Orion Photo Group Success Story Podcast
Orion Photo Group Success Story Podcast
Navigating Flash Misfires
What if you could confidently capture every moment, without another flash misfire ruining your perfect shot? Brace yourself for an unraveling of this common issue, exploring the ins and outs of this photography hurdle. We dive deep into the importance of battery choice, seating of the transmitter, thermal protection and avoiding radio frequency interference. You'll walk away not only understanding the how's but also the why's behind your flash misfires.
Hey there, welcome to OPG's Tips and Tricks. Here I'm going to share some quick tips and some tricks that I think you'll find very useful. Let's get right to it, alrighty. Welcome back to another episode of Tips and Tricks with your host, jason Group. That's me. Today we're going to dive into a very, very common challenge that we all face at some point or another flash misfires. I'm going to go through some simple fixes and some troubleshooting techniques that, hopefully, will ensure that you just continue to get out there and you don't have to deal with this issue. Unfortunately, I'll preface that with saying it doesn't matter how seasoned you are. You're going to have this problem.
Speaker 1:We deal with misfires, whether you're the most seasoned veteran in the world and you know your gear to getting started with flashes. Flash misfires are just something that we deal with on a regular basis. Knowing what to do is the trick and where to start. If you've been listening to these podcasts, there's always a check down when do I start, where do I finish? What do I do? Jumping in flash misfires can be just a super-duper headache for photographers. We've all been there and getting that perfect moment and then the flash doesn't fired and you miss the shot, or you're standing there fumbling with your flash. There's nothing that's going to make you look more professional than the flash not going off. If most of our clients and guests don't know much about photography, but they know. When the flash isn't going off, it can be really embarrassing, so it's really important to be like oh no, this isn't a problem. I just need to check down and figure out what the issue is here. Common problems range run the gamut. The best thing to do is just start with the simple ones and then get more complicated. I'm also going to provide a little insight into high-speed sync and how it relates to freezing motion and get into that as well. High-speed sync can definitely add another layer of complexity to dealing with your flash photography.
Speaker 1:All right, first up, let's talk about the importance of battery choice. You need to use alkaline batteries in your transmitter, and that can save you from a lot of misfires. When your transmitter has low power, it might not trigger your flash correctly. Same goes for however you're powering your flashes. If you have an older flash that takes AA batteries, alkaline batteries are important to do. I don't recommend using rechargeable batteries, because you just never know when the life is up for them. The best thing that you could do is to make sure that the signal is being sent to your flash, and that's the most important thing. Battery choice matters and I don't cheap out by buying Kirkland or Sam's Club or anything like that. I buy Duracells or Energizers, I buy the best batteries I could possibly buy and I'm making sure they're alkalines.
Speaker 1:The second place if you're having so first thing flashes and misfiring, first thing I do make sure. Maybe it just changed the batteries in the transmitter. Who knows, maybe those batteries have been in there a while, maybe they're just bad batteries, so I just replace the batteries. That's the first place I'll go. Second would be or this actually might be my first is make sure that it's sitting properly. So if you're using it on camera flash, make sure that is properly seated in your hot shoe. Or if you're mounting it on something else like a hot shoe, make sure it's fully seated, and that goes for your transmitter as well. If that doesn't do the trick, sometimes look at the contacts. The contacts dirty. If you live in an area where there's a lot of You're near saltwater or the ocean a lot, you might need to clean those contacts, and a Q-tip and some alcohol can really help that as well, sometimes just juggling it in the hot shoe. If that's the case and you find yourself worrying about the seating, there's two things that are going on there. Either your hot shoe on your camera is becoming defective or the male part on the transmitter is becoming defective. So you're going to want to look at that and if you're having those recurring issues, it might be time to replace one or the other.
Speaker 1:Alright, thermal protection. I know that sounds like a big fancy world. If you're using high-speed sync, you might encounter a thermal protection limit and to solve this, lower the power, raise your ISO and slow down your shooting Try turning off your camera flash and back on to reset the protection counter. Basically, what this means is, if you're shooting a lot and you're, let's say, it's a dark room and you're using high-speed sync or you're doing it outside, many of our flashes today will have a protection in them to basically shut your, slow your flash down so that it doesn't overheat and melt everything inside. As someone who used older units and I've burnt out many flashes over the years and it's not a fun thing to do because you're throwing hundreds of dollars away when you do that. So what I recommend is, if you feel like your flash is hot, thermal protection.
Speaker 1:Again, if the flash is hot, good time is to just replace that flash with another flash and, and you know, start with another one. Let the other one cool down. If you don't, then you just might have to wait until it cools down a little bit or just slow down or switch out of high-speed sync. That's a good way to really heat up your flash. Again, going back to making sure that the contacts are clean on your hot shoe and your transmitter, and another tip with the transmitter is sometimes, if your flash is and this might seem silly, but if your flash is too close to your transmitter, you may experience radio frequency, rf interference and it's like think about it like this it's like shouting in someone's ear. And if you're using Godox, change your settings to the closest setting of zero to 30 meters in the distance section under the menu on your X-Pro or just simply walk the flash out a little bit further and you know that solves that problem too Tricky one here, and I'm guilty of not keeping it up to date.
Speaker 1:Keep your transmitter's firmware up to date is crucial, especially if you have a newer camera. Check for the latest firmware versions and installation software on the manufacturer's website. This would be one of the last things that you do. You had trouble with the flash all day. It's just not working for you and you're just struggling with this. You just don't know what's wrong with this flash. It could be a firmware thing, and this is something you'll do at home. It's an easy fix, but a lot of times you just have to do a lot of reading to get it done and can kind of be a pain in the neck and I'm not a big fan of that to do those things, but it's a good thing to do. Sometimes they put some firmware in there that makes a flash a lot more just to make it better. I know I've done this before and it was like having a brand new flash that did all kinds of fancy things. All right for you. Mirrorless camera users disable electronic shutter options, including electronic first cutter shot, first curtain shutter, also known as EFCS, and use the mechanical shutter when using flash. This is a little bit more advanced. I would recommend doing some homework on this so that you understand it and go from there. But that's a really good tip. You're going to want to disable some of the things in your camera.
Speaker 1:Let's talk about high speed sync, hss. There's a misconception that HSS is great freezing motion. But it's not in, but not necessarily in most cases. Freezing motion in photography relies on two factors fast shutter speed and short flash duration. Unfortunately, you cannot combine both factors. So when you go beyond your camera's sync speed now that this gets tricky, now right. So if you go beyond your camera sync speed, your flash switches to HSS mode or in some cases, you have to switch it yourself, and it's not synonymous with short flash duration. Instead, it pulsates, functioning more like a continuous light LED. This doesn't effectively freeze motion and puts an additional strain on your flash, leading to lower output and slower recycle times. So, alright, I don't know if you're with me on this.
Speaker 1:So how do you get to flash short durations? Well, simply put, use slightly lower power on the flash, and that employs insulated gate ply polar transistor technology. I look this up. I have no idea what that means, but typically that means 1 eighth power or lower, and that will give you a very, very short flash duration. So let's go back and kind of talk about this a little bit again. So in high speed sync you're not necessarily going to be getting.
Speaker 1:We think about flash as something that freezes motion right. But when you're using HSS, what's going to happen is it's pulsing, so you could get blurry images using HSS. What you're going to need to do is go to your limit on your shutter speed, which will be 200th or 250th of a second, and then work from there. That makes it tricky, I understand that, but at 250th of a second you should be able to freeze a lot of motion. Beyond that it gets a lot more technical. But for weddings and wedding talk, I would say that you max out your shutter speed without using high speed sync and do what you got to do change your shutter speed in your ISO to adjust for not using a higher shutter speed. I hope that makes sense. So, outdoor settings, maintaining a fast shutter speed around Now again getting back to high speed sync that may not be possible outside.
Speaker 1:So 3200 or quicker is crucial to freeze motion, but it can be demanding on flash power and may lead to overheating issues. Now, when you're outside and you have lots of available light, you should really just be using flash as just a little fill to sharpen up your images. So using high speed sync and a fast shutter speed should be fine, but it's not something you're going to want to be pop up, pop up, pop up, pop up doing with your flash. It's going to be one, two, three, four. Think about it like that, because otherwise you're going to overheat your flash. So just you know. Again, there's limitations to even the most complex flashes that we have today. Now again, mastering flash photography is always difficult.
Speaker 1:In all these articles and podcasts that I've been doing, and again, best thing to do is to understand what your check downs are and going through those things that I just talked about, starting with the hot shoe jug, you know, making sure it's seated properly, making sure your flash isn't overheated, and kind of go from there. So I hope that helps. I'm sure there's other things that I may be missing, but those are the big ones. That's generally what's going to keep your flash from misfiring batteries, hot shoe, rf interference and things like that. Also you can consider which.
Speaker 1:I didn't talk about changing the channels on your frequency. I used to run into a lot of RF interference in New York City. A lot of times I would have to change and go to like weird channels that I've never used before because there's lots of RF interference in New York City. So consider that as well, and if you, you know, practice these things and know where they are and how to change your channels, how to change your battery, how to, you know, make sure that your cameras are clean, and all that should keep you getting the shots that you need to get All right. I hope that helps and hope you're enjoying this podcast and you should be much better equipped to overcome these challenges, get those great images and remember photography is always a journey and you need to enjoy the journey and put that knowledge to practice and happy shooting out there. That's a wrap for today's tips and tricks and we'll see you on the next episode. Take care, everyone.
