As you may know if you read my site,or if it is your first time around,I do recommend to learn about flashes and lighting by testing the studio setups that you’ll find here and on the web with small flashes.This will allow you not to spent a lot of money on studio strobes before even knowing about flash photography and if you’ll like it at all.

Almost every one has with his digital camera an off camera flash.Usually it will be a good start to explore your creativity with light and studio photography.Two lights will more than double the options.In this post I’ll will go over some of the most affordable flash units that you can get.Don’t feel cheap , as they give great value for the money.In this category I listed the flashes for the price range 50$-100$.So dig in and see which will be your choise for the first/second flash!

Vivitar 285HV Auto Professional Flash

One of the most popular flash unit as for the strobist.com.The built-in variable power of the Vivitar 285HV auto professional flash provides you with fill flash and the ability to shoot properly exposed rapid-sequence pictures. This vertical bounce flash gives your photographs soft, professional lighting. The four f-stops give you control over the flash distance range and the depth of field, while the auto Thyristor circuitry allows for a faster recycling time as well as more flashes per set of batteries.

Sunpak PZ40X II Power Zoom Digital Flash

I have to say that this flash unit looks very impressive.With digital operation and a clear LCD monitor its will give you a great budjet option.

Sunpak, a division of ToCAD America Inc. announces the upgraded version of the popular Sunpak PZ40X, a compact, lightweight, full-featured, shoe-mount electronic flash unit for digital and film cameras. The new Sunpak PZ40X II retains all the advanced features of the previous model, but it is now dedicated to the top-selling Nikon D50, D70/D70S, Coolpix 8800; The new Sunpak PZ40X II also works manually with non-dedicated cameras employing a single-contact hot shoe. The PZ40X-II is also backwards-compatible- with TTL metering for all TTL flash Nikon Camers And even though it is 40% smaller and significantly lighter than previous flash units with the same features, the Sunpak PX40X II has an impressive ISO 100 Guide Number Range from 60 at the 24mm zoom-head setting to 120 at 80mm. The Sunpak PZ40X II provides such advanced features as TTL auto flash, i-TTL for Nikon, a large, backlit, full-info LCD, and a power zoom-bounce flash head covering 35mm-equivalent focal lengths from 24-80mm in continuously variable auto mode, or 5 manual steps. Tilt positions range from zero to straight up for maximum bounce flexibility, and the built-in, near-IR auto-focus-assist beam turns on automatically when needed. Other features include: 5 power ratio settings down to 1/16, flash-exposure confirmation, bar graph flash range display, and power-saving circuitry that automatically set the unit to Standby Mode after five minutes.

Metz MZ 36341 36AF-4C E-TTL Flash

Metz is one of the best third party company out there.Some of the canon users will say that the pro Metz flash is better than the Canon 580EXII.It is very noce to know that Metz also has a budget unit.This Metz flash is designed to be totally computable with your new Canon Cameras sophisticated TTL system. Featuring an easy to read, backlit display, you will find this an extremely easy to use reliable unit. Technical specs: film & digital TTL; auto shut-off; AA battery size; battery type: Alkaline. NiCad. NIMH battery type; coverage: 0.94 in.; depth: 3.74 in.; display type: LCD; exposure OK indicator; extended zoom; guide number @50mm (ISO 100): 30 guide number (meters); height: 4.53 in.; integrated AF measuring system; max guide number (ISO 100): 36 guide number (meters); max recycle time: 5 seconds; number of batteries: 4; tilt: +90° head tilt

Phoenix DZBIS-112CII Digital Autofocus Flash

Phonix offers here the most less expensuve unit around.With your standard zoom, the built-in flash is usually effective to only about 13 feet, and that’s when your zoom lens is set to its widest-angle setting. When you want to zoom in on the action, you’ll find that the built-in flash does exactly the opposite of what you want. Its range is reduced to about 10 feet, and sometimes even less! It is even more annoying if you have a 70-300mm telephoto zoom lens. What is the sense of having the magnifying capability of 300mm but your camera’s flash is only effective to about 10 feet?

When you want to use your zoom’s telephoto capability indoors, requiring the built-in flash, your pictures come out dark, or even worse, not at all! Compared to your built-in flash, the zoom head of the Phoenix DZBIS-112CII (set at the tele position), allows you to shoot up to 3X further away with improved color, more natural lighting, and added depth to your pictures.

In addition to pure power, this Phoenix flash provides better looking photographs. It reduces or totally eliminates the annoying “red-eye” effect. Even when using the red-eye reduction feature of your camera (necessary because the built-in flash is too close to the lens) the flash reflects off your subject’s retina directly back into the lens and often results in pictures with “red-eye”.

The height advantage of the Phoenix DZBIS-112CII Flash greatly reduces or eliminates this “red-eye” effect. If your blue-eyed subjects still get “red eye”, this can be totally eliminated by using the bounce/swivel feature of the flash head to “bounce” the light off a neutral-colored ceiling or wall, for professional looking portraits.

If you think I missed someone from this list you are free to let me know about it.Just post a comment below.

Enjoy!!!

Going around the web I found a manufacture of really big,but portable diffusers.

The good thing about it is that they have an online catalogue and downloadable catalogue.In this catalogue there are many examples on how touse their products,much of them also show the setups used for taking really professional shots.You could and should download the catalogue and learn how the pros  use those bounce panels.It will be you job to learn how to adjust the stuff that you have at home and imitate the effect of the real one.

Of course you could also buy their products,there is an online price list available.

Click here for the online catalogue.

Popular Photography magazine (I’m a subscriber for at least 10 years)Published in their August issue a very interesting list about the misunderstanding or things you should know about your hot-shoe flash.

You could read the full article in the Popular Photography web site here.

Here is a summery of the points and what I think about them:

1. TTL metering is overrated-I use the manual mode for my flashs almost all the time.I use manual mode for my wedding photography and for studio photography as well.For studio work weather if work with strobes  you even don’t have the TTL option at all,I take it step by step and configure the exposure using my histogram and examining the pictures in my camera screen.As for the wedding photography,I use the flash in manual mode almost during all the event except for the location shots.
2. Batteries are a big deal-Allways by the best batteries you can afford.It will be an absurd to buy a 400$ or more flash head and getting a 5$ office deppot 2700mha set.
3. Manually setting zoom head focal length gives you special effects and other cool benefits-About the creativity of using the manual zoom for your flash you can read in a previous article I wrote in this site dealing with the ability to create a snoot like effect if you zoom the flash beam to 85mm-105 mm,you should try it its a fun game .
4. Hot-shoe flashes aren’t confined to hot-shoes-Yes they are right at popphoto! I use the hot shoe flashes of camera all the time,learning to control the hot shoe flash of camera will improve your photography amazingly!!!
5. Shoe-mount flashes make experimenting easy- this one is much like 4. Use the flash in the camera manual mode and you’ll learn a lot about the abilities of your camera.The problem with using the TTL and automatic camera modes is that the camera will decide the exposure for you even when you try to achieve something else,you’ll get the same exposure any time (unless you use the flash exposure compensation ).

Share your tips here!

I always liked the effect of the tiltshift lens.The basic construction of the lens enables the front element to shift in a direction you like and by that to put the focus of the lens on any point of the frame that you like.By that allowing you to control the lens blur that you want.You could see numerous examples for tiltshift photography in the net.

The fact that those lens cost a lot of money influenced photoshop user to try and simulate the tilt effect with the use of photoshop.

Here is my quick example for this technique.The picture was download for the internet and a 2 minutes PS work yelded this outcome:

This is one of the best tutorials that i stumbled around the net,Enjoy it!

Share you pictures with us and let us decide which one is the best.

Link.

In this post a member of the fredmiranda.com forum had a problem setting his Canon 580EXII as master to the Canon 420EX.There is some good tips and pictured explenations on how to solve this problem and set the 580EX master for the 420EX.

The link to the post.