Wireless Flash

  

click photo to enlarge		 I took a class put on by Nikon at Bel Air Camera. The class was about wireless flash photography. You use the built in flash on your camera to control other flash units using the Commander Mode on your Nikon camera. The water drop to the left is the only one where you do not use your own camera. It would simply take to long to set up each persons camera on the tripod to take the photo. But the student takes the shot. You put your memory card in the camera and you take the picture. This is actually a drop of water bouncing up after it hit the surface of the water.

click photo to enlarge		 You can tell in the photo to the left the flash is coming from the right not from the front. The background is not actually black either. One of the things we learned is aperture and flash determines exposure on the subject and speed determines exposure on the background. In order to make the background black you use a flash setting called 'Auto FP High Speed Sync'. For an explanation on this see this link. Of course you have to have a camera that supports it AND it does not work with the built in flash.

click photo to enlarge		 But basically you set the camera to properly expose the subject and way underexpose the background till it appears black. The instructors goal was to teach us how and for each photo use a setup you can create for under $25. It was a lot of fun and I learned a lot. I also tried it at home just to see if I could black out a background in daylight and you can.

click photo to enlarge
               click photo to enlarge