Small Flash Photography

The new flash is small flash—and it has become king. In recent years, small flash has been widely popularized by people like David Hobby, the founder of strobist.com (a leading photography web site that is devoted to small flash and its many applications), as well as Joe McNally and Lou Jones, both small flash aficionados and authors of popular books on the subject.
So why is small flash so popular among today’s professional photographers? Well, first, because studio flash (a.k.a. “big flash” photography) is expensive, not particularly mobile, and ill-suited to really small areas—like nooks, crannies, and the back seats of sports cars.
Additionally, small flash photography is done without modeling lights, which essentially made it impossible before the advent of the DSLR’s instantpreview LCD. With film, you had to do the math (sometimes exceedingly difficult math) in your head—calculating distance to the subject, factoring in
the reflectivity of the subjects and environs, and taking into account a myriad of other factors. Now, all you have to do is to check the LCD screen and say, “Whoops. I’d better give that one a stop more exposure.” The times have decidedly changed.
Small flash has the added advantage that it can be controlled via the camera’s LCD. Because of WiFi technology, and the camera makers’—specifically Nikon’s—ingenious engineering of TTL units, multiple small flashes can now be completely controlled from the camera. The result is nothing short of amazing, as you will see throughout this book.


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