Flashphobia - I Learned a New Word
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For a long time I have been aware that for some folks, the idea of using a flash is anathema. Honestly I have yet to understand why flash is so disliked by such folks, but I have recently learned a new word, flashphobia. This is saddening to me, being such a flash fan, so I want to understand what it is and how to help folks manage this fear and learn to embrace their flash.
Bad Experiences
It’s well known that many folks are uncomfortable with flash because they have had bad experiences with flash. This is usually due to an image that the person feels was ruined by flash. I can understand this. For many years cameras came with a pop up flash and while many praised the makers for the inclusion, it generally caused a lot more problems than it ever solved, and as an educator I have advocated since day one to use some gaffer tape to prevent the darn thing from ever engaging.
Why? Because on its best day it looks like someone hit the subject with a blinding spotlight, constricting pupils to pinpricks or evoking the Demon in all subjects, particularly your friendly pet. Software makers responded with Red Eye Reduction, which if anything was ever an indictment of flash, that is it.
In addition to stark, harsh, flat and preternaturally ugly light, it also delivered the benefit of limited range and a guarantee of an ugly shadow if the background was near the subject. It was crap then, and never improved.
Some vendors made it worse by promising that you could control off camera flashes using the popup as a controller. This was at best irregular in functionality, producing grey hair, baldness, migraines and gastric ulcers. It was a crap system then and still is, but fortunately radio wireless is now the standard for off camera flash and if you are not doing that, well you need to get with that program yesterday.
On Camera Flash Looks Like Dung
It really does, and the only time it is passing acceptable is as fill with flash exposure compensation set to at least -1.5 stops, more is better. Many folks were convinced that a larger more powerful flash on the camera was better than a pop up. These fine people were told lies, falsehoods and disinformation and the purveyors of such tripe should be tarred and feathered. The solution is simple. Don’t do it.
Oh but wait! It gets better if you just put a globe or a big reflector or some kind of light shaper on the flash that is mounted on the camera. Nay nay nay!. It just makes for a slightly larger source that is still flat, unforgiving that now unbalances the camera and possibly becomes a sail.
The best answer to on camera flash issues is don’t do it. For the third time, NO.
Hate Moving to Fear
Once we appreciate the criticality of getting the flash off the camera, our tendency to hate flash will begin to wane, but fear of flash now starts to creep in. Or roll in, like a tsunami, depending on the person.
Why is this so? Effectively, it is because the flash is no longer on the camera. So it must be placed elsewhere. Any decent flash comes with a tiny table stand that holds the flash, and every stand I have seen in the last decade has a ¼-20 mounting hole. So you can mount it to a tripod, a light stand, a platypod, one of these bendy things that pretends to be a tripod, a spike, a clamp, yada yada yada. Yes it is more work than on camera, but place it where you want the light to come from (three measurements for light are quality, colour and direction - placement defines direction),
Most decent flashes today come with built in radio receivers, but manufacturers tend to act like serial sodomists in what they charge for their radio transmitters. So don’t support them. Just buy one transmitter and one receiver for every flash that you have from Godox and be done with it. You could get one transmitter and four receivers for less than the cost of any camera makers’ transmitter alone.
The fear also comes from instructors, web ne’er-do-wells and the stupid who insist that flash must be handled manually, which is as Colonel Sherman Potter said on MASH, is horse-pucky. Manual works fine when you are comfortable and a pain when not so instead use the flash in the proven and accurate TTL mode. Set the transmitter to TTL, the flash to TTL and the receiver to TTL and you are good to go.
TTL flash metering uses EXACTLY the same rules as TTL ambient light metering. It stops the exposure when the meter thinks it’s good. Our camera meters are so good now, that it will be perfectly exposed 95% of the time. If it is not working more than 5% of the time on the first shot, the problem is not the camera, the radios or the flash. The human interface has made an error.
Now what do we do if we think that the TTL flash is too bright? We use flash exposure compensation, most often on the transmitter which is mounted on the camera to reduce the flash duration. A bit too bright, dial -⅔ or along those lines. A lot too bring, dial -2. Not bright enough? Dial the other way, +⅔ and higher as you like. Adjust the flash exposure compensation until you get what appeals to you. If this sounds EXACTLY the same as using ambient flash compensation, that is because it is true.
But I Cannot See What It Will Look Like BEFORE I Make the Image
True. Get over it. Back in the days of film, that was true for EVERY shot. Now you see the outcome in low resolution IMMEDIATELY on the LCD on your camera. No waiting for hours, days or weeks, instead you have immediate gratification and if you aren’t happy, you are in a perfect opportunity to adjust and make it satisfying. It’s wrong to think that you can get from ambient what you get from flash, or that what you get from continuous light is better than flash. Not so. Nothing brings as much power in such a small package. Nothing is as easy to position for direction control. Nothing else provides the number of light shaping options and nothing else makes it as simple as to alter the colour of the light to suit your goals.
Mastering Flashphobia (aka beating it into submission)
It is said that the key to mastering any fear is to face it, and to face flash phobia, you have to choose to start working with, not in spite of, your flash. This means taking it with you and using it as much as possible, getting the ambient shot and then once you have it, take five more minutes and make the shot with the flash. Just as you once learned how to compose an image and how to choose a shutter speed, or how to decide on depth of field, becoming a flash pro is a series of steps. It’s not hard, you cannot kill someone with the flash. You cannot hurt yourself. The worst thing that can happen is that the image doesn’t come out exactly the way you want on the first shot. Just like any other kind of photography. As the great philosopher Carlin once said, “you got to wanna”. You can beat flashphobia if you want to.
Wrap Up
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