Hey Everyone! Hope you've had a super week! This week I want to talk about something I don't think I've talked about much. Off camera flash and the mechanics on how to hook up your camera to shoot off camera. I was recently on a workshop that my club had on Portrait Photography and using off camera strobes. You may not know but I used to do a lot of portrait work and shot weddings and the such. But as I've got older I haven't done as much. You can use off camera flash to do all sorts of photography from table top , macro, real-estate and yes portraits. Attending this workshop got me thinking about the past and the tools and the mechanics on how to set up off
camera flash even if you shoot film instead of digital. Honestly I haven't shot much off camera flash with film but have recently and it works pretty well you just have to figure out how to get the flash to sync with your camera when you push the shutter button. Now most camera's have a hot shoe on top of your camera that you can put a flash and through the connection when you push the shutter your flash goes off. This is a very flat and not flattering light and to improve it you must get the flash off of the camera and to the side somehow. Thats what this blog is about the mechanics of OFF Camera Flash. 

Sync Cord: The easiest way is with a sync cord. This cord goes from a port on your camera (usually covered by a little plastic cover) to a port on the flash or strobes that you have. This is how it was done in the old days and cords and cables were strewn all over the place. This is a cheap way to do it and it works. The drawback is the cord you can only go as far away from your flash with the length of your cord.

Infra Red triggers: Infra Red triggers are built into some camera's. They allow you to trigger the flash through an infra red signal that comes from your camera to the flash. The trick is that it is proprietary. You must use your camera's brands flash. With Nikon you must use Nikon flash , Canon you must use Cannon flash. Which makes this a very expensive endeavor as brand name flashes are very expensive. Also you must have line of site with these triggers . Much like the remote control of your TV you can't have anything get in-between the camera and flash or it doesn't work.

Radio Triggers: These triggers use radio waves to transmit a signal from your camera to the flash or strobe. You hook a transmitter to your camera's hot shoe and receiver to your flash or strobe light. Then through radio waves you can trigger the flash to fire when you press the shutter button. These are very popular and come in many price ranges from 40 dollars to hundreds of dollars. Pocket wizards were the industry standard many years ago but you can have all sorts that work great. The biggest thing with these is to make sure that you are not on the same frequency as another nearby photographer or your flashes will work off of his press of the shutter too. These triggers do not need line of site and can be placed almost anywhere and the radio waves will reach them witch is great for back lighting where the light is placed behind the subject. These types of triggers only trigger the flash they do not work with TTL of your camera they are used on manual flashes and strobes.

TTL Radio Trigger/Controllers: Then there is the Controller trigger. It takes all the info from your camera and transfers it to the strobe and makes the proper power flash off of these calculations. It can shoot TTL and High Speed Sync. It can control from your camera many flashes at one time and have them flash at different powers to each flash. These triggers are proprietary to the brand of camera you have. So if you have a Nikon you have to get a controller that fits a Nikon. The controller mounts to the hot shoe and you can dial in what you want and what channel each flash is on. You can have external receivers or they are built into the flashes themselves. The flashes/strobes have to be compatible with the controller used. Godox brand is the most popular but there are others also. The controllers cost about 70 bucks but you must also purchase the flashes and or strobes .

Slaves for Multiple flashes: If you have more than one flash that you want to trigger but only have one trigger and one receiver or only have a sync cord going to one flash you can use optical flash slaves that hook to the second flash or strobe. When it sees a flash from the first flash that is synced it goes off instantaneously . You must manually adjust these flashes but the system works well and I used it for years before I got newer trigers for my flashes. 

Being able to control the light really makes you a great photographer and shooting off camera flash and strobes is the first step in really being able to CONTROL the light. Not just react to it. Hope this was helpful until next week Get out and Shoot!

Hey if you want to check out my photography go to my instagram account Max Stansell Photography there are over 2000 posts there. Here is the link

 Max Stansell Photography Instagram Link

Hello Everyone! Hope you're having a great week. Me? Pretty well. Hey I was thinking about what I would take on a Street photography trip let's say to New Your City. The Big Apple! I have never been but am looking to go soon so what would I take on let's say a long extended weekend trip. What camera gear or my computing needs for that matter. I know I want to be quick and nimble while in route so just a carry on bag if flying or taking the train. So I would want all of my gear and clothing to fit in the carry on which would be some sort of backpack. Light on gear and clothes. So let's get started with the easy stuff clothes.

If I was going on a 4 day trip to include travel days on each end. I would probably take two pairs of pants the ones I was wearing and one other. And a couple of shirts. These clothes would have to be very packable not jeans or clothes like that. I like to travel with convertible pants that can become shorts at a moments notice and shirts that are super light weight. Just to make things easier well say that this trip is in the spring so cool in the mornings and warm during the day. So I would want some sort of jacket that would compact down to a small size when it warmed up. Just a few personal toiletries to get by with. A comfortable pair of shoes because I'll be doing some walking. I would put all of this in some sort of packing cube that would fit in my backpack.

Now let's talk about camera gear and computing. I'll start with computing because I would keep it simple some sort of iPad maybe my iPad mini. It's small and compact and I'll be able to back up my photo's from each day and even edit some if I need to. Now to camera gear. I have lots of good choices to choose from. If I wanted to keep it super small I could use my point and shoot Canon G7XII . Its small compact, 20mp type 1 sensor and has a 24-100 equivalent lens with maximum aperture of f/1.8-2.8. It's very discrete and small and would go almost unnoticed . But never have been to New York before I would want something a little more punch. I would probably bring my A7C with a 50mm and a 16-35mm lens. Both are small-ish but would definitely be noticed more than the point and shoot. And of course I would have to carry some sort of bag to hold the extra lens and batteries. Or I could carry a 20-70 f4 lens I have and the Sony and just do one lens. It would be a bigger set up but it would have a better camera set up with just one lens. Now if I was really brave I could go with a film camera and shoot film the whole time there. If I were I would bring my Canon Cannonet GIII QL17. This is known as the poor mans Leica with a 40mm f/1.7 lens. It would definitely tic all of the boxes but then its film and won't be as flexible as digital. So what to do? On a special trip like this I could go without a camera and plan a trip to B&H Photo Video and buy a camera for street there. It would almost be worth it maybe something like a Fuji X100 a built to be a street camera. There are so many ways to go. What would you do?

Well since this is all hypothetical I would probably go to B&H and buy a new camera just to say that I had done it. But in reality it would probably be the Sony A7C although I think the smart choice would be the Point and shoot.  Well that's just me dreaming. What would you do? Let me know. Until next week Get out and Shoot!

Hey if you want to check out my photography go to my instagram account Max Stansell Photography there are over 2000 posts there. Here is the link

 Max Stansell Photography Instagram Link

Hey Y'all ! Hope you're having a great day! We as camera buffs are always looking at the latest and greatest in cameras and camera related gadgets. We as consumers try to dissect what is different or what is newer on each of our cameras and new ones that come out each year. And to admit there is a lot that is different between camera brands and models but there are some things that are the same of all cameras. Even ones from decades long ago and we forget that these little machines still have  the same goal to capture a moment in time , an image. Remembering what is the same makes the photography much more simple. I think that cameras are getting more and more complicated when they should be staying simple. I shoot with all kinds of cameras from older film cameras to newer mirrorless cameras. Sometimes I think that the newer ones can be more complicated than the early film were. Why do you think that is. I certainly don't know. Maybe the newer generations didn't know how simple it was in the past to take a photo. But people that were raised holding a computer in their hand that was advanced than the computer that sent men to the moon seem to think that things need to be more complicated. Now I'm not generation bashing I just want to explain what is the same in photography. Lets start.

The medium used to capture the image. Although it has changed from film to digital sensors a lot of the same principals still apply. In the film days you could choose your film based on either black and white or color and you could choose the sensitivity of the film by the ASA (American Standards Association ) now known as ISO (international Standards Organization ) . Modern Digital you can dial in your ISO and you can change the look of the image from color to black and white. Just the same as film. Are the newer Digital sensors more flexible than the roll of film? Well of course they are but doesn't that make it more complicated . With more choices comes paralysis by analysis . Not being able to make a decision quickly. Like buying glasses at the eye doctor. There are a wall of choices hundreds of choices  and to you they all look alike. Hard to make a choice. But besides that they are really the same.

Lenses used in film and digital are basically the same. Although more modern the newer lenses are basically the same with aperture blades that can open and close to make the hole bigger or smaller. There are focusing rings that you can manually focus with. Many older lenses are manual focusing while newer ones are auto focusing using little motors and gears inside of the lenses to do the work that your hand and eye did. Now does the newer lenses focus quicker and maybe even more sharper focus? Well of course they do. But they are very similar except most modern lenses are much larger to house the newer components. 

Shutters are the same. Shutters with the ability to change shutter speeds. Either Focal plane shutters or leaf shutters in the film era worked very much the same as the modern shutters . Now shutter speeds go up to 1/8000 of a second where 1/1000 was the norm for many years in the film era and consumer cameras were at 1/500. Now we have mechanical and electronic shutters and I'm sure in the future mechanical will be a thing of the past but they do the same thing. They let light in for a certain amount of time so they do the same thing.

View finders are kind of the same. Optical view finders showed you what was going to be in your photo. Modern view finders do that and a whole lot more. It can be like flying a jet with heads up display with all of the gismos in the frame when you are viewing your subject. Stuff like the meter, battery life, camera settings like shutter speed, ISO and aperture . All which is very nice but can become kind of cluttered. Of course you can pick and choose what you want to see in your view finder.

Meter to measure light. Just about all cameras from the 1960's and on had some sort of meter in them to measure the light. Film camera's used center weighted metering where modern cameras can use an array of different metering modes to include center weighted. Matrix or Averaging metering mode takes in the whole scene and averages out meter reading. Most photographers use this type of metering 100% of the time. Why so many choices? Just to confuse you LOL! I think that modern metering is better than old but I didn't have a problem with the old ones either  and still use them in my film cameras.

Things like shutter buttons, self timers, and the such are all still there. So what I'm trying to get at is yes they have changed but the principals like the Exposure Triangle are still the same. Basically you have a box that captures light and puts the image onto some sort of medium. So when you look at that new camera that has all of the gismos on it before you spend your hard earned money make sure you need the gismos that it is offering. Many times the answer is no you have all that you need in the camera you have that will still take great photo's.

Until next week , Get out and Shoot!

Hey if you want to check out my photography go to my instagram account Max Stansell Photography there are over 2000 posts there. Here is the link

 Max Stansell Photography Instagram Link