How to use an on camera flash | Speedlight tutorial

In this video, Rion describes the key elements all photographers should know in how to use an on camera flash for portraiture.

[raymondchan]

Thanks, one of the most useful tips I could find about flash in Youtube.

[ChuckHaines]

Thanks for this video. This is one of the best I've found that really helped me understand how best to use an on-camera flash. Great jobs of explaining it very clearly and easily to understand.

[guyphoto]

When using Rembrandt lighting the shadow with the triangle portion of the face should be closest to the camera. Not on the far side of the face. That's essentially "broad" lighting rather than "short" or Rembrandt lighting. In classical photography the mantra is "shoot into the shadows."

[jennyhartman]

I really loved how you built the concepts up piece by piece. Thank you.

[samuelsmith]

By the way you don’t need a low ceiling to bounce flash. In fact generally a high ceiling or distant walls are better. Light follows the inverse square law. If you double the distance from the flash to your subject, the light intensity falls to one-quarter of its original value. Conversely, if you halve the distance, the light intensity increases by a factor of four.
What this means is that the closer your flash is to the subject, small differences in distance have an increasingly huge impact on flash exposure. When they are far away, ie bouncing off a distant wall, the fall off is much lower/ steady. This is crucial in wedding and events photography where you may have more than a single person as a subject. Bouncing off a close ceiling or wall can mean the subject closer to you is exposed differently to the one a little bit further away. However if you bounce off a distant wall or higher ceiling the exposure will be much more even. Not only that the light will be softer and more diffused, all much more pleasing. Flashes are easily powerful enough to cope with large rooms unless you buy a little crappy flash. Also TTL will pre flash to meter before the main flash, it will usually expose perfect for bounce flash, and can be tweaked by flash compensation if necessary.

[tremaincheerful]

So THAT's what that pull-out white card is for! Clear and enlightening insights, presented so well. Thanks! Subscribed immediately.

[andrerenaud]

Your video was a very positive revelation for me and changed my speed lite use in photography. I will follow you for sure!

[russellbrown]

Your video was extremely helpful and the bloopers just relaxed me, thanks.✌🏽😇

[neeyababy]

Omg! I cannot thank you enough for this video. I loved how you were quick and straight to the point. Super effective. Thank you!

[lego_minifig]

Great video! I have always avoided flash for the past 4 years since I hated how direct flash looked more than high ISO and couldn’t justify the cost of picking up an adjustable speedlight for myself until now. This has been a great refresher on the fundamentals that I had forgotten.

[FigleyCreative]

Good stuff! I will practice these. Also, thanks for explaining the characteristics of Rembrandt and Paramount lighting.

[tomkryzz]

I'm new to the speedlight game and this was very helpful. Thank you very much, Sir!

[klyiu]

Thank you so much for this excellent video. I got a manual flash but had a difficult time to figure out what settings to make to the flash and their relationship to the settings on the camera. This video really helps a lot with my adventure.

[sixstring]

thx, understandable and implementable! I´m glad you missed out all of the fancy presentation stuff. That was nice an clear! Like!

[Arisevideo]

Helpful, wow! Excellent, thorough tutorial, with some surprising secrets too. Thank you.

[laurenmiller]

Thank you so much! This video was EXTREMELY helpful!!

[keithdennis]

This was very informative!!! Thanks!!!

[olatunjisaheed]

I love your video. May God continue to increase you in wisdom, knowledge and understanding

[UnauthorizedCreations]

When I use my flash the lens I use is a 35mm 1/4 and I keep my ISO between 100-200. A lot of times I will set my exposure to -1.

[_HMCB_]

Good video. Thank you for the easy pace and explanations.