Product Description

Canon Speedlites and Nikon Speedlights are small, off-camera flashguns that can provide big results - if you know how to use them properly. Acclaimed Boston photographers Lou Jones, Bob Keenan and Steve Ostrowski guide you through the technical and creative aspects of how to get the most out of these powerful tools in this indispensable guide, packed full of inspirational images and comprehensive diagrams of the lighting set ups used to capture them.

They are significantly more advanced, lighter and considerably cheaper than a standard flashgun, and have many advantages. They are small (and cheap) enough that a number can be carried in your kit, and they can be used in combination, triggered wirelessly. They use through-the-lens (TTL) metering, which allows you to use the in-camera LCD and histograms to calculate the required power/direction, rather than havng to use a light meter or trial and error. They use proprietary, dedicated technology (from Canon and Nikon) that means there are no compatability issues.

Getting the most out of them, however, remains a mystery - most photographers still just use their speedlights in the same way as a standard flash gun. This is where this book comes in.

Key Features

*Expand your creative potential by mastering your external flashgun

*Full of Professional, Inspirational images with full lighting diagrams to show you how they were taken

*Covers all of the best-selling Canon Speedlites and Nikon Speedlights

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Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #391672 in Books
• Published on: 2009-05-28
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 224 pages

Features

• ISBN13: 9780240812076
• Condition: New
• Notes: BUY WITH CONFIDENCE, Over one million books sold! 98% Positive feedback. Compare our books, prices and service to the competition. 100% Satisfaction Guaranteed

Review
"this could be considered the cutting edge of lighting, and as speedlights are affordable and portable and capable, pushing the capabilities and indeed understanding them is very much on the mind of many serious digital photographers" Simon Gurney, Photographer

From the Back Cover

Every photographer taking pictures today has seen the dramatic revolution in photography from film to digital. There is now an equally dramatic evolution in lighting - from flash to Speedlight. While they may look, feel and work like traditional portable flashes, Speedlights are the most significant technological advance in the history of lighting.

Yet they so closely resemble their traditional portable flash "cousins" that most photographers continue to use them like old fashioned flashes, failing to get the most out of one of the most powerful weapons in the modern photographer's arsenal. This book will change the way you use your flash forever.

Professional photographers Lou Jones, Bob Keenan and Steve Ostrowski guide you through the technical and creative aspects of how to get the most out of these most versatile of tools in this indispensable guide, packed full of their own inspirational images and comprehensive diagrams of the lighting setups they used to capture them.

About the Author
Lou Jones is one of Boston's most diverse commercial & art photographers. This prolific, award-winning photographer specializes in photo illustration & location photography for corporate, advertising & collateral projects. His client list is as impressive as are his photographs -- IBM, FED EX, American Express, Oldsmobile, AETNA, Museum of Fine Arts, Fortune Magazine, US News & World Report & National Geographic. Jones' assignments have taken him to Europe, Central & South America, Africa, Japan & 46 of the 50 states. Assignments have placed Jones on location at NASA, Boeing, Universal Studios, British Telecom (England) & Saab (Sweden).

Bob Keenan is a Boston-area photographer. A retired Electrical Engineer, Bob spent his career designing and developing Radio Frequency communications equipment, so working with the wireless speedlights and the concept of light pulses is a natural fit. Bob is a graduate of the Boston University's Center for Digital Imaging's Photography Program

Stephen Ostrowski is an award winning photographer with over thirty years experience in Commercial, Editorial, Annual Report, Fashion, Portrait, and Event photography. He has worked with small flash as a studio and location lighting tool since 1977. He is currently an instructor at The New England School of Photography in Boston, MA; teaching Editorial Photography as a major course of study, digital camera techniques, and specializing in teaching lighting with Wireless TTL Flash.

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Customer Reviews

Illuminating Flash
The relatively new flash systems offered by Nikon and Canon, which allow an amazing degree of automated control over illumination (with an increase in a certain type of complexity) offer amazing opportunities for photographers to capture images. Lou Jones and his fellow authors address those opportunities in this book.

There are just two chapter headings: One Light and Two Lights. But within those two chapters are discussions of many of the ways to use the new speedlights (as Nikon calls them) or speedlites (as Canon refers to them). The book is aimed at owners of the flagship flashes of each of the manufacturers: the Nikon SB 900 and 800 and SU800 and the Canon 550EX, 580EX, 550 EXMKII and 580 EXMKII, as well as compatible cameras. Owners of other flash units may or may not benefit from reading the text.

The publisher is to be congratulated for trying many techniques to make the information accessible. Instructions applicable solely to Nikon or Canon are coded purple and green respectively. Distinctions between textbook, anecdotes, warnings, etc. are also color coded. Lighting diagrams for each of the illustrative images are included in the back of the book.

One of the book's strong points is the discussion of the nature of light, whether natural or from flash, and the point that thinking of all light the same way will make it easier to control. Moreover the book urges you to allow the automated systems to do their work and to control the results by a few simple adjustments. There were also occasional tips on how to get more from a flash, like how to rotate the head of the flash to overcome the effect of the inverse square law.

I must confess that I was confused on my initial reading. The illustrations each include some lengthy text, and then require flipping to the back of the book. That combined with the war stories made it difficult to follow the instruction, especially since the illustrations didn't often relate to the instruction. However, when I read the text over without considering the text relating to the images or the war stories (the latter didn't seem to add much to the teaching points) the author's lessons became crystal clear.

Although aimed at specific Nikon and Canon flashes, this is not a guide to setting up those units. For that one must rely on the manual or some other book. The authors do not spend much time discussing lighting for portraits. Discussion of ancillary equipment like stands or snoots is limited.

Still, the lessons, which became simple and clear once I had finished my second reading, are important and not often conveyed by other books on lighting with flash.

Lou Jones & small strobes rock!
If you want to learn about small strobes, and if you are a "visual" learner, then this is the book for you.

"Speedlights & Speedlites" has some very cool features, first there are only two chapters in the book, chapter one is "One Light" (25 one light setups) and chapter two is (you may have already guessed) "Two Lights" (20 two light setups), each image is accompanied with the "inspiration, how's, and whys" of the shot and a complete lighting diagram.

To make it as simple as possible to follow along the book is even color coded (Nikon - purple, Canon - green) so you can quickly and easily determine if the discussion is about a Nikon Speedlight or a Canon Speedlite.

Sandwiched in between each of the images are one and two page educational segments that start with the fundamentals of flash, inverse square law, mastering distance, characteristics of light, comprehending the direction of bounce flash, and so much more.

The authors also cover mixing speedlights with studio strobes.

This book is for all levels of photographers and the images cover just about anything you might ever want to photograph, still life, portraiture, corporate, commercial, architectural, and sports.

We learn to talk by listening to others, we learn to walk by watching others, and "Speedlights & Speedlites" is a great educational opportunity for those who want to "walk & talk" small strobes.

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NOT What I Had Hoped For
I read the book twice; gleaning little nuggets here and there.
The book highlights standard lighting techniques (which could be used with any type of artificial lighting)using speedlights. GREAT! What are my problems then, you might be wondering.
One "problem" with the book is that the author,chapter after chapter, continually attempts to "sell" the reader on the idea that using speedlights is a "great way" of shooting with flash. "YA, I KNOW THAT, that's why I bought the book in the first place" is what I was grumbling into the air as I continued read on to the end. His propensity to do this was annoying and left me feeling like I was getting cheated out of more helpful information. I don't need the author to tell me WHY I am using speedlights I want him to tell me HOW.
Another "problem" was that, like the title says (it finally dawned on me...), the book is only about using Nikon and Canon ETL speedlight/speedlite flashes. I was hoping that this was going to be a tome about off-camera flash using flashes in manual and setting up with shots using wireless triggers and etc. Maybe there would be some exposure tricks and tips that help the photographer get around using a light meter. I was hoping for, well, meat and potatoes..."strobist" stuff I guess. Maybe like how to train my eye and to be able to see the forest for the trees and vice versa when it comes to lighting. Oh well.
Don't get me wrong, I learned some stuff but...