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Here's how we shoot off-camera flash.

We use this three-step process and we

learned this a few years ago from the

strobist.com and it really helped simplify our

thinking and separate our ambient exposure from our

flash exposure, which I'm going to get into

in far more detail in a few minutes.

For now, let me define those two terms

for you just so you don't get too

confused.

When we refer to your ambient exposure, we're

talking about the exposure you would have in

your photograph if you were to eliminate the

flash, okay?

The flash exposure is the part of the

photograph that is illuminated by the flash.

Okay, pretty self-explanatory.

Keep those definitions in mind though as we

go through this module.

Now, here's how we do it.

99% of our flash photographs are taken

using this three-step process.

Number one, get a full ambient exposure.

Dial in your settings for a properly exposed

photograph using just the ambient light, okay?

Number two, go dark.

Drop that exposure down to create some drama.

Number three, add flash.

Bring our subject back up to full desired

exposure by adding the flash, okay?

Three simple steps.

Now, let's look at each of those steps

in a little bit more detail.

To get a properly exposed ambient light photograph,

I'm sure you guys all know this, but

I'm going to review very quickly.

We adjust three things.

You guys all know about the exposure triangle,

right?

We adjust our shutter speed and our aperture

and our ISO, and all of those three

things combined control our ambient exposure.

Typically, when we're shooting natural light, the order

in which we decide our settings is ISO,

aperture, and shutter speed.

However, when we're shooting off-camera flash, the

order of operations changes a little.

We still choose our ISO first, then our

shutter speed, then our aperture, and then flash

output power last.

The aperture and the shutter speed flips in

terms of our order of operations.

Now, just to make things simpler for learning,

let's take ISO completely out of the equation

for now.

Let's say we've already made our decision with

regards to ISO, and we know if we're

shooting flash, we can choose a lower ISO.

All we have left to decide is shutter

speed and f-stop.

With natural light, we choose our aperture first,

and we already talked about this, right?

This is a priority for us because it's

our storytelling device, but when we're shooting off

-camera flash, we choose our shutter speed first.

Why?

Three scary words, flash, sync, speed.

Now, I'm not going to get into the

technical bullshit of this because, quite frankly, I

don't know.

But all I really need to know, and

all you need to know, is that your

camera and flash have a top sync speed.

It's a maximum shutter speed that will allow

your photo to register the flash, and it's

probably between 1 250th or 1 200th of

a second, and that's all you really need

to know.

And if you forget this, that's when you

get those weird photographs where they're half dark

and half bright.

Okay, we're not going to get into high

speed sync here because it's something Lani and

I very rarely use, and it definitely impacts

the power outage of our flash.

So to keep things simple, we're not going

to get into that here.

Okay, so 1 200th of a second or

below.

Anything faster and it won't work.

Once you've got your shutter speed in that

range, that's when you dial your aperture up

or down until you've found the exposure that

you're looking for, for your ambient light.

And remember, we haven't even done anything with

our flash yet.

We haven't even turned the flash on.

Basically, all we've done is taken a properly

exposed natural light photograph with the shutter speed

at or below 1 200th of a second.

And every time you take a flashlight photograph,

whether you think of it like this or

not, you're essentially making two exposures simultaneously.

You're making an exposure of the ambient light

as per any other natural light photograph, and

you're making an exposure of the flash's light

at the same time.

This is actually what's happening.

Think of it as two overlaid exposures.

Okay, a slow shutter speed ambient exposure, slower

than or equal to 1 200th of a

second, mixed with a frozen instantaneous flash exposure.

So you have two exposures to consider in

every flashlight picture.

The ambient exposure and the flash exposure.

But both of these exposures are made at

once.

Both light sources contribute to the overall exposure

of the final photograph.

The ambient exposure is controlled by the f

-stop and the shutter speed.

Your flash exposure, on the other hand, is

only affected by your f-stop and the

flash setting.

Because the light from your flash is instantaneous,

it doesn't give a rat's ass about what

your shutter speed is, as long as you're

below that 1 200th of a second.

An extreme example of this would be photographing

at night, you know, in making a star

shot perhaps.

You know, we could leave that shutter open

for one second, or we could leave that

shutter open for 30 seconds.

And that's going to drastically affect the ambient

exposure of the photograph, whether or not those

stars burn in.

But it's not going to affect the flash

exposure in the photograph one bit.

Okay, so let's go through those three steps

one more time.

So you start with your ambient exposure.

I set my shutter speed to 1 200th

of a second or slower.

Then, if I want to darken the scene,

I'm going to f-up my aperture.

F4, F7, and basically it's just trial and

error until it looks the way that I

want to get that underlying ambient exposure.

How dark you go, how much drama you

add, that's up to you.

Liani and I are very dramatic people, so

we like to add lots of drama.

Okay, so that's step one and two.

Now I've got the starting point for my

final lit image.

Now I just have to bring in the

flash.

When I do that, no part of the

image will get any darker.

So we'll end up with this drama plus

our flashed subject.

Adding the right amount of flash exposure is

very simple and straightforward, at least the way

that we approach it.

Why?

Because we work with our flash in manual

mode and it's predictable and it's repeatable.

It's one less variable for us to screw

up and one less variable that the camera

has to make decisions for us.

So we bring in our flash on manual

power, usually with a grid or a warming

gel so that light doesn't spill everywhere, and

we position it off to the side in

a way that's going to cast some interesting

light, turn on the flash, we turn on

our transmitter, we make sure they're linked, which

is sometimes the hardest part, we pop a

test frame, and then we eyeball it.

Is the flash too bright?

Then we turn the flash power down.

If the flash is not bright enough, we

turn it up, or alternatively we can move

the flash closer or further away.

Now we could just adjust the f-stop.

The f-stop will also affect the flash

power, but it will also affect our ambient

exposure, right?

So we don't want to fiddle with that.

We ran into problems at the beginning of

our career when we didn't think of those

two exposures as separate.

When we were trying to adjust our flash

exposure at the same time as trying to

adjust our ambient exposure, and when we did

that, things just got really, really confusing.

So once we boiled it down to this

three-step process, and we separated our ambient

exposure from our flash exposure, things got a

lot more simple.

Okay, let's look at a photo from a

recent portrait session that demonstrates the slow ambient

exposure combined with the flash exposure really well.

So as you can see in this photo,

the top half of the frame is a

silhouette, and the bottom half of the frame

is lit by a flash.

So that top half of the frame represents

our slow ambient exposure, right?

We're exposed for the sky.

We've got our shutter speed at 1 200th

of a second, and our f-stop is

probably up around f7 in order to be

properly exposed for that sky, right?

Before we added the flash to this photograph,

that bottom half of the photo was completely

dark, right?

As soon as we added the flash in,

it gave us that pop of light in

the bottom of the frame, and that is

the instantaneous flash exposure combined with the slow

shutter speed exposure up top.

Okay, one more real life example.

This was during a wedding in the UK,

and we noticed that the cake was right

by the window, and that it was blue

hour outside.

So an incredible opportunity.

So Lani decided to take a little bit

of a risk and take this cake cutting

shot from outside the venue.

We had an assistant with us, his name

is John Mould, and he was holding Lani's

flash, and I was taking more typical safe

cake cutting shots.

So as Lani was heading out the door

to take this shot, first thing he did

to put his shutter speed at 1 200th

of a second or less.

He also might have bumped down his ISO

a bit because he was going from shooting

inside to outside, and he wanted nice drama,

right?

He wanted that blue sky, and he wanted

that warm glow from the windows.

So he adjusted his f-stop accordingly for

that.

Only after he got that exposure perfect the

way he wanted it, only then did he

turn on his flash transmitter.

Turns on his flash transmitter, takes a test

frame, whoa, way too bright, dials down the

flash, takes another frame, perfect, right?

And once you get used to following this

process, it's really easy and really quick.

You know, Lani was able to pull that

off in under a minute, right?

And also once you get used to it,

you kind of move from the three-step

process to more of a two-step process.

Now, instead of just talking about this, I

think it would be much more helpful for

us to take you out into the field

and show you this three-step process and

what it actually looks like on a shoot.

So let's go.