Now we'll explain later why you need a modifier for your light. But for now I just want to show you the modifier that is probably the number one and to get at the beginning of your flash journey, and that is a shoot through umbrella. So, I'm sure you've seen an umbrella before. This is a white shoot through umbrella by Westcott and I used to use a couple different brands before this one and then I found this And the beautiful thing about this umbrella is that when you close it down, the shaft actually pops into and it gets really compact. These are in the 20s of dollars, 25 bucks or something like that. And this will turn your speed Buy into a beautiful light source.

And as you can see, it's pretty small, and it's cheap. So this is this is great as many speed lights as you have buy that many umbrellas, maybe an extra one just so you have it in case something happens because they do tend to turn into parachutes when it's windy. We're going to talk about more, more about modifiers later on, can let you know why we stick this thing in front of the light and what's the purpose and what are the ones that are available. But this is definitely the best place to start from modifiers so go grab yourself some umbrellas as well. So earlier I mentioned the Speedway's tape batteries, double A batteries, and you're gonna go through a lot of them if you shoot a lot. So I would highly recommend getting yourself some rechargeable batteries because you don't want to be throwing batteries away over and over again.

It's bad for the environment and it's bad for your wallet. So buyer cells from rechargeable batteries. Right here in my hand. I use Amazon basics. They are awesome. They're pretty cheap.

There's a lot of other brands out there I've tried a bunch of them. Pair stone eneloop Duracell Energizer 10 energy, there's just so many brands, but by reading a lot of forums and reviews and using a lot of them myself, I can tell you that these Amazon basics are the best value out there. I've also read that they are actually rebranded eneloop batteries which eneloop is kind of like the pinnacle of rechargeable battery. So Amazon takes them put their label on them and sells them for a little cheaper which is a great deal for us. So I say stock up on these guys. And you'll also need a battery charger.

And if you don't have one, I'm going to show you a great one that you can grab if you're doing a lot of photography and you need to charge a lot of batteries at once. So you're going to need to charge all those rechargeable batteries and the best way that I've found after I graduated From the Chargers that only have four slots in them and plug them into the wall and wait 14 hours is this tener GTN 160. And as you can see it hold 12 batteries at once. And this little digital reader here is really great because you pop the batteries in, plug it in, turn it on, and it'll show you how much more it's got left to fill each battery. And it gives you a separate readout for every slot. So you can put a few batteries in here, you can fill it to the max, it doesn't really matter, it'll let you know what's going on.

This is really handy. Even better is that each one of these slots holds a double A. But if you can see down here and there's a small little tab, you can pop triple A's in this too. And that's important if you're using triggers those all triple A's. So this is great. You know, get one if you need more get 234 Who cares?

This will keep your batteries charged. And it also has this button up here that says refresh. And what that lets you do is if you use batteries for a while, sometimes they have what's called memory and they won't necessarily charge too Their full capacity. And that comes from not draining them all the way and charging them and not draining them away and charging them and that'll happen to the battery and hit refresh this we'll go through an algorithm where it fully drains the battery fully charged it up fully drains fluid, and it has it goes through cycles like that to kind of refresh the battery and get it back too close to what it was like when it was new. So really handy, really worth it. This is an inexpensive and it does a great job.

And again, I've used a lot of battery chargers and this is by far the best one. Another modifier that you can use on your speedlights that comes in handy, especially with headshots is grid, excuse the beat up package, but I use the heck out of this thing. And I keep this in my bag and it's all torn up. But the grid itself is really nice. I will say that it's not the most elegant way to get it onto the speedlight which is with a velcro strap. It's kind of tough to keep on there.

But the grid works well. And we'll talk about exactly what this does to the light in later in the video. But these are really inexpensive as well. These are not a necessity, especially when you're starting off. But it is a nice thing to have in your bag. When you get a little bit more advanced, we'll talk about that though.

And these are made by uptake. It's called the speed grid. And again, links on the resource page. Something else you can add to your spotlight to do something a little bit more creative or to do some color correction. It's called gels. They're not jelly, they're not soft or anything.

It's just a piece of plastic essentially like a heavy duty saran wrap, if you will, that's got a color to it. So here's a package of gels that I've got. And a very common one is called CTO, which is color temperature orange, and you can see it right here. very faint, very light. But what that does is you put that on your speed light and it'll change the color of the light to more match the ambient light in the environment. And we'll go over For color correction later on.

This pack in here has a bunch of different colors all sort of pink and green and blue and yellow and anything and it's a little kit that you buy for a few bucks. And you can put those over your flash to create color lights instead of just white flashlights in your photos and you can just do some creative things with that. So it's nice to have in your bag. Again, not a necessity, but a pretty inexpensive way to expand what you can do with your flashes. And last but definitely not least, you're gonna need a way to carry all this stuff. And so what I find is there's a awesome duffel bag on Amazon.

That is the perfect size and it holds everything you need. And it's really durable. I love this thing to every single wedding I shoot every single regular shoot commercial shoot anything it is and it's all in here. This is my lighting bag. It's got the stands, it's got the flashes, everything is in here. So when I know I need to light which is almost every shoot, I grab my bag and grab my camera bag, and I'm good to go.

So this is perfect comes in a couple of colors if you care about that, and it holds everything we talked about in this video. Alright, so that is an exhaustive list of all the things you need to take flash photos, there's a few things I left out, because personally, I don't use them. But I want to mention them so that when you hear the terms when you see them listed online or anything like that, you know what they are, and you know why you might not necessarily need it. And one of the main ones is TTL. And this is a term for a function that a flash can do and it's basically the flash will talk to the camera and vice versa. So if you go to take a photo, and you press the shutter button halfway down, that camera is going to tell the flash, hey, I need this much light to expose this photo correctly at the settings that I'm set to and the flash gets that message in If fires whatever the camera tells it, so it's essentially automatic flash power, and it will calculate it based on what the camera sees.

There's a few problems with this. If you're in a studio setting, and you're taking repeated shots, let's say you are set up for headshots, and you're taking photos and you have an on TTL. Well, you might adjust the camera a little bit and it might recalculate. And you get varying flash powers from photo to photo when in reality your scene is not changing at all, and you want to have consistency. So TTL is not useful for that. It can be useful in some situations like event photography, you can mount your flash to the top of your camera settings and CTL run around and just take pictures and hope that the camera makes the right calculation.

Personally, I don't like it. It's not always right. Just like your auto modes and your camera and not always right and figuring out the exposure you're going to have the same problem with your flash. I prefer to be in control the flash, I prefer to know exactly what it's going Do and adjust it the way that I want it to be adjusted so that I can get the results that I know that I want. I shoot in full manual on the camera and I shoot full manual for the flash. The other benefit, besides being in control is that all the gear that you need is a lot less expensive.

You don't have to buy a flash that can do TTL. You don't have to buy triggers that can talk TTL you don't have to worry about any of that stuff. My mantra is always simplify. Make things as simple and basic as you can, like, get the result that you need to get. And that is a really great balance point to be at. And you save yourself some dollars too.

If somebody asks you, Hey, why don't you use pocket wizards? And you say, what the heck is a Pocket Wizard? Well, here's what it is. It's a trigger. Like we talked about before. Pocket wizards are the smart version of a dumb trigger.

So with pocketwizard you can have a TTL flash and it'll communicate that TTL data back and forth. So you can wirelessly wirelessly have TTL. They come at a hefty price tag when you can get a set of triggers for $35 that are dumb triggers or you can buy TTL triggers for hundreds of dollars. I think you can see one of the advantages of shooting manual. And it also makes you a better photographer because you're going to be really in tune with what's going on with the light, what's going on the exposure, you're going to have to pay attention to it rather than just blindly pressing the shutter button and letting your camera do all the work and hoping that it gets it right. Now I know this is an opinion and I'm not stating his gospel.

Some of you might disagree. Some of your friends may disagree. That's cool. Everyone's got their own thing. But this video is what I use in real life. photoshoots that gets the job done and does it well and costs a reasonable amount of money.

You can definitely spend thousands of dollars on your lights set up and have every Bell and whistle that there is in some way that's worthwhile and that it really helps. Others like myself might argue that it actually is a hindrance. And it's not very helpful to have those things. So the way I think about it is why pay extra for something that I really don't need. So, hope that makes sense. If it doesn't send me a question and an email, I'd be happy to help the email.

The contact information is on the website, and I can explain that further.