I was a photo journalism student back in the day, all we used was bounce card for everything. Carried 16 AA batteries and an index card everywhere I went
Great video, not enough people talk about flash, lighting and studio equipment etc. Everyone on youtube these days seems to just want to talk about the latest mirrorless camera or lens offering. But seem to avoid topics which really differentiate pro photographers from your typical amateur or enthusiast. Maybe I've been looking at the wrong channels. Bounce flash is so important for events. More so than camera choice and to a degree lens choice. There are so many nuances that can be discuessed, such as due to the inverse square law, the further your subject to Flash distance is, the smoother the drop off in flash power. So if you also want to illuminate additional people behind the subject, common in events and weddings, it's essential to have a large distance between the flash and the subjects, otherwise your near subject is going to be over exposed or far subject under exposed, or both. Bouncing flash behind you creates this distance and solves this for eve lighting front to back. Completely agree about diffusers and other attachments being at best unnecessary and at worse, a hindrance. However, there was one thing that I did learn from another photographer on youtube regarding accessories which was quite useful, that if you clip on some black craft foam (cheap on amazon) with an elastic hair tie, you can use it to block direct flash so only bounced flash hits your subject. I have been doing this recently it's really cheap, simple, not too cumbersome and very effective.
Not true at all. All you have to do is type in whatever you want to see on UA-cam and there's a million videos on whatever topic. There are countless videos on both on and off camera flash and The Inverse Square Law. Clearly you didn't look even try to look.
@@jasonbodden8816 Yes you can find anything if you search for it. But there are a great number of UA-cam "photographers" with large followings that all do the same content talking about the latest and greatest cameras and lenses, usually they are associated with a manufacturer and get early access to equipment to review. Occasionally they put out a video where they go take some mediocre landscape or street photographs and tell you how much better the latest Sony /fuji/canon is. Maybe occasionally they explain the exposure triangle to beginners, or give people framing guidelines or other beginner tips. Whereas the channels that discuss real photography, like how to run a business, build a portfolio, do marketing to gain customers and earn a living, they exist but they are pushed into obscurity by the youtube algorithm. Granted there are some semi successful channels that show to use flash and lighting effectively to improve your compositions, get mood and style into your pictures and develop as an artist. People like Sean Tucker, Jamie Windsor, Niel van Niekerk. There are also people who dont do reviews of the latest gear and just give specialist advice to their genre of photography, like Simon d'Entremont, Adam Karnacz and Allan Walls. I really appreciate and respect these people and many others. However, there are so many people that seem to give the impression that they are photographers, but they are merely youtubers with photography followings that they use to make money from affiliate links. They usually build their channel using UA-cam shorts with a clickbait title. My issue with this is that these are the first videos new photographers find when they go on youtube, and they are led to believe that photography is all about buying cameras and lenses, that you need the best autofocus or best iso performance etc.
i first read about the use of flash outside of the studio in an old book about learning photography and the thing that i remember the most is that if you use a flash correctly it shouldn't look like you used one. i don't like it when the subject is perfectly lit with a flash it looks unnatural, i like when it adds light to the subject but it looks like it comes from the environment and not from a totally different source. lots of photographer make it look like they used a spot light on their subject, they are so well lit compared to the rest it almost look like a news paper picture. thanks for the video
What a great way to easily lay out the basics of using a flash. The best thing to do is just use your gear until you understand everything about it and it becomes second nature to handle. Cheers Martin fantastic work 🎉
Wow, using the flash and practice instead of selling the latest and greatest… fantastic video. I’ve learned through the years that I’ve relied on TTL flash and use my compensation a lot as I bounce my flash everywhere. I’ve had people look at me as if I’m crazy sometimes pointing my flash in every direction except toward my subject until they see the pics. The only issue I run into like you said is the color cast… but a simple adjustment to white balance can fix that most of the time. One of the best UA-cam channels for learning photography. 👍
Maybe for some people an advantage with on-camera flash is that the autofocus is really helped by the red lights on the flash. So for very dark event photography or dark weddings.
I recently bought a used Canon EX430 flash, and it has really been interesting using it. Don't underestimate what a simple speedlite can do both indoors and outdoors! I agree Martin, use the manual settings to get consistent results. Cheers!
I always have a flash with me. I love it with my Fujifilm X100V because it has a leaf shutter. You can really get some beautiful dialed-in light. I use a Nissin i-40 with it, easy and quick control on the back.
Flash must be awesome with that camera. Until we get more global shutter cameras, only the leaf shutters can do flash at any speed so easily. Ironically the 1999 Nikon D1 could flash sync at 1/16,000th thanks to global ccd shutter.
Good video on flash - but what you missed to explain here is the color blending of the flash with the ambient light. When you have yellow ambirnt light and blue light from the flash - they don't blend together very well from the white balance point of view. For that if you put a CTO gel over the flash - it will give you more easy editing after that.
well, i missed a lot more than that! this was meant to be a very basic intro. The CTO gel thing depends. If you want to bounce flash to mimick window light then a CTO gel isnt going to help very much is it. If you want to mimick the ambient then you add it but you lose separation, it just depends what you want to do. But I barely covered anything in this video, just a very brief overview 🙂
I always think that on or off body flash should be like the soundtrack on a movie, ie that it needs to add and enhance the ambient sound narrative, but really if it’s well matched and balanced it ought not to be something that you notice. Bouncing really does work well in the respect as long as there are suitable walls/ceilings and it can be quite fun playing with the bounce angle to best effect… kind of like playing snooker and aiming the cue ball at a cushion to then bounce back at the ball you wanted to strike indirectly haha! Actually Canon introduced an AI flash that had a self angling motor in it a few years back but I never tried it and it didn’t seem to catch on, not sure why as it seemed a good idea 🤷♂️ did you ever come across it? Excellent vid and explanation 🙌
Mr Castein... Off the topic but I don't want to clog your email, but at the same time I feel HIGHLY compelled to ask this question... it's dear to me, and it's been a tool for me my entire life (musician, and all around general idiot)... SO. How are you with using errors? Mistakes.. or the unexpected? Or, do you think that because of your craft in a field where consistency might be considered key... that the unexpected is unwanted? Mind... this is hopefully a polite question and NOT to be seen as confrontational. But, I am VERY interested in your response. Thank you... IN adVANNNNNNCE ! :) all my love btw and pls stay safe.
nooo email me always, every time I put up a video people comment on that video then watch others and comment on those plus people are watching all my other videos still so it can be a hundred comments a day or more when a video goes up so they get lost easily. Dont worry about emailing me. I totally embrace mistakes and love it. They are the best learning expiences even though the downside is that it feels hard to take any credit for it. Id go as far as saying this is one of the main ways we learn. The more we do, the more mistakes we make and the more accidental great shots can happen and we learn the most from those.
Great video but I don't use that garbage bounce card speedlights come with. Only one thing I disagree with you on - if I have no clean walls or ceilings to bounce off, I much rather use a modifier on my flash than that trash bounce card. It'll be a MUCH better quality of light than that tiny crappy bounce card. If there are no surfaces to bounce off, a modifier is absolutely necessary for any kind of decent quality of light. And no, that tiny bounce card on its own will never give anything resembling soft light at all. Not even remotely. That's not its main purpose anyhow. Its purpose is actually just to provide, in a pinch, some semblance of a catchlight so your subject's eyes don't look completely lifeless, not to give soft light, which it can't anyway.
the bounce card would still be used in conjunction with a bounce itself, like off the ceiling just puts a bit more light forwards too, ive had good results with it.
@@MartinCastein I hear you. I just think the light looks much better with a larger bounce card or modifier, regardless of whether or not I have a ceiling to bounce off of. I have a few different sizes, depending on the circumstances of what I'm shooting.
@@jasonbodden8816 my preference is always a long sideways bounce if possible, i presonally really like to get directional side lighting thats fairly soft, the bounce card for me is more like a get out of jail in a hurry solution rather than anything like a go to, i also have a larger bounce card thing that i use that is very effective but i actually angle that sideways a bit too so i get a sort. of side vertical boucnce, that works well too. whatever works man.
I was a photo journalism student back in the day, all we used was bounce card for everything. Carried 16 AA batteries and an index card everywhere I went
You quickly become one of my if not my favorite ho to advisor for photography!
Thank you so much for your helpful straight to the point videos 👍👍
Back to basics with clear explanations. You're a natural and with your real life experience, I'm wiser because of you.
Thank you that’s very kind
A very useful talk. Thanks.
Great video, not enough people talk about flash, lighting and studio equipment etc. Everyone on youtube these days seems to just want to talk about the latest mirrorless camera or lens offering. But seem to avoid topics which really differentiate pro photographers from your typical amateur or enthusiast. Maybe I've been looking at the wrong channels.
Bounce flash is so important for events. More so than camera choice and to a degree lens choice. There are so many nuances that can be discuessed, such as due to the inverse square law, the further your subject to Flash distance is, the smoother the drop off in flash power. So if you also want to illuminate additional people behind the subject, common in events and weddings, it's essential to have a large distance between the flash and the subjects, otherwise your near subject is going to be over exposed or far subject under exposed, or both. Bouncing flash behind you creates this distance and solves this for eve lighting front to back. Completely agree about diffusers and other attachments being at best unnecessary and at worse, a hindrance. However, there was one thing that I did learn from another photographer on youtube regarding accessories which was quite useful, that if you clip on some black craft foam (cheap on amazon) with an elastic hair tie, you can use it to block direct flash so only bounced flash hits your subject. I have been doing this recently it's really cheap, simple, not too cumbersome and very effective.
Not true at all. All you have to do is type in whatever you want to see on UA-cam and there's a million videos on whatever topic. There are countless videos on both on and off camera flash and The Inverse Square Law. Clearly you didn't look even try to look.
@@jasonbodden8816 Yes you can find anything if you search for it. But there are a great number of UA-cam "photographers" with large followings that all do the same content talking about the latest and greatest cameras and lenses, usually they are associated with a manufacturer and get early access to equipment to review. Occasionally they put out a video where they go take some mediocre landscape or street photographs and tell you how much better the latest Sony /fuji/canon is. Maybe occasionally they explain the exposure triangle to beginners, or give people framing guidelines or other beginner tips. Whereas the channels that discuss real photography, like how to run a business, build a portfolio, do marketing to gain customers and earn a living, they exist but they are pushed into obscurity by the youtube algorithm. Granted there are some semi successful channels that show to use flash and lighting effectively to improve your compositions, get mood and style into your pictures and develop as an artist. People like Sean Tucker, Jamie Windsor, Niel van Niekerk. There are also people who dont do reviews of the latest gear and just give specialist advice to their genre of photography, like Simon d'Entremont, Adam Karnacz and Allan Walls. I really appreciate and respect these people and many others. However, there are so many people that seem to give the impression that they are photographers, but they are merely youtubers with photography followings that they use to make money from affiliate links. They usually build their channel using UA-cam shorts with a clickbait title. My issue with this is that these are the first videos new photographers find when they go on youtube, and they are led to believe that photography is all about buying cameras and lenses, that you need the best autofocus or best iso performance etc.
i first read about the use of flash outside of the studio in an old book about learning photography and the thing that i remember the most is that if you use a flash correctly it shouldn't look like you used one.
i don't like it when the subject is perfectly lit with a flash it looks unnatural, i like when it adds light to the subject but it looks like it comes from the environment and not from a totally different source.
lots of photographer make it look like they used a spot light on their subject, they are so well lit compared to the rest it almost look like a news paper picture.
thanks for the video
What a great way to easily lay out the basics of using a flash. The best thing to do is just use your gear until you understand everything about it and it becomes second nature to handle. Cheers Martin fantastic work 🎉
Wow, using the flash and practice instead of selling the latest and greatest… fantastic video. I’ve learned through the years that I’ve relied on TTL flash and use my compensation a lot as I bounce my flash everywhere. I’ve had people look at me as if I’m crazy sometimes pointing my flash in every direction except toward my subject until they see the pics. The only issue I run into like you said is the color cast… but a simple adjustment to white balance can fix that most of the time. One of the best UA-cam channels for learning photography. 👍
hahaha yes thank you and you are right you can colour correct if there is a bit of a cast and still better than bad light.
Super helpful, thank you!
Great video Marin and a simple explanation.
Black foamie thing , Neal van Niekert. Very simple, handy.
I didn’t like it personally but gave it a good go at the time
Maybe for some people an advantage with on-camera flash is that the autofocus is really helped by the red lights on the flash. So for very dark event photography or dark weddings.
Flashes with TTL will pre-flash to get exposure and focus, even if the the head is pointed at the wall the red line transmitter will face forward.
Yeah, that was exactly the point. It will help the camera to focus and meter at the subject
Great information
I recently bought a used Canon EX430 flash, and it has really been interesting using it. Don't underestimate what a simple speedlite can do both indoors and outdoors! I agree Martin, use the manual settings to get consistent results. Cheers!
you keep at it, i hope you still have your 5dii
@@MartinCastein yes! I bought a second 5D MKII body last month! Future proofing!
I always have a flash with me. I love it with my Fujifilm X100V because it has a leaf shutter. You can really get some beautiful dialed-in light. I use a Nissin i-40 with it, easy and quick control on the back.
Flash must be awesome with that camera. Until we get more global shutter cameras, only the leaf shutters can do flash at any speed so easily. Ironically the 1999 Nikon D1 could flash sync at 1/16,000th thanks to global ccd shutter.
Amazing, love this! ❤
Once again a champion vid!
thanks!!!!!
Well explained sir 👍
Good video on flash - but what you missed to explain here is the color blending of the flash with the ambient light. When you have yellow ambirnt light and blue light from the flash - they don't blend together very well from the white balance point of view. For that if you put a CTO gel over the flash - it will give you more easy editing after that.
well, i missed a lot more than that! this was meant to be a very basic intro. The CTO gel thing depends. If you want to bounce flash to mimick window light then a CTO gel isnt going to help very much is it. If you want to mimick the ambient then you add it but you lose separation, it just depends what you want to do. But I barely covered anything in this video, just a very brief overview 🙂
I always think that on or off body flash should be like the soundtrack on a movie, ie that it needs to add and enhance the ambient sound narrative, but really if it’s well matched and balanced it ought not to be something that you notice.
Bouncing really does work well in the respect as long as there are suitable walls/ceilings and it can be quite fun playing with the bounce angle to best effect… kind of like playing snooker and aiming the cue ball at a cushion to then bounce back at the ball you wanted to strike indirectly haha!
Actually Canon introduced an AI flash that had a self angling motor in it a few years back but I never tried it and it didn’t seem to catch on, not sure why as it seemed a good idea 🤷♂️ did you ever come across it?
Excellent vid and explanation 🙌
This is what I need to hear
good good
Thanks for the video) What white balance do you set bouncing flash?
Mr Castein... Off the topic but I don't want to clog your email, but at the same time I feel HIGHLY compelled to ask this question... it's dear to me, and it's been a tool for me my entire life (musician, and all around general idiot)... SO. How are you with using errors? Mistakes.. or the unexpected? Or, do you think that because of your craft in a field where consistency might be considered key... that the unexpected is unwanted? Mind... this is hopefully a polite question and NOT to be seen as confrontational. But, I am VERY interested in your response. Thank you... IN adVANNNNNNCE ! :) all my love btw and pls stay safe.
nooo email me always, every time I put up a video people comment on that video then watch others and comment on those plus people are watching all my other videos still so it can be a hundred comments a day or more when a video goes up so they get lost easily. Dont worry about emailing me. I totally embrace mistakes and love it. They are the best learning expiences even though the downside is that it feels hard to take any credit for it. Id go as far as saying this is one of the main ways we learn. The more we do, the more mistakes we make and the more accidental great shots can happen and we learn the most from those.
I broke three pencils taking notes.... maybe I need to buy a typewriter. Hmmmm... TY !!! Making me think of using it as fill... with subttle shadow
hahaha!
Okay so I have to take a group photo for work in a warehouse so no white ceiling. Can anyone offer any tips on how to use my flash in this scenario?
A mini softbox?
Your room is a light box
I bounced my flash off the wall and it broke. I hold you responsible.
HAHAHAHAA
Have you tried a bubble wrap diffuser?
Great video but I don't use that garbage bounce card speedlights come with. Only one thing I disagree with you on - if I have no clean walls or ceilings to bounce off, I much rather use a modifier on my flash than that trash bounce card. It'll be a MUCH better quality of light than that tiny crappy bounce card. If there are no surfaces to bounce off, a modifier is absolutely necessary for any kind of decent quality of light. And no, that tiny bounce card on its own will never give anything resembling soft light at all. Not even remotely. That's not its main purpose anyhow. Its purpose is actually just to provide, in a pinch, some semblance of a catchlight so your subject's eyes don't look completely lifeless, not to give soft light, which it can't anyway.
the bounce card would still be used in conjunction with a bounce itself, like off the ceiling just puts a bit more light forwards too, ive had good results with it.
@@MartinCastein I hear you. I just think the light looks much better with a larger bounce card or modifier, regardless of whether or not I have a ceiling to bounce off of. I have a few different sizes, depending on the circumstances of what I'm shooting.
@@jasonbodden8816 my preference is always a long sideways bounce if possible, i presonally really like to get directional side lighting thats fairly soft, the bounce card for me is more like a get out of jail in a hurry solution rather than anything like a go to, i also have a larger bounce card thing that i use that is very effective but i actually angle that sideways a bit too so i get a sort. of side vertical boucnce, that works well too. whatever works man.