580ex ll help

[Charlie0742001]

I just got my 580ex ll and I have to admit I'm a little intimidated by it. The manual is a tough read for em too. So does anyone know of an idiots guide or can set me in the right direction in getting started with this flash? Thanks and have a great holiday

[DDCSD]

This isn't specific to the 580EXII, but it is a great on-camera flash techniques site. Have a read through the site, play with your flash for a few days and then go back through the site. It will make a lot more sense the second time around.

http://www.planetneil.com/tangents/flash-photography-techniques/

Here is a great thread that is a sticky at the top of this section. Great info.
http://photography-on-the.net/forum/showthread.php?t=138907

Great thread with more situational specific links.
http://photography-on-the.net/forum/showthread.php?t=46599

This is the EOS flash bible, linked to in the above thread, but worth pointing out separately. Very helpful information.
http://photonotes.org/articles/eos-flash/

[40Dude6aedyk]

The manual is a tough read??? I find that very hard to believe. Maybe you skipped ahead to the French section?

Seriously, read page 11 and you are done.

[Titus213]

Put it on the camera, turn it on, make sure it's in ETTL mode (may require the manual, and I agree the manuals are not always clear), turn on the camera, shoot pictures.

Simple idea to get your head around, flash pictures are really two exposures, the ambient light exposure that the camera can meter, and the flash exposure determined by the flash and camera (automatically with the flash in ETTL mode).

So, meter the scene with the camera meter - this is why many prefer manual mode on the camera - underexpose a bit depending on how much ambient light you want from the background, shoot. Chimp and adjust using FEC (again, you may have to read the manual a bit - Flash Exposure Compensation).

That should get you started.

Oh, and welcome to the forums.

[Charlie0742001]

Thanks for the welcome Titus. So basically as long as Im in ETTL mode I can meter as usual with the camera and the flash will work according with it. I played around with it tonight and thats what basically happened.:D I did have to use FEC and I tried it with the flash bouncing in different directions, the diffuser pulled down, little card pulled up, etc. and really like it. Thanks again everyone.

[Charlie0742001]

I just finished reading what Curtis posted on using flash and that was great. A lot easier for a simple newbie for myself to digest than that "French" manual the flash came with.

[Katzer1]

I picked up flash photography about 2 weeks ago. I should have bought a flash 2 years ago and forget about 1.4 primes and high iso... I never got the results I wanted at my dim apartments and now I use my zoom lenses, stopped down at 100 or 200 iso with terrific results. Long live the 580exII.

This is a good opportunity for me to test my understanding... so here it goes.

Say we don't use a flash, we take a long exposure in a dim room. At 1/2 sec... first shot is nicely exposed but all of a sudden someone comes in an turns on the lights in the middle of the exposure - Bam! the shot is ruined because the lighting changed, and with "regular" exposure, the camera measures the amount of light, figures out the shutter speed or aperture (or both) to match that light assuming that the light is *not* going to change.

With flash photography it is totally different. The flash is going to change the amount of light , drastically.
The luminance of a flash has only one setting: B-R-I-G-H-T. The only parameter that can be modified is the duration the flash is lit. The camera has a light sensor that during the time the shutter is open meters the amount of light that enters the camera. Once that meter is satisfied that enough light has reached the sensor - it cuts off the flash. This is why the flash can be set to bounce against a ceiling or a wall: that sensor will tell the flash to keep emmiting light until that sensor is "satisfied".

That flash light duration is not very long, in fact is is very short (1/700 sec tops).
On the other hand, it is not that easy for a camera to coordinate a flash with the shutter opening and closing. The maximum shutter speed a camera can handle for coordinating the shutter and flash is called sync speed. Since sync speed is much lower than 1/700 (1/200 for rebels, 1/250 for 40d, 1/500 for the latest 1 series), it is easy to see that the shutter speed has no effect on the flash exposure itself.

But to make life easy, the camera tries to balance the flash part and the ambient light part into a overall proper exposure. It does so with that meter, if enough light already entered the camera before the flash fired, that meter should cut the flash of earlier (so we don't get an overexposure).
I does however has an effect on the ambient light exposure.

See a flash shot has 2 components: the flash exposure and the ambient light exposure. Remember turning on the lights from the first example? this is exactly it, only now we have a light meter that would turn them back off again once we have reached a proper exposure.

So if the shutter speed has no effect on the flash exposure, what does have an effect?
2 things:
1) aperture: the bigger the aperture, the more light comes in so the flash doesn't have to stay on for so long...
2) iso level, the higher the iso, the higher the sensitivty, just like an 1/60 sec exposure at iso 100, will take 1/120 at iso 200, same goes for the flash: it will need to give light for half the time if you bump the iso from 100 to 200.

What is talk about 2 exposures good for?
1) understanding it helps us figure out our results
2) we can play with it to achieve sublte effects. For instance, say there is ok light already, enough for an available light shot, a flash gently bouncing of the wall can help bright up the shaddows... just an example.

Good thing we are at the digital age. I would have totally burnt hundreds of rolls before I'd be able to get any hunch for how a flash is going to effect the picture...in other words, you just need to experiment with different settings.

Hope it helps, comments, corrections and criticisms are welcomed.

Erez

[DDCSD]

Excellent break down.



Good thing we are at the digital age. I would have totally burnt hundreds of rolls before I'd be able to get any hunch for how a flash is going to effect the picture...in other words, you just need to experiment with different settings.



I wouldn't have, I'd have sold the flash (and maybe the camera) after the third roll! :) Good thing I only had the pop-up on my old film rebel.