How Important are External Flashes?

July 3, 2009 By Leave a Comment

Exter­nal Flashes have many advan­tages over on-camera flashes; not only is an exter­nal flash much more pow­er­ful than a small‚on-camera flash, but it also has a tilt-able head so that you can bounce it. Bounc­ing a flash is a great way to soften the light since direct flash is quite harsh.

An exter­nal flash gives you far more con­trol over how you want the scene lit — the built in flash on your cam­era is usu­ally only good enough to light a sub­ject from a short dis­tance and the light from the flash can only be used from one plane. This is another area where an exter­nal flash shines :)

Exter­nal flashes can be taken off cam­era. This allows the pho­tog­ra­pher to cre­atively light a sub­ject from dif­fer­ent angles. You’ll need a way to trig­ger the flash and there are sev­eral good meth­ods depend­ing on your bud­get. The cheap­est way (20 bucks or less) is with a sync cord but a bet­ter way is a wire­less trig­ger­ing sys­tem like the Pocket Wiz­ard.

So if your bud­get can cope, an exter­nal flash is a prime invest­ment and a step­ping stone to get­ting you closer to the ‘advanced pho­tog­ra­pher’ sta­tus. For addi­tional info check this link from our pho­tog­ra­phy forum.

Filed Under: Photography blog entries, Photography tips Tagged With: , ,

60 — Panning and the Weston Portrait — Interview with Laszlo of Montreal

January 20, 2009 By 4 Comments

Pho­tog­ra­phy pod­cast #60 fea­tures an inter­view with pho­tog­ra­pher Las­zlo of Mon­treal. In this inter­view, Las­zlo decon­structs a por­trait of Loblaws owner Galen Weston so that we may learn from it. In the inter­view he describes the var­i­ous tech­niques used to cre­ate this image includ­ing pan­ning, bal­anc­ing the flash and the ambi­ent light as well as his choice of shut­ter speed and envi­ron­ment for this image.

Galen Weston by Laszlo

Galen Weston by Las­zlo — Click to enlarge

Links men­tioned in this pod­cast:
Laszlo’s web­site
Laszlo’s Paul Anka por­trait
HDR Pod­cast #59

Assign­ments on the bul­letin board:
Jan­u­ary 2009 photo assign­ment — Warm and Cozy

Thanks as always to‚ Steven K,‚ Susan, Michael Van der Tol, landon9720, Yise­haq, Frank and Gary H who posted a blog com­ment about our last pod­cast and to all the new mem­bers of the bul­letin board.

If you are look­ing at this mate­r­ial on any other site except Photography.ca — Please hop on over to the Photography.ca blog and pod­cast and get this and other pho­tog­ra­phy info directly from the source. I Sub­scribe with iTunes I Sub­scribe via RSS feed I Sub­scribe with Google Reader I Sub­scribe for free to the Pho­tog­ra­phy pod­cast — Photography.ca and get all the posts/podcasts by Email
You can down­load this pho­tog­ra­phy pod­cast directly by click­ing the pre­ced­ing link or lis­ten to it almost imme­di­ately with the embed­ded player below.

Pod­cast: Play in new win­dow | Down­load

Filed Under: Photographs, Photography podcast Interviews, Photography podcasts, podcasting Tagged With: , , , , ,

Flash sync speeds — Photography podcast #47

July 11, 2008 By 7 Comments

Pho­tog­ra­phy pod­cast #47 talks about flash sync speeds. We talk about what the flash sync speed is (it’s also called x-sync) and how very impor­tant it is espe­cially when you are tak­ing day­light por­traits out­doors. We also talk about high-speed flash sync as well as answer Sergey’s ques­tion about why the high speed flash sync is not work­ing with the trans­mit­ters that he is using.

Links/topics men­tioned in this pod­cast:
My sleepy dog pho­to­graph
Sunny 16 rule
ST-E2 trans­mit­ter
Canon 580 flash series with the OC-E3 off-camera shoe cord

Thanks as always to Benny, Mer­man, Tmat, Yowzah, Tim and Sergey for recent com­ments and sug­ges­tions. We LOVE com­ments and sug­ges­tions so please send more.

You can down­load this pho­tog­ra­phy pod­cast directly by click­ing the pre­ced­ing link or lis­ten to it almost imme­di­ately with the embed­ded player below.

Pod­cast: Play in new win­dow | Down­load

Filed Under: Photography podcasts, Photography tips, podcasting Tagged With: , ,

Leonard Cohen Portrait

June 11, 2008 By 16 Comments

A cou­ple of weeks ago I was lucky enough to meet the Poet/Singer/Songwriter Leonard Cohen in Sague­nay Que­bec. I have always been an enor­mous fan and rarely does a week go by when I don’t lis­ten to one of his truly great songs. Although we only spent a few pre­cious min­utes with him, he was gra­cious enough to allow us to take a few shots. This shot was my favourite of the few shots we took.

It was a hot sunny cloud­less day and the sun was still fairly high which meant I had to be on the look­out for shad­ows in the face. I there­fore set my flash to minus 2 which would fill in the poten­tial shad­ows. This shot was orig­i­nally processed in colour and I really like how it turned out (maybe I’ll post the colour ver­sion some­time). How­ever there is some­thing time­less and mys­te­ri­ous about Mr. Cohen’s music and I knew when I took the image that I’d likely process it in black and white. Also, his suit and hat were just scream­ing to be pho­tographed in black and white.

I’d like to thank Leonard Cohen (and his UNBELIEVABLE ensem­ble of musi­cians) for the fan­tas­tic con­cert where he received at least 15 stand­ing ova­tions, and for allow­ing me the plea­sure to take a few shots. My only regret is that my wife (who is equally an enor­mous fan) wasn’t there to meet him with me. She was rest­ing at the hotel since she was tired from the 5 hour drive from Montreal.

Filed Under: Photographs, Photography blog entries, Photography tips Tagged With: , , , , ,

Using backlighting outdoors — Photography Podcast #45

May 30, 2008 By 2 Comments

Pho­tog­ra­phy pod­cast #45 talks about how to use back­light­ing out­doors. We talk about tak­ing that clas­sic photo on the beach in front of a sun­set and doing it prop­erly. We also describe how to take a nice por­trait using back­light­ing and the whole pod­cast and is based some­what on an email from Cindy;

“This sum­mer my fam­ily is going to the beach. Of course, I want to take lots of pic­tures. What is the best time of day? I love sun­set pic­tures, but how do I take pic­tures of the peo­ple with their backs to the ocean (sun in back­ground etc.) and see their faces clearly? ”

The images below (done really quickly with almost no post pro­cess­ing) clearly show the dif­fer­ences you can obtain using back­light­ing and flash at dif­fer­ent set­tings. Per­son­ally I like the Minus 2 shot the best. You best see the dif­fer­ences in flash out­put by look­ing at the face.

using backlighting and flash outdoors

Pho­tog­ra­phy links men­tioned in this pod­cast:
Acces­sories that you can use to hold reflec­tors etc. — pho­tog­ra­phy pod­cast 35
Pho­tog­ra­phy and the law

Thanks as always to Cindy, Jason and Alex Wil­son for recent com­ments and sug­ges­tions. We LOVE com­ments and sug­ges­tions so please send more.

You can down­load this pho­tog­ra­phy pod­cast directly by click­ing the pre­ced­ing link or lis­ten to it almost imme­di­ately with the embed­ded player below.

Pod­cast: Play in new win­dow | Down­load

Filed Under: Photographs, Photography blog entries, Photography podcasts, podcasting Tagged With: , , , , , ,