[ 104 ]
[] MASTER YOUR DSLR: RADIO-CONTROLLED FLASH[ PHOTOGRAPHY MASTERCLASS ]Master your DSLR:
Radio-controlled flash
FREE YOUR FLASH PHOTOGRAPHY USING THE LATEST WIRELESS TECHNOLOGY.
[ TECHLIFE TEAM ]YOUR ON-CAMERA FLASH might enable you
to light up a scene, but it’s unlikely to light up
your portfolio. Whether it’s an underpowered
pop-up flash or a flashgun mounted on the
hotshoe, camera-based flashes give sharp,
directional lighting that create harsh shadows
and give a ‘rabbit in the headlights’ look to
portraits. Taking a flashgun off-camera
enables you to control where shadows fall,
and to more effectively introduce modifiers
that soften and shape the light.There are two ways you can do this: working
with a flashgun that’s tethered to the camera
by a cable or using wireless flash. There’s a lot
to be said for the convenience of working
wirelessly: it’s become the standard way of
working with multiple flash units. The thing
to bear in mind is that wireless systems come
in two parts: you need a transmitter or ‘master’
and a receiver or ‘slave’. The master unit
typically sits in the camera’s hotshoe and tells
the slave units to fire when you take a picture.Wireless flash has evolved substantially
since the early days of optical flash triggers;
these cheap and cheerful units simply caused
slave units to fire when they detected light
from the main flash unit. They’re still available
to buy now. These days, wireless flash comes
in two flavours — infrared and radio — both
of which offer substantially more control
over slave units.
Infrared wireless flash uses an optical beam
of light, fired from the master unit, to trigger