THE SET-UP FAST FLASH ON LOCATION 02 04 01 03 05 02 06

How to get your Canon camera and Speedlite talking for some speedy off-camera flash shots

01 CANON SPEEDLITE

We’ve used Canon’s new EL-1 Speedlite and set it to High-speed Sync (HSS) mode (see inset photo below). But any flashgun with HSS mode will do – nearly all Speedlites have this nowadays. We also chose to set the flash power manually, and manually set the zoom to 105mm.

02 FLASH TRIGGERS

We triggered our Speedlite wirelessly from the on-camera transmitter, with the receiver attached to the base of the Speedlite. If your camera has a pop-up flash, or you have two flashguns, you can use these set to Master to wirelessly fire your ‘slave’ flash unit instead.

03 SUBJECT & PROPS

We bribed our puppy to pose next an oversized tennis ball as a prop to give the impression we’d shrunk the dog! If you don’t have a big tennis ball or similar, you could always get creative and use a normal tennis ball, then try out your editing skills to merge images with layers in Photoshop.

04 LIGHT STAND

An affordable light stand is useful to act as an extra pair of hands to hold and position the Speedlite. An adjustable head helps to angle the Speedlite as necessary. You could also use a tripod, but you’d need to use your Speedlite’s shoe on the bottom to then screw it on to the tripod base plate.

05 OUTDOOR LOCATION

We simply shot in our back garden on the (artificial) grass to fit in with the tennis theme of the shot. We also positioned ourselves so the background foliage behind was in shadow, therefore with our fast shutter speed, it was rendered very dark so our dog stood out when lit by flash.

06 CANON CAMERA & LENS

We’ve used our trusty full-frame Canon EOS 5D Mark III and EF 24-70mm f/2.8l standard zoom lens. But any EOS camera and kit lens will work just fine, as it’s all about the fast flash settings for getting sharp action shots. We kneeled down for a better dog’s-eye-view composition.