Getting Down and Dirty With Off-Camera Flash: Part II

Ok so let’s continue on from Part I then shall we?

In Part I of this article, I sort of gave you a little background on how I began working with off camera flashes and studio strobes and even gave you a little brief rundown on the two different ways to use your speedlights off-camera. Both modes, Manual and TTL, are both terrific and are each beneficial in their own way. This continuation will tackle when and why I choose TTL flash. Hopefully I’ll clear up a few things for you in the process as well.

---

In my business, I really try to market the fact that I can do on-location work. If it is a family portrait shoot then I want them to pick a location that is special to them. It could be property they own, at a beach house of theirs or a favorite park that they frequent. Same thing if they just brought home a newborn baby and want photos taken. I tell them that I can come to them which eases their minds. Each location will be different so I need to be ready for any “gotchas” or possible shooting catastrophes that may happen on-location. This could be anything from horrible light, crummy backgrounds, wind, rain or anything other curve balls that might come my way.

I use my off-camera flashes to really add that extra pop to my images. A flash goes a long way. You could use it in moderation to provide a catch light in your subject’s eyes or you could really crank it up for some dramatic lighting. My style tends to depend on the shoot and the mood I want to convey but I do tend to gravitate towards an image that doesn’t yell out and scream that I used a flash. If the shoot is outdoors then I do everything in my power to dial down the ambient light to really bring out the clouds and then use my flashes to brighten up my subjects.

Without a flash, the only real way to get the subject AND background properly exposed would be to take two photos that have different exposure values. You would also need your camera to be on a tripod and have the subject motionless to try and prevent you from going through Photoshop hell trying to merge both images together. The first would be of your subject properly exposed and the second being one that exposes for the ambient light such as the background or sky so you can see those nice clouds and beautiful colors of the sky at sunset. From there, we would have to go into Photoshop and do all sorts of layer masks and junk to end up with hopefully one nice photo. Don’t forget to say goodbye to the wife and kids for a week while you sit behind the computer editing all these images extensively. You could do all that for each and every image of yours OR you could just take your flash out of your camera bag, dust if off and take amazing images from shot to shot. YOU are now in control. You are not TAKING a picture, you are MAKING one now.

So here is the long and short of how I use my camera and flash to MAKE images:

Camera Settings & Shooting Mode: I have been using Aperture Priority mode on my DSLRs extensively for about 1 year now. I know die-hards are 100% manual 100% of the time but I am 100% about getting the shot. When I started my business in 2006, I had that same manual mentality but when you miss one shot here and another there because you are too busy dialing in an exposure or ‘chimping’. When you are in the business of photography then that gets old real fast… Especially when you have mouths to feed and that shot you just missed could have been a nice print sale. Instead, all I can say for those misses is “Whoops!” Technology has come so far since I started shooting digital that how could you NOT embrace it. It’s like getting a $20k decked out computer setup to play Solitaire you know?

It is much easier for me to set my depth of field with the aperture and riding the Exposure Compensation +/- a stop or so to get the image. There is even an Auto-ISO feature on newer cameras which is a God send but I will save that for another article.

Lastly, I enable the Highlight Warning on my camera so there will be black spots blinking where I spiked my highlights when I look at the LCD. That means the data in those regions is full white RGB(255,255,255) or dangerously close to it. There is no recorded data in these regions so good luck recovering that info. Your camera simply doesn’t know what those colors should be. (the same goes for full black RGB(0,0,0)…) I also shoot 100% in RAW mode, even for candid family moments… RAW has made my workflow a breeze and the RAW converting software used today is par none.

Built-in Flash: On my D700′s it is popped up and ready to rock and roll. If you refer to your Custom Settings (on the D300 and D700 at least) then take a look at e3 (“Flash Cntrl for Built-in Flash”) to give it an actual purpose. For that e3 setting, I put my built-in flash into Commander Mode and then right click over to the advanced settings. It is here that I disable the Built-in flash by going from TTL to “–” Both group A and group B are set to TTL.

*Take a look at this video to see how I assign my FUNC button to pop up this screen with one click.

Anywho, the beauty of this is that this one menu screen on my camera allows me dial in the power of all my off-camera flashes FROM WHERE I AM. That means I can keep shooting and keep the flow of the going strong… No more having to run around to each flash to change settings. Convenient huh?

With the built in flash, the only ‘gotchas’ that you may encounter might be:
1.) In that e3 custom setting you need to actually to hit the OK button on the camera to accept your settings. That has gotten me a couple times too many. The beauty of the one click menu pop-up is that you can check to be sure it took the new settings.
2.) You need to have all of your speedlight’s little TTL sensors facing your camera so it can pick up the signals that your built-in flash is sending their way.
3.) You need them to all be within a direct line of sight so you cannot easily put strobes behind your subject. I haven’t had luck when my flash was behind me either so keep your flash in front of you and zoom in with your lens.
4.) You may need to be using High-Speed Sync (or FP Sync – FP stands for Focal Plane BTW) to get the shutter speed faster than its sync speed in order to dial down the ambient. Keep an eye on your shutter speed and make sure that it doesn’t go faster than 1/200″ or 1/250″. It never hurts to go to your custom setting e1 on your D300 or D700 and make sure that you have 1/250″ or 1/320″ (Auto FP) enabled. The Auto FP will go past the 1/250″ or 1/320″ and allow you to kill the light via shutter speeds of 1/500″, 1/1000″ or faster up to 1/8000″ if need be. Good luck pulling that off using a Manual Flash!

Be aware of where you flash is at all times! Take a look at these two images:

I had my flash in TTL mode camera left. I am a lefty so this is where my one light goes almost all the time. However, it didn’t work here. Do you see the hard shadow on the rightmost subject? The flash is partially blocked and there is a quite an unpleasant shadow on her face.

I noticed that shadow so I repositioned my flash camera right and provided more of a direct flash across all four subjects. Notice how that shadow on her face is gone.

Off-Camera Flash Setup:
I use Nikon SB-800 and 900 speedlights. The SB-900s are the newest kids on the block and they have made the off-camera flash setup much easier. The 900 is just a simple dial click to Remote/ Slave mode unlike having to hold down a button and go through a chunky interface like on the 800,… The 900 is easy breezy.
Next, I use the lightweight Bogen/Manfrotto 7.5 ft. Pro Stand (about $55). It is a little TOO light and I may invest in some sandbags because my camera case isn’t heavy enough and I easily get a man down when the wind is too high. Being in Buffalo means that happens a lot. Thank you lake effect! I also have the Bogen/Manfrotto 026 Swivel umbrella adapter (about $30) as a connection from the stand to my flash and umbrella… I use the included Nikon foot to mount my flash on but you could also get a cold shoe adapter that fits the 1/4″-20 thread screw. Lastly, I need light modifiers. I have two but find myself using the softbox a whole bunch. I have the square Westcott 28″ Apollo Mono softbox (about $120) which is made to directly fit over a speedlight AND it collapses like an umbrella does. That is very convenient because your flash goes directly inside and you do not have to go through the hassle of tearing down a soft box like how you may do so with other ones. PLUS, it fits on my light stand via the umbrella adapter. Those also come in other larger sizes by the way. Finally, my umbrella is a whopping 60″ Photoflex convertible umbrella (about $40). This one is nice because it is great for lighting large groups and you can take off the black backing for a shoot through umbrella and for other lighting purposes.

That is what I use and it all fits within my little cheapo light stand case…

My flash was in TTL mode camera left to my subject and was used to only add a catch light in the subject’s eyes.

Remember that whole line of sight issue I mentioned about before with TTL? You would think that the communication between the commander and slave would be compromised with the flash being completely enclosed inside the Westcott softbox but it isn’t! At least, I haven’t noticed it… That is absolutely amazing to me and makes me feel real confident that I can use Nikon’s CLS system.

---

THE SHOOT:
Now you know what I use, why I use it and basically how I have it set up. Now let’s picture a senior portrait shoot for example. One subject, outside in a field, sunset. Got it? Here is how I go about, step by step, to get my lighting perfect. Mind you, this is with only one flash. You can add as many flashes as your little heart desires.
1.) Check settings… Aperture Priority mode, ISO starting at 200, Pop up flash up in Commander Mode, SB-900 Flash sitting off-camera on light stand with softbox and the flash is in TTL Remote mode.

2.) I lock the pop-up flash down for a second and take a test shot at 0.0 EV with my desired aperture of like f/4 (exposure value – AKA using camera’s exposure compensation) where I solely care about dialing in the ambient light. Period! I do not go past f/5.6 with one speedlight because it requires just too much juice. I mentioned that this shoot is being done at sunset, that gives you the best colors par none (unless you like getting your client’s out bright and early for a sunset shoot). I will get a properly exposed sky and ambient and my subject should be a silhouette. Now I dial down that EV to maybe -1.0 or -1.7 EV so that the ambient light is even darker… This brings out the colors in the sky more and makes those clouds look really cool! This is a personal preference for how dark you may want to go. Just keep in mind that you want to darken the ambient so that yes colors pop but also so that it doesn’t take away from your subject. You want depth and dimension and you want your subject to pop! Keep that in mind.

3.) I plop my light stand, flash and umbrella setup about arms length from my subject and so it is out of the composition. The light stand sits on the right or left side of my body so it is off on a 45 from my subject. This gives a nice gradient from highlights to shadows on my subject’s face for a sense of dimension. Remember, you need to convey a three dimensional object on a two dimensional medium and you do that through the use of highlights and shadows. Note: I usually enable the Beep on my flashes which chirp when they have fired and when power has been fully recycled.

4.) I then pop up my built-in speedlight and take another test shot. This time, the flash will go off because my built-in flash is now communicating with the remote flash… Note, your built in flash will actually emit a flash… If your Commander Mode is set to “–” then that is just the pre-flash that emits milliseconds before the exposure it taken to simply tell (or command) your remote flashes so they know what they should be set to and so on…

5.) HERE IS THE TRICKY PART! You just need to know this… Remember in step 2 when I said that I use the Exposure Compensation to dial down the ambient light a stop or so? Well, that step down affects EVERYTHING! That means my TTL flashes are also firing at -1.3 or -1.7 EV… Look at the back of your camera at the image. If your subject looks well lit, no blinking highlights, good catch light in the eyes, and a sense of dimension then perfect. You are locked and loaded so shoot away. Otherwise, if your subject is either too dark or too light then you will need to use that custom setting e3 to change that flashes exposure compensation accordingly. If your camera is dialed to -1.3 EV for example, then dialing in +1.3 EV for your flash would completely cancel out the flash so it would effectively be firing at 0.0 EV compensation…

Got it?

So if your subject is too bright AND you have that-1.3 EV set in your camera for the ambient then you should probably go into e3′s menu and dial down your TTL flash to like -2 EV and go from there. That would effectively dial down only your flash 2 stops while keeping your camera’s ambient light at -1.3 EV… If your subject is too dark, then dialing in +2 EV in your TTL flash would effectively give you only +0.7 EV for your flash since it has to first negate the -1/3 EV that the camera is overriding it.

Remember, there is the FLASH exposure compensation and the CAMERA’s exposure compensation. If you are working with the CAMERA’s Exposure Compensation then that will win every time. It dials down the overall exposure and that means your flash as well! You need to use your FLASH Exposure Compensation to up the flash power. Don’t think “Oh, I dialed my camera EC -2 so I need my flash to be +2 to compensate for that loss.” A little goes a long way and maybe +1 flash EC will do the trick. When in doubt, look at your LCD screen and judge from there.

Aperture Priority is the camera looking at the scene and giving you an appropriate shutter speed for the Aperture and ISO that you tell it… Exposure Compensation for the camera only tells the camera that you want that reading to be a little darker (with – EVs) or brighter (with + EVs) than what the camera is telling you. This overrides the settings. TTL is basically like Program Mode to cameras.. It is in cahoots with the camera and both the camera and flash chatter away with one another to give you a proper flash output based upon all your settings. The camera is still the boss and the camera tells the flash to take whatever it though was a good output and dial it down the same amount that the camera is set for…

All in all, it may be likely that you could have -1.7 EV for your camera’s exposure compensation and +0.7 EV for your flash compensation…

Make sense? If so then comment below and say how it is helpful, if not then comment below and let me know what is still racking your brain and I will update this article accordingly…

Part III will discuss working with Manual Flash! Check you then!

---

ADDENDUM: I received a great question from Brian Sullivan and think it might help out a lot of readers.
Here is his question:
“Michael,
I just re-read this article and I have a couple questions. In the first photo of the four girls sitting on the ground, did you use your softbox on this image? The reason I ask is that when I try this I often get light “Splashing” on the ground. I don’t see this in your image and I like the fact that the girls are well lit but it’s not obvious that flash was used.
Secondly, I see that you like to do your portraits near sunset for better lighting. Obviously our equipment has limitations and I am wondering how you would handle a portrait setting in the middle of a sunny day when you don’t have control of when the portraits are done? (ie..weddings) It seems like our speedlights may not cut it if our camera settings are at 1/250 @ F/11 or so to kill the ambient…
Just curious.”
- Brian Sullivan

ANSWER:
To answer your first question, yes my 24×24″ softbox was used… You have an issue that can easily be fixed. All you need to do is start “fanning” your softbox. Fanning is basically where you direct the softbox away from your subject. It would seem obvious that you need to point the softbox directly at your subject but light does splash all around them. If they are sitting (like how my subjects are) then you need to lift the softbox higher than them so the “splashing” portion of light coming from the softbox is what is illuminating them. The center of the softbox and above just goes off into the void and doesn’t hit anything so it isn’t noticeable. You can also fan your softbox so that it pivots left or right on the stand and hits your subject for a much softer light source.

I’ll make an article on that sometime soon to better reflect what I mean. I think it would make for a great article BTW so thanks for the suggestion ;)

Now for your second question, high speed sync (aka fp sync for Nikon users) is how you can dial down the sunlight… Let’s take the sunny 16 example to give ourselves an imaginary ideal camera setting for our natural light exposure on our subjects… It may be way off from what we would see in the real world but let’s just use it for argument’s sake.
ISO 100
Shutter Speed = 1/100″
Aperture = f/16

Now, the effect of a strobe or flash is dependent on four things. (1) the flash power-more power=more effect it has on the image (2) flash to subject distance=closer for more effect (3) ISO=higher ISO means the sensor is more sensitive to light (4) Aperture=lower the aperture the more the effect. Notice how I never mentioned shutter speed! That is because the flash could care less about it (aside from the sync speed in some instances).

So if I am photographing those four girls for example… Now let’s critique the sunny 16 rule for that portrait. It would give me a real good depth of field with f/16 so they will all be sharp in the picture. What isn’t cool is that at f/16, my lonely speedlight will NOT register in the picture simply because there isn’t enough power. To shoot with a flash I would need to bring a more powerful studio strobe and battery pack. That costs money. A lot of money. ISO 100 is good for a nice crisp file. Nikon’s lowest ISO is 200 so ISO 100 appears as LO-1 and is basically a simulated ISO and it isn’t native so the files aren’t as good as their native ISO 200. THAT would make the sunny 16 rule a tad different since we have an additional stop of light coming in courtesy of that ISO 200. We could kill that off by going to 1/200″ shutter speed however which also follows the sunny 16 rule since we need the reciprocal of the ISO to be our shutter speed. Canon has native ISO 100 but can go down to 50 as their LO-1 BTW. Finally, the shutter speed is good and all and should give us a fast enough exposure to freeze any motion…

So the biggest issue with that sunny 16 exposure is that darned aperture. If I used High Speed sync, I could dial that f/16 down to like f/5.6 and it would give me three additional stops of light to come into the exposure. I can totally get f/5.6 with my speedlight and have it show up in the image without blowing it up so no need for studio strobes anymore. The only thing to be careful of is the depth of field. You want everyone in focus so make sure they are on the same focal plane for the sharpest image. It wouldn’t be good to shoot a couple rows of people at f/5.6… From there, I would have ISO 200, f/5.6 and then the shutter speed is TBD… By going to a faster and faster shutter speed we kill off the ambient light… So from 1/200″ on my Nikon, we can go to about 1/1000″ and REALLY dial down that ambient light… Do this to taste and make sure it darkens the sky enough so you can see clouds without “blinkies” on the back of your camera. Once that is set then you are ready to rock and roll. Granted, that is all done with Manual Camera mode since I was controlling each camera setting until it was correct and made the image look good.

I would just throw my camera into Aperture priority mode with my ISO at 200 or 400 and my aperture set to f/5.6 or even f/8 (using the aperture to still let the flash in the picture so maybe ISO 400 or ISO 800 at f/8) and dial down the EC by -1.3 stops for starters. I would not have my flash turned on and I would just take a test shot for the ambient. If I needed it darker then I would drop the EC more to like -1.7 or -2… Adjust that to taste… So my shutter speed would always be calculated for me so that everything is 1 or 2 stops darker than what it is reading… That is my ambient light. Next, I flip up my pop-up flash as a commander and turn on my flash and put it as a slave and in TTL mode. I dial my flash exposure compensation to maybe -1.0 EC and then take a test shot with my subjects in the picture. I look at the screen at the image preview and adjust my flash as needed from there. If it is still too dark then I dial my flash’s EC to like -0.3 or in the pluses if need be…

Related Posts:

• Getting Down and Dirty With Off-Camera Flash: Part I
• Essential Equipment for Off-Camera Flash Photography
• Attn: Nikon CLS Users D700 Trick for you Off Camera Flashers.
• PPA Super Monday Off-Camera Flash Techniques Curriculum
• I’m A PPA Super Monday instructor
• Get Cheap With Your Flashes

---

Help Me Help You

The inLIGHTin Workshop helps support my growing family.

If you find this as helpful as a book you might have had to buy or a workshop you may have had to take, feel free to help me continue helping everyone.

If you've attended a workshop, purchased some of my products or helped otherwise, then thank you! It's great people like you who allow me to keep adding to this site.

If you haven't helped yet, please do, and consider helping me with a small donation.

The biggest help is to use these links to B&H Photo Video, Adorama, Abe's of Main or Amazon when you get your goodies. It costs you nothing and is a huge help to me. These places have the best prices and service, which is why I've used them right from the start and I personally recommend all of them!
Thanks again to all for your continuing support! ~Michael