How do I use a flash?

Ok...maybe a daft question, but I reckon there are three groups of people who will have very different answers to this question.

a) "Joe Public", with their compact camera for hoiday snaps, ( though there's nothing wrong with that ). Their answer would be, "Simple! Turn the flash on auto and let the camera decide".

b) You guys. The "professionals". You will have loads of fancy ideas...which are want I want to learn

c) People like me. Wanting to go from, " Oh, it's dark, I'll turn the flash on", to knowing how to really use it.

So, on that note, ( bearing in mind I am skint! ), whilst watching an AF160 on ebay, which I missed out on by 60p I bought a Canon 200e for £3 ( had to be worth a gamble for that price).
It works on my istDL, but only in a limited way. But I'm happy to accept the limitations as, if nothing else, it'll save the batteries on my camera. Now I just need to learn how to get the most out of it. I've been playing around with it today, and I will look at making diffusers for it, but tips in balancing aperture / shutter speed would be useful.

( sorry for the long post )

Use a shutter speed anywhere between 1/60th and 1/180th, it'll not make much difference as the flash of light from a flash gun is around 1/10000th of a second and sometimes as fast as 1/40000th. Much faster than any camera shutter. It's the aperture setting and flash to subject distance that affects the exposure most. Start with f11 and take it from there.

To be honest, you're better of finding a book on flash and/or basic studio lighting. It's such a huge subject on its own, it'd be difficult to answer your question here.

EDIT: It looks like your flash may be TTL only, in which case it'll probably fully discharge (maximum light) when you use it with your camera. TTL flash was supported on the *istD and *istDS only and as it's a Canon flash, is unlikely to work properly even on those bodies.

Pete is right about that canon flash, I don't think you will get much joy from it due to it limiled capabilities.

The AF 160 at least has 3 options Hi, Lo and manual which discharges the flash fully. I have 3 and used 2 of them as a dual head flash for macro work. They aren't the most powerful flash but suited my needs, until i got hold of a couple of AF200T flashes which i found a lot more versatile. They can be used in manual in 1/8, 1/4, 1/2 and full discharge, all with the flick of a button, (no tiresome digital menus to scroll through). very easy to use and after a bit of trial and error, you learn where you need apertures and shutter speeds.

If you still want the AF 160 i can send you one for the cost of postage, but i am in Australia and it will cost around 4quid. cheers.

Thats not bad, Free Flash, sent half way round the world for 4 Quid
>Bargain of the year

Certainly is and an offer I can't refuse.

Thanks Clarky!!!
I'll PM you about payment.

Father Dad,
flash doesn't mean that in bad lighting conditions will be solved
unless you want to use as your main source of light.

I strongly reccoment THIS site .

Thanks, I'll have a read of that

interesting thread and links. I too am hoping to do something to improve on the pop-up flash but find the flash i would like a long way over my budget. Has anyone ever compiled a list of older flashes that come up second hand that are compatible with the K10D hot shoe?

That's exactly why I was looking at the AF160. I still haven't got very good results with it yet, but I haven't had much time to experiment properly.

How to use the AF160:
1) Set camera to Av
2) Set camera to a _fixed_ ISO rating. Essential!! Don't have sensitivity correction or auto ISO enabled!
3) Set the AF160 to either Green or Red (little wheel on side)
4) Use the chart on the back of the AF160 to work out which aperture to use
5) Set that on camera.

Job done
You should have great results

(The auto-ISO is usually the killer for Auto flashguns. The camera ups the ISO without being able to tell the flash and you get massively overexposed images.)
Matt

get some means of firing the flash off camera (optical(optical would require a digital slave that ignores the pre-flash) or radio slaves) and you now have a three light set-up.
3????
1) ambient light
2) built-in pop-up light
3) off camera light. (you can use this one to fire other lights when you get them.)

so you decide which is going to be your main light for any scene, then decide how to use the others.

for example:

you may decide to use your off camera flash as main light for a portrait subject.
you start by metering your background (perhaps setting to underexpose by 1.5 stops).
you set up your off camera flash unit to output (in your case, moving the flash closer or further from the subject) to put out 1.5 stops more than your ambient exposre to correctly expose the subject.

good reading :
link

Hi pather Ted
I use the AF-330 FTZ, (análogico), and always in position AV.
It is where I obtain better work.

Greeting
f248

well this sounds cool and good value if i only get a marginal improvement on the pop-up flash by using an af160, there seem to be a few going for a fiver on ebay. i have no experience of this flash a beginners question maybe MattMatic could answer. How does the af160 flash when used with the k10d. Does it require the pop-up flash to be on and it detects it flashing then flashes also. No idea what you would do. I'm hoping this will provide more light further away than the pop-up which seems to fall away very quick.

Any light source falls away according to the law of squares, e.g. double the distance and the light is reduced to 1/4.

The maximum distance for any flash is given by the guide number, which is 13 for the pop-up flash at 100 ASA. Maximum distance = Guide Number/Aperture (metres).

For f/2.8 the distance is 13/2.8 = 4.6 metres (approximately)

AF160 arrived in post today, nice and cheap from Ebay. I can see it's not getting me much more than the pop-up but is an improvement. The guide on the back of the flash doesn't seem that helpful, found images quite dark until I adjusted the aperture, even with the iso set to 400. I reckon this will be just enough improvement for my needs.

I wonder if any experts would be good enough to list or point to a weblink that details the other second hand flashes that tend to come up and what improvements they make on the 160. For example how much improvement is there from the 160 to the 200?