Are you shooting weddings and want to learn on-camera flash?
If you want to get off the ‘natural light shooter’ train and hop on board the ‘I can deal with literally any situation’ express (why train metaphors?! I don’t know, I’m sticking with it though) then you need to learn on-camera flash! It’s the topic that comes up the most in wedding photography Facebook groups – how to learn on-camera flash. So here’s how…
Every camera and every flash is different, but the basics are always the same. It’s as simple as this:
- In a dark or murky-lit room, in manual exposure mode, meter your exposure to one or two stops underexposed.
- Keep your shutter 1/250 or lower (check the max sync speed of your camera, usually 1/250) or you’ll get a black part of the screen.
- Aperture should be wide open or close to it.
- Adjust ISO to make it a stop or two underexposed.
- Put the flash on the hot shoe.
- Angle the flash up to the ceiling.
- Pop up the little white card that comes inside pretty much every flash (it’s tucked away in there, use your nails to dig it out)
- Turn the flash on to Manual.
- Set the flash power to halfway – generally they power from 1/1 (full power) to 1/128 (lowest power). So try 1/64.
- Then take a photo.
- Is it too dark or murky? Either increase flash power or increase your ISO.
- Is it too bright? Lower the flash power or ISO.
- Keep playing with those settings (flash power and ISO) until it looks right.
- High/dark/coloured ceiling? Angle the flash every so slightly forward (just a click or two). Keep that white card up!
You could try semi-auto exposure settings on the camera, and TTL on the flash, but as creatives it’s better to be in control of how the final image looks.
And there you have it, on-camera flash for wedding photographers. Nailed it.
This post would have been extremely helpful to me a couple of months ago when I was hired for an event. Though I did okay and clients were happy, I would have loved to jump on the “I can deal with any situation” express! Thanks for sharing.
If i were to re-do everything again, I would print this out and take it along with me during my weddings to remember what to do during poor lighting conditions!
Aha!! Great advice! I use on-camera flash sometimes at weddings and this will be super helpful!