My Thoughts on Shooting Off Camera Flash in Micro Four Thirds Environment

Hello everyone, today I want to talk about my experience of Off-Camera-Flash in the Micro Four Thirds system. I am recently trying to improve the quality of my pictures significantly by learning how to light properly. Naturally, I learned about all the options: natural light, available light, artificial light. While I have been natural light shooter for a long time, there are times when natural light won't let you grab that picture that you want simply because you will have to crank your ISO to get the exposure from very dim natural light and the picture looks soft due to high ISO noise. That's when I decided to learn about using speedlight.

David Hobby Inspired

I am now a regular visitor of David Hobby's blog strobist.blogspot.com which held tons of high quality information about how to "light", mainly using off camera flash. Automatically, I then started to explore off camera flash and bought the right stuff to help getting better result using off camera flash and start to use that technique more and more to produce my shots. Now I flash almost everything when I bring my flash and I do it off camera handheld with no lightstand whatsoever. Doing it with Micro Four Thirds is really liberating because the camera is small and light enough that you can handle it with one hand easily while having your other hand holding the flash off camera, with or without modifier.

However, it was a bit difficult to me at first to get the right tools for doing off camera flash that are compatible with Micro Four Thirds since the information was scattered all around the internet and there was no proper single documentation of many different methods of doing off camera flash photography with Micro Four Thirds, especially the one that can cover newbies-level FAQs.

I spent at least three months to understand what will work and what will not work, and basically found interesting discoveries along the way that might be useful to know when you start shooting OCF using Micro Four Thirds. And now let me share some of my experience! Please be mindful that this is basically my personal experience and don't treat this blog post as some sort of an exact rule that you must follow; I could be wrong with some of the information especially about wireless triggers so please double check before you proceed with a wireless trigger.

Start basic off camera flash using integrated wireless flash system on newer Micro Four Thirds cameras and flash

Olympus FL-600R

When you purchased recent releases of Micro Four Thirds cameras(late 2013, 2014, early 2015), your camera will have the wireless flash capability using RC mode(remote control). The RC mode on your camera will work with flashes that support RC mode in Micro Four Thirds environment.

The way to do this is by using the built in pop up flash or the included mini hot shoe flash that comes with your camera, go into the menu and enable wireless flash or RC mode. Your built in flash now will act like a commander and it will send light signal to compatible flash that carries flash power information as well as the trigger, so that your external flash will fire with the desired flash output. If you want the flash to fire with automatic exposure, set the RC flash to TTL mode. If you want to set the flash power manually from your camera. set the RC flash to manual mode and set the desired power. Now align the external flash' optical sensor so that it can "see" the built in flash of your camera. You are now ready to fire your shot and get the flash to contribute to your exposure. You can put the flash down somewhere, handheld(as how I do it most of the time), or use a lightstand as long as the optical sensor can see the built in flash.

Flashes that are compatible with this RC mode is usually Panasonic or Olympus branded flash with "R" letter on the name. My preferred flash for this kind of setup is the Olympus FL-600R. To enable RC mode on the flash, simply change the mode to RC mode. Set the channel and the group on the flash to match those in the camera menu.

A quick information about the Olympus FL-600R; if you, like me, are doing full manual flash and need to change the power setting a lot, the FL-600R will provide the manual power setting with GN measurements by default which is hard to understand and not really intuitive for most shooting situation. You can change it to the regular flash power output unit by holding down the OK button for a few seconds, turn the dial until you see GN on, then change it to off using the dial.

If you don't want to spend money on Olympus or Panasonic branded full featured flash, you can go to third party brand that offers fully featured MFT compatible flash such as Nissin (i40, Di466). or Metz system; both feature TTL, high speed sync and many other standard features at slightly lower price.

On the budget: use third brand flash with optical slave capability

Yongnuo YN560EX, or also known as EX800

If you, however, can't afford such flash, you can go even lower with full manual flash that doesn't offer TTL. This way you can still use your flash off camera but lose the automatic TTL capability and the high speed sync capability. The general choice for such flash will be Yongnuo YN560 series, or other popular manual flash. My own personal choice is the Yongnuo YN560EX.

There are two ways you can do wireless off camera flash with these kinds of flash. The first way will always work and that is to just use the built in flash of your camera, set it to its lowest power(to minimize the effect of the exposure) and set your external flash to Slave mode(usually S1 or Sl Manual) and align the flash' sensor so that it can "see" the built in flash of your camera. When the pop up flash fires, the external flash will fire immediately and affect the picture. You will just have to set the power manually to get the desired exposure. Normally you will want the built in flash to contribute as little as possible to the exposure by compensating it as low as possible but you can also experiment by adding it to your picture as a fill flash.

The second way will work only with some flashes that have delayed Slave mode such as my Yongnuo YN560EX. The advantage of this way is that the pop up flash won't affect the exposure at all and will only act as a commander. To do this, go to the camera menu and turn on wireless flash or RC mode. Then go to your external flash and set its mode to Slave 2(S2 as in the case with my YN560EX). Set the power of the external flash manually, align the external flash sensor to the built in flash and fire away! Your pop up flash won't contribute to the exposure.

Use Off Camera Flash Cord, and use any flash!

Phottix Universal Duo TTL Flash Cord.

If you don't like the idea of aligning your external flash with the pop up flash of your camera, you will have two choice to avoid that and still be able to do off camera flash: 1) Wireless Remote Trigger or 2) Flash Cord. My choice for short range off camera flash photography is to use the Flash Cord.

My choice for flash cord is Phottix Universal Duo TTL Flash Cord, as pictured on the left. This cord features a pass through hotshoe connector that enables you to mount another hotshoe accessories on top of it, maybe your remote, or maybe another flash. As weird as it may sound, this pass through TTL cord isn't actually TTL at all, even though I bought the Canon version which is supposedly compatible with Olympus/Panasonic system. It turns anything to become manual; but I have no problem with it because I shoot my flash manually most of the time.

To use it, simply put your flash on the other end of the cable's hot shoe, and mount the foot of the cord that has pins on it to your camera's hotshoe. Set your flash to manual, adjust the power, and you are ready to take picture.

Some known information: you can have TTL capability using flash cord if you are buying Canon's version of off camera flash cord or a third party cord without pass through TTL that has the same hotshoe configuration with Canon's cord. Usually the name contains the word OC-E3. Use this cord together with your TTL capable flash, and you will have all the automatic features as well as the high speed sync capability maintained when using the cord. The only known issue is the reduced normal sync speed limit due to the construction of the cord.

The benefit of using this camera setup is that it is optimized for handheld external flash, which is very good for run and gun off camera flash photography such as in wedding or when you are documenting an event. If you need to put it on a lightstand, then you will need a long cord for that because most of the cords are only 1 meter long.

For far away off camera flash needs, go with a wireless remote flash trigger

Phottix Strato II transmitter and receiver.

Sometimes you just need to have your external flash very far away from you, the longest cord that you can buy is just too short for that, and your wireless RC mode alignment is blocked by an object. The only way to tackle this problem is to use wireless remote trigger.

This is where it gets tricky; not many people know which triggers work with Micro Four Thirds camera. The documentation gets scattered all around the internet and it will take you a long time to learn about them all.

I will tell you all that I know in this paragraph about remote flash trigger. Most of the triggers that will work will be manual only triggers. Some well known triggers for that includes PocketWizard manual trigger that isn't brand specific, Yongnuo manual triggers, Phottix manual triggers, and Cactus V series in manual mode. There is no TTL capable wireless flash triggers that is Micro Four Thirds compatible as of today that I know. Also high speed sync wireless flash triggers is not available yet for Micro Four Thirds, even for manual triggers.

For PocketWizard, that means Plus series, including II+ , Plus III and PlusX; as always with PocketWizard, your flash needs to have PC Sync cable jack, which isn't present in my Olympus FL600R. For Yongnuo, that means the RF series(RF603, RF605, etc). For Phottix, this means Phottix Atlas, Ares, and Strato series(make sure they are non TTL ones, buy the Canon version to match the hotshoe pins). For Cactus, the V series should work in manual mode but I have no experience.

My GX7 with Phottix Strato II attached.

My personal experience is with the Phottix Strato series. I bought a Phottix Strato TTL, and it DOESN'T WORK because of the TTL thing; it just won't fire at all, unless when I mount it to a Canon camera.

I then bought a Phottix Strato II Multi which works in a fantastic way and syncs down to 1/320ms on my GX7 and E-PL6 with no problem. Keep in mind that this trigger is full manual and doesn't do high speed sync. If you need high speed sync, you must use the wireless RC mode.

Or, like me, you can trick the camera to get the high shutter speed exposure down to sync speed range shutter speed by using a 4 stop ND filter. My preferred ND filter is Hoya but any brand shouldn't matter as long as you check for any color cast and sharpness issues before you buy it. Please note that by doing so, you will not only drop the exposure of the ambient, but also you are going to lower the flash power by 4 stop. To compensate for that, you have to increase the flash power by 4 stops(for example: 1/32 to 1/2).

On a more positive note, the transmitter has a pass-through TTL hotshoe that actually works to let-through the TTL information to whatever thing that's on top of it, so you can actually mount another flash on top of the transmitter and have all the TTL and high speed sync capabilites maintained...or mount another trigger....or mount your flash cord for a more complicated multi flash setup... or mount any other hotshoe accessory that requires all the pins!

What about my personal setup?

Crazy off camera multi flash setup with one trigger.

See this crazy picture on the right? I can trigger two flashes that are connected by the off camera flash cord using the Phottix Strato II. I can also put the cord on top of the transmitter on my camera and have two flashes there, one off camera on the cord handheld using my left hand as the main light, one on top of the transmitter as the fill or to bounce, and an extra flash on the receiver being triggered far away from the camera.

Modifiers?

As for modifiers, I do use Rogue Flashbender Large a lot for event photography and product photography with my off camera flashes. This modifier works best at close range and can almost act like a soft box when you put a white diffusing material in front of it.

I also sometimes use my home-made Lightsphere DIY made from plastic paper bowls with holes to mount the flash. Not the prettiest but it works and I can't justify spending US$80.00 for a modifier yet.

For outdoor, I do everything bare flash and try my best to control the harsh shadow to appear as minimal as I can.

In the future, I will probably get an umbrella for studio-like photo or for on location shooting. Or maybe a real soft box. But for now, I am happy with what I already have and they do their job very well, at least for the kind of photos that I need to make(product photography, event documentary, quick indoor portrait).

That's all for my off camera flash experience, I hope this post helps you and I will definitely update either here or on a new post if I learn something new. Cheers and God bless :)