Flashguns

Flashguns, for many photographers, are one of the first steps taken into getting serious about their imagery. Photography is all about light, after all, and what flashguns provide is a powerful means of controlling light. Offering far more raw power and depth of control than any camera’s built-in flash, as well as the ability to be used and positioned independently of the camera body, a good-quality flashgun is an essential tool for any serious photographer.

Flashguns

Flashguns provide a short, intense burst of light. They come in different shapes and configurations, and the quality of light they produce can be modified extensively with lighting accessories like softboxes, reflectors or umbrellas. While features vary between individual units, many more sophisticated flashguns offer things like bounce/swivel heads for bouncing the light off surfaces, or Automatic TTL (Through The Lens) metering to ensure pitch-perfect exposures.

Depending on the type of photographs you take, you may want to prioritise features like high-speed sync, which allows a flashgun to synchronise the burst of light with faster shutter speeds. Or, for capturing a sense of motion, you may want to use rear-curtain flash, which fires off the burst of light right at the end of the exposure. If you want to use multiple flashguns for photography in conjunction with one another, you’ll want to look at the wireless master/slave modes a flashgun offers, i.e. whether it can control and be controlled by other flash units.

Allowing you to fill in shadows, freeze action, illuminate dark scenes, capture perfectly lit portraits and more, flashguns are hugely useful for photographers in all disciplines.