Why not just a fast shutter speed to freeze motion? That’s what I always thought, but there are good reasons to use a flashlight or speedlight to do it instead. Take a look to see what they are.
I’ve always lived by the coast, growing up near the southern beaches of Sydney and more recently in the extreme south-west of Japan. That means I’ve always loved the outdoors and the ocean, especially surfing. So when I got more serious about photography during my college years, it was only natural that I would be attracted to landscape photography and marine sports photography. To that end, I never really needed flash and didn’t bother learning about them. It wasn’t until my first daughter was born and I started to indulge in portrait photography that I realized what I’d been missing out on all these years. But flash isn’t just good for portrait photography.
And that brings us to this amazing video by Kai Wong, in which he teaches you how to use on-camera flash and off-camera flash together to freeze motion. This is a very helpful video to understand some basic rules of using external flash and the conditions when flash will be better than natural or ambient light. In his example, he shows you how using the camera without a flash at a shutter speed of 1/8000 second is still worse than using a flash synchronized with another speed lamp. If you’ve never used an external flash (on-camera and off-camera) and you’re curious about how to set it up and get the most out of it, watch this video and let me know what you think.
