From the course: Photography Foundations: Flash

Types of flashes

From the course: Photography Foundations: Flash

Start my 1-month free trial

Types of flashes

“

- Now that I've spent all this time trying to convince you that it's how you use a light that matters more than what type of light you're using, now I want to talk to you about the specific types of flashes you might choose to use. Because while everything I said before is true, your considerations about the role of a light the fact is some types of flashes are better suited to some work than other types of flashes. Your camera might have a built-in flash. The great advantage of a built-in flash is that you always have it with you. But honestly, built-in flashes get a bad rap. I think it's because of built-in flash units that some people have a knee-jerk reaction to flash, "Oh I don't like flash photography," you'll hear people say. The problem with built-in flash units is that they're really only effective in certain situations, and in certain roles and within those situations they can absolutely mean the difference between a good shot and bad shot but if you try to use a built-in flash in the wrong role, and outside the realm of its capability, which is how most people use them, then you're going to get ugly pictures. As you'll see, built-in flash is best used as a fill light, and built-in flash only works well when shooting subjects that are within about 10 feet of you. In some situations, a built-in flash can help you deal with bad backlighting but most of the time, these types of flashes are intended for fill uses and you shouldn't try to use them for anything else. What that means is that the built-in flash on your camera is best used when you're shooting in bright light. Later in this chapter you'll see why. A handheld flash unit uses the same technology as a built-in flash but scaled up. With a handheld flash you get more power which allows you to cover a larger area with fill light or a smaller area with more light than you'd get from a built-in flash. You get more control and most importantly you can get the flash off of the camera, you'll quickly see why that matters. With a single handheld flash and some skill you can create very sophisticated lighting including lighting setups that are not possible with continuous lights. Handheld flash units come in a variety of sizes, and with a range of features and power. What's more you can find them in a broad range of price points. That makes it easy to start experimenting with flash shooting to see if you like it, and all without a big investment of cash. Any type of flash is a strobe light, a light that turns on and off very quickly, but for some reason flash units that are bigger than a typical handheld flash are often referred to as strobes or studio strobes while these are called flashes or handheld flashes. These strobes deliver far more power than even the biggest handheld flash which allows you more creative flexibility. It's also possible to get studio strobes with very short flash durations which are what you need if you want to freeze fast objects in the studio, water droplets, clouds of powder, and that sort of thing. In this course we're going to work with built-in flashes and handheld flashes, however I have a follow-up course to this course which offers more coverage of handheld flashes as well as studio strobes and sophisticated modifiers. If you're looking to buy a handheld flash or studio strobe I have an entire course that will walk you through all of the features and specs that you need to consider for those pieces of gear. Before we can continue our discussion here we need to learn some more about we need to learn some more about what goes on inside a flash unit. what goes on inside a flash unit.

Contents