Basic Flash

Understanding how and when to introduce a flash to your photography is the first step for many into professional level shooting.

So what’s a flash?

Basically a flash is an artificial light source that can be attached to your camera (direct flash) or used remotely (off-camera flash) and adds light to an image where more light is required.

Pretty simple really.

A direct flash is a flash directly attached to the camera. The light from this setup will be harsh and contrasty but in many situations absolutely essential when there isn’t enough natural or available light.

When it comes to street photography there are street photographers who use small on-camera flash for every shot. While very aggressive and intrusive the addition of a flash makes for very compelling images.

When it comes to street photography and flash it’s important to know that most cameras have what’s called a flash sync speed. What that means is your camera has a limit to how fast the shutter speed can be set when using a flash unit. These speeds vary from camera to camera but if you accidentally set too high a shutter speed the shutter curtain will not have sufficient time to fully open and part of your image will be rendered as just a black bar.

Once you set your flash sync speed then exposure is determined by your film speed or digital sensor ISO in combination with your aperture setting. For street photography using a small built-in flash and shooting inside of distances no more than 10 feet or so the aperture can be set to f/11 or f/16. This negates the need to focus as the depth of field will be so great as to render everything in the frame in focus and quite sharp looking.

You can use flash on just about any camera. Even the most basic point-and-shoot generally comes with a pop-up flash or has a “hot shoe” flash shoe connection. Larger cameras often include a flash terminal for firing a flash unit that’s not directly attached to the camera.

I’ve always said you can’t buy too big of a flash as you can always turn down the amount of power. But big flashes are cumbersome and awkward to handle so sometimes very small flash units with very limited flash range will work out best especially when shooting street photography.

External flashes can be mounted next to the camera on a flash grip holder among other devices. These flash brackets move the actual flash off axis from the lens thus reducing the chances of red eye (Red eye happens when light from the on-camera flash reflects directly off the back of the subject’s eyes turning the resulting image into a photo with the subject’s eyes appearing blood red. Not a good look.)

External flashes can also be triggered by cables to the flash terminal on many cameras or fired remotely through a mini shot-shoe transmitter and mini built-in receiver in the flash.

In a similar manner multiple flashes can be slaved together to fire remotely with a main light and a secondary light either set farther away or fired at reduced output to create a studio look just about any where.

We will talk about flash modifiers next.