Flash Photography advice please

[Rich K]

I've a Nikon D7000 and wish to add a flashgun to my kit
this will be used for normal low light pics as well as developing my skills
with night time indoor and outdoor shots

I find that my results with the pop-up flash really hit and miss
and dont really understand how or why I get the results that I do.

So .......
what do I need to look for in a flash gun ?
do I need to spend in excess of £300 to have a flash that "I wont grow out of"?

Ive looked at the Nikon Speedlite SB700 and SB900

what advice can you give me to allow a proper selection to be made and the right flash purchased

cheers and ta in advance for you thoughts

[-Pete-]

I'm not a Nikon photographer so can't comment on their offerings, but a hotshoe flash will be more flexible. Although you still need to think about where you point it, head-on it will still suffer the same problems that your built-in flash have. Bounce it off a white ceiling if you're indoors, I always use a STO-FEN OmniBounce diffuser... seems a lot of money but they do the job.

[RobDickinson]

Flash really gets good when you get it away from the camera.

You can probably do this with nikons wireless system and use the pop up as a command mode flash. This will retain the whole automatic exposure control and FEC ability.

The other off camera option is cheap wireless triggers and shoot strobist/manual.

On camera speedlight is good if you can bounce as said above.

I find for flash your almost certainly better off in full manual mode, and always remember you are shooting 2 exposures, flash and the natural light, shoot the natural light shot without flahs and make sure its right, then add in flash and use fec/power/aperture etc to control that.

[Yellabelly]

Get yourself over to Strobist 101 they'll put you right

YB

[omohat]

Yellabelly said:

Get yourself over to Strobist 101 they'll put you right

YB

Can't recommend the Strobist website highly enough. Although the site is aimed at teaching you off camera flash techniques, the knowledge can be applied to vastly improve your on camera flash results as well.

[dxbtiger]

I had my first play with using a sb900 last week, I was glad of an hour before the job to find a power, direction and settings I liked but once I had that the results surprised me (in a good way).

This or something similar is now on the xmas list

http://www.gadgetinfinity.com/cactus-af45-auto-ele...

[GnuBee]

As others said... www.strobist.com - read both the 101 and 102 archive.

Also www.zackarias.com visit his blog and read through the posts on White Seamless it will help give you another view on the practical application of lighting ratio.

Get the flash off-camera if possible, forget about clever TTL/ADI/XXX technology and get to grips with the manual controls.

[kybo]

dxbtiger said:

This or something similar is now on the xmas list

http://www.gadgetinfinity.com/cactus-af45-auto-ele...

Looks exactly like the Canon equivalent that I purchased from Jessops!!

Scott