How To Work With Multiple, Portable Speedlights

How To Work With Multiple, Portable Speedlights

by William Lulow

The next step is to learn how to work with just two portable speedlights. If you don’t want to get into the expense and learning curve of actual studio lighting, the next best thing would be to get a couple of portable speedlights and just work with the both of them. What I do is to add a Canon speedlight which is mounted directly onto my camera’s hot shoe and then add another one mounted on a light stand, which I can move around the subject as needed. The trick I use is to add a “bounce card” to the unit on the camera so that the light becomes larger and therefore, softer. This helps to eliminate any harsh shadows often caused by camera mounted lights. The second light I position either to light the background or to provide an “accent” light or other special effect to my images.

This is what the unit attached to the camera looks like:

You will note that the flash is aimed UP at the bounce card which is approximately 5″x5″ square. It’s enough to make the light quite a bit softer without losing too much power from the light being indirect.

In one particular application, I used two extra, off-camera lights to help provide the accents. Here was the setup:

You can see where the lights were placed. Here is the kind of image I produced from this setup:

So, in this case, I was actually working with THREE lights, but you could achieve a similar result with just one light on the camera and one off. In this case, again, the extra lights were providing accents. But you can also use them to provide light for the background.

Here is a shot that was an outdoor party at night. If I had just used the on-camera light, all the backgrounds would have been dark because light from speedlights is not as powerful as that from studio units and cannot light a background sufficiently. Here I placed one light in the background to light what was in the back of the shot:

Actually, for this image, I used two OFF-CAMERA lights and shut off the one on the camera. Otherwise the people in the front table would have been too bright and I wanted those folks with their backs to the camera to remain dark.

In order to use off-camera flash, you can either learn how to set up units as slaves, with one master, or get a radio flash triggering system. The one I use is the Pocket Wizard:

It consists of one transmitter and two or more receivers that are then connected to your other flash units with cables. For me, this is the best way to ensure that all lights will be synched together so that they will flash when you trip the shutter. Each flash unit is mounted on its own light stand and has a battery and the Pocket Wizard receiver. They can all be controlled from the camera position. I use them for my studio lights as well. Once you have a setup like this, you will see how easy it is to control multiple lights without any cables or the necessity to plug anything into the wall. One thing I always advise is to have plenty of batteries on hand and to make sure that your Lithium-ion batteries for the flash units themselves, are charged as well.

You can then achieve a variety of results with your portable lights.