Recommended Books, Flash Photography

Amazon has many good flash books. Some are "system" books which explain the buttons on the flash. My own notion is that the better books explain how take good pictures. Most have pretty high satisfaction ratings from customers. In the top-most choices there, there are a couple that seem required in any beginning library.

• Beginners to photography: Bryan Peterson's Understanding Exposure, 3rd Edition: How to Shoot Great Photographs with Any Camera has become THE classic about beginning photography. It does not cover flash. Specifically, it is about the basics of using shutter speed and aperture. Definitely a beginning level book, for newbies, but this is what photography is, and we absolutely gotta know this most basic stuff. This book should be any beginner's first photography book, to start them down the road in the right way. It is not deep - it is a very easy read about how the first basics of photography work, about using shutter speed and aperture for exposure. This one has developed a wonderful reputation about being very effective to get beginners started right, they like it. There is more to its subject than just "Exposure" - it is about the Whys of your choices. When you know why, you know how. However, this one is NOT about flash. This book is about regular continuous light, sunlight and light bulbs, about everything EXCEPT flash. Be aware that flash is quite different, in a few ways, and we must know both. But if aperture and shutter speed are still any mystery, you need this one before all else. This book will very likely be in your public library (may be a waiting line for the new third edition, but the older ones are good too). Only about $17, and if you need it, then this is easily the best money you can spend on photography.

  
  

• As useful as the above book may be, I might skip past Peterson's new Understanding Flash Photography: How to Shoot Great Photographs Using Electronic Flash.

  Pros: It IS a good beginning introduction to flash for manual flash, and it CAN get beginners started thinking right without complicating it - especially if you have a Nikon flash model SB-700, SB-800, or SB-900 with the GN mode calculator feature discussed.

  Cons: Its noticeable flaw is that it totally rejects TTL flash in favor of Guide Number flash. And that coverage is dumbed down, it never even explains Guide Number (see page here). The book uses Nikon flashes, but the SB-400 and SB-600 do not have this specific GN calculator feature. Guide Number is a very decent system for bare direct flash, if you know the distance, and the Guide Number. You can always compute GN manually, or tweak manual results by eye, or use TTL. Says the reason for ignoring TTL is because TTL can be affected by the subject's colors, and so is not always precisely accurate or reliable (the same is of course always true of ANY reflected meter). But it never mentions flash compensation, which we need to know is how we control TTL flash exposure. And yet then, the exposure instruction given for bounce flash is to "open the lens two stops"? That was a standard ballpark guess 50 years ago, for flash bulbs before electronics technology, but this guess is hardly accurate, certainly not like TTL actually metering the flash could be. This part is pretty weak today, and bounce is much more important than was presented here. Manual flash is in fact often good and easy. It is packed with many full page pictures, but for beginners, just omitting one of them could have allowed a few words about TTL.

  Faint praise, but a good read, and yes, the book is a decent introduction in other ways, and much of the rest of its ideas (they are good ideas too) can be useful even if you use TTL or whatever. It is about flash, but just know that this book is NOT about TTL... but it never hurts us to have more than one book.

  
  

• Better IMO, as a first introduction to speedlight flash is David Busch's Flash Photography Compact Field Guide. It is written as a Canon book, but there are only three or four pages not applicable to Nikon too (Nikon is on the cover). But flash is flash, and the book is about using flash, and even from my own Nikon perspective, this seems no issue for me. I am not aware that this book ever mentions Inverse Square Law or Guide Number, which might be a plus for some today (TTL largely takes care of it, and it explains how to adjust the flash manually too). It is small and spiral bound, but it is a strong book, which is packed to fully cover indoor and outdoor flash photography, and portrait photography too, the first essentials you need to know. It is a beginner's book, an introduction, and very well done, an excellent value, and if you have not learned this basic stuff yet, then you're missing out on what is possible. It has the necessary and adequate images, but it is Not full of full page images to just fill space - instead lots of text explaining things well - your money's worth, the stuff we need to know. David has a million books in print on digital cameras, and he knows how they should be written. The book does have an index, and enough material to index. I don't see how a beginner could spend $11 better.

  
  

• When you are ready for "the one book you really need", Neil van Niekerk's On-Camera Flash Techniques is a great book about "using" flash - about using one hot shoe flash to create good lighting to take great flash pictures (which should interest everyone, that's what flash is about of course). No qualifications about this book at all (it is really not a beginners book, not really for rank beginners with zero photography experience). It is for anyone seriously interested in improving their flash pictures. The subtitle does say wedding and portrait photography - Don't let that scare you off, it is just about "flash". But it is a serious book (an easy read, but no fluff), and if you want to know how to use your hot shoe flash to take great flash pictures with good lighting, this is it. Snapshots or serious work, these methods will enhance any flash picture you take. Real world, and as good as it gets. On-camera flash is about bounce flash of course, but it covers most things about flash usage - metering, color balance, flash modes, TTL and compensation, flash with tungsten ambient light, fill flash in daylight, etc. If you do want to know, this is that stuff you want to know about using on-camera flash.

  
  

• Also, Neil's Off-Camera Flash Techniques for Digital Photographers book is a very good introduction to going farther with flash photography - umbrellas and such. It is excellent, but for speedlights, I would suggest his newest book, next below.

  
  

• Neil's newest book is Direction & Quality of Light: Your Key to Better Portrait Photography Anywhere, obviously proving to be a big hit. This covers speedlights in many situations, both bounce and off camera, including multiple lights.

  
  Neil also provides much information on his excellent web site. If you want to know how to improve your flash pictures, see the extensive blue column menu at right on his page. Good flash lighting is greatly easier than you may think, but realized only after you actually try it, and start getting the idea about the basics.

  
  

• There are many formal books about portrait photography, of which I have too many. Some didn't do much for me, but several are pretty good. I liked the books by Bill Hurter and Monte Zucker, which are classics. But we do need to see more than one. The one that has easily impressed me the most is The Portrait: Understanding Portrait Photography by Glenn Rand and Tim Meyer. This one is rather different than the others, being quite detailed about the theory, instead of about the equipment. It does have specific explanations of the basics about the lighting. Each point is carefully explained. It assumes you actually want to know, and it actually says the words! So a little wordy perhaps, but clarifying, not rambling - it is a very comfortable read. A few extra words were a big plus to me.

  Other books may be a more conventional first introduction for beginners (who don't have the questions yet), but following that, then this one is different, and if you have ever tried to set up a lighting session, you should recognize the issues here that you still wondered about. This book actually explains portraits to me, because it explains the why's of the lighting, in a way that creates understanding.

  Other than satisfaction at last, a notion I had was that if there were going to be a written test, obviously this is the material that would be on it. This one seems more clear than any about the basics, in my mind, the actual answers are finally here, to be able to "get it".