Thursday 17 March 2011


Flash on the battlefield with Keith Robins Photography.
Maiden Newton At War re-enactment presented absolutely loads of flash opportunities.
Recently a Canon 580 EXll flashgun arrived in the post, from my wife who thankfully encourages me in my photo endevours.
Along with my existing 580 EX mark one I now have the makings of a portable studio which I can control with an ST-E2 Canon gadget that clips into the camera hotshoe and which I picked up for a song.
Now you may think this is getting away from pure strobist flash techniques and you're right, but I'm not going to apoligize for trying to conquer yet another milestone in the ever expanding challenge of photography. This is modern technology and is going to take a lot of getting used to, so thank heaven I've had thirty five years head start as a genuine strobist. I'm a knobs and levers sort of bloke and some of these modern menus sometimes baffle me.

My learning of ultra-modern flash techniques started off with just one Canon 580EX flash at Maiden Newton 20th of June 2010.
I set the camera on Manual mode, the ISO to 200, F8 in aperture priority and the flash set to ETTL at 1/3 rd under exposure so as not to overpower and appear obvious, this is admirably demonstrated above with the title shot of my day out.
Being a really bright day the shutter speeds soared above the sync speed of my flashgun, but by pressing a combination of buttons on the back panel of the flash I found highspeed sync. This sends out the flash in a series of pulses relating to the shutter speed and exposes all parts of the sensor evenly meaning I didn't get the normal black bar across the lower part of each image. Operating the menu requires fairly small fingers, but eventually I managed it with my builder's sized digits.

I was surprised to find that some photos were taken as high as 1/800th, which causes the flash to be so weak it's usless at anything more than three feet! I should have realised this and gone for an aperture of F11 and lowered the sensitivity to ISO 100 before ruining 20% of my daylight flash balance efforts.

Going back to the camera being on manual and the flash on ETTL, the flash knows what aperture I've set on the camera, it even knows what ISO setting is being used and produces light accordingly. This is all very clever and so beyond most of us that I'll excuse you for throwing your hands in the air and saying; 'Oh Sod it! I think I'll just use auto and be damned!'
However, stick with it and before long the penny begins to drop. But, beware! Just when you think you've grasped the know-how and beginning to master this daylight flash balance malarkey, then something will go wrong, you'll be stumped again and wishing you'd stuck with manual strobist guns.

To soften the flash indoors I've got a Stofen to send the light around the room and sends out enough until the camera agrees with the output and turns off the flash, but outdoors Stofens just don't cut it.
Instead I use the lid of a large emulsion paint tub which I've cut and shaped to fit the flash head. The angle of 45 degrees sends out a fairly soft edged light which caused a lot of interest on the battlefield. Mind you, should I happen to lose it there are another five paint tins lids in my shed.

Many thanks to all the WWll re-enactors who helped make my day.
In the next post I'll explain a little more about ETTL on location and hope I can make it easier to understand - for both of us!