Photo workshop on speedlite

I went to a photo workshop on Sunday. It was run by SHOOT photography workshops, and it was a half day workshop for people to learn about the use of speedlite (I didn't know that Nikon spells it as "speedlight", while Canon spells it as "speedlite").

I haven't used a speedlite much before as I have never owned one. So, I thought it won't be a bad idea for me to attend a workshop to find out more especially when our school is covering the cost of the workshop as a part of my professional development. For the workshop, I borrowed 430EXII from our photography class at school.

I thought the lecturer was very knowledgeable and patient, and his presentation was interesting and easy to follow.  However, it would have been much better, if the contents of the workshop had been thrown at a higher pitch.

The bulk of the workshop was spent on very basic things like how to set up the flash unit on cameras and to learn different buttons, and so on.  People can learn these by reading a manual or get some ideas from youtube videos, I thought.

I was more interested to learn about how to use multiple flash units to achieve different lighting effects for different settings as opposed to using bigger strobe monoblocks for instance. I was also hoping to find out how to use a speedlite for action shots and so on.  The lecturer talked about these things briefly while he was doing his power point presentation, and he did a few demos outside, but I thought that there wasn't enough time spent on learning actual lighting techniques. 

Another bummer part was that my EOS 6D was being pretty much useless during the workshop as the camera doesn't have a function to control external flash units on its own. While those guys with other camera bodies like 60D were being able to control a group of flash units from their camera bodies, the only thing I could do was to play by myself with the 430 EXII sitting on top of my camera. 

 

Anyway, I would still recommend the workshop for people who got absolutely no idea on how to use a flash unit.  As I said, the lecturer was great and you always pick up some skills just by watching how a professional person works.

For others who already some ideas on how the speedlite works but want to explore further, it would perhaps be better off to spend the same amount of money to hire a couple of units of speedlite with a wireless flash trigger from Camera Electronic, and spend one weekend to work out how to use them by yourself.

Before returning the speedlite back to school on Tuesday, I did a bit of experiment to see how it works on different subjects around our house. Here are some photos.  

Shot under natural light. It sows a natural transient light. It is kind of Zen aesthetic.

Shot with flash.  Lift the shadow but it looks wired as the direction of the light and the shadow doesn't line up

My grand father's old camera.  Too bad it is broken.  Shot with ambient light at f/3.5 @ 1/25 sec on ISO6400

Shot with a speedlite. The light was bounced against the ceiling. The camera looks flat without shadows.

Shot under ambient light.

Flash + defuser. Leaves look very waxy unlike how they really feel