EOS Flashes

Canon, like all other camera manufacturers, has a flash mode to balance the flash with the ambient light, aka the fill-in flash. You need to have the flash in eTTL and the camera in Av mode. When using the flash, the aperture controls the power of the flash and the shutter speed controls the ambient light.

Flash can be very complicated or fairly simple depending on how you set it up. Some people are masters, like Joe McNally of the Hot Shoe Diaries' fame and Syl Arena of the Speedlighter's Handbook fame. Some people are more on the child-like side, like me. There are two main problems:

1. People want one easy solution that fits all.
2. The camera/flash combinations are so sophisticated that they are using auto on the camera and auto on the flash.

The camera pop-up flashes and the “lower end“ flashes can only illuminate in front. Most “good” flashes allow you to bounce the light instead of just sending it straight in front. You can bounce the light to the ceiling or even behind you toward a corner or a large reflector.

Regular hot shoe flashes have only one power setting: the full power. To throw less light, they cannot reduce the power, they reduce the time of the flash. A ½ power is just the same amount of energy but over ½ of the time. A ¼ power is just the same amount of energy but over ¼ of the time... just like a camera shutter.

Camera manufacturers have spent millions upon millions to simplify the flash and make it work with bounce, slave, remote... Take advantage of it.

My standard settings for the flash operations for the camera (I even have it stored as C1) are:

Like most speedlight flashes, the Canon Speedlite's heads are hermetically sealed. “Hermetically sealed” means that no air can go in or go out. When things are hermetically sealed, things tend to heat with use.

The rumor is that “you can't do too many flashes or the speedlight flash will shut down for 10 to 20 minutes while the flash tube cools down.”

Yes, too many flashes will shutdown the speedlight flash to give it time to cool down. The question is: “How many is too many flashes?”

Canon has this wonderful thing for flash, it's the E-TTL II system. With E-TTL II, you can control the exposure and the flash exposure separately. Basically, it sends a pre-flash to read the exposure across the 63 metering zones for what's dark (interpreted as background) and what's bright (interpreted as foreground). The problem is that I was looking to set the exposure and to lock that flash exposure for the rest of the photos.

The problem is where is the Flash Exposure Lock (FE Lock) button? I can't see it on the flash. I can't see it in the Canon 7D's menu. And of course, I didn't have any of the manuals with me.