Links for on-camera flash use?

Here's a link to a short video of Denis Reggie, describing why he often uses a single, hot-shoe-mounted, on-camera flash to create beautiful lighting. Tip of the Week with Denis Reggie - Foofing! | The Pictage Blog

Mr. Reggie uses on-camera bounce flash using Canon d-slr cameras,and his results are, well, some of the best of any American wedding photographer. Using on-camera bounce flash is as he says, "a lovely way to use flash on-camera."

Reggie points out that the newer Canon bodies have exceptional High-ISO capabilities, and he is not afraid to use ISO 3,200 or 6,400, or even higher, allowing him to use wide-aperture lenses and to make 20,30,40,even 60-foot bounce throws,and still get beautiful light from a single, on-camera speedlight.

For those that are new to wedding photography and who might not have heard of Denis Reggie, American PHOTO magazine rated Denis Reggie one of its 10 Best Wedding Photographers in The World,and he and Joe Bussink were the only two American wedding photographers featured in the British Broadcasting COrporation's TV special featuring five of ,"the Worlds' greatest Wedding Photographers." He and Bussink are teaching a 12-person, 3 day workshop this October, priced at $1,495 per person.
 
Good for him. He has thousands to spend on a camera body. For us poorer laymen with bodies that can't safely go past 800, such use of flash simply isn't viable. Bounce flash is nothing terribly extraordinary. And it's about the only way one will ever manage to get okay lighting from on-camera flash.

But on-camera flash still limits you. Always.

A simple sync cord for goodness sake can get the flash away from the optical axis and let you get the darn thing in the right place for catchlights when, say, using it for fill outside. That's simply something that can't be done correctly with on-camera flash, without bouncing it into, say, an umbrella being held by your handy-dandy Mk I assistant, which mind you, us laymen also can't afford.
 
Did you happen to miss the Strobist.com lessons on using on-camera,shoe-mounted flash as on-axis fill lighting outdoors? If you know how, using the flash on-camera creates perfect, neutral fill light. Are you familiar with that technique?
Strobist: On-Axis Fill: Introduction
on-axis fill light-introduction.

Strobist: On-Axis Fill: Run-and-Gun Version
on-axis fill from on-camera speedlight in run-and-gun

Strobist: On Assignment: WiMAX
Another use of direct, on-camera, shoe-mounted speedlight as neutral, on-axis fill light.

Anybody who happens to have a camera that will shoot at ISO 800 and has access to a couple of decent prime lenses can shoot good bounce flash. We did it in the 1980's,well before the strobist movement got so many newbs into stand-mounted speedlights.

I learned to shoot bounce flash in the 1980's when 3M's ISO 640 color slide film was considered "extraordinarily fast" color film useful only for emergency on-location color work. Well-executed bounce flash allows you to create lighting that looks a lot like ambient light, but you have to have some experience to do it.

As far as creating catchlights, I'm old enough to have been shooting bounce flash back when the high-end technique was to use a business card or a white,plastic spoon rubber-banded to the flash head to divert just a kiss of light forward, while the rest of the light was bounced off of the ceiling. Metz has some flash units with a bounceable main head, and a smaller, secondary flash tube that faces directly forward, just like my old Nikon SB-16 from the Nikon FE-2 and F3 days. These dual-flashtube speedlights give both bounce flash AND straight-ahead light for a catchlight; this technology has been available for over 30 years for those who are aware of it and want it. And, uh, it works much better than the plastic spoon trick !

Reggie's bounce flash techniques ARE easily available to those who have cameras capable of ISO 800; I grew up in the ISO 64 and ISO 100 era...and bounced flash and digital sensors and lenses have only gotten better since then. The original poster asked about sources of good info on how to use on-camera flash,and I have a lot of experience on using both on-camera and off-camera flash. Obviously, there are a times when on-camera flash is the only possible way to shoot,and as the strobist blog points out, even top professionals use "on-camera flash" as fill lighting. So, flash on-camera is not always "limiting"; actually, on-camera flash it is often quite liberating and proper use of on-camera flash can mean the difference between a professional-looking fill-flash shot and a snapshot outdoors.
 
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*sigh* You realize that I'm talking about the extremes here, right? There's no way in hell I'm going to get my 580 to bounce flash off a wall that's 40ft away and get a decent exposure without horsewhipping it to death at ISO 800. And yes, I've tried. At f/1.4 . (An issue that is compounded further when you actually have to fight the ambient for the sake of a passable image.) Guide numbers lie.

And no, I didn't miss the Strobist.com lesson you're referring to. I've gone over all of those basic lessons at least twice. I use fill all the time. But my point is that it sure isn't easy to get a catchlight in the right spot if you don't take the flash off the camera. It's always going to be at roughly 12 o'clock on the eyes unless you tilt it (which is funky in any case, and I don't like it), and if you're shooting someone from below and up, life gets even nastier because now those lights are coming from below. And shooting at the tele range it gets closer to the centre of the eye too. Unless it's PP'd later, I'd much rather just get the darn catchlights in the right place in the first place; somewhere off-centre and above the horizontal centre of the eyes. Plus, getting it off camera outdoors can give you the wonderful option of just blasting a flash and over-powering the ambient, with nice directional light coming from off-camera.
 
Here's a link to a short video of Denis Reggie, describing why he often uses a single, hot-shoe-mounted, on-camera flash to create beautiful lighting. Tip of the Week with Denis Reggie - Foofing!*|*The Pictage Blog

Not bad if you have a camera that goes to incredible ISO levels without turning a picture into garbage. But for someone who "often" uses this technique, his online portfolio has just a couple of images which are shot with a flash, all of which are backed up so much by great natural lighting and high ISO that the flash is barely visible and possibly could have been omitted in favour of a bit of dodging in photoshop.

Great if you can do it. Shame someone who is about to buy their first flash is unlikely to have such a nice camera body though.
 

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