Wireless flash systems

Separating your camera and flashgun gives you more control over your lighting

The first step to better flash photography is to move your flashgun off the camera. Stick with a pop-up flash or leave your Speedlite mounted on the hotshoe and you’ll restrict your creative options.

The light will look flat and you won’t be able to control where the shadows fall. If all you want to do is smash some light onto a subject, these options are fine – and at least a flashgun with a swivel head will enable you to bounce light from a wall or ceiling for softer results. But being able to put a flashgun where you want? That allows you to shape the light, to control where the shadows fall, to add drama or make the flash light subtly blend in.

Attaching a flash sync cable between the camera’s hotshoe and a flashgun remains one of the least expensive and most straightforward ways of taking the flash off-camera. The problem here is that off-camera hotshoe cords aren’t typically very long; Canon’s coiled OC-E3 cable only stretches a couple of feet, which restricts its usefulness. And besides, trailing cables are a recipe for disaster.

Working with a wireless setup makes a lot of sense. What it lacks in the plug-and-play simplicity of a cable, it more than makes up for in terms of flexibility. You have more freedom over where to place the lights and you won’t run the risk of yanking flashguns and stands over if you move the camera.

Wireless flash is a two-part system featuring ‘master’ and ‘slave’ units. The master unit can be used to control the slave units and trigger them to fire when you take a picture.