OddThinking

I recently purchased some new flashgun-related camera equipment. I am out of my depth. I need to have mastered it in two weeks for an event, and so I have been practising, with rather mixed results. This is a brain-dump to help me think through the issues.

The Equipment

The Camera

I have an aging Canon EOS 300D, a DSLR. It is due for replacement in January, subject to prices and availability of funds; I am getting excited about that possibility already.

The Old Flashgun

The Soltron AF888COS is a huge top-mounted phallic-symbol of a flashgun which I purchased it (for my old Canon EOS 500 film camera) in 1875 or possibly around 1996, I don’t recall exactly.

When I bought it, this flash was a great improvement from the built-in flash on my camera.

It supports Canon EOS TTL (Through The Lens) metering. This was a far superior method of getting exposure correct than either manually computing the exposure for each shot, or having the flash try to work it out for itself. (I didn’t do the type of pre-planned shots that warranted a light meter.)

However, for reasons I cannot fathom, this technique was apparently completely dependent on a meter detecting light reflecting off film. Once I moved to a digital SLR, I lost this benefit. It took me some time to work out why my flash pictures sucked so badly on a digital SLR.

Unlike the built-in flash, it is mounted relatively high off the camera. Red-eye is almost never a problem.

It swivels to become a bounce-flash. If you hate flash photos, check out what a bounce flash can do in a room with a low ceiling. Flash photographs look bad for two reasons: (i) the light is coming from an unusual angle, and (ii) it is not very diffuse, which both leaves harsh shadows and washes out the facial features. Bouncing the light off the ceiling can improve this immensely. Still not as nice as natural light, though.

It has a four-position zoom function by extending the head of the flash.

A three position switch, meaningfully labelled P1-P2-P3 allows you to select your desired lens aperture on the flash. P1 = F/4. P2 = F/5.6. P3 = F/8. Weird, huh?

The back has a number of sliders that allow you to set the film ISO and zoom position, and then read off aperture required for a given length. This was useful for non-TTL operation. I don’t believe that the sliders are actually used by the flash, and the whole thing is irrelevant with TTL – but I always superstitiously set the ISO correctly when using it with a film camera.

This is actually three flashes in one. An infra-red flash (allegedly; I never noticed it working) performs a pre-flash to prepare the flash and illuminates the subject to help the auto-focus on the camera. The main flash can be bounced off the ceiling, and a smaller flash always points forwards and can be optionally turned on to “fill-in”.

The manual is poorly translated, and rarely offers much insight into the detailed questions.

The Modern Flashgun

I bought the Canon Speedlite 430EX in late 2006.

It features ETTL, which is the digital equivalent of TTL. Yay, my flash pictures look better again.

It swivels to bounce (but oddly, only 270° around).

It auto-zooms (with a motor) based on the len’s focal-length, from 24-105 mm. A fold-out “wide-panel” screen supports even wider angles – down to 14mm.

It can be manually set to go off from full power down to 1/64th power.

It has a infra-red lamp (straying well into the visible red spectrum!) that lights up for auto-focus assistance. If you want candid shots in dark conditions, go for manual focus; the auto-focus is too distracting for the subjects.

It can be made to sync with the second curtain, or as I call it “Fire Juggling mode”. By flashing slightly later during slow shutter speed shots, this makes the trail of light from a fire torch seem to lead toward the torch (like persistence of vision) rather than where the torch is about to be.

Interestingly, it can act as a slave flash (but not a master) when used in conjunction with other, far more expensive ($700+?) Canon Speedlite flashes. That means when one flash goes off, it triggers the other one. I used to believe it was triggered by the light of the first flash, but I was wrong. There is a separate (infra-red?) signal.

It has many other features that I won’t mention, because I don’t want to ramble for longer than the first flash!

The New Gadget

I just purchased a Blazzeo RF Speedlites Trigger transmitter and two receivers, for $56 (delivered).

Each receiver is a bit shorter and squatter than two matchboxes end-to-end, and has a hot-shoe for each flashgun to plug into.

The receivers themselves have a plastic hotshoe mount so they can fit neatly into those two tripods with the flash mounts that I wished I owned. (In the meantime, gaffer tape is my friend!)

The transmitter is smaller still and plugs neatly into the flash hotshoe on the camera. When the shutter is depressed, a radio-frequency signal is sent to the two receivers that trigger the flashes, and POOF! the whole scene is illuminated. It is like magic!

Manual versus Automatic

I am fairly familiar with the controls on my camera. I understand the advantages and disadvantages of various settings. I will happily override the defaults, and I am aware of the situations where I need to do so.

However, I sometimes horrify other camera enthusiasts by being willing to delegate to the automatic settings when I think it will do a sufficient job in the circumstances. If I am taking portraits, I will use Portrait mode. I could do the same manually, but I would rather be able to spend the time worrying about other parts of the shot, than whether my desired aperture is too wide for the exposure. I can and will focus manually when I need to, but auto-focus is the norm for me.

I am generally not taking still-life photos or photos of models willing to pose until I get it right. The shots I take are only available for a short-time.

I know that letting the camera choose settings can result in poor choices. I know that under pressure, I make plenty of mistakes. I know that, no matter how well I can control my camera, people sometimes ruin shots by blinking, people sometimes ruin shots by walking in front of the camera, and bloody jugglers frequently ruin shots by throwing props that come directly between their face and the camera.

So, I play a percentages game. I would rather be able to take several pictures quickly than spend too much time fiddling with settings for each shot.

What have I learnt?

The real reason for this post is not to talk about what I own, or argue my philosophy to discuss but what I have learnt about using the new gadget.

My Google searches revealed plenty of advice about how to plug the wireless triggers together (which is blatantly obvious) but not much about how to take well-exposed photos. I am finding it is challenging my normal technique, so I need to think this through (and practice, practice, practice).

Basic lessons

• Two flashes, at full strength, pointed at one spot, can be very, very bright.
• ETTL doesn’t work across the wireless link, which I knew before I started, but it is requiring me to think about flashes again, in a way I haven’t had to do for over 20 years.
• I tried out a similar set-up a few weeks ago (which is when I realised I wanted a set-up like it!) and the professional photographer who owned it gave me detailed manual configuration instructions (e.g. ISO 400, 1/30 s, F/4). Now I need to learn to figure that out for myself.
• I can’t understand how one setting can possible work for all the shots in a particular flash configuration; it should depends on the focal length of the zoom lens, it should depend where I am standing relative to the subject, it should depend on how close to the flash the subject is standing. How can it work? Is it just that it is “close enough” and relies on a large acceptable light range of the camera sensors? I need to practice to convince myself it works (and work out when it doesn’t).
• I don’t own a light-meter any more, and certainly not one that works with brief flashes, so my technique is take test shots until it looks right. Maybe one day I will be able to estimate it well? Doubt it, though.
• The small amount of theory I picked up from web-sites seems to be: use your aperture to determine the exposure of the foreground (or more strictly, the subject illuminated by the flash), use your shutter-speed to determine the exposure of the background. That makes sense to me.
• Related to the above suggestion, the sites recommended using the Aperture priority (Av) mode of the camera. This probably makes sense for tripod-mounted shots where there is a city in the background. However, I found it useless for the sort of shots I am taking, for two reasons:
  1. the background is also being somewhat illuminated by the flashgun, making the camera’s built-in light meter reading irrelevant, and
  2. when the camera considers my small aperture setting in a dark environment, it decides that it needs to expose the shot for up to 30 seconds, which is too long to be practical for a hand-held shot.
An annoying feature of my camera is that when it decides to take a 30 second shot that I don’t know any way it can be interrupted (short of rebooting it, which takes almost as long).

The standard scenario seems to be I take a candid shot of a group of people, they decide they want to pose for another shot, but my flash battery is running low, it takes too long to re-charge and I take the picture too soon, which means I have to then wait for the camera to reset while the posing subjects look puzzled at me wanting me to hurry up.

Ugh.

• Shutter speed must be longer than (approx) 1/200 s, or the flash goes off too late. Allegedly 1/30s is fine, even when hand-held, because the flash will “freeze” the action. I need to test this theory, because I am dubious that there won’t be blurring of the details.
• Playing with the double flash set-up on people, I was finding that the faces were definitely being washed out. I reduced the exposure significantly, but they were still pale and lacking colour. Then I turned off automatic white-balance, and forced the camera to detect it as a flash shot. I got the most natural-looking shot of the test run.

  (Yes, if I am taking shots in RAW mode, this is irrelevant, but my memory cards are a limited resource, and that comes into play after an evening of photography. Larger, faster cards are on my shopping list for 2009.)

  Am I getting a nice shot because I have a nice flash set-up or merely because I am overriding a poor AWB algorithm? I don’t know yet. More experimentation will be required.

Low MTBF

There are lots of items that may fail. Lots.

• The Speedlite turns itself off after a while to save batteries. This feature can itself be turned off through an arcane ritual of button pressing. I need to be proficient at that.
• I am familiar with shots failing because the flash has failed to re-charge between shots. Now, I have to wait for the slower of the two.
• I cannot check that the flash has recharged before taking the shot, meaning I have to wait even longer, just to be sure.
• There are 5 or 6 sets of batteries that could fail. Each of the transmitters takes AAA. Each of the flashes takes AA. The camera takes rechargeable Canon batteries. The transmitter takes (long life?) button batteries of some description.
• There are 5 power switches that need to be turned on to take a photo – each transmitter, each flashgun and the camera. That’s not to mention the lens cap. They should all be turned off again too.
• Theoretically, I could get out-of-range. It hasn’t been a problem yet; I haven’t measured how far it works, but it was quite a distance.
• When in Av mode, the 30-second exposure is a problem.
• Care must be taken not to let the flash get into frame, or it fills the shot with white. Lens flare may actually be an issue on shots with the flash just out of frame; need to experiment with that.

Shadows

• A direct flashes at an angle to the camera can produce strong shadows. This can produce both quite interesting and quite distracting effects.
• Two direct flashes reduces the impact and provides two sets of shadows, but it is still quite prominent. It is reminiscent of a person on-stage under two spotlights, which is actually quite appropriate for the performance shots that I do.
• It is really obvious when one of the flashes fails to trigger – the shadows are one-sided.
• The strength of the Speedlight can be adjusted to make the two shadows even. The old flashgun always fires at full-strength when it isn’t mounted to the camera.
• Flashes coming from the side are far less impactful to jugglers and other performers who need to see what they were doing. (I made myself a guinea pig here, figuring I should know how it feels.)

I wish I could…

• The receivers and transmitters support 4 channels of signal. One use of multiple channels would be to have many sets of flashes set up around a theatre, and then swap between them as required. Aerial act? Use the high-mounted flashes. Juggling act? Use the side-mounted flashes. etc. What I can’t do with the cheaper set-up I have is turn on individual channels independently. (Turn on Flash 1 but not Flash 2 for this shot.)
• The transmitter supports using an X-Synch cable, which is the old, pre-hotshoe way of triggering a flash. This is good, because it means that you can have one flash mounted on the camera’s hotshoe, and the transmitter floating around at the end of a X-Synch cable, triggering the other flash(es). The advantage there is if you need to resort to the old-school system, you can fallback to it quickly.

  I was about to manufacture my own X-Synch cable because this is an important feature to me, when I realised for the first time, that my DSLR doesn’t have an X-Synch plug. Oh.

  I wonder if the remote trigger for the camera acts in both directions – i.e. can be used to press the shutter button and also can be used as a X-sync cable.

  I also wonder if I made a press-button switch that triggered both the camera and wireless flash trigger at the same time, whether there would be any timing issues.

  As long as I can’t do this, I have a problem with turning around during performances and getting crowd reaction shots. (This is especially fun when performers do gross acts like shoving sharp items up their nose.)

• This isn’t on my “I wish I could” list, so much as my “to try one day” list; having a lackey carrying the flash and pointing it at the subject. Could be quite interesting for shots on the convention floor or even at a party, but requires someone willing to be a lackey. Getting the exposure right is likely to prove difficult.

Usability

• Upon powering up, the receiver automatically triggers the flash once. I keep dazzling myself with this. New mantra: Always turn the receiver on first, the flash on second.
• I believe it is desirable to mount the flashes high up. If they are very high up, (e.g. mounted in the rigging for an aerial performance) they will be impossible to access for tweaks and battery changes.
• My equipment doesn’t fit in my camera bag any more. I have to carry two. Lucky I don’t have those tripods, or I couldn’t carry it all!