ACTUALLY YOU CAN BLAME IT ON GUNPOWDER:
I wondered if you would make it this far. Flash photography started either on the Chinese New year or at the OK Corral. Flash powder created the bright light for some of those first plates that needed to be exposed. It worked till one of the genius's decided to take pictures in an old mine. You used gun powder in a long pan. You guessed it ...methane. They never found him but they did find the pan. They used it to collect him.
Hmm, research tells us Flash-powder mixtures pose serious risks of burn, amputation, blindness and death. They are shock-, friction-, and electrostatic-discharge-sensitive, and sensitive to some types of contaminates, such as strong acids and bases.
They should not be handled by those who are unfamiliar with the properties of such compositions, or the handling techniques required to maintain safety.
WE ARE TALKING ABOUT FLASH
For a pro trained in film use and experience, there is a reluctance to use all the automated features. With the newbie, he thinks the automated features will be the end all and problem solver. Both are wrong.
Flash is an essential, viable and valuable tool for the photographer and no specific setting or adjustment will solve a problem, you have to. There is no magic, you are the magic and the magician, you are expected to do the tricks. If we were still using flash powder, based on what I see, there would be a shortage of photographers and the I.J.Morris chain of funeral homes would be gangbusters.
There will be additional parts with input from some well known PRO friends of mine. The problem is both Canon and Nikon seem to want you to exclusively use their system and thats why both have taken their systems and totally integrated them into their cameras. But it appears, no one integrated the scene, the Bride, the location lighting, the alcohol, emotions, and a million other things that can and do go wrong that St. Murphy-Lawes is so proud of into the camera. Thats when a PRO who understands this takes command and experience and knowledge guides him through.
Today we have Wedding photographers with that same mentality. Sort of shoot first and ask questions later. For months I have been stealthily reading on many of the forums about Wedding and Event photographers coming to grips with flash. Or shall we say coming to gripes with flash.
An article in WPPPI, one of the trade magazines indicated about 20,000 new photographers in the Wedding game and 7,000 or so didn’t make the first renewal. Net gain 13,000. The business has a horrific failure rate. "One Wedding doth not a photographer make", it's usually the second or third when he walks in unprepared, and gunpowder and body fluids hit the fan.
I have said on 1000 occasions or so that a Wedding/ Event/ Journalist/ Photographer must have two qualities. He must understand business and light. Business skills relate to the financial, sales, promotion, leadership and focus of the company. Light skills cover the art of photography including the study of light, subject, composition, creativeness, after all, it’s photography’s most primal and true definition.
THE BEGINNING - STARTING CAN BE PAINFUL:
Understandable, I truly emphasize with you who have blitzed yourself into financial and talent obscurity and I do feel your pain. It will get worse when you discover you need to buy a flash. The thing on top of the prism doesn't cut it. It’s a groin injury because your wallet sits on the back of your groin defending your disposable income outlay. Our money is always well spent. It must be, it seldom returns.
It's just like buying a tank. When out shopping for tanks it's important to realize three things. Lets use this nice Panther I found at Ft. Benning. Light, fast, and pallet drop-able. So you ask yourself a few questions, if this is the one for you.
1- Make sure you are not being outgunned.
2- Make sure it's suitable for the occasion or terrain.
3- Make sure the right ammo is available and works.
The truth is when you buy a strobe ask yourself the same questions.
1- Is this strobe powerful enough to do the job it is intended for?
You have to weigh the entire process. Fortunately flash units are lighter than tanks.
2- Is this strobe portable, with an optional pack or even stable as an AC unit without overheating for different locations and sites. Lugging a fifteen pound battery to the top of that hill that looked so promising absolutely sucks as an idea. Is is big enough to handle a wide wedding party?
3- Is it compatible with my existing gear and in the case of older flashes not harming my newer gear. Ask yourself will it even work with my new gear?
While out cruising, Dolly, my late beloved, came across this one owner Russian T-72 in decent condition. "Honey, she said we can save money by buying a used tank like this on eBay."
Closer inspection revealed it needed some paint, a little bodywork from careless driving and for some reason the reverse gears were completely worn out.
Surprisingly enough it had no bullet holes in it. So I checked with TANK FAX and found out it was registered to Saddam Hussein's Republican Guards.
It saw limited action in the first Gulf War mostly in reverse, and was updated with safety equipment by Ralph Nader who was hired as a consultant and put huge backup lights on all their tanks. That explained the wear on the rear gears. If you know little about used gear, take someone along who does. Or buy from a reputable dealer with a thirty day return policy less the ammo you used.
YOU ARE ON A WELL TRAVELED PATH
Like a migration of the Caribou or the gigantic Wildebeest herds in Africa, the newbie Wedding shooter seems to follow a path laid down by his predecessors. It is, the new techno world. The manufacturers have replaced knowledge. Knowledge was earned by working as an understudy with a real professional. Unlike today with the promise of perfection as long as you have the proper credit card and a computer.
Photography is about light, not the mantras of the photo equipment manufacturers. Failures are because of a lack of preparation, training and a sheer lack of effort and study. PERIOD. Flash manufacturers, know this and they have automated their flash units to death, they call it integration. So you get something of an image, and then I hear, just shoot it and we'll correct it in Photoshop.
Those folks have new names. "POST-OGRAPHERS" study the extreme use of sharpness, raw over/under exposure and bloated saturation which is the motivation behind an enormous cash flow in the general direction of ADOBE. I know I pay for the same upgrade bills you do.
Our newbian feels the impulse to shoot Weddings because; It looked easy enough at his sisters wedding, and all the talent is in the tool, right? The new cameras do all the figuring and work for you to get perfect pictures. So let the buying begin. It comes in stages to create the perfect storm. A compilation of bad moves. Many of the statements here reflect portraiture and event photography too as well as Quinceañera's and other customary social events.
STEP ONE
It sometimes starts with a cost efficient, innocent and strategic move. The budget determines you have to save somewhere and that’s the flash unit. In your local camera store, albeit a Ritz or independent, they’ll help you into a rebadged Quantaray, Vivitar, Sigma, or Pro Master just to name a few. Many of which are under $130.00, about half of the factory unit.
It's like buyer a starter car. Our hero, Mr. Invincible, at this point, has at least made sure the flash works and the book said it would figure it all out for him. Remember I said there are two parts to being successful...but there are about twelve that can ruin you.
He forgot to scope the Church and poor planning usually leads to poor results. “I walked in and the lighting was really bad, not enough flash power" or "they wouldn’t let me use flash”! Big oops!
Chalk it up to a bad experience, especially since this usually occurs at the first paying wedding for some one other than his sister, cousin, office associate or friend. Debilitating to say the least. He loses faith in the business because he realizes this is not all fun,glory and the tools do the work. It is good business practice and a working knowledge of both business tool and cameras gear.
STEP TWO
When stage one falls apart the photographer joins a forum and asks questions. He or she wants to learn how everyone else did it. We all know "an answer". The problem is we don’t all have the same questions. There is no one right answer for 100 possible things we were not privy to.
Simple, we did not see or sense what he did. Never the less, the written answer right or rightly wrong is right more like “write”. The real problem is any advice is null and void at the next event since it will be different and the game will change.
Our skills and training are different and work-a-rounds are like cake baking. Same basic ingredients mixed and proportioned differently. Took me three years to learn why you beat crepe or pancake batter very lightly and don’t drag out the cake beater and whip it for ten minutes if you want light airy pancakes or even crepes. Eventually I learned, my wife was very patient and my head is very thick at times. Thanks to her, I am a crepe genius.
Enter the brand groupies, in concert they join in and some will say you need the integrated flash unit from the manufacturer of your camera. It wasn't your fault. Nice of them. Thats because they made the same stinking mistake. In a comfortable tone they will tell you, your problems are because you got the wrong flash.
So you need to step up to the N-C-P-S flash of your camera brand. That’s spelled PROPRIETARY. Misspelled it’s really PROSPERITY. The difference, you pay more for the manufacturers flash because of the features. Well thats a HALF TRUTH: All those exotic features are great as selling points but are they useful when the Bride changes the script and you have to improvise. Do you need all those features? Are you paying for what you will never use. are you willing to learn what the flash can really do?
Features and benefits are the hallmarks of the selling process. You are shown the features which sell the benefits to you. Like when you got your last car. The car salesman, tells you the Glitzo 530E- has a Macpherson front suspension! Reality... the car had to have something to support the wheels whether it be an A-frame, Macpherson or Torsion bar. That's features and benefits. Putting a value on the obvious at no cost.
TRUTH: - You pay the difference for proprietary stuff because of the R&D. The aftermarket guys just reverse engineer the product and find ways to make it cheaper with cheaper help, less features, less integration, as part of the equation.
STEP THREE -
A forum guru, self proclaimed offers, "More power to you”. The phrase came from the prison system. It was yelled across the concrete floors and steel bars of death row to the departed heading for the electric chair. Want to be a pro? You need a fourteen hundred ninety dollar battery pack and the Quasitmoronia Formido ZF200Mi head, made by the Gestuffan Battery Company in Deutschland.
This game is about light. It’s about enlightenment, knowledge and the student takes a long time to learn this because there is no reason to expand his thinking. The strobe is automatic isn't it. So just compensate and you solved the problem, you just don't know how. So you sell the strobe.
So the next step is to move up to a more powerful system or add more of the proprietary units via wireless. Great thinking “three is better than one”. If you can’t get one flash to do your bidding when you want it, how are three going to make your life easier during the stress of a wedding? Explaining it another way, you just graduated from training wheels to the two wheel bike and tomorrow you’ll be riding in the Tour De Bankruptcy in France.
With more money than brains and talent, find a used Quantum Turbo FLASH for sale because it’s larger and more intimidating and with a mere few hundred dollars extra get the Digital with the digital module for your camera.
But soon you find you have a strobe which only uses a certain PROPRIETARY power pack and the cheaper model only gives you 200 flashes when new which ends the day you use it the first time. So you really need two or more of them. This will usually end up at the $3000 mark when you are done and you still aren’t getting what you wanted.
STEP FOUR -
Add Alien Bees or Dyna-Lites or some other inexpensive setup that you have to add a Vagabond or other off-site power supply to operate wireless. All that currency spent for tiny units that cost more than the first pro camera you bought or go all out and beyond your learning curve.
The reason for the Vagabond is if you have AC lights with cords and someone trips on the cord; don’t worry about your mono light that smashed into the ground, better to worry about a lawsuit from the tripper. Hire an assistant, a second shooter, a beginner, or your wife to help carry all this gear. In step four you start thinking, this is work. Wives are smarter and as long as they are not sleeping with your lawyer you are OK
BLAME - COMMON EXCUSES
So things go wrong and you blame the gear, is the most common excuse we hear. That explains why your photos are not up to par and you just noticed everything was over or under, bad super bad backgrounds and so forth.
Try this, use phrases like “it was caused by poor ambient defunct lighting pre-operational techniques”. No one will know what the heck you are talking about and dismiss it after suing you. (Def: NO PLANNING)
Another good one is bad batteries you got at Wal-Mart. Since the strobe is powered by 4 super AA’s you missed most of the good shots because the alkaline were dying, the NiMH only gave half as many shots as the 2700’s promised.
Blame the flash diffuser, not realizing that the overpriced diffusing device you paid 50 dollars for was forcing full pops to properly illuminate the waiter in the back of the room via the mirrors and chandeliers, or worse he's picking his nose or scratching his...
Now if nothing works, you may purchase a can of Blamesmanship, the new all-purpose spray we developed for Golfers who really make bad shots, one spray and all those around can't remember how bad your last shot was. (copyright)
Just saturate the air when they are looking at your latest craft. They won't remember a thing. Blamesmanship is available in 12 ounce spray cans, bulk packed in a dozen or fifty gallon drums for use by crops dusters to do small towns for the picture of the mayor with that high school cheerleader.
FLASH DIFFUSION and BARE BULBS
You need a GIZMO, commonly called a diffuser, one of the 4000 lighting diffusion, add-ons that we cannot live without. In B & H’s last catalog (the big one) there were four pages of diffusers by eight plus companies. That’s a lot of turf. More expected this year.
• Lets face it, a good picture is like a house. Bad foundation, weak structure and all the fancy paint in the world won't help a bad house. There are no magic bullets in photography. Composition, Lighting, Action, Subject and Position all play a key role in the formation of the winning shot.
• Diffused light is on the secondary level of technique. It's an improvement to the foundation. The other most commonly used improvement is "I'll fix it in Photoshop".
• Flashes by virtue of their nature are simply an electrical dispersion producing light. The problem is the light is sharp, the term specula not spatula, as produced by most flashes. This is how high guide numbers are achieved for sales purposes and usually under or over shots, never what you wanted or saw. This "sharp light" is like direct sunlight, flattering to few and unflattering to many.
• We take this narrow and specula light and either diffuse it in a softbox by shooting through or bounce it with flashcards, spheres and reflectors. Simply put we are widening the light source which dilutes the power in F-stops and increases the power the strobe must put out. So the obvious and simple answer is bouncing light. But, too much bounce and we get a bunch of soft shots that are too equal all over and we lose the modeling effect. I've seen results from the newest hotdog diffuser and it's Ok in some and a disaster in others.
• There are two ways to achieve bounce, the least expensive, you can make yourself, use a flashcard, in one of the 300 different models or drag a wall wall or ceiling with you. There is no such bullet for perfect exposure whether softened or not and that's because every scene you photograph is not the same. Thats why we have studios, consistent, variable controlled environments.
THE OPPOSITE OF DIFFUSION IS BARE BULB -
• This is not a new idea. "Hand Grenade Flash in Theory" has been around for ages. In photo gear, the late sixties and seventies brought out the bare bulb. The reason: SLOW FILM had little contrast and bare bulbs with no reflectors produces a specula light, very sharp, good for newspaper guys so the plate-makers for the newspapers who printed pictures had contrast and not flat pictures. In B&W with S-L-O-W--F-I-L-M, and very little contrast most of the time this becomes a disaster with digital.
• For those who are willing to try bare bulb, which is really weird with DIGITAL, and deadly if you are shooting in a hall with mirrors, chandeliers and any other kind of light reflection, you are in the realm of disaster for stuff that counts.
* Use it for the Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde stuff. Like a good fling, you take it all in but don't get married to it. Digital see's better than you do. All of the color spectrum that's visible. You basically have no control.
OUR VERSION
• So we went back over to brother Hiram's Redneck Museum of Photography and asked Billy Bob if he heard of any other devices that could put light out in all directions evenly at once. He strode out to the broken Kenworth next to the barn, grabbed a part, went to the shop and after about ten minutes said " hey you 'all, this here will work, cost you a dollar". I don't really know if he got the picture.....
WARNING: This device has not been approved by the Bureau Of Mines for use in Natural Gas Plants, Oil Refineries, Dynamite Factories and the Men's room at Hemingway's favorite Bar in Key West. Use of this device in any of the mentioned areas might cause a horrific explosion. If you have been in Hemmingway's you'll know what I mean. More gas than the Alaska pipeline.
EDITORS NOTES:
This document has been checked for speling, granma and flunctiation. No dangling participles here since Granma trimmed them. The bull was not very happy!
And add a couple hundred dollars of Photoshop add-ons next to your slick AVATAR on the forum. Make sure it's above your credit line at the bottom of page next to your list of filters, gorilla pods and tripod accessories you own. Really makes the other guys jealous of all your disposable income and lack of any real talent.
SUMMARY
• Flash is always a heated discussion. There are those who defend their outlay of disposable income and think a 100 Guide Number unit can truly duplicate what studio gear can do. They can with lots of manipulation and technique.
• There are those who drag enough studio gear for solid location setups and this will work at all weddings till you get too old or a hernia, or someone trips over the setup and the crash is heard throughout the wedding hall.
• The end result, whatever these folks had, didn’t work for them and now they hope they’ll recoup their loses by selling their gear with some story attached like they are going back to ambient light or returning to Cornell for their degree in advanced Heart Surgery.
• I guess that’s why so much flash units are for sale on eBay, forums and websites. You wind up with hundreds of other peoples failed flash ideas and the truth is most any light can work if you understand the mechanics of lighting.