In my recent posts about the techno wizardry of small hot shoe flashes like my SB800 I mused as to whether most of us are really using their capabilities to the full. As is my usual idle wont I pointed you towards Dave Black’s excellent set of tutorials for more information on how to get the best out of them. If you followed the link you will have seen that Dave uses some pretty exotic set ups with multi SB800s and dials in various combinations of exposure compensation for the separate groups he uses in his banks of flash units and he uses them on the TTL setting. Meanwhile, over at the excellent Strobist David Hobby advocates a more, shall we say, “budget” approach with extensive use of older (and cheaper!) SB24s, SB26s and SB28DXs etc. and he uses his flash units almost exclusively on manual. Both these guys are highly respected working pros and really know their stuff, both produce terrific work. So which one is right?

OK, you’ve probably guessed it, they’re both right, of course! Dave Black’s approach will work for most of the time, especially when you factor in Dave’s long experience in knowing when and how to tweak his settings. Ditto for David Black, especially when you factor in etc., etc. The real point is you are still going to have figure a lot of this stuff for yourself and experiment to settle on the working practices that suit you and your particular photographic vision - and that’s leaving budgetary considerations aside that may well constrict your choices in the first place.

In the past I’ve been a bit leery of any auto exposure systems - it seems to me that they always seem to subtly change exposures when you know damn well the exposure should stay the seem when the same conditions prevail. Then again, when you look at Dave’s (Black, that is) work you can’t help but be tempted to give his techniques a try. That fits in entirely with my philosophy of figuring out what you want to achieve and then test, test, test.

Now, if only it would stop raining, I would be out in my back garden trying all this stuff out for myself!