daggah
No longer a newbie, moving up!
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OK, so my experiments with off camera flash have been with manual flashes and cheap radio triggers, and honestly I've just been winging it as far as power goes. I've just assumed that I didn't need that much power and usually gotten a decent exposure out of guessing 1/64 or 1/32 power from my flashes. But I just watched a Snapfactory video on Youtube where Mark Wallace explained that some of the more advanced flashes actually have their own built-in light meters, so if you tell them what aperture and ISO you have your camera at, they will still fire a pre-flash and determine flash output! You can even trigger normally incompatible flashes (i.e., a Canon flash from a Nikon camera or vice versa.) This mode would work with even the cheap ebay-style radio triggers and still offer automatic flash exposure.
Here's the video for reference:
The main drawback is, the lightmeter on the flash is on the front, so it prevents you from using light modifiers. However, the Photek Softliter is like a hybrid between a softbox and a reflected umbrella, and is available in a large 60" size. So theoretically, you should be able to put a compatible flash in with the front facing forward and the flash head pointed 180* behind and still have the flash able to automatically determine power output!
Has anyone messed with this? I bring this up because Mark Wallace pointed out that this feature is not all that well-known.
For what it's worth, the cheapest flash I've found so far (definitely don't take this as gospel, I'd love to be shown wrong on this!) is the Nissin Di 866 at around $350. So theoretically, for $500 (to account for the softliter, a light stand, and a cheap radio trigger) you could have semi-automatic off-camera flash with a large light modifier.
Here's the video for reference:
The main drawback is, the lightmeter on the flash is on the front, so it prevents you from using light modifiers. However, the Photek Softliter is like a hybrid between a softbox and a reflected umbrella, and is available in a large 60" size. So theoretically, you should be able to put a compatible flash in with the front facing forward and the flash head pointed 180* behind and still have the flash able to automatically determine power output!
Has anyone messed with this? I bring this up because Mark Wallace pointed out that this feature is not all that well-known.
For what it's worth, the cheapest flash I've found so far (definitely don't take this as gospel, I'd love to be shown wrong on this!) is the Nissin Di 866 at around $350. So theoretically, for $500 (to account for the softliter, a light stand, and a cheap radio trigger) you could have semi-automatic off-camera flash with a large light modifier.
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