Speed lighting basics

Whether you take still photos or movies, lighting is the key to creating an atmosphere that effectively reflects your artistic purpose. Here we will provide some lighting tools and techniques that you can use to take high-quality pictures.

Reducing shadows and improving depth

Although the flash setting that is not connected to the camera can improve the optical depth, it is usually easier, and sometimes even effective, to use light bounce from the camera's flash unit from a nearby surface such as a wall or ceiling to obtain more natural lighting with improved dimensions. The difference can be enormous, because the flash unit stays on the camera as it maintains maximum freedom of movement and speed. Flash bounce also provides wider coverage, which is ideal when you need to light a group of people, for example.

High-speed and slow flash sync

To create background bokeh in bright lighting, you need a fast shutter speed with a large aperture. And if you also need a fill flash, the maximum shutter speed will be limited, and this may make it impossible to use a large enough aperture. High-speed sync (HSS) allows flash to be used at all shutter speeds, so you can increase the aperture as needed.

Bounce off the ceiling

Point the flash toward the ceiling to distribute the light and spread it to create a nicer atmosphere and more advanced images that can be achieved with direct flash.

Slow sync is used in situations requiring a slow shutter speed to appropriately expose background scenes at home or during the night. The flash is fired to expose the subject, then instead of closing it immediately, the shutter remains open enough to expose the background as well. Thus you get well-balanced images whose target and background are properly exposed.