So Im gonna get a 430EX....

There are several styles...the 'old school' ones are typically the ones where the flash is off to the side. The one I have, holds the flash directly above the camera in either portrait or landscape orientation. Having the flash above the camera helps to eliminate red eye and it casts people's shadows behind and below them.
If the flash is off to the side, the shadows will be cast off to the side...and when someone has a wall behind them it can make for some bad looking shadows.

OK, thanks makes a lot more sense. Somewhere I read that it was better to have it to the side, but ya...the whole shadow thing. THANKS MIKE!
 
It's a device that attaches to the flash and tells the flash to fire whenever it's triggered by another flash of light.

So if you have a room of 400 flashes with optical slaves attached to then, you could take a picture with your pop up flash and get all 400 flashes to trigger at the same time.

So do you have to have your pop-up flash on the camera on for it to work? Is that the only way it gets the other flashes to flash? I think Im a bit confused on this part of it. lol
 
Remember that this in an art...as much as anything else. There is no right and wrong...so don't think that everything you read is the best or only way to do something.

When shooting with a bracket, I prefer to have the flash above the camera for the reason I mentioned above.

However, when I'm using a flash completely off the camera (not on a bracket) or using a studio light...then I certainly want the light to be off to the side, because this gives you side light, which gives your subjects some depth and texture.

Like I said, there is not right or wrong...just different ways of doing things.
 
So do you have to have your pop-up flash on the camera on for it to work? Is that the only way it gets the other flashes to flash? I think Im a bit confused on this part of it. lol
You do have to have on flash that is connected or triggered by the camera. This would be the master....the ones on optical triggers would all be slaves.

The easy answer is yes, the pop up flash could probably trigger a bunch of optical slaves. The 'not so easy' answer is that your pop up flash uses a preflash (because of E-TTL)...so it actually fires twice. A cheap optical slave will be triggered by the preflash, and the flash won't be able to fire again so quickly. There are more advanced optical triggers, which can ignore the preflash.
 
The only prefrash from the pop up would be for red eye reduction which can be disbled. You'd have to have a 5xx on the camera to use wireless TTL.
 
but if the pop-up flash were to pop up...do a pre-flash, which would then fire the off-camera flashes, (if you were using an optical slave) then the pop up flash goes off as well...would you even notice the pop up flash in the picture? or am i totally confusing everything and making it harder then it is? lol
 
but if the pop-up flash were to pop up...do a pre-flash, which would then fire the off-camera flashes, (if you were using an optical slave) then the pop up flash goes off as well...would you even notice the pop up flash in the picture? or am i totally confusing everything and making it harder then it is? lol

The pop up flash has to do a regular flash and not a preflash. Since light moves at the speed of...light...it all happens instantaneously to us. You may notice the popup flash with the right conditions, but with the right settings and distances it won't even be apparent as it's not very powerful at all and the other flashes will overpower it. Keep in mind that flashes triggered by optical slaves will only work in manual mode, so it's up to you to set the power and camera settings on your own.

There's a lot to learn, but once you do it'll increase your photography ten fold and then it all becomes second nature.
 
You can also set the popup flash to its lowest setting, so the light should have no effect in comparrison to how bright your main flashes are. (in ideal situations).

Wow! 23 posts and I'm Going to be the first to say it.

Check out www.[B]strobist[/B].blogspot.com
Start with 101 and work your way through the site; If your like me at 3am you will look at the clock, realized that you just missed and 8 hour shift that ended 3 hours ago, but you wont even care because you feel so enlightened about off camera lighting.
 
The only prefrash from the pop up would be for red eye reduction which can be disbled
I believe that the built-in (pop up) flash will always fire a pre flash...I don't think it can be set to manual control, which would be the only way to disable the preflash.
 
You can also set the popup flash to its lowest setting, so the light should have no effect in comparrison to how bright your main flashes are. (in ideal situations).

Wow! 23 posts and I'm Going to be the first to say it.

Check out www.strobist.blogspot.com
Start with 101 and work your way through the site; If your like me at 3am you will look at the clock, realized that you just missed and 8 hour shift that ended 3 hours ago, but you wont even care because you feel so enlightened about off camera lighting.

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