slave - flash photography

[Bambi]

in this post: Fungi in shadow

MA said:

I grabbed Chantelle's Flash and used it as slave to create these shots ...

what does that mean exactly? I've heard it before as well.

thanks

[Marko]

Of how I must restrain the comments!

Slave simply means that that second flash fired because the first one triggered it...The first flash beat the second flash over the head with a blinding pop of light and so the slave popped too.

How did the slave do it? Either it had a built in thingy.

OR it attached to a thingy that once it saw the first flashes's fire, automatically triggered the second flash.

In this case - Chantelle's flash helped light the subject (fired) when it saw MA's flash fire.

makes sense?

[kat]

So, they weren't simultaneous but continuous? Why would you do that? Because of a longer shutter speed?

[Marko]

Hmmm at they speed they were going, for all intents and purposes, they fired independantly at the same time. BUT only one flash acted as the slave, the first flash, is correctly named the Master.

You would do it to light the subject from different planes - or part of the background, basically you now have 2 sources of light to light the scene instead of one. It gets funner, trust me.

[kat]

Okay. I got yah now.

So when I see on flickr 5 stobes.. then 5 light things going off at the same time using one of those setups.

[Bambi]

okay that makes sense.

and thanks for restraining yourself

see if you can keep it up for the next question: what exactly is a 'thingy' and how does it work?

[Marko]

Okay. I got yah now.

So when I see on flickr 5 stobes.. then 5 light things going off at the same time using one of those setups.

Correct!

okay that makes sense.

and thanks for restraining yourself

see if you can keep it up for the next question: what exactly is a 'thingy' and how does it work?

"You can buy a peanut slave (20-30 bucks) and attach that slave to most portable flashes through a fairly cheap wire.

When the peanut slave on the portable flash catches the light from another flash source it fires"

In case anyone is interested here's a (affiliate disclaimer) peanut slave that I use from B&H.

Here's 3 podcasts you may like that talk about portable flash and lighting with portable flash and syncing portable flashes.
Portable flash
Flash sync speeds
Fill flash


Hope that helps - Marko

[biathloneil]

Slave, ussually has something to do with exchange of rings and a serious decrease in one's skiing, shooting, and fishing time unless you can produce the required equipment for two participants. Extra gear can always be claimed as an attempt to include one's significant other and thus reduce the slave effect. There is no PS action to replicate visually.

Happy Shopping,
Neil

[Fortytwo]

I use slaves to carry my flashes and other gear around. Does that count?

[Mad Aussie]

We have opened a can of worms haven't we??

Bambi ... with the Canon 580 ExII flashes (strobes) you can manually set them to be either Master or slave. One 580 will control up to 2 other 580's as slaves in this way. No other attachments etc required at all. The master must be on the camera though, and when that flashes (which is so quick most shutter speeds can't beat it) the other flash (or flashes) fire so soon after it's almost instant.
I'd say the better SB nikon flashes can do the same thing.

I've used the peanut (or similar) before which was handy when you have only one external flash because your built in flash will trigger it if it's not too far away. This would be a great thing for you to play with Kat! No cords to worry about.

As you can see by my Fungi shots, I used very little flash from on the camera. Instead I angled the external flash on the camera up and deflected it's flash down with the catch card (built in card for this purpose) to diffuse the light from the camera's direction. At the same time I hand held the slave flash where I wanted to create a harsh light from different angles to highlight those droplets and create some shadows and texture on the fungi.

This is stuff I'd like to do a lot more of actually.