Night and Low-light Photography Photo Workshop

Nikon system is called the Creative Lighting

System, or CLS for short, and the Canon sys-

tem is the EX Flash System. This allows a

flash on the camera to tell the off-camera

flash not only when to fire, but also what

power to use. These systems work well most

of the time.

a ceiling by allowing part of the light to go
straight up and the rest of the light to be bounced
at the subject. The advantage of this system is
that it comes with different color screens that
allow you to match the color of the ambient light
or just color the light as you want to. A third
solution is to use a softbox that is made for your
flash unit. These devices mimic the bigger soft-
boxes used in studio photography, and they can
be used right on the camera; however, their real
power comes into play when you use them off
camera. The softbox attaches to the head of the
flash and turns the small light of the flash into a
bigger light. By using a small SoftBox III from
LumiQuest on an off-camera flash, I was able to
get this great light for a quick shot of Sam in
Figure 4-9.

One advantage of the flash unit is that you can
use it off-camera. There are four different ways
that the flash can be fired when off-camera:

■   Cord. The easiest way to fire a flash that is

not in the hot shoe of your camera is to use a
special cord, where one end slides into cam-
era’s hot shoe and the other end has a hot
shoe for your flash. The downside is that the
flash is still attached to the camera by this
cord. This means that the placement is lim-
ited to the length of the cord. The advantage
is that the camera just thinks that the flash is
on the camera and fires it automatically.

■   Built-in trigger. Many of the camera systems

used today have a built-in external flash sys-
tem. This usually means that a flash on the
camera triggers an external flash. Some of the
cameras are able to use the built-in pop-up
flash as a controller for the external flash. The

ABOUT THIS PHOTO The LumiQuest SoftBox III attaches to the

flash with the use of an included Velcro strap, making it easy to put on

and take off. As you can see, it produces a nice light. Without the soft-

box, the light would have been much harder creating harsh shadows.

Taken at 1/5 second, f/5.6, and ISO 200.

4-9