Low key without wireless trigger?

[TheStupidForeigner]

Hey, just wondering if anyone has any suggestions on how to do low key style photography without a wireless trigger? As in using the pop up flash to trigger the external?

 

[weepete]

Yeah if your flash has that function just set it in camera. Snoot can be useful for this kind of stuff too.

 

[Derrel]

The snoot can be made of aluminum foil or cardboard or whatever works to shunt the light from the pop-op flash off toward the remote flash, so you do not get unwanted flash fill on close subjects. If your camera has a PC cord outlet, a 20-foot PC extension cord is still a good, inexpensive way to trigger a second flash unit that is off camera. flashzebra.com sells affordable PC cords and needed accessories, such as hot shoe cubes that slide-in and create a PC connection/outlet on the cameras that do not have a PC connection on them.

 

[dannylightning]

I use the flash on my camera, I set the flash to manual mode and turn it to the lowest power, as long as I am not very close to the subject the on camera flash light does not show up on the photo, if you turn your studio lights off and take a few shots with the on camera flash you will find out how close you can get to something before the light from your on camera flash starts to show up in the photo, as long as you get a pure black image when you take those test shots than you know your not getting on camera flash in the shot. my speed lights have to be on the right setting for the on camera flash to make them fire, I press the mode button on my lights and when they are in S1 mode they will fire when the on camera flash fires but they must be in that mode to work that way. so if your lights may or may not need to be in a specific mode to fire this way

I just picked up a inexpensive neewer wireless trigger system for 20 bucks on amazon that works works great with my speed lights, one end fits on the hot shoe of my camera and the other end connects to my flash and those work great, there are no wires attached to the camera and I do not need to use the on camera flash . I just hook the wireless trigger to one of my lights and than set the other lights to fire when that one does..

either way you do it works just fine, using a sync cable will also work well if yo do not mind having a wire connecting your camera to the flash, I would personally get at least a 15 foot long cable if you go this way and if your camera does not have a spot to plug in the sync cable you can get a hot shoe adapter that does for around 20 bucks or less