Welcome back! This is part 2 of our Off Camera Flash Tutorial. By now, you should have set up your off-camera flash from lesson 1. There’s nothing like learning by doing – so, we’re diving in!

This article gives me a chance to post a photograph of my son. Hehe. This stinker is almost 17 months. Help!

F/stop controls your flash exposure.

Step 1. Google your camera’s sync speed. Go do it right now. Go, go, go. My 5D Mark II has a sync speed of 1/200. You will NOT be able to photograph at a faster shutter speed than your sync speed. Why not? Because you’ll end up with photographs like this (ignore the horrible overexposure).

Shutter speed at 1/320. This photographer did not follow Step 1. Oh wait, that's me.

Step 2. Camera and flash should both be set to manual. Then, go set up an indoor space for you to take some test shots. You probably want to photograph something inanimate at this point. An object will have boundless patience versus a small child (who has none). My flash & umbrella was set up about 4 feet from my teddy bear at about 45 degrees. The teddy bear was about 5 feet from the wall.

Looking to figure out where to place your light? Check out strobox.com.

Step 3. Set your f-stop to f/5.6, your shutter speed to your sync speed (in my case 1/200), ISO 100. Why these settings? We have to start somewhere. If it were sunny outside, I would probably start at f/16. If I were photographing in open shade, I’d try starting at f/8. Overcast? Indoors? Maybe f/5.6.

Flash should be at full power. 1/1.

Take a photograph with these settings. What happens? I’m horribly overexposed:

f/5.6, 1/200, ISO 100, flash full power 1/1. We're blinding the poor animals.

How do we fix this?

Step 4. Adjust your f/stop. Why? Because f/stop controls flash exposure. I’m overexposed so I’m going to stop down. If you’re underexposed, open up. If f/5.6 gives me overexposure, let’s try f/8. Don’t adjust anything but your f/stop.

f/8, 1/200, ISO 100, flash full power 1/1. Hey! We're getting there.

Almost there…! Let’s try f/10.

f/10, 1/200, ISO 100, flash full power 1/1. Woot!

But… ew, I don’t want to shoot at f/10.

You want to shoot at f/5? How do you get correct exposure? Most of our cameras’ f/stops will adjust in 1/3 stops. Going from f/10 to f/5 is opening up six 1/3 stops – or 2 whole stops. Go ahead and count it, how many times do you have to dial to go from f/10 to f/5?

Why is this important? Because now, we’re going to adjust our flash power to compensate for the extra light we’re letting in. Instead of full power at 1/1, I’m going to adjust my flash power to 1/4 power (2 stops down).

f/5.0, 1/200, ISO 100, flash 1/4 power.

One more example: if I open up one more stop from f/5 to f/3.5, I have to adjust my flash power by one stop as well (f/3.5, 1/200, ISO 100, Flash 1/8 power).

f/3.5, 1/200, ISO 100, flash 1/8 power.

The same concept will apply to your ISO settings. If you go one stop from ISO 100 to ISO 200, you either have to adjust your f/stop or your flash power accordingly.

But what about shutter speed?

Shutter speed controls ambient exposure. If there is no ambient light, adjusting your shutter speed will make no difference.

This was taken with my original settings of f/10, ISO 100, full flash power but my shutter speed was adjusted to 1/60th of a second.

Lesson 3 will look at shutter speed and ambient lighting more in depth. For extra credit, adjust your shutter speed to see how it changes your photograph.

Here are the links to Off Camera Flash Tutorial Lesson 1, Off Camera Flash Lesson 2, and Off Camera Flash Lesson 3.