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Lesson Info

Click It, Zoom It, Remote Control It

Okay let's talk about click it click it so we have this this is the click noise get your flashes because this is one of my favorite ah ha moments um so this when you uh if you look on the back your camera please do this at home there's this uh zoom right here and the zoom what that does is it matches the angle of you in fact I'm going to sort of jump ahead on our clicking zooming slide I want to show you the zoom first before we do the click it so um let me see who can get really really close on this. I'm gonna go over to this camera here and get really, really, really close, so when you zoom your lens in and out so if you could get this right here really close when you zoom lens in and out and you guys can try this look at the end of your lens and then zoom your lens what you'll see is that this element is moving inside of your flash so can you see that in there? Okay, so what's happening is the flash is a matching the zoom of your lens you might have to push your show to release half...

way to make this work oh yeah we have somewhere that just took a picture there face nice will be so you guys see that happening yeah, you have to make sure you push the shutter release half way, and you can see that this isn't enough. So inside of here, there's this element two people have not done that thiss element is zooming in and out, and what it's doing is and this again, is why I think you should stick with canon, canon, canon, nikon like on night gun, sony, sony, sony, whatever, because a lot of stuff is happening here remember the color tim thing is telling you the zoom thing, all kinds of stuff what's happening is if I'm a twenty four millimeters, this has to go ah, nice angle of youto light that if I'm at seventy millimeters, it consume in, it can focus that flash farther if I put a two hundred millimeter lens on here, so you're going to focus more so you can get more punch at a great distance because it's actually focusing the light from the flash and with the newer flashes that matched the brand. Not only are they focusing, but they're smart enough to know the sensor size of your camera and focus it accurately for that sensor size. So once again stick with the brands because there's a lot going on there ok, so that is what's happening and when we pull this out for the super wide angle you see that it goes to seventeen or ten or whatever it is in your flesh now when you click this go ahead and click that notice that the zoom on the back here flash just goes two dashes or nothing it goes away and the reason for that is now this flash isn't trying to match the output of your lens anymore because the flash is smart enough to know now we're bouncing light around okay, so what you can do is there's a button on here that's called zoom you can push that and you can set the zoom manually for bouncing so you can say hey bounce but bounced with a really wide angle of light or bounce with a really narrow beam of light for more punch and so you can tell the flash how to control the output of light from its angle of you when you click it up and down pretty cool, huh? Yeah you know um but there's another secret here so far you guys with me that's cool stuff opens new um there's another click it so we got click it going up right all these clicks click, click, click, click and it stops right but no there's more if you push, listen to this a little teeny click of the very end little teeny extra click barely there. Ok, not all flashes have these and not all flashes have these the five eighty x to the six hundred does that sb nine hundred? I think the s p eight hundred the nine ten has this just little teeny click the very end and on this camera on this flash and on nikon flashes there's this little warning sometimes it's like everything flashing there's, this little guy here flashing it, saying, hey, you have the extra little click on that extra little clique is if you're shooting something really close, okay, you're getting really close to somebody you want to take a picture and they're six feet away four feet away, three feet away, something like that, a flower, whatever that's your way of telling the stupid flash hey, we're really close, so ninja, take it easy, that's what you're saying take it easy, ninja when you do the pre flash, take it down a few notches and we're going to expect that we don't need so much to come back and it's going to make sure that this understands that we're really trying to shoot something really close so that extra little teeny click there can really save you some pain. Also, if you don't know that click is there and you've accidentally clicked that and you're trying to shoot something ten feet away it's a world of hurt because your flashes going you told me take it easy, okay that's the extra click right let's do click it questions if we have them if not, we still have remote control it and I think a zoom it everybody's got a little bit of that because I've had that flash like wise is flashing why that doing that right now and not on clashes have them that extra little flick some do some don't um just looking here, this is my sb nine hundred it's got it must be nine ten it has it not the five, fifty years doesn't have it yeah, you have it, you know does not have it. Ok, not all of them. All right? I'm ready for questions if you have them a question from his highness not her highness his highness is it really easy to overheat and melt a speed bite? My manual says aiken fired it ten times in a row at full power. How do I know when to stop when I'm in automatic flash mode? I know it's not exactly what we're talking about, what no that's a good really good, good question, so I'm going to use something that I think could be great for this this is a nikon d three yes, I apologize in advance for them about to do you so yeah, it can't even keep up with this right now there it goes so my batteries can't keep up with my it's trying I know so if you're just there it goes see that what? I just did it I just force overheated my flash so see if you can see this there's a little warning message it gave me a little chime beauty milly leet puppet I know pretty cool so what will happen is your flashes going tokyo enough it's gonna shut down um and then guess what now I can't use my flash for a while you want that to happen because if you if you don't have that safety built in your flash will literally melt it will melt the element and everything and it will ruin your flash and so yeah is still saying jerk you overheated me it's hot in here so this could take a while for this to cool down uh it can heat up the batteries all kinds of stuff. And so, uh if you're in that situation when you're overheating your flash like that you're doing something wrong not always but a lot of times and what I mean by that is you're asking your flash to throw out a lot of power really, really rapidly. And I did this on purpose where I closed down my, uh, my aperture. And I put this diffusion panel on here to really make this thing have to pump out full blast every time. So I sort of made this meltdown right, and it didn't take very long. Did you see that? That was, what, twenty, flashes? And it was like, the done see if it's done still saying no. Okay, um, so what, this, what I could have done if I was a real situation, we needed to shoot really fast force, whatever a couple things one, I should probably not have had the diffusion panel on there so I could get more out of my flash. So if I didn't need this, it shouldn't be on there if I need to shoot really fast. Secondly, what I should have done is if I'm not getting enough out of my flash fast enough, I could just increase my I s o increasing my eyes so makes my camera more sensitive to light, which means my flash has to put out less light and so it can recharge faster and doesn't have to do so much work, or I could open up my aperture if that's something that I could have. You know with depth of field wasn't that thing so uh now it says ok now on nikon flashes here's one of the things that's the most loved and hated thing from nikon owners I'll show you there's a little temperature gauge right here on a nikon flash to tell you how close it is to having a meltdown, some people want to shut that off like why would you ever want to shut that off? You can you can use that to see if you're getting close to doing something disastrous and to see if you maybe need to increase your isil or open up your apertura do whatever um cannon flashes don't have the gauge they just go who older flashes and some flash brands don't either have the gauge or the safety. And so a few years ago I did a tour where it was all about speed lights and we had I don't know a couple hundred photographers everyplace shooting and we hadn't over the how many cities eight or nine cities we had two three people melt their flashes because they just were like, oh teacher from like way you should slow down and they didn't and they had some issues there um those were all like off brand flashes or flashes that were really old that didn't have the safety is built in another reason I think you should get a really nice flash that's unknown brand because there are some things that you can do that are bad for your flash okay way have some quick questions okay, we'll take those sure ok, I guess I should have a question than uh let's see another question from sam cox is the extra little click every useful when the flashes off camera um I've never used it off camera no never used it off camera I mean there might be a situation where it is useful but I can't think of one so usually I don't think I've ever used the extra click off camera because usually off camera I have a modifier or some sort of umbrella soft box I'm balancing the light or something where I need more power and so even if I'm close there's not a ton of light coming up um find more so candid cheek says so the extra little clique is for shooting something ten feet or closer you see it's about six feet or closer around there yeah, and even in your user manually it has like a little page on that little extra click and it will say meters and feet and where it is and it depends on one of the things we haven't talked about is guide numbers we'll talk about those tomorrow going people are asking about I know guide numbers we have it it's coming tomorrow um also shooting in manual mode with these tomorrow using a light meter with these tomorrow you know this is action packed this weekend is action packed so what was I talking about with these guys can't remember we're talking about the millions so these guys this is an espn nine hundred this isn't a five eighty x two they have about the same amount of power output but if you've got like a four thirty or sb eight hundred or seven hundred different flashes they might be the same brand but they don't have the same amount of power output and so you could melt them down or or get them into the deep freeze faster or not as fast because they don't have as much horsepower and so that's important okay let's keep going because we have a lot of things we have a few more things we have to cover today okay before that okay important note uh mark you go sir erna is watching and I wanted to let you know that awesome he says hello hello hello? Yeah, I start we talked about desert this morning did we not did yes so it did you think your guy was watching? Yes. Oh I didn't hear the first part of like a guy start yes go go is up how's your brother this guy I just wanted to stop so way have like two minutes I can talk about because he is so cool so cool I'll try to post a picture of him on my facebook page because this was so inspirational so this is a guy who's a senior in high school who invited uh kelsey and myself to go to die, start high school and hang out in his photography class and we did and as we were there we were getting a tour of the school and sort of what we had and the teacher was telling us all about this sort of a gallery that was going on so they had all these pictures on the wall and they were all taken by high school students and their spectacular I mean spectacular better than a lot of the gallery's I've seen it I won't mention but places okay really really cool and so kelsey and I both immediately I saw this picture and I wish I had it on me but it was like oh my gosh this is awesome and a guy who's there it's like that's my picture and I was really, really cool he's really a nice guy and so he's now going to go and pursue his dream of being a photographer and he's gonna make it really cool so what? We have to hang out when I get back phoenix we'll check okay let's keep going um I love hanging out of high schools and talking to people in students in just fun school talk. Let's talk about, um, this other thing is not on here. It's the focus, focus the auto focus. So one of the things that you can get and I don't know this will show up here on this really, really low light. But we'll see if it will. It is not going to show up. You can see if you do this at home. You can, uh, if you pulled your hand in front of your flash, you can actually see if there's not a lot of light. A red little square that that shows up in front of your flash what's happening is there is an auto focus assist being that's being shot out. So normally how your lens focuses? How your camera focuses is it looks. For contrast, it looks for things like lines like this that are very, very contrast. E, white, dark, quite dark, and it can click on of those that's. Why, when you focus your looking for edges, glasses, hair, stuff like that that's how you can focus if you have something that's just like this there's, no contrast is just sort of, uh no difference in the dark and light camera could have a really tough time focusing in low light when the light drops. What happens is the contrast everywhere drops and so your camera has a really tough time focusing because there can't see just like you can't see you can't see it so what an auto focus assisted being does on your flashes doesn't send out a big bright beam of light you know there are cameras that do that this actually sends out uh beam of light that's infrared and it measures the distance between the flash and object and tells that to the lens and then that just focuses based on distance or like a bat's radar right and so it's really, really fast and it works terrific now one of the things that you'll find out if you have your focus mode into in continuous focus mode, it doesn't work because uh if you put this on continuous focus and you try to focus if that beam was always on it's going to run your battery's down and so on most cameras if you have it on aye aye servo, eh? I focus or on continuous focused on a night conner other brands that little beam doesn't work so it's just on single focus moat that's if it's not working for you and you're like, why doesn't it work? Check your focus more that's probably what it is ok last but not least today a preview of tomorrow and that is remote control it all right, now there are a lot and I mean a lot of different ways to take your flash off your camera and control it I'm late walked through the nikon can in a way and then tomorrow we're going to show you other ways wouldn't talk about how to the pocket wizard's work and some other things there are radio poppers there are lots of different brands of things that you can use to get your flash off your camera so on your, uh can and camera there's a little button it's got a little flash there might be something that says slave master it might say, um uh, this guy right here there is master and slave in remote control there's all different words for that. So on a five day tx two let me show you how this works five eighty x two you push and hold the zoom button and when you do you're going to get this little thing that starts flashing says master and winston yeah, and if it says off that's okay, because when we push this again because you can roll this and change between off master slave and some other things so we're going to go into detail on this tomorrow but you can put this on master and now this flash on your camera can control other flashes if you put it on slave, so I'll put this hold that down put it on slave now what will happen is that flash on your camera is controlling this we can also do things like put it on a channel and said it to his own so you can have one that's on zone a and one zone b and you can control those independently that's sort of what I did with that picture that just went away or that picture over there we said we want a little bit more light filling the surroundings with less light in the front so we can do all that kind of stuff so that's on a cannon they're all sorts of things that you can do by just pushing the zoom button and holding it and you can set the channel in the slave this is one of those things that is vastly different based on your flash and brand so if I went through how to set this up for every single uh flash we would just never go home so that's how you do it on a five day tx two let me quickly show you how do you do it on an sb nine hundred one of these things that I love about nikon flashes uh it has a switch that says on then it has a switch that says remote okay I know pretty easy huh but what if you want this to be the master then you flip it over to master that's it and then you can control so I think in the space of uh, controlling external speed lights and the ability to dive into your speed light and turn the custom functions on an often really see what's happening with your flash and I think most photographers that that you speed lights would agree with me nikon speed lights are far superior, okay? And I don't want to get into the nikon can anything but nikon speed lights to be able to go in and dive in and figure out what you're doing in remote control, that kind of stuff they really, really are simple and easy to use and dive in cannon with the new system that they just announced I think have just, uh finally caught up and surpassed just a little bit nikon systems so as things progress and technology improves and people started having patents expired and stuff like that, we're going to see it just it's just gonna be better and better world there's a different thing that you can use to control off camera flash and they're these things right here so this is a cannon s e two s t dash e two and this is a nikon s u eight hundred these guys are our, um master commanders it's basically instead of putting a flash on your camera and setting it to master and having a remote flash you just put your off camera flash into remote mode and then you slide this on a camera and turn it on that's it she has turned this on and that flash will fire off camera it's really cool same thing is true of this of the nikon the night khan has little flappy dog years on it the reason for that is this also works with macro attachments and stuff so once again that the nikon one very simple they both through ratios they both like to control your flashes remotely to do this stuff the nine kinds got a big screen last you to do manual control and dial things in thie cannon doesn't, so this is much more advanced than this one and that's why when I'm shooting with my cannon and a lot of times I'm shooting with my nine conto I prefer to use pocket wizards because I can control things in a way that I just can't with the systems as they come, so those are pretty advanced spectacular things and really spoiled excuse them all the time one of the things that's coming but I'm really excited about I wanted to get one for this workshop, but it just wasn't available the new can and flash is wireless, so you can I mean not just wireless but radio and so it's there's all this a new stuff that cannon just announced that that I think is going to make the cannon speed light system the premier speed light system now I'm saying that I have only read the manuals and all that kind stuff I haven't actually used them but if what I've read is true wow these things are gonna be awesome so if you're on the fence trying to figure out what kind of cannons speed like to buy, I highly say go get the new six hundred and the control units for that because it is spectacular bad news I think it's seven hundred dollars for that flash around there's a pretty beefy um but it's pretty pretty awesome as well we're close to being out of time today let's to see if there any last minute questions they will do a preview of tomorrow and then we'll go to the darkness outside this so at home I just use a cable uh cable yeah if I put this in if I connect this vehicle uh think cable put this in master and I have another flash master will it trigger it more doesn't have to be on the hot seat on the hot shoot I could be wrong about that, but I'm pretty sure I'm not so that the reason is this and this is what you're talking about the young people yeah, they're two different flavors of that there's one and it doesn't matter what brand you can get in it it slides onto the hot shoe, and it has all of the connections that go to your flash. And what it does is it allows all the t t l stuff. All the exposure, compensation, everything works. Just a ziff. This was on your camera. Okay? And so it's communicating all of that stuff, those cables air usually like, eight hundred dollars. Something like that, the other cable that you can get is this is just the same cable. Yeah, all that does. In fact, if you want to try this, get a paper clip, it works the same. It just sends a signal to it. It just closes a circuit. All it does is say, flash that's it. So if you're in a pinch, you need a flash to fire, you can always get a paper clip and just put it over the little flash, so maybe even find when I'll show. You know, I tried doing that with my tongue once. Did not do that, it's not good. Okay, so, yeah, I don't think it was going. And even if it does tell it the fire just not having any control there. I don't think it will make it fire and been a starbucks on it.