Todo lo que siempre has querido saber sobre flash para cámaras Canon y nunca te has atrevido a preguntar

Por un pequeño compromiso que he adquirido para el mes de Abril, tengo que informarme de como funcionan los flash en cámaras reflex digital de Canon. Al igual que cuando me compré la cámara, poco a poco me voy acostumbrando a las iniciales de este mundillo: que si TTL, A-TTL, E-TTL, E-TTL II… potencia, difusores…

El artículo más completo que me he encontrado hasta el momento sobre el tema es Flash Photography with Canon EOS Cameras. Probablemente a mí me venga mejor algo más sencillito para ir empezando (a parte de conseguir una unidad de flash), pero desde luego este tiene la pinta de que me sacará de grandes dudas mientras siga aprendiendo cosas.

The invention and subsequent automation and miniaturization of electronic flash revolutionized photography. If you’re a photographer you’re no longer tied to available light. A reliable and portable light source is immediately at your disposal if you choose.

But flash photography has always been a very difficult technique to master on any camera system. It’s easy to take a snapshot of your friends in a restaurant and get that hideously blown-out rabbit-in-the-headlights look from built-in automatic flash. But using electronic flash well – achieving natural-looking images – is quite tricky.

This is in large part, of course, because the human eye can’t fully discern the effects of a flash burst at the time an image is taken – the brief pulse of light is just too short for us to process. And you can’t even see the flash if you’re looking through the viewfinder of an SLR camera anyway, as the mirror will have been raised for the duration of the flash. It’s also because small light sources mounted close to the lens produce a very unnatural form of light.

So you have to read manuals and experiment. But with film-based photography there’s a long lag time in the feedback loop – you have to take your film in to be processed before you see what worked and what didn’t. Taking notes can be cumbersome because of the highly automated nature of modern flash. Even professionals don’t rely entirely on their experience and flash meters and do test shots with a Polaroid instant film back in studio flash situations. Digital photography has one of the benefits of shortening this feedback loop considerably, but that doesn’t really help those of us who still use film.

So, here’s some information that may help you understand some of the mysteries of flash photography with Canon EOS camera equipment. Much of the information presented herein is fairly general in nature and thus covers similar flash systems used by other manufacturers, but much is very specific to Canon EOS products.