580EX Flash on Canon 5D
By Gary Cook
29 Jun 2008
Ten Tips for a 580exII Flash mounted on a Canon 5D.
These tips are from experience I gleaned from shooting a Canon 5D with 580ex II and 430ex speed lights. Your experience with other types of flashes and cameras may be different. These shots were taken at small venues where flash was allowed.
1. Get there early and have a plan B.
This one you often hear from photographers. "Get to your venue early." Check out the existing lighting with an eye to enhance the deficits. If you are like me, you don't want to have on-camera flash as your only option. I look for locations for off camera slave flashes. You also need to plan your shooting positions, strategy, and a plan B.
I did not have plan B for shooting my last concert. I arrived early and placed two slave flashes, one on each side of the raised stage. I pointed the flash heads to optimize my shooting from anywhere directly in front of the stage. The concert started and the press of bodies quickly became oppressive, making it difficult getting shots. I decided on an alternate shooting position after the concert was already underway. I climbed up on stage beside the speaker stack.
Once there I was free of the press of bodies and could finally concentrate on shooting. When I reviewed my pictures I discovered I was losing 60% of my shots to under exposure. It turns out that one of my slave flashes was lined up directly with the side of the stage I was standing on. Almost every shot was getting a direct blast of light from the flash, causing the cameras exposure meter to compensate. I couldn't remedy the situation until intermission at which time I realigned the slaves to bounce off the ceiling.
Next time I will have a plan B consisting of at least one alternate shooting position and the lighting factored in.
2. Manual zoom to maximum for high ceiling bounce.
With the amazing low noise high ISO available on some digital cameras; you can take advantage of bounce flash even off high ceilings. When you tilt the Canon 580ex up for bounce, it automatically zooms to 24mm. On a high ceiling this is much too wide, especially if your subject is relatively close to you. To concentrate your lighting and give it more range, manually adjust the flash zoom to maximum. On the 580ex speedlite, this is 105mm. I even use this set up when shooting sports events in a gym. Typically I am shooting at f/2.8 ISO 800 in AV mode. I have the camera's custom setting for AV mode set to 1/200 sec flash sync. If you switch your flash from bounce to direct, remember to switch the zoom mode back to automatic. Otherwise your flash zoom will continue to be at whatever you last set it at.
3. Use Manuel Flash Zoom to isolate or highlight.
If you shoot on camera flash with the 580ex set to auto zoom mode, the flash will zoom to cover the same angle as your lens. If you set the flash to manual zoom, you can highlight the center of your photo, similar to a lens vignette effect. This works primarily for wide angle shots. I learned this by accident. I had just finished shooting bounce flash using tip 2 above. The flash was set to manual zoom of 105mm. I tilted the flash head back down into normal position but forgot to change the zoom mode back to Automatic. When I latter reviewed the shots, I saw that in a crowd of people, I had actually high lighted the person I was most interested in. This was a happy accident that I now use intentionally from time to time.
4. Don't go long with on camera flash in a dark room.
Using on cameral flash for long shots in a dark room will likely show the dust in the air. Instead place slave flashes close to the subject or move to off camera flash at an angle. This avoids capturing all the dust particles between you and the subject.
I discovered this at the first concert I shot. With a high ISO setting I was expecting that my flash could reach the far side of the room and give an adequate exposure. I did get an adequate exposure but I was seeing haze in the exposure that I wasn't seeing with my own eyes.
Because of the distance between my on camera flash and the subject, the light from the flash had to pass through all that air, and all that air has dust in it. Because the flash was not at an angle to the subject, the light reflected off of the dust was coming straight back to the camera.
If the flash had been off camera at an angel, light would have reflected off the dust at an angle and less reflection from the dust would have made it back to the camera. Better yet, had I placed slaves up close to the subject, the dust would hardly reflect back to the camera at all.
5. Beware of using channel 1 for your slaves.
This was completely unexpected for me. I arrived early at the concert venue to check out the lighting and setup two slaves on stage. There were other photographers there but none of them were setting up slaves, so I did not worry about finding an unused channel. Soon after the concert began I noticed I was not getting the lighting effect that I was expecting. I test fired my flash while watching the slaves and saw them fire ok. Just as I began to turn my head, I saw them fire again, except that I had not triggered them.
I watched the other photographers and found the one who was triggering my slaves. When I approached him I was even more surprised to find out he was not shooting with a 580ex or even a canon flash. He was shooting with a Promaster 7500 Digital. After talking to him I learned that the Promaster did not have a feature for selecting channels. I had to wait until intermission to get to my slaves and change them to channel 2. Problem finally solved but a lot of action missed.
6. Choose your batteries for fast recycle time.
I now use Energizer Lithium and Promaster NI-MH rechargeable batteries for their fast recycle times. When I last shot with slower recycling alkaline batteries I got inconsistent exposures. The 580ex will fire even on a partial charge. If your flash shots are coming at a faster frequency than your flash can recycle, then the power of the light given off will be less than 100%.
This leads directly to my next tip.
7. Give it a rest.
With fast recycle times you can overheat your flash. The 580exII will automatically delay recycle time 8 to 20 seconds if it overheats. That happened to me while shooting a dance. I was taking shot after shot when all of a sudden the flash was not firing. I thought it was broken but after awhile it began to fire. After rereading the manual, I understood what had happened. If you are going after a peak action shot, you may be wise to pace your shots leading up to the peak action. The manual says, "If you fire more than 20 continuous flashes and then fire more flashes in short intervals, the inner overheating prevention function may be activated to make the recycling time about 8 to 20 sec. If this occurs, allow a rest time of about 15 min. and the flash will then return to normal."
8. You need a fast memory flash card if you want to take advantage of fast flash recycle times. Like tip 7, I also learned this the hard way. The Canon 5d will take nine raw images in its internal buffer before the speed of the flash card becomes a factor. After hitting the ninth photo in quick succession, the camera must then wait for the buffer to be written to the flash card. I don't know if it writes the entire buffer, or just the next photo in the queue before you can take your next shot. All I really know is that I hit that magic 9 number in quick consecutive raw shots and I was busy pushing the shutter button, getting no pictures, while missing all the action. The compact flash card I was using was an inexpensive Promaster 4GB. I have since upgraded to much faster 4GB RiData 233X.
9. Beware custom camera 1/200sec synch setting for AV mode.
This happened to me. I was shooting in the evening in AV mode at f/2.8 allowing the camera to automatically set the shutter speed. Deciding that some of the shots would look better with fill lighting, I threw on a 580exII speed-light, not realizing that my cameras auto aperture was now locked into 1/200 of a second because of the custom camera setting. All my pictures from that point forward were overexposed. Moral of the story, check your camera's custom settings in regard to how you are using your flash.
10. Test fire your slave flash
Also test fire your slave flash from all the potential shooting positions you might use.
This is another obvious tip. The canon 430ex and 580ex when in slave mode are triggered by a light signal from the master flash. This means that if light from the master cannot reach the slave, the slave will not fire. Either move closer to the slave or reposition the slave so that light is hitting it.
In that last concert that I had shot, I had not expected to be shooting from beside the speaker stack, so I had not test fired my flash from that position. When at the heat of the moment that I was shooting from that position, I discovered that one of my two slaves was failing to fire. It was too late then to do anything about it and I was getting shadows where I did not want them.
Summary of tips:
1. Arrive early and have a plan B
2. Manual zoom your flash out to maximum for high ceiling bounce.
3. Use manual flash zoom to highlight or isolate the subject.
4. Avoid shooting long, with on camera flash, in a dark room to avoid picking up the dust in the air. (Unless that is the effect you are going for.)
5. Beware of using channel 1 for slave flashes.
6. Choose your batteries for fast recycle time.
7. Rest your flash after quick sequences of flash shots.
8. Use fast flash cards to support quick recycle times.
9. Beware Canon 5D custom function for 1/200sec synch for AV mode.
10. Test fire your slave flash.
