With digital cameras, we can shoot as many photos as our hard drives will hold, and they’re free. Anyone can get the kind of intensive practice that was only available to professionals just a few years ago. The more you shoot, the better you’ll get.
Even so, we can all get bored, and our photography might need a kick in the pants from time to time. Buying a new piece of kit can do this, but that can be expensive and – while it can be great for a while – we might not learn anything new. Flash photography can be both cheap, educational and above all, fun.
In this post we’ll look at an old Nikon Speedlight to illustrate just what you need to buy, and how to use it. We won’t cover flash technique, as it is frankly way to big a subject for one post. For this, you should head over to the best flash photography site on the web, the Strobist, run by photographer David Hobby.
Modern strobes do everything for you, and that’s fine. They are also expensive, and don’t always do what you want them to do. One of the best ways to get into off-camera flash photography (and that’s the only kind of flash photography you should be doing) is to buy a cheap second-hand strobe.
There are two important things to look for: One, older flashes can fry the circuitry of a digital camera. A flash is fired when the camera opens the circuit connecting two contacts on the flash’s hotshoe connector. Back in the days of manual, the voltage across these contacts could be any size as there was no other circuitry around. A digital camera doesn’t like these high voltages and modern flashes have a trigger voltage of around 5V. Good luck finding the trigger voltages for older units — it’s better to pick up something a little newer, or use a PC cable, more on which below.
Second, you need a strobe on which you can set the output level, usually in increments down to 1/16 power. Otherwise the only way to vary the light reaching the subject is to put filters in the way or simply make the flash more distant, neither of which is really practical.
Yesterday, for this piece, I picked up the venerable Nikon SB-24, first seen in the 1980s. It has manual adjustment and is safe on digicams. It’s also cheap, although not as cheap as it was before the Strobist blog popularised it last year. Back then you’d pay around $30 on Ebay. Now you’re looking at $120 plus, but that’s still cheaper than a new unit.
So, how do you fire the flash if it isn’t on the camera? There are wireless options available, but even the cheapest will cost more than the flash itself. You need a cable:
The easiest way is to grab a PC sync cable, a standard cable which connects camera to flash. If your camera doesn’t have a PC socket, you’ll need a hotshoe adapter, which slides into the camera’s accessory shoe and offers a socket on the side. They’re cheap.
Once it’s hooked up, you’ll need to know how it works. The SB-24 comes with all manner of bells and whistles, none of which will work with your camera (unless you have an old 1990s Pro Nikon SLR lying around). The only buttons youe need to know about are these:
The “M” at top right is the manual setting. That’s the one you want (next to it is the multi-flash function which fires several times in one exposure. Neat, but not what we’re looking at here). The bottom row, from left to right:
Zoom. Press this and use the arrow keys to zoom the flash in and out. The motor shifts lenses inside the head and throws a wider or narrower beam.
Lightbulb. A little faded (a lot of old SB-24s have the letters completely worn off). This turns on the display’s backlight for use in the dark.
M. Hold this and press the arrow keys to set the power output. You can see this indicated in the bottom right of the display, currently set to 1/16th power.
Arrow keys. Used in conjunction with the others to set options.
The on switch. Usually you will set this to “Standby”, which keeps the flash ready to go but in a low power mode. Touching the camera’s shutter button will wake it up. If you get sick of it going to sleep after a minute, set it to “on”.
Now comes the fun part. In addition to the usual exposure controls on your camera, aperture and shutter speed, you now have a third option: flash. The thing to remember is that the shutter speed doesn’t affect the flash at all: the burst of light is so short that as long as the shutter is fully open, all the flash’s light will get to the sensor. But the shutter speed does affect the ambient light. This, combined with the aperture control (which does affect the flash) means you can balance flash and natural light with great finesse.
As we said, actually using the flash is beyond the scope of this article. Start of with Strobist’s Lighting 101 class instead. For just over a hundred bucks you can revitalize your photography and make some stunning images. Remember to post any pictures to our Flickr group. As soon as I get my new speedlight out into the wild, I’ll be doing just that.
If you do pick up an old SB-24, I managed to track down a PDF of the scanned instruction manual. The link is below, but I also threw a copy up onto Scribd to save the poor guy’s bandwith costs.
SB-24 Manual [Lensinc]
SB-24 Manual [Scribd]
Steal This Flash - The Nikon SB-24 [Strobist]
Lighting 101 [Strobist]
Gadget Lab Flickr Group [Flickr]
