Nikon SB-910 Speedlight

krystalynnephoto · Jul 30, 2013

I won't tell you how excited I am, bc you all already know my husband surprised me with a 50mm lens yesterday, but I just walked in from the grocery store to find a shiny, new SB-910 sitting on my computer desk. This man.... I tell you; I'm literally without words.

Anywho, because of this... (I know nothing about using a speedlight, this will be fun!) - I need to know what everyone's "must know," about flash photography and using a speedlight. Any tips and tricks, etc? I am so excited to get started with this big baby!

Derrel · Jul 30, 2013

Well, the web has a LOT of good resources for people interested in learning about speedlight use. One tip/trick is that bounce flash can be done with the flash in the hotshoe, and the zoom head on the flash set to one of the narrower, more "TELE" settings like 85 or 105mm zoom setting, and the flash aimed up, and off to the side, or up and behind, or up, and off to one side AND behind, etc. so that the flash gets a good "bounce", and will rain down soft, diffused light from a relatively big source.

Denis Reggie, the famous wedding shooter, calls this "foofing". He does it with his camera's ISO level set pretty high, and he can bounce the flash off of very high ceilings and walls, over pretty long distances. The key is a good aim for the bounce, and setting the flash to a TELE zoom setting.

Indoors, if you try a bunch of different aim-points for bounce flash, sometimes, not always, some simply GORGEOUS lighting can be created. I recall one time working in a very small room, trying multiple bounce flash aims, and on about the sixth different aim points, I hit upon a lovely lighting pattern that looked much different from the prior tries. So, that would by my tip: try bounce flash. You have a good, modern camera, with good ISO performance, so you can now use flash indoors at higher than ever ISO levels, so that flash acts more as a gentle shadow fill-in light, and not so much as the "main" light. Planetneil.com is a great site for exploring the various ways to use flash, naturally.