Wireless TTL with Canon Flashes

Technology has given the modern photographer some incredible gifts and the Canon flash system is one incredible system.  I have been involved in photography pretty much my whole life, the year before I graduated from high school about 1968 I worked in a camera store in Clinton, Iowa.  It was just about that time that I bought the most wiz bang flash of the day the Honeywell 770 Stobonar.  This was one of the early automatic flash units of the day.  What the auto feature did for the wedding photographer of the day was incredible, no more guessing what the distance to the subject was and adjusting the aperture.

Today. Tom and I shoot with Canon 5D and the 1D Mark II and Canon 550ex, 580ex, and the 580exII.  This combination of modern cameras and system flashes has revolutionized how we use flash.  Lately we have given the wireless ttl function of these flashes a real workout in our wedding photography.  A 580ex is mounted on our camera and the new 580exII is mounted on a bogan umbrella bracket with a small white umbrella.  We prefer the original 580ex for camera mounting over the 550ex flash units because it tilts and rotates with one button.  The 580ex is also prefered over the 580exII for on the camera as it has a simple switch to change the wireless setting which is much more handy than the menu driven controls of the 580exII.  During a shoot the on camera flash is switched frequently from “master” to “off.”  If you forget to turn the flash from “master” and you use in a normal flash manner the exposures will not be right. 

All of the flashes we own appear to function the same in terms of the wireless ttl performance, but maybe I am missing something. 

The set up is simple with the on camera flash is set to master and the off camera is set to slave, all units are set to channel 1 and the the umbrella light is set to “B”.  We power all the flash units with external batteries so we can shoot real fast with out loosing any to recycle.  Tom and I both slave to the same light throughout the reception shooting. 

The exposure is simple with this setup, for indoor receptions we use a pretty high ISO and wide aperture so we collect some of the continuous light.  So something like ISO 800 and F/5 will work nicely.  The exposure is then fine tuned as you shoot by clicking the large wheel and adjusting the plus or minus.  We have often found that it may need a +2/3.

Depending what is going on we may use the on camera as a fill light and the off camera as a main and create ratios with the lights.  After you pull up the ratio menu you will see sets of numbers along the bottom of the flash.  The first # is the camera flash and the second # is the remote flash.

The wireless ettl canons are simply amazing in that they work!!  You can vary any aspect of your exposure/iso and the system immediately response with a corrected exposure.  You can train your camera way across a room, with a telephoto lens and if you have a high iso dialed up and and set on f/2.8 you can grab some great candids.  You can go outside and with great success use the flash even in a program mode make great images nicely blending the ambient and the flash exposure.  Young photographers may never know how the old film shooters had to scratch their heads and try to meter and calculate what the canon system does in a fraction of a second preflash.

Better Bounce

This a response to a post on Opensourcephot.net  

Ditch the Fong!! We use the better bounce and attach with Velcro. I put two strips of the Velcro soft side around the top of the flash and three 1 ½ inch pieces of the hook side on the foam. This makes a very versatile set up and never falls off. I would never own another expensive gizmo for my flash again. This is the best!

And don’t just think that you should attach to the back of your flash; I often put it on the front and throw the majority of the light to a wall or to left or right ceiling. What you get is a very soft directional light.

If you have 5 bucks and a scissors, give it a try. The foam is stinky when it is new and seems to resist the Velcro stick but if you leave it out for a while the Velcro will stick real good. Take a look at any of our weddings in our online store and you will see the results. Our Fong fell off last year and we never got another one.

This is how we set it up for thowing the light toward a wall.