Playing with remote triggers

[Stan_Lite]

I think it does have the potential to boost otherwise ordinary shots with the huge range of potential positions for the flash. I'd really like to see the effect in proper darkness and diffused.

[Haly]

Originally Posted by vix

The third picture down is brilliant. It looks like an album cover. It might not be technically 'right'. (although I wouldn't know!) but it really does look good.

I was just thinking how much it looked like an album cover too

[Kitten]

agreed with Vix on 3. There's a real sense of movement with the subject which I think is enhanced with the detail we can see due to the remote flash.

[divine]

Once you get the hang of them you can make yourself twice as attractive as you really are. That's why I love mine

[divine]

Originally Posted by Bigstan

I think it does have the potential to boost otherwise ordinary shots with the huge range of potential positions for the flash. I'd really like to see the effect in proper darkness and diffused.

A large advantage off camera has is that you don't require darkness to achieve those sorts of effects.



This for example, I think was taken in the evening with curtains open. Dim but not dark.

[Mark]

MB - having been slapped in the face for not seeing the obvious - don't take my post as criticism. It was purely inquisitive.

[Stan_Lite]

Originally Posted by vix

The third picture down is brilliant. It looks like an album cover. It might not be technically 'right'. (although I wouldn't know!) but it really does look good.

Originally Posted by Kitten

agreed with Vix on 3. There's a real sense of movement with the subject which I think is enhanced with the detail we can see due to the remote flash.

Oddly, that is my least favourite of the set. I prefer the last picture - it seems less artificial to my untrained eye.

[divine]

3 and 4 are good, though sadly seemingly out of focus. They really demonstrate the ability of flash well with the subject well lit with a normally exposed background. Ordinarily that shot would have ended up with a very bright background or a dark skater and been somewhat lifeless.

[Matblack]

Originally Posted by Bigstan

I was wondering about synchronisation too - is there any noticeable lag or does the trigger compensate?

Right, to explain this I really need to make sure everyone who reads it understands what we are talking about and how flash works.

A flash is very different from what we see when a flash goes off, when we see a flash it lingers in our eyes for a few 1/10th of a second but in reality a full on flash lasts not 1/10th of seconds but much much less. A capacitor is like an elastic band under terrific tension until it it cut loose and than it moves/ fires incredibly quickly and incredibly brightly, which means that as long as the shutter is open then when the flash fires it is almost like a second shutter. Imagine a camera in a completely dark room and a subject unlit, open the shutter for a full minute and there will be nothing on the plate; fire a flash during that minute and there will be a single sharp image as if the shutter had only opened for that millisecond when the flash fired.

What we can take from this is that shutter speed isn't too important when using flash. However in the circumstances above when you have ambient light you do need to keep the shutter speed below a certain point (usually 1/200th of a second or slower) modern flash technology does have some special trick for high speed sync but lets leave that out of the equation as cheap off camera flash can't take advantage of it. Because our capacitor is under so much strain when it gets a signal it can cut loose very fast, radio signals travel very fast and the trigger circuits work very quickly so as long as our shutter speed is below 1/200th then there will be time for the flash to fire during the shutters opening

So no compensation just the miracle of electro magnetic signals

MB

[divine]

Another use, albeit on a more functional level:



Taking images of bubbles for my others half's final year project and off camera lighting produced much better images for analysis than front lit.