How to Use a Camera Flash

Video Transcript

"My name is Anthony Maddaloni and I'm going to talk about how to use a camera flash. Now flash photography whether it's built into your camera or external such as this flash, is a very important part of photography. And at first I've noticed that I had a certain, I don't know, a fear of flash, I just didn't like it. I thought it made people look unnatural, it made them look kind of pasty. But the more I experimented with my flash and the more I learned about photography, I found that flash photography was really, really awesome. One way I started figuring it out was that I would just take an image naturally with natural light and then I'd either put the pop up flash on my camera on, or I would experiment with my external flash and I would take the same image using the flash. Now I would look at my flash and what type of settings are on it. This particular flash is a 285 HV Vivitar flash. It's color coded on the side and that let's me control how powerful this flash can be put out. Now sometimes I can make it very weak or I can make it very strong depending upon the situation that I'm photographing in. In my hand right here is a sync cord. This cord is plugged into part of my camera and actually lets me be able to hold this flash or put it onto a light stand to incorporate this in my photography. I really do love flash photography almost as much as I like natural light photography. So this is a really important tool to have in doing your photography. And that is how I would use flash photography."