Kens Photography Blog

Don’t have an expensive Sekonic Flash incident meter?

Not to worry, here’s a super tip to get your lighting ratios set quickly.

Tie a string to the flash head somewhere, important, we want it so it moves with the flash head up and down.

Every time you shoot something, take the string and roll it out to reach where you focus on the subject, tie a knot there or mark it some other way. write down the flash settings and camera aparture. After a while you will have all your useuall distances marked so you can just look up what you need, roll out the string again and voila, ready to rock. If your other heads are the same type just make an identical copy of the string and tie it to the other lights.

You could also measure with a ruler or something if you don’t want strings dangling from your heads. Not wery pro, but if you’r doing product shots this works great.