-CA MERA FLA SH

Off-camera flash – also referred to as strobism – is simply the ability to remove a flashgun from a fixed attachment on the camera body, and fire it from a position away from the camera. By freeing the flashgun from the camera, you open up a lot of creative possibilities. To explain all of them would require a lot of pages in this issue – but in a nutshell, offcamera flash allows you to modify, through direction and distance, the way the light affects your subject.

Using flash light to supplement or boost ambient light when you’re out on location can help you take more effective photos. It is particularly popular for portraiture, allowing you to direct light more effectively and creatively over the face, as well as capturing more detail within a scene. To start in off-camera flash, you need a camera, a separate flashgun, and a way of triggering the flashgun remotely. Some cameras have built-in wireless capabilities – but in most cases, either a cable or, even better, a separate flash trigger and receiver are used to communicate with and fire your flash light.

There are many different types of flash triggers available – from cheap and cheerful ones to more expensive and complex versions, which also offer greater control over one flashgun or a whole group of separate flashguns. The precise camera settings vary from situation to situation. The only real way to start to understand how it works is to experiment, and look at the difference as you adjust power settings, angle of flash and distance from your subject. You can start with simple still-life set-ups, before moving onto portraits and other more challenging subjects later. I’ve just taken the two shots as a very basic example of what off-camera flash can do. The left-hand shot is a perfectly exposed image of the subject, but with the flash attached to the camera’s hotshoe. This means that the angle of light is head-on to the fossil. While the flash has illuminated