RADIO TRIGGERING OF FLASHES

Ashok Kandimalla has been field for in the photographic over three decades and has extensive experience in both film and digital photography. Being an electronics engineer by profession and a photographer, he possesses a unique and deep insight into the technical aspects of digital photography and equipment. He has published more than a 100 articles on photography and some of his writings have also been published in the well-known international magazine Popular Photography. An avid collector of photographic books and vintage cameras, Ashok has a keen interest in the history of photography and a passion for sharing his knowledge on photography through teaching and writing. He is the only Indian photographer to be featured on the Nikon Centenary website. He is presently working as a Management and Engineering consultant. He can be reached at [e-mail].

- Ashok Kandimalla

Picture 1: Harsh shadows at the wrong place are the result of on-camera flashes.

Battery powered portable flashguns (or just flashes for short) are handy as sources of light - either as the main illumination or as a fill. The main disadvantage is that flashes when mounted on your camera on the accessory shoe (as it is commonly done), give rather unflattering results (Picture 1) as they will cast harsh shadows at unwanted places. Plus, there will be no provision to attach any light modifiers like softboxes, umbrellas, etc. More importantly, there is no scope to position the flash where you want. The latter is important when photographing portraits, still-life, etc. All these drawbacks can be removed and a flash can be used effectively, when you keep it off-camera.

However, an off-camera flash brings its own disadvantages and challenges. One of them is that you need to find a suitable fixture or a stand to position the flash. Many such devices are available in the market, but, we will not be going into the details in this article as they have been discussed earlier in Smart Photography. Coming to the challenges, the most important one is that, the firing of the flash must be exactly synchronised with the opening of the shutter. The flash also needs to be set to a proper mode viz. manual or auto-TTL, the latter offering automatic flash exposure.