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:
- 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.
- 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.
- 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 .
- 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!!!
- 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!
