Understanding and Balancing Flash

I just wanted to drop a quick entry today highlighting what I think is an awesome little video from the guys at studiolighting.net, explaining how your shutter, flash, and balancing the flash with ambient light really works. It's a great start to understanding how flash works. Check it out HERE!

In addition, you can also check out one of my favorite blogs, strobist, for some great indepth articles and discussions on off camera flash and how it can be used to create some awesome images.

Now, if your using an ETTL (Canon or Nikons through the lens metering) flash and a white diffuser (lightsphere, omnibounce, or walmart alcohal bottle & scotch tape) you can follow these pretty easy instruction to make beautiful portraits. Keep in mind, these setting are a guide and should not be considered the solution for all situations. Generally speaking though, they are pretty helpful. While using the flash and diffusers, shoot on cloudy white balance, to ensure you get nice warm skintones.

Check out the Gary Fong's suggested settings HERE.

Finally, there is a really cool style of night photography that involves keeping the iso really low, shooting in manual, setting the shutter way down, switching to rear curtain sync, and getting some really cool night images and even moving the camera after you press the shutter to add to the effect. Check out digitalfrog's explaination
HERE!

Hope this information helps make you a better photographer and with all new things, practice will def help improve your skills.

-m