Remote lighting on a budget
You are very limited in the lighting effects you can get from your built in flash. It’s fine for those party pics, but beyond that you’re going to need to get something better. Maybe you buy a decent hot shoe attachable flash; something that can bounce the light off the ceiling, perhaps even with ttl so you don’t have to think too much about setting the flash power. Now you can do some slightly more interesting lighting, peoples faces will actually have depth and shape instead of just being flattened with a straight on blast of light. Now of course, to be able to do some lighting from off camera flashes would be nice, so what are your options?So what
is
there that
a poor amateur
can use?
Well being on a budget, a very tight budget, I decided to go with cheap optical slave flashes. Not very powerful, yet quite cheap, and so far reliable; these slave flashes opened up a whole new world of lighting for me. Suddenly I could easily light objects from behind and the side, I could apply modifiers to each light source (though not many due to the lack of power), I had fun. Yet I still had to use an on camera flash to be the optical master, this placed some limits on what I could do. So obviously some wireless flash system was required. So what were the options?
Well, Canon’s flash line up have wireless capability if you are buying the 580ex or their ST-E2 transmitter, but B&H’s 2×580ex + ST-E2 kit at $959.95 is a way to much for me. And of course their system only works with Canon flashes, so I’d be limited to that in the future. There is of course the Pocket Wizards, that I would definitely go with if I were a pro and doing this as my job. I am not a pro though, and the $400 or so I’d have to pay to just remotely trigger one flash, is certainly not worth it. So what is there that a poor amateur can use?
Well there are the Gadget Inifinity remotes. At $29.95, these are much more in my price range. I was a bit worried about their reliability, though the general consensus on the internet is that they are pretty good considering the price; not something a pro would want, but perfect for an amateur. Some misfiring occurs, and the range is very short. However, they are easily modified to increase the range (and even if you break one, at $29.95, who cares). And now apparently they have a version 2 out. It’s not backward compatible with the old remotes, the price you pay for buying cheap I guess (Pocket Wizards maintain backwards compatibility with their products, they have to at that price!).
Well, I think I’m going to bite the bullet, and purchase some of those cheap remotes next payday.
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