Posts Tagged ‘Speedlites’

When considering setting up a home studio for photography, whether it be for portrait, product, or food photography, the most important decision is typically regarding the lighting. Should you go for continuous lighting or strobes? And if going for strobes, should you go for speedlight flashguns or studio strobes?

I've covered the differences between continuous lighting and flash in the article LED Light panel vs. Flash. So in today's article I want to look at the choice between speedlight flashguns and studio strobes. We'll look at the benefits and disadvantages of each system, to help you make the decision as to which will work best for your purposes.

Canon 600EX-RT Speedlite Flash and Elinchrom D-Lite RX 4 Studio Strobe

Rear or second curtain sync flash is a flash mode available on many (though not all) cameras. It is designed for use when you want to combine a slow shutter speed with flash. Unlike the standard flash mode, rear curtain sync flash will fire the flash at the end of the exposure, rather than the start.

In this article we'll take a in-detail look at rear curtain sync flash, looking at how the resulting image differs to standard flash, and why and when you might want to use this flash mode.

Using off-camera flashguns (often called speedlights or speedlites) can get you some great dynamic lighting that would be difficult to create any other way.

Presenting: Abby! by ryantron. on flickr (licensed CC-BY-ND)

There are a number of different ways that you can get your camera to trigger the flashes when you press the shutter. Some are basic and cheap, while others are more advanced and expensive. Let's look at the different options, their benefits and disadvantages:

TTL stands for Through The Lens, and refers to the camera metering the exposure through the lens, rather than using an external light meter. The exposure meter reading is used by the camera when determining the aperture and/or shutter speed in any auto exposure mode.

Virtually all cameras made today use TTL metering. A TTL flash means that the output of the flash can be set automatically by the camera, based on the camera's TTL metering system.

TTL mode on flash speed light