Buying Your First Flash
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Hello neighbours. In this article, I’m going to invite you to invest your time learning why you want a flash, what it gives you and how to select the flash to own.
Why Do I Need a Flash
Fair question. You may perceive that you don’t need a flash, indeed there are lots of photographers who never use a flash, many because the idea is uncomfortable to them and because to be a bit of a black hole of materials. Allow me to be clear. Having an using a flash provides you the opportunity to grow your photography in ways that are not possible via any other route.
The reason for this is simple. Photography is all about light. Varying translations from Latin say it means drawing with light, or writing with light. The translations are less relevant than the doing. Every photographer is used to available light, sometimes called ambient light. Available light means the light that is available to capture without supplementation.
Therefore the sun outside on a bright cloudless day is available light. So is the stage lighting at a club. So is the light in the sky after the sun has gone down. It has two characteristics to remember. It’s there whether you like it or not, and there is nothing that you can do to directly control it.
Forget all the chatter about scrims and reflectors and the like as tools to control the available light. They may allow you to shape the available light, but you cannot control it.
Imagine instead that you had the power to hold a star in your pocket where you have complete control of the light that it emits. That star in your pocket is a flash and your ability to completely control it is the magical difference.
The Characteristics of Light
I will diverge briefly here so we are all on the same page when we talk about controlling light. Light has three characteristics that matter to us as photographers. It really is that simple.
The first characteristic in no particular order is direction. Where does the light come from? How does the direction of the light impact how the subject gets lit? Is the light coming straight on to the subject, is it coming from one side or another, or is it coming from behind the subject? With available light you get what is there. With a flash you can decide the direction that the light is coming from.
The second characteristic is quality. This is a sliding scale going from hard light, described as being like a point source, with high contrast and clear shadowiness all the way to soft light which is very flat, has low contrast, minimal shadow lines and appears to come from a giant source. Visualize hard light as the light on a cloudless sunny day. Visualize soft light as the light coming through a fully clouded sky right after a rain. Both ends of the spectrum are useful in different contexts and invariably available light falls somewhere on the line between hard and soft and you get what you get. Flash gives you the power to choose and control the quality of the light.
The third characteristic is colour. Humans are diurnal creatures meaning that we are mostly awake during the day and asleep at night. Consequently our eyes and optical mental processes have evolved to see daylight as normal to us. We call it white light, but it’s not really white, except to our perception. A common metric of light colour is based on the Kelvin temperature scale, where what we perceive as daylight is about 5500 degrees Kelvin, expressed as 5500K. Colour temperature is a common rathole for photographers who waste an inordinate amount of time worrying about it when the choice of light colour is more artistic than scientific.
This is why while so many worry about colour temperature, they also don’t want to be making images at high noon on a cloudless sunny day. We hear about the blue hour which only means that the colour characteristic is more blue (has a higher colour temperature). We hear about the golden hour which only means that the colour characteristic is more orange (has a lower colour temperature). These times of day vary depending on the season and where you are on the planet. You chase them, they do not come to you. Flash puts you in complete control of the colour of light.
What the Flash Gives You
By this point you understand that the flash puts you in control of the characteristics of light. This is very useful of course, but is not the only benefit of flash. While we can under or over expose available light at our choice, we cannot manipulate its intensity directly. We cannot decide to have more light in one place than another, and as none of us are comic book gods, we are not adding more nearby stars to bring us the potential for multiple light sources where we can also control the intensity of the light.
The flash brings us control of intensity. You decide how much light the flash is providing. This is mistakenly referred to as flash power, correctly it is flash duration, but that is a discussion for a different time. We can also bring more than one flash to the party, meaning that we can manage and control the ratio of output between multiple flashes. Fashion and other studio work are clear examples of the power of multiple light sources where you control the intensity of each source independently.
As we see in the context of continuous light, it is not abnormal that we see a continuous light as being brighter or dimmer in context to other measures over time. This is why we may conclude that things like a single LED light is very bright, when in fact it is quite dim, we just see it as a continuous source. We do not see the momentary pulse of light that comes from a flash. A common inexpensive flash that can mount to your camera has a maximum flash duration (how long the flash is providing light) of about 1/1900th of a second. You know a flash has happened but have no idea of its intensity or even its duration. Depending on the settings and the flash itself, the flash duration could be as short as 1/80000th of a second, which is so short a time, humans have challenges recognizing it.
The outcome of this is that we cannot see what the effect of flash is until we make the image. This scares some people and that is unfortunate since storage is so cheap that a few test shots cost nothing and are remarkably revealing.
Because the flash is portable, and is battery powered, it can go with you anywhere. It can be used to fill in shadows on a bright day and it can be used as the primary source when the available light is too low. Because the duration is so short, flash also freezes motion producing sharp images of subjects that may blur out at longer shutter speeds.
Today’s flashes not only work on the camera, but with the addition of inexpensive radio controllers work off camera as well, controlled from the camera with significant range depending on the radio system. Many manufacturers spent a lot of time and money building systems to remotely control flashes optically. You can safely ignore that whole idea. Radio is better and more reliable in every shooting situation when you want the flash to work not mounted directly on the camera.
What To Look For When Buying a Flash
Your camera if built in at least the last decade, and for many brands much older than that took the proven TTL (through the lens) metering system for available light and extended it to allow the management of flash exposure. This is where the term TTL Flash comes from. When you buy a flash you want to buy a flash that supports your camera brand’s TTL Flash language. Any TTL flash can also be used in manual mode, which while useful is nowhere as foolproof as TTL flash so you can deposit all guidance to only buy manual flashes into the round recycling container. Your flash should speak your camera brand’s TTL Flash language and sadly every brand has a different language.
We already understand the characteristic of light direction. Thus while a flash should offer a direct option, the flash head should be adjustable to allow it to be aimed in other directions. This is often referred to as bounce flash or bounce swivel. This is a requirement. A flash without the ability to change the light direction should never be bought. Before the appearance of hot shoe flash mounted light shaping tools, we used the ability to “bounce” the flash light off of white ceilings to create a large light source that by its size produced soft even coverage. It worked for decades and still does. Keeping flash simple while flexible is easy when your flash has a bounce/swivel head. The swivel by the way is to perform the bounce aiming when you are using the camera in the portrait (vertical) orientation.
There is no substitute in lighting for power. The measurements of power are all over the place as maker’s strive to not tell you about maximum flash duration or output capability. Fortunately you have me who will tell you the truth.
Any hot shot flash worth its purchase price will run on 4 AA rechargeable batteries. Somewhere in the documentation will be a Guide Number rating with a bunch of caveats. Typically guide number is expressed as a number relative to a 1m distance. It’s quite meaningless in today’s context because companies measure it differently. Nikon in their flashes use a different metric model than Canon or Sony. Third party flash makers will do so as well. You can look at this as a guide post with the understanding that it could be misleading.
However through a lot of testing comparing studio strobes which are measured in watt-seconds (a real measurement) to hot shoe type flashes I have found that most 4 battery tilt swivel head TTL capable flashed put out between 200 and 250 watt seconds. This is where you want to be. More output is going to mean a much bigger battery pack or fewer flashes with longer recharge durations. I have measured the top of line Canon, Nikon, Metz, Godox, Nissin and other flashes and find them all to be around 250 watt-seconds. This is ample. If you need more light, just add another flash.
If that last statement sounds like an invitation to bankruptcy, it could be only if you stick with manufacturer brand flashes. Top of line Nikon and Canon flashes are excellent but very expensive. You can get more than four equivalent power and function Godox TT685 flashes (that also already have a radio receiver built in) for less than one of the brand name flashes and no one but you will know the difference. Moreover as you will at some point want to take the flash off the camera to control direction, quality and colour, a Godox transmitter is under $100 compared to $400 for the same functionality from the manufacturer. Buying a flash does not have to be economically devastating. What you buy is your personal choice, but you don’t get more by spending a lot more in this case. I say this with confidence because I have done it myself.
Where you buy your flash is up to you. Some like a shop where you can go in and talk to someone. This is wonderful if the person you speak to actually knows about flash and a horrorshow if they do not. The other alternative is to buy online from a large photo retailer such as B&H Photo Video. You may pay less, their people are well trained and their support is in my experience very good. Where you go is as said, up to you.
In Summary
In order to develop skills and extend your capabilities as a photographer, having and knowing how to use flash is not optional, it is required. It is less expensive and easier to get into flash than every before and more tools are available now to extend how you use that portable star in your pocket.
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I'm Ross Chevalier, thanks for reading, watching and listening and until next time, peace.
