Simple Wikipedia

It’s the end of the day and you’re tired. You want to do a bit of research but you don’t want to deal with all the stress of reading a lot, say no more. Try out Wikipedia Simple English, it uses simpler words originally intended for those who don’t speak much English.

Off Camera Flash Photography

So you’ve got yourself a nice dSLR, but you find yourself still using it on Auto mode all the time. This is a common thing for beginner photographers, but if you’re interested, there’s a whole world of incredible photography beyond the standard point and shoot method of our parents’ time. The two photos below show the difference between just turning on your camera and hitting the shutter button (left)... and using the aperture priority function and an external flash placed behind the subject (right).

Notice the flatness and lack of shadows on the coins in the left photo when the flash is pointed directly at them. Now look at the right photo and take note that when we place the flash behind the coins we get much more natural lighting leaving us with shadows that help define the coin faces. Also when we use the aperture priority function to focus in properly we get great depth and definition of the coins!

This is a lighting technique that every professional photographer utilizes to give the subject a ‘natural light’ look by not eliminating all shadows, but actually creating them. This helps us recognize the fine details in the photo.

How do you take your flash and put it elsewhere you might ask? Well, this process is easy and pretty cheap! You must have following three things to utilize this technique yourself:
• a camera that has a sync cable jack (or you can buy a hot shoe to sync cable adapter for $9.95 dollars at Adorama)
• an external flash (any old flash will work just fine, if you don’t have one, this external flash is really great!)
• a pc sync cable

All you have to do now is connect the flash to your camera with the sync cable, turn your camera on to any of the priority modes (Program Auto, Shutter, Aperture, or Manual), and shoot!

I decided to make my own hot shoe connector and cable to save some money. To do this I soldered a hot shoe connector together with a piece of pc board and some resistor wire. Then I opened up my external flash and soldered the wires that lead to the terminals on the hot shoe connector, then I put ethernet jacks at each end so I can just use any standard ethernet cable to connect my camera to my flash!

An additional perk to making my own cable is that now I have a cheap and extendable cable since we all have spare ethernet cables laying around!

Want to learn more? Check out the Strobist blog, it’s an amazing resource that I’m still learning from all the time! For more examples check me out on Flickr!

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