when you set the white balance for your subject. You can gel the flash to closer match the tungsten light with a CTO, or CTS gel. I often like to leave a little warm glow to the ambient so don't always correct completely. This will also work for matching the flash to warm late afternoon light.

You can gel for fluoro lights but I usually overpower them or turn them off if possible.

Oh yeah flash will pick up the colour you bounce it off, so you might not need to gel it if you're bouncing off warm coloured walls.
 
blade_922 said:
Richard if you dont ask, questions and doubts will always stop you from becoming better at what your doing! :D

Thanks for your advice. I understand the inverse square rule when using flash. Is it a general rule that doubling the distance means quarter the brightness? Or is there a numerical way of working out brightness depending upon subject distance?

Are there any other rules to follow or bear in mind when using flash?

Thank you for your help, much appreciated.
Click to expand...

Strictly speaking the inverse square law applies to a point light source, which a flash gun effectively is, but a big softbox isn't. However, even softboxes comform quite closely, in that if you move them back from the subject the light reduces very quickly indeed (as well as getting harder). It catches people out when they light a studio subject and the white background suddenly looks grey. That's simply because it's usually twice as far from the light, so it's going to be much darker.

The numerical way of doing it is with the guide number, which is how the output of different flashes is compared, even if it's sometimes difficult and prone to manufacturers' marketing departments. You can use it for exposure calculation. The guide number is often part of the model designation, eg 430EX has a GN of 43. They are mostly expressed in meters at ISO100, with the zoom head at max, and one stop difference - a halving or doubling of power - means the guide number should be multiplied by the square root of 2, ie 1.4 (that's another aspect of the inverse square law again - there's a lot of squaring goes on in flash and f/numbers calculations).
 
Last edited:
I have the 360afd, use it on both my canon and nikon and find its great ~80% of the time..but that 20% it doesn't fire or the timings out :( other than that great value for money, though I would never rely on it :( Cheers. Paul
 
Managed to pick up the flash gun today. Going to play about with it later.
 
First impressions, looks very strong. Adds quite a bit of weight to the camera. And a very powerful flash.

Took some pictures with it bouncing the light up and also firing flash head on, and a BIG difference. When firing head on it adds soo much unatural light its terrible. But when firing up at the roof it adds much more natural light to the subject. Also firing head on on a portrait, it left some shadows, bounced up at the roof and it was eliminated.

Will post more of what i think later
 
blade_922 said:
First impressions, looks very strong. Adds quite a bit of weight to the camera. And a very powerful flash.

Took some pictures with it bouncing the light up and also firing flash head on, and a BIG difference. When firing head on it adds soo much unatural light its terrible. But when firing up at the roof it adds much more natural light to the subject. Also firing head on on a portrait, it left some shadows, bounced up at the roof and it was eliminated.

Will post more of what i think later
Click to expand...


Ceiling bounce will result in racoon eyes if you shoot people that way, can you swivel the flash head to bounce it off walls to the left nd right?

Have you looked up Neil's tangents blog? Or strobist? They are well worth checking out.
 
Last edited:
HoppyUK said:
Not sure about that Nev! :thinking:

To the OP, get a decent gun, one that does high speed sync (430EX does) and learn to use it. It will transform your existing photography, and open up completely new creative areas.

There is no comparison with the pop-up at all. It's not just about giving light, it is about providing creative light, where you want it, as much as you need.
Click to expand...

BTW this tip about using the on camera flash for focus assist is a good one, I do it all the time. Cameras like the nikon D3 don't have a focus assist light built into the body, you can disable the flash if you want and still use the focus assist pattern it puts out. The one on the flash is less annoying to people and it can save your bacon in situations like processionals in a dark church.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top