Introduction
Welcome to the Canon Speedlite System Digital Field Guide, 3rd Edition. Your Canon Speedlite and this book are a powerful combo! Together, they can help you create the photographs you’ve always wanted. With a little of your time and effort, this book will guide and inspire you to create images that you will be proud to present to clients and share with your family and friends. Flash technology evolves rapidly, bringing with it new features and capabilities. These are exciting opportunities for creative and business growth. The goal of this book is to get you excited about light by helping you understand the possibilities of your Speedlite System, the nuances of lighting, and camera flash terminology.
These powerful, handheld lights are simply amazing. Sophisticated in their features but simple enough to learn to operate, these technological marvels open a whole world of creative possibilities. With the Canon Speedlite System, you can literally just point and shoot! But why would you want to? That’s only half the fun. A Canon Speedlite is able to do the complex exposure calculations for you, balancing the flash exposure with the ambient lighting and allowing for a more natural look to your images. I’ll dig deeper and show you how to take control of your Speedlites by making creative and technical choices that will take your flash photography to the next level!
Learning how to understand and control your Speedlites is just the beginning. You will also learn about the different qualities of light and light modifiers, and when, how, and why you should use them. I will also cover light placement and styles of lighting for different and creative effects, and I’ll address posing and composition. This book takes you beyond “point and shoot” and starts you on the road to creating truly cool images.
Short History of Canon’s Speedlite System
The first Canon Speedlite that offered any type of automatic flash was the 300TL, introduced in 1986, which employed the TTL (Through-the-Lens) metering system and was designed to be used with the Canon T90 film camera.
Essentially, how the process of standard TTL auto flash worked was that a sensor in the camera measured the light reflected off the film plane. When the sensor determined that there was enough light to sufficiently expose a neutral subject, the flash automatically cut off. Although TTL was better than manually setting the flash, it did not always produce great results. Canon set out to improve this when it introduced A-TTL (Advanced Through-the-Lens).
The A-TTL auto flash system, first seen on the Canon T90 camera, was a great improvement, considering that before this, all calculations had to be done by hand. You had to measure the distance from the flash to the subject, figure out the guide number of the flash power, and decide how much power to use for the selected aperture that was required for the image.
A-TTL was Canon’s advancement on standard TTL auto flash. Available with the EZ-model Speedlites, A-TTL fired a preflash before the actual exposure while the camera was metering, thus determining the proper flash exposure while retaining readings for the ambient light. The camera then used both of these readings to provide a natural-looking picture by using the ambient light for the main exposure and light from the Speedlite as a fill flash. This was known in Canon’s nomenclature as “auto-fill reduction.” When the camera meter determined that there was not enough ambient light for proper exposure, the flash was then used as the main light for the subject’s exposure.
Although A-TTL seemed like a good thing, it did have a few shortcomings. Some of these included using a sensor on the flash to determine the light output instead of using a sensor in the camera, and having the preflash fire when the shutter button was half-pressed. It also wasn’t very useful when attempting to employ bounced flash techniques.
In 1995, Canon introduced E-TTL or Evaluative Through-the-Lens flash metering. The advancement on A-TTL was that E-TTL fired a low-power preflash immediately before the shutter opened, rather than when the shutter button was half-pressed.
Canon’s E-TTL metering system also improved on A-TTL by providing a more subtle and natural-looking fill flash when used in daylight situations. It did this by partly basing the exposure on the autofocus point that was locked onto the subject rather than by using an average of the light from multiple zones, as it had done in the past.
In 2004, with the advent of the EOS 1D Mark II, Canon introduced the E-TTL II metering system. This is very similar to the original E-TTL but with a couple improvements. Canon improved the way E-TTL II meters the scene. With E-TTL II, the camera takes a reading of the scene both before and after the preflash fires to help reduce false readings that can be caused by small, reflective substances in the scene. A second improvement was adding the capacity to use distance information supplied by the camera’s lens to help obtain the correct flash exposure.
What You’ll Learn from This Book
Although this book strives to be a great resource for learning about the Canon Speedlite System, please keep in mind that it is not meant to be the definitive guide for all things Speedlite. For that, you have your manual, which, as painful as it sounds, I suggest you read. Rather, this book is a digital field guide, small enough to be portable for easy reference in the field. It’s here to help you to understand your Speedlite’s capabilities, and to demystify its technical aspects, buttons, and menus. Along the way, you learn to take control and create flash photographs that really pop.
This book shows you what’s possible with your Speedlites, and how they can be used in different situations. I provide an overview of lighting patterns, throw in some helpful tips and tricks, and give you advice about what’s worked best for me. At the end of this book, in Appendix C, you’ll find a comprehensive list of continuing education options. I am excited to share my love of flash photography with you. The journey can be a little intimidating from time to time, but hang in there, have fun, and experiment. The rewards are well worth the trip!