The Off Camera Flash Tutorial Options

[Sam Muller]

I’m going to assume that everyone reading this knows how to use a flash, because if you don’t, you shouldn’t be worrying about how to use 2 off camera flashes. The reason for using off camera flashes is to get better, or less “flat” lighting. It’ll make your photo more interesting, and it will look much nicer, with all the shadows and highlights, than on camera flash looks. For starters, the simplest way to trigger 2 off camera flashes is by radio slaves. The most common ones are LPA Design’s Pocketwizard system. Quantum also makes radio slaves, but if you want to learn more about that, there are reviews in this section. Another, more complicated way to trigger 2 flashes is by using sync cords. I don’t know much about this, so I’m not going to try and explain it.

Flash placement is the most difficult thing to learn, because for every situation it’s different. I’m going to draw some very awesome illustrations for examples of placements (this is basically the same as skateboardphotography.com’s tutorial, but hell, I learned a shit load from that.)

Placement One:
I used this for my photos on the bank at LA High. Some people seemed to like the photos so I guess I’ll explain what I did.




Gear details: Sunpak 383, Nikon SB-25, Nikon D2H, Nikkor 50mm f1.4, Pocketwizards

The rimlight was 8 feet away, so I used the equation Aperture = Guide Number of the flash / Distance.
The guide number on that flash is 118, so I did Aperture = 118/8, which is 14.75, and the closest fstop on the flash to that is 16, so I chose 16.

My second flash sucks, so I cannot choose the aperture, so I just had to guess the distance, and I got lucky. But, you would use the same equation to get the fstop of that flash. My best advice would be to write that equation down and keep it in your bag.

For the camera part, I exposed the shot correctly, and then underexposed the shot by 2 stops. For this one, the ambient was at f4 at 1/250, so I went to f8 at 1/250.

Placement Two:
This was my placement for my photo at Fairfax high, it’s fairly similar to the one I used at LA High, but I’ll draw a picture anyways.




Gear details: Sunpak 383, Nikon SB-25, Nikon D2H, Nikkor 50mm f1.4, Pocketwizards

The rimlight was 6 feet away, so, again, 118/6 = 20…closest fstop is f22, so I chose f22. My other flash, as previously stated, sucks, so I just had to guess the distance.

As for my camera, I only underexposed the ambient light by 1 stop, so the ambient was f4 at 1/250, so I set my camera to f5.6 at 1/250.

Side Note: every flash has a guide number, that describes the power of the flash.
The sunpak 555 has a guide number of 150 at iso 100, the 544 is 140 at iso 100, the vivitar 285 has a guide number of 120 at iso 100.


I hope this has helped, and if you guys have any questions, just ask me, and I’ll answer them as best I can.

Also, feel free to make additions.