Why your Prints are Too Dark (and How to Fix It)

Of everything I get asked about with printing, why do my prints come out dark is the one that comes up more than anything else, and if it's happening to you then you haven't done anything daft. You've more than likely just taken the same advice that I did before I figured this out.

Why it happens

Your screen is backlit. It's basically a light source, the same as a lamp is, and a print isn't. All a print can do is bounce back whatever light is already in the room, so you've got one thing making light and one thing borrowing it, and those two are never going to look exactly the same.

However, here's the bit that catches everybody out. If your screen is throwing out more light than a sheet of paper could ever hand back to you, something happens while you're editing that you won't notice at the time. The picture looks bright because everything on the screen looks bright, so you bring it down a little, and what you've actually done is make that adjustment based on the screen rather than the picture. Then you send it to the printer and the paper has got no way of lifting it back up again, so you get the version you darkened on a surface that can't do anything about it.

The number

What you'll normally hear is to set the brightness in your calibration software to somewhere between 80 and 120 candela, and more often than not you'll hear 120. Sure, 120 looks great. It's bright and everything on it has a bit of life to it, but that is exactly what's wrong with it. It looks great because it's throwing out far more light than a sheet of paper is ever going to give back to you, and all the time it's sat there looking great you're quietly pulling down pictures that were never too bright to begin with.

I'm not saying everybody else has got it wrong. I'm saying I took that recommendation and my prints were always too dark.

The histogram is the only thing telling the truth

When your screen is calibrated too bright it's kind of lying to you, and the histogram is the only thing you can really trust. Change your screen brightness and to your eye the picture completely changes, but the histogram doesn't move, not one bit, because nothing has changed in the actual file. It's the one thing in this whole process that doesn't care how bright your monitor is.

The settings I use

After a lot of trial and error, and I do mean a lot, along with a fair bit of wasted paper, ink and money, I settled at 60 candela for my screen in my workspace, and I've not had a print come out too dark since. The software you calibrate with may well look different to mine, but the numbers transfer straight across:

• luminance 60 cd/m2

• white point D65

• gamut Adobe RGB

• gamma 2.2

• black point 0.5 cd/m2

Most calibration software will offer you presets, and the photography one will typically drop the luminance in at 120, which is the whole problem, so I ignore the presets and put the numbers into the custom target instead. The black point is worth a word too. By default it'll be sat at absolute zero, and I lift mine just a touch to 0.5, because even in the darkest parts of a picture I still want a bit of detail; at absolute zero it's just completely black.

I'm not saying 60 is the right number for everybody either, because the room you're working in comes into it.

The room your screen is sat in

Your eyes don't judge a screen on its own, they judge it against everything else around it, so a bright screen in a dark room appears brighter than it actually is, you darken more, and it's the same problem again only now the room is making it worse.

Two things matter. Enough light in the room, and light that's fairly neutral rather than a warm domestic bulb, because a warm bulb will have you making decisions about colour and that's a whole different problem. In my office the main light stays off and I use a Screen Bar Halo 2 from BenQ instead, which throws light down onto the desk without any of it hitting the screen and puts a glow on the wall behind the monitor. That glow on the wall is the bit that does the work, because it cuts out the extreme contrast of sitting in a dark room with just a screen on.

If you haven't got a calibrator

You can still get most of the way there for nothing. Take a print you've already made, hold it up next to your screen, and bring the screen's brightness down until the two of them look pretty much the same. That's it. It won't fix your colour and it isn't calibration, but it's a down and dirty way to stop your prints coming out too dark.

Whichever way you go at it, going from 100 down to 60 or thereabouts will look far too dark at first, and it is quite a jump, but just let your eyes adjust and they will after a few minutes, and very quickly it'll seem normal.

The Westcott Photography Wagon

Today, Westcott have announced the Photography Wagon!

It's a collapsible rolling gear cart AND light stand built specifically for photographers and filmmakers, it's available from today, and it's priced at $189.90 in the US and £159 + VAT in the UK

The walk from the car

Every “on location” photographer can relate to this; light stand under one arm, camera bag on your back, softbox in the other hand, and a backdrop that won't sit comfortably under anything. Then you get to where you're setting up and realise the batteries are still in the boot.

So you go back, and more often than not you go back again.

That's the problem this thing exists to solve, and I like that Westcott have gone after it rather than after another light. At the Wex roadshows this summer I've been carrying the X-Drop Pro, my vintage grey backdrop, an FJ250, the 36 inch Octa and a stand, and none of that is heavy on its own … it's just awkward.

The boom pole is the point

Plenty of people already use a wagon. I've seen no end of photographers turn up at conferences with a cart but what makes this one a photography wagon, rather than just a wagon, is the boom pole which also drops into a holster built into the frame and locks so it won't rotate.

It gets up to 7ft 8in, about 2.3 metres, and it'll take 13 pounds on the end of it, so roughly 6 kilos; easily an FJ400 and a decent sized softbox.

The pole comes out and works as a handheld boom too, and there's a soft grip section on it, which is useful if you're shooting somebody on steps and want the light coming down at them.

And it isn't only for lights; you could also attach a reflector for example or even a tethering table.

What it actually holds

175 pounds, which is about 79kg. The cart itself weighs 24 pounds, near enough 11kg.

The sides are fabric panels that fold over onto hook and loop tape and hide the frame, so the thing looks like a piece of professional kit rather than something off the beach. There's a fold down tailgate at the back for anything long, a C stand say, so it can sit out the end. Grab and go pockets on the sides, and the bottom has a thicker section of padding sewn into the middle of it, which is the sort of detail you only appreciate after you've put a heavy light down hard.

The front two wheels have friction brakes. They still swivel when they're locked, so it's the rolling that stops, not the steering.

Setting it up is a handful of movements: open the two sides, fold the fabric panels over, press the hook and loop down, drop the boom pole into the holster. Collapsing it is the same in reverse. That's it.

It doesn't care whose lights you own

Worth saying plainly, because it's a bit unusual for a Westcott product. There's nothing here that ties you to their lighting. Any brand's stands, any brand's bags, and any brand's light on the end of that boom.

So if you shoot Godox, or Profoto, or anything else entirely, it works exactly the same for you as it will for me.

Mine is en route

So this is a post about a product I've been shown by the folks at Westcott, rather than one I've rolled across a car park or a beach but it is en route, so when it turns up I'll do a proper video with it because for me, this is going to be incredibly useful when out photographing for my I am Lyme project, when on my own.

Early Morning Swimmers, a Man Called Neptune and Matching the Shadows

I was down on the beach at Lyme Regis at 7 yesterday morning for the next set of portraits for my “I am Lyme” project, this time with early morning sea swimmers, Mary and Christine; Mary runs the Axminster and Lyme Regis Cancer Support, and Christine, an artist and also the wife of Harry May, one of the fishermen I photographed a good few weeks back.

Waiting for them to come out

Low tide had been at around half four, and we were shooting at seven, so the sea was on its way back in but still a fair way out, so I waited until they'd had their swim and photographed the two of them together right on the water's edge, wet hair and robes.

Christine and Mary

My dear friend Steve Healy came along to help out and did a top job holding the light, which meant I could spend the time talking to Mary and Christine rather than fiddling about with a stand.

And then Neptune turned up

This is the part I couldn't have planned.

While we were shooting, Mary and Christine spotted a chap they knew coming out of the sea and pointed him out to me; Nick, known affectionately as Neptune, another early morning sea swimmer that has done so pretty much his entire life of 83 years; yeah I know what you’re thinking “He’s 83??” Yep, looks amazing huh. I guess there’s something in this sea swimming.

Nick aka Neptune

Anyway, they called him over and he was keen from the off, which always helps. For him though it had to be in the water, because anywhere else would have been wrong, so it was trainers off, trousers rolled up and in I went. Mary took over the light for that one, stood in the sea alongside me, and it was done in a handful of frames.

What I used

• the Westcott FJ800 strobe

• the Westcott Rapid Box, 3ft by 4ft softbox

• the Fujifilm X-T5 with the 33mm f/1.4 WR lens

• the Westcott XT1-M wireless trigger

That's the lot, and you'll notice there's no neutral density filter on that list.

The settings, and why there's no ND filter

Normally on the seafront I'd have one on to keep the shutter speed within sync while I'm shooting wide open, and to hold on to the detail in the sky. This morning was properly overcast though, so the sky was doing nothing dramatic and there was nothing to rescue. The grey did the job for me.

My Fujifilm X-T5 was in Manual with the following settings used to “set the scene” …

1/160 sec, f/4, ISO 100, with the 33mm giving me roughly the 50mm equivalent on the X-T5.

For the flash, the FJ800 went into TTL first, purely to get the exposure right on the skin, and once it was there I locked it in using the TTL to manual function, which I keep banging on about. From that point on it fires exactly the same every single frame, so nothing shifts as I move around or recompose. It takes seconds to do, and on a morning when your subjects have just got out of the sea, seconds matter.

Matching the shadows, which is the bit most people miss

The softbox was in as close as I could physically get it, just out of frame, and that was a deliberate decision rather than habit.

When you're using flash outdoors, most of the attention goes on balancing the flash with the ambient, so the two brightnesses sit together and it doesn't look lit. That's only half of it. You also have to match the quality of the light, meaning the shadows your flash makes need to look like the shadows already in the scene, whether those are hard or soft.

Yesterday morning was flat and overcast, so the light on everything around us was very soft, with shadows that were barely there. If I'd lit Mary and Christine with something small, or with a big modifier pulled back a long way, I'd have put a harder shadow on their faces than anything else in the frame had. The eye picks that up straight away, even when the person looking can't tell you what's wrong with it. It's one of the biggest giveaways that a flash was used.

So a 3ft by 4ft box, in tight, giving light almost as soft as the morning itself. On a hard, bright day I'd want the opposite, something that puts a shadow on the face with an edge to it, because that's what the sun is doing to everything else.

It's worth paying as much attention to that as you do to which modifier you own. Same softbox, wrong distance, and the picture tells on you.

BIG Thanks to Steve for holding the light all morning, to Mary for taking over when I waded in, and to Christine and Nick for being so game about the whole thing.

Latest Wex Roadshow Locations and Something That Stuck With Me

The last few days took me out on the road for the next two dates of the Wex Photo Video Roadshow, first at Milton Keynes and then up to Nottingham. Two very different days, and both of them a lot of fun.

Milton Keynes was the testing one. It's a relatively small store, so there was no space indoors to set up for my bit showing how I take portraits with minimal kit in a small space, which meant being out the front of the store, under a gazebo, in 34 degrees.

Working under a gazebo in the sun

It was hot, and on top of that we had the sun shifting round through the day and bright light coming in under the edge of the gazebo.

So the light was never quite the same for very long.

I had good company out there though, with my friend Carly from BenQ UK and my friend Dominic from Epson both under the gazebo with me.

Carly from BenQ UK

I actually really enjoyed it; it kept me on my toes and it kept making me adapt, and more than that, it showed something I think is worth showing; whatever the environment, you can still make a good portrait … you just work with what you've got in front of you.

It was good to be able to talk people through the technical side of that, but also the other half of it, which is how I zone in on somebody so that all their focus is on me; voice, mannerisms, the way I talk to someone while I’m working. That's what helps them relax.

The people who sat in front of the camera

I wasn't photographing models over the two days, II was photographing whoever had come along and wanted to know more about what I do, which for me, is always the better way to do it.

My friend Mick Hampson came along at Milton Keynes and I got a portrait of him that he’s really happy with. There was also a lady called Deborah, a photographer herself, who hates having her picture taken, but she's seen her portrait since getting home and she's really pleased with it, which is just wonderful to hear.

Mick with one of the other portraits I took of him

Then after Milton Keynes I had a lovely dinner with good friends Mick and Ian Munro before setting off up the road to Nottingham.

Nottingham, and the luxury of air conditioning

Nottingham is a much bigger store, so this time I was actually inside, with air conditioning, which after the day before, that felt like a proper treat.

Great day again, and lots of pictures taken, including one of a member of staff called Sam.

I distinctly remember a lovely guy by the name of Kevin, who came along and told me straight out that he doesn't think he's very photogenic.

We got a black and white portrait of him looking away from the camera, a bit moodier, a bit more contemplative, which he's now seen and he's really happy with.

He said in an email reply that it's encouraged him to want to get back into taking portraits himself.

That sort of thing is why I do these days.

The bit that stayed with me

There was a chap at Nottingham who'd clearly been doing photography a long time. We got talking, and I invited him to take a seat so I could photograph him. His wife sat down instead, which was lovely.

While we were there, a friend of his came over and said to him, “oh, I'm surprised you're here, you already know how to do all this”, and he meant the setup, the lighting, all the technical side of it.

That stuck with me, because that's not what portrait photography is about.

Yes, it's important to have nice light on someone, light that complements them or creates the mood you're after, but the most important thing of all is the person in front of the camera.

Somewhere along the line, that chap's priorities had turned a hundred and eighty degrees, and the kit and the setup had ended up mattering more than the person sat in the chair.

It's the point I made over both days, and it's the one I'd want anyone to take away from this:

“If someone looks uncomfortable on camera, they will look uncomfortable in good light and in bad light. It makes no difference. So helping them become comfortable is the most important thing of all.”

Portrait, retouch, print, all in one go

The thing I enjoyed most over the two days was being able to show the whole process end to end, and that came down to teaming up with BenQ and Epson.

At Milton Keynes it worked like this…

I'd take a portrait, then bring everyone round the laptop, which was hooked up to the BenQ SW272U, the same monitor I use day to day at home. I'd talk through the edit as I was doing it, with people stood there watching it happen. Then I'd hand it over to Dominic, who printed it out on a matt fine art paper.

We did the same at Nottingham, although Carly wasn't there for that one, so I was editing on my MacBook Pro screen and then passing the files to Dominic to print.

Somebody could sit for a portrait, watch it being retouched, and then hold a print of themselves in their hands, all within a few minutes. People really loved seeing that hands-on, and clearly something people want more of.

The kit

Nothing complicated, and all of it small enough to go in the car for two locations:

• Fujifilm X-T5 and GFX 100S II

• Westcott FJ100 strobe

• Westcott Rapid Box Switch, the medium Octa

• Westcott X-Drop Pro background

That's the lot, and portability was the whole point of it.

The new FJ100 Storebe from Westcott perfromed flawlessly … and didn’t need a signle charge. In fact I doubt I’ll be charging it for the remaining tour dates.

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where I'm off to next

Both teams at Milton Keynes and Nottingham were incredibly engaging and so welcoming, and there was a real buzz about both days, so a HUGE thank you to them.

Norwich is next, later this week; quite a drive for me but I’m really looking forward to it, so if you’re in the area … I’ll see you there ( LINK )

I am Lyme - Group Portrait on Victoria Pier

If you're ever in Lyme Regis and you happen to be on the Cobb at 7.35 in the morning, you'll meet these gentlemen. Seven days a week, come rain or shine, they're there.

Each of them is very well known in Lyme. I've lost count of the number of times I've heard people talk about this group, how good they are for one another and how good they are for the town. More than once someone has said to me that if you ever needed help, these would be the first men stepping forward.

If you walk past them, all you'll hear is laughter. That morning walk is their own little bit of therapy, their own bit of escape, their own way of putting the world to rights. Whenever they stop and speak to somebody it's as if they've known them for years, and you always come away feeling better for it.

I'd wanted to photograph these men as a group for a good while to include in my "I am Lyme" project, because to me they really do represent Lyme Regis.

I was out with my great friend on Saturday morning and we happened to be on the Cobb, and sure enough, there they were. I stopped and explained about the project and they were more than keen, making jokes amongst themselves about getting their hair done and sorting out the makeup.

The following morning I went back, without telling them I'd be there.

I'd arranged to photograph Jason first ( LINK ) , so once that was done I carried my kit down to the far end of the Cobb, right by Victoria Pier. If you ever visit and go out on a sea fishing trip, that's the bit where you get on the boat.

The kit was simple. Flash on a stand with my 3ft by 4ft softbox, and I had the softbox positioned horizontally because I knew I wanted to spread the light right across the group rather than have it drop off at either end. My back was to the sun, and so was the back of the softbox. Then I sat down next to it all and waited.

At 7.35, they turned up.

I walked over to one of the guys, John, who happens to be the brother of Harry May, who I photographed a few weeks back for the project. I said, "John, I said I'd be here. How do you fancy doing the group portrait now?"

Two test shots, four frames, done. It took a couple of minutes at most, because the last thing I wanted was to hold up their walk.

As we were shooting, the wind picked up a bit and the stand needed some support, so I grabbed a volunteer from the group of people waiting to go out on a fishing trip. I never got his name, but he did a sterling job of holding everything steady.

I packed up and was about to head off to Town Mill for some breakfast, and I turned back to the guys and said, "Have a great day, and I'll see you soon with a print" , and each of them called out "Thank you Glyn" ,"Cheerio Glyn" , "See you soon Glyn"

I'd said my name once and each of them remembered it. I walked away with a beaming smile on my face.

This coming Tuesday I'm heading down to The Cobb nice and early to sit at the end of the Cobb by Victoria Pier with a coffee, and just wait for these great guys to turn up so I can hand them each their own print.

I cannot wait.

Photographing "Beach House Café Jason" for I am Lyme

I was up and out at 4.30 last Sunday morning to take an early morning sunrise photograph of a chap called Jason down on the seafront for my "I Am Lyme" project.

Jason is a well known face around Lyme Regis. Everyone knows him and everyone comments about him being such a kind, gentle soul. We chose The Beach House Cafe right on the front as the place to photograph him as he’s great friends of the owners.

I've seen him loads of times, always a “Good morning”, and the odd bit of chat, nothing much more than that, but I've wanted to photograph him for a good while.

Turns out somebody else I'm shooting for the project soon had already mentioned it to him. So on the Saturday, when I was out with my friend Steve Healy and we happened to see him, we got chatting about the project and I asked him there and then. He was more than happy to be involved, and it was Jason who suggested six o'clock the following morning. So that's what we did.

Sitting down before picking the camera up

I got down there good and early and was set up by 5.30am, and before I even picked the camera up we sat and chatted, talking about all sorts.

That's when he told me he isn't originally from Lyme Regis; he's from Southampton, and a few years ago he was cycling round the world, all over India and Thailand, and he was making his way round the UK when he stopped off here and never left. He got the job at the cafe pretty much the next day and has run it ever since for the elderly couple who own it.

At one point in the conversation he also opened up about some fairly serious medical problems he's had to deal with in the not too distant past. It's not my story to tell so I'll leave it there, but it really struck me … you just never know what somebody has been through.

Taking the portraits

Once he'd finished setting up, that's when we started taking some portrait shots; all very slow paced with no rush at all, which was lovely.

It was genuinely a completely relaxing experience and that's exactly what I'm loving about the "I Am Lyme" project, much the same as I did with the veterans work. By sitting and chatting with people you get to know them a bit, you understand them a bit more, and I genuinely believe that comes through when you take their portrait.

The thing that really got me though was how many people said good morning to him while we were stood there. I honestly lost count. Everybody knows Jason.

The kit I used

Nothing complicated, and nothing I haven't used a hundred times before:

• Fujifilm X-T5

• Fujifilm XF 33mm f/1.4 R LM WR

• Westcott FJ800

• Westcott Rapid Box Switch Octa, 3ft x 4ft

• Westcott XT-1M remote trigger

• Tethered into Capture One Mobile on the iPad

Settings were ISO 100, f/4.0 and 1/125 sec.

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TTL to manual, and why I keep banging on about it

The flash side of it is the bit worth explaining, because it's the thing that makes a shoot like this so much calmer than it sounds.

It works like this.

I set the flash to TTL and take a frame, and the flash works out for itself what it reckons is the perfect exposure. All I have to do then is nudge it up or down on the dial on the remote until it's where I want it, and use the TTL to Manual function to lock that power in.

That's it. Pretty much one shot and the flash exposure is bang on and we're good to go.

From then on the flash fires at exactly the same power every single frame, so nothing is quietly drifting about while I'm working, and that's really the whole point of it for me. It keeps the technical side of the photography simple and quick, so as a portrait photographer my time gets spent engaging with the person in front of my camera instead of being distracted by the tech.

For anyone who's been put off by the idea of manual flash, it's a lovely way in as well, because you're letting the flash do the maths and then simply keeping the answer.

The ambient was the interesting part that morning.

The rising sun was over to camera right and it kept appearing and then going back behind the clouds, so the light was changing every couple of minutes. Rather than chase it, I set my camera for the ambient with the sun behind cloud and then only took photographs when it was behind cloud. Wait, shoot, wait again.

It sounds like a faff but it isn't. It meant the ambient light was consistent, and because the flash power was locked in manual, that was consistent too. Same background, same light on his face, frame after frame.

The print

I'll be getting Jason's print to him in the next few days, which is the bit of this project I look forward to most. Handing somebody a print of themselves in person is a very different thing to sending them a file, and it's become the part of "I Am Lyme" that I wouldn't skip for anything.

I’ll make sure to grab a picture of Jason with his print and share it.

The New Westcott FJ100 and How It Compares to the Profoto A2

Westcott have announced the FJ100 today, and there are actually two of them; there's a speedlite and there's an off camera strobe.

It's the strobe I want to talk about here, partly because it's the more interesting of the two, and partly because it lands right on top of a light a lot of people already have strong opinions about.

The headline is simple enough … hundred watt seconds, a colour touchscreen, a removable battery that charges over USB-C, and a body small enough to disappear into a jacket pocket, and Westcott are selling it at £217 plus VAT.

A hundred watt seconds in something that size

The thing worth sitting with for a moment is that number; a hundred watt seconds is proper output. It's not a speedlite pretending, it's a strobe, and it's arriving in a housing that measures about 16 by 13 by 8 centimetres and weighs 700 grams with the battery in.

The whole design brief here was clearly footprint.

The spec sheet has the usual things you'd want and a few you might not expect at this size …

There's a modelling lamp. There's zoom control running from 24mm all the way out to 200mm. There's stroboscopic mode. HSS up to 1/8000th, TTL and manual, front and rear curtain, and a freeze mode that shortens the flash duration when you need it. It works as both a host and a client on the FJ wireless system, so it'll trigger your other lights or be triggered by them.

The battery is the bit that matters

700 full power flashes on one charge.

Of everything on the spec sheet, that's the one that changes how you actually work.

700 at full power means a wedding day, or an event, or a long portrait session, without the moment where you glance at the battery icon and start quietly doing sums about ISO.

It charges over USB-C, which means a power bank in your pocket, or a laptop, or the back of the car. You can run it off mains as well, so it does studio duty without eating charge cycles.

And it's the same battery family as the FJ80, so if you've already got a drawer of those, they carry straight over.

The touchscreen

The screen is crystal clear. The screens on the other FJ units are very clear anyway and easy to read even in bright sunlight, but this one is a noticeable step up.

That matters more than it sounds like it should. You're reading power values at arm's length, often in bright light, and usually in a hurry.

The Octa 15 and what goes on the front

Alongside the light there's a new Octa 15, a 15 inch softbox that clicks open in one motion and comes with the grid in the box. It's the same twist lock mount you already know from the FJ80, so existing Westcott twist lock modifiers go straight on.

For anything larger there's the S2 bracket, which is designed so the weight sits correctly through the stand rather than hanging off the light itself. That's what lets you put a proper sized box on the front of something this small, and it means my favourite 3' x 4' is still on the table.

The Creative Pack gels drop straight on the front.

How it compares to the Profoto A2

This is the comparison everybody's going to make, so let's make it properly. The A2 is Profoto's 100 watt second light, and it's £699.

Same wattage. Roughly three times the money.

A few of those deserve a sentence rather than a row.

The modelling lamp difference is the one worth pausing on. Profoto's runs at 3500 K, which is warm, and nowhere near their own flash at 5800 K. Westcott's is 5500 K, essentially daylight, and close enough to its own flash to be useful. One is for judging where your shadows fall, the other you could actually shoot with.

The zoom is the clearest gap. The A2 doesn't zoom at all.

The weight is the odd one. The Profoto is genuinely the smaller light being about the size of a drinks can and the Westcott about the size of a regular coffee mug, but with the battery in and the stand adapter on, which is how you'd actually use it, it comes out at 773 grams against the Westcott's 700. The smaller light is the heavier one.

But none of that is three times the money's worth of difference, and the battery gap runs the other way by a long distance.

Where I'll be with it

I'm looking forward to getting out and shooting with this one properly, and there's a video coming very soon showing it in action, so do keep an eye out for that.

I'll have it with me at all of the Wex Roadshows ( LINK ) I'm on as well. If you're coming to one, come and find me and have a play with it yourself. Pick it up, put it on a modifier, fire it at something. That's a far better way to work out whether a light suits you than any spec sheet is going to manage, mine included.

The travelling is the part I'm quietly pleased about. I've got flights over to Belfast and up to Glasgow coming up, and something this size just goes in the bag without a second thought. Anyone who's wrestled a full sized strobe through an airport will know exactly why that matters.

A hundred watt seconds, a touchscreen, USB-C charging and 700 full power flashes at £217 plus VAT.; on paper that's a lot of light for the money

TTL Flash: What It Is, How It Works, and How I Use It

TTL has a bit of a reputation. People find it unpredictable, they get one shot that looks perfect and the next one that looks nothing like it, and they quietly go back to manual and never touch it again.

I understand why, but it's worth persevering, because TTL is not actually unpredictable. It's very consistent at doing the one thing it was built to do. The trick is understanding what that one thing is, and knowing when it's the wrong thing so you can step in. Once you have that, TTL stops being a mystery and becomes a genuinely useful tool.

So here is the whole thing in plain language.

What TTL is

TTL stands for Through The Lens; it's an automatic mode for your flash.

Instead of you deciding how much power the flash puts out, the camera and flash work it out for you, aiming to give your subject a sensible exposure.

The single most important thing to understand from the start is this … TTL is a flash mode, not a camera mode. It decides flash power; it does not decide your shutter speed, your aperture or your ISO. Those are still yours. Hold onto that, because it answers most of the questions people have about what overrides what.

How it works on a digital camera

On a digital camera, TTL works using a pre-flash.

When you press the shutter, the flash fires a quick, low burst of light a fraction of a second before the picture is actually taken. That burst bounces off your subject, comes back through the lens, and lands on the camera's metering sensor. The camera reads how much light came back, works out how much the real flash needs to put out, then fires the main flash at that power as the shutter opens. All of it happens in a few thousandths of a second, so in normal use you never see the pre-flash as a separate pop.

It works this way for a reason. On film, the camera could read the light reflecting off the film surface during the actual exposure and cut the flash the moment it had enough. A digital sensor is not reflective enough to be read like that, so the pre-flash method replaced it. Every current system does this, whether it's Canon, Nikon, Sony or Fujifilm. They all fire a pre-flash to measure before the shot rather than during it.

What the metering actually is

This is the part that explains nearly every frustration people have with TTL.

TTL metering is reflective metering. It measures light bouncing back off your subject, and it has no idea what it's looking at. It cannot tell a white wedding dress from a black dinner jacket. All it knows is how much light came back, and its goal is always the same. It wants to render whatever it measured as a mid-tone, a medium grey.

That works beautifully when your subject is roughly average in tone; it falls apart when it's not. Point it at something white and bright and it assumes plenty of light is coming back, so it holds the power down and the white comes out grey and underexposed. Point it at something dark and it assumes too little is coming back, so it pushes the power up and the dark comes out washed and overexposed.

So TTL is not unreliable; it's reliably aiming for grey. The skill is knowing when grey is the wrong target and telling it so, which you do with Flash Exposure Compensation. FEC adjusts only the flash output and leaves your ambient exposure alone. White subject looking muddy, dial in some positive FEC; dark subject blowing out, dial in some negative. In real use it tends to live somewhere between minus two and plus two stops depending on the subject and the scene. There is no single setting that works every time, because there are too many variables. It's an educated adjustment, and the back of the screen tells you when you have it right.

Do your other camera settings override TTL?

They do not override it, but they absolutely shape what it does, and this is the mental model worth having.

Your aperture and ISO set the box TTL has to work inside. Open the aperture or raise the ISO and TTL simply needs less power to get there. Stop down or drop the ISO and it needs more. TTL adapts to your settings, it does not fight them. You can back it into a corner though. Shoot at a very narrow aperture and very low ISO and the flash may need more power than it physically has, so you get underexposure even at full output. When that happens the answer is not more compensation, it's changing your aperture or ISO to bring the flash back into range.

Shutter speed is the odd one out, because within your sync speed it does not change the flash exposure at all. It changes how much of the existing room light or daylight you let in around the flash. That is why I think of shutter speed as the ambient dial and flash power as the subject dial. They are largely independent, and that independence is what makes flash so controllable once it clicks.

If your camera is in manual, does that override TTL?

No, and this catches a lot of people out.

Your camera's exposure mode, whether that is Manual, Aperture Priority or Program, and your flash's metering mode, TTL or manual, are two separate systems. You can have the camera in full manual and the flash still in TTL, and the flash will happily keep metering with its pre-flash and adjusting its own power shot to shot.

That combination is actually one of the most useful ways to work. Camera in manual gives you a fixed, deliberate ambient exposure that will not drift between frames. Flash in TTL then tops up the subject automatically as you move around. Change your shutter speed and the background gets brighter or darker while the subject stays put. Change your aperture and TTL quietly compensates to keep the subject exposed. You get consistency in the ambient and convenience in the flash at the same time.

The trap is the opposite setup, camera in Program or Aperture Priority with TTL as your main light. There the camera keeps shifting your shutter speed between frames, your ambient drifts, and nothing feels consistent. If you want predictability, put the camera in manual and let TTL handle only the flash.

How I actually use TTL, and why I don't carry a light meter

Here is the bit that ties all of this together into something practical, because it's exactly how I work.

I shoot the Westcott FJ system, and my trigger is a universal, multi-brand unit, so the same trigger sits on top of whatever camera I am using rather than being locked to one brand. That is handy in itself, but the feature I lean on most is the TTL to Manual carry-over.

In TTL the flash recalculates its power for every single frame. Convenient, but it means the power can wobble slightly from shot to shot as the metering reacts to tiny changes in the scene. For portraits I am going to retouch as a series, I do not want that; I want every frame identical.

So my routine is simple. I set the flash to TTL and take a shot to get a good base exposure in seconds. Then I hit the TTL to manual function, which carries that exact TTL power output straight over into manual. From there the power is locked. If I want it a touch brighter or darker I nudge it from that known starting point, and once I am happy every single frame fires at precisely the same output. Nothing drifts.

That is the reason I do not carry a handheld light meter. TTL gets me to the right ballpark faster than metering ever would, the carry-over locks it in, and my own eyes on the back of the screen do the fine tuning. For the way I shoot, a meter would just be an extra thing to hold.

Worth knowing if you are not on Westcott, this is not a Westcott-only idea. Some other brands have their own equivalent technology, so whatever system you are on, it's worth checking whether you already have this feature sitting there unused. It's one of those things that quietly changes how you work once you start using it.

A word on Fuji face and eye detection

I shoot Fuji, and a question I get asked a lot is whether having face and eye detection switched on matters when you are using flash. It does, and in a good way.

Start with the obvious. Face and eye detection's main job is autofocus, and that alone is reason to leave it on. Eye detection is really just face detection refined to lock onto the eye, which is exactly where you want critical focus on a portrait.

Here is the part people miss. On Fuji, TTL meters the flash essentially the same way the camera meters ambient light. And when face detection is active, the camera biases that metering towards the detected face, to the point where it takes over from whatever metering mode you had selected. Put those two facts together and you get something genuinely useful. With a face detected, your TTL flash exposure is weighted towards exposing that face correctly, rather than being thrown off by a very bright or very dark background behind it.

In practice that means better, more consistent skin exposure straight out of camera when you are working quickly in TTL. It's not a pure spot reading off the face, it's more of a blend under the bonnet, and Fuji do not spell out the exact recipe, but the result is reliable and it works in your favour for portraits.

Two things to keep in mind. First, because face detection takes over your metering, do not rely on the Fuji spot meter for an ambient reading while it's active, because a detected face will quietly override it. If you want a spot reading off a specific tone, take it with detection off, then switch detection back on for the shoot. Second, none of this applies once your flash is in manual power. If you have locked your power in manual, including straight after the TTL to manual carry-over above, the flash fires at the set power regardless, and detection is back to doing nothing but focus. Which, for a controlled portrait, is exactly what you want anyway.

wrapping up

TTL is an automatic flash mode that sets flash power and nothing else. On digital it uses a pre-flash to measure light bounced back through the lens, then fires the main flash to match. It always aims to make what it measured a mid grey, so it gets fooled by very light or very dark subjects, and FEC is how you correct that. Your aperture and ISO define the box it works inside, shutter speed handles your ambient, and TTL adapts rather than getting overridden. Putting your camera in manual does not switch TTL off, and camera manual paired with flash TTL is a strong, consistent way to work. And if your kit has a TTL to manual carry-over, use it, because it gives you the speed of TTL and the consistency of manual in one move.

Get those few ideas straight and TTL stops being the thing you avoid and becomes another tool you can reach for when it suits the shot.

Minimal Kit, Timeless Portraits with WeX in Bristol and Birmingham

The last few days have been brilliant.

Last Thursday, the 23rd July, I was over in Bristol for the next leg of the Wex Summer Road Show, and then on the Friday and Saturday, the 24th and 25th July, I was up at the Wex store in Birmingham.

The idea behind these days is simple. I'm there on the shop floor, all day, showing people how I take classic, timeless portraits using minimal kit in a limited space, and when I say limited space, I really do mean it. Being on the shop floor, that's genuinely all the room I've got, which is exactly what makes it so authentic. There's no hiding behind a studio setup. It's just me, a small bit of kit, and whatever space I can carve out.

The kit I've been using is the same as I've had for a while now:

• X-Drop Pro Background

• My signature vintage grey backdrop

• One light … either the FJ250 or the FJ400 from Westcott

• White / Silver Reflector

• My Fuji X-T5

• Medium RapidBox Switch Octa from Westcott (36”)

That's it.

That's the whole point.

Showing people that you don't need a room full of gear to take a portrait you'll be proud of.

It's been a fantastic few days. I took some great portraits of friends along the way, and on the Thursday over at Bristol I grabbed Andre from Lumix for a slightly different kind of portrait, again using just that one light.

The Friday at Birmingham was really busy, and it turned into a day of constant repeat mini workshops, which I absolutely loved. Taking people through the process from scratch is my favourite part. So many of the attendees had never used flash, so being able to simplify it right down so it just clicks for them is such a good feeling. You can actually see the light bulb go on in their eyes when they get it.

One moment that stuck with me was chatting to a couple of gentlemen and walking them through it all. One of them handed me his camera, a Canon 200D with a kit lens on it.

Because the Westcott X-T1 M is a multi-brand trigger, I could switch it over from Fuji to Canon, pop it straight onto his camera, and take a portrait of his friend using that same single light. I edited the shots afterwards and sent them over, and they were over the moon with them. That's the bit that makes these days worth it.

The team at Wex

I also have to give a special mention to the staff, and in particular the team at Wex in Birmingham. They were so welcoming, so friendly and genuinely caring, and it made the whole couple of days an absolute pleasure.

Adele, the store manager is a sweetheart. She was incredibly attentive, constantly making sure everything was running smoothly. She even went so far as to sort out a salad for me on the second day, having picked up that I'm quite particular about the food I eat. That kind of thoughtfulness is just brilliant, and it doesn't go unnoticed.

Rees too, who I believe looks after sales for Wex across the south of the UK, was super friendly and attentive throughout … a lovely guy! Honestly, I couldn't have wished for more.

The TTL question

One thing that's come up again and again on this road show is how surprised people are that I'm using TTL with the flash.

Here's how it works. My camera stays in manual, so I can set the scene and get rid of any unnecessary ambient light, which really matters in the stores with all the mixed lighting going on, but the flash itself is on TTL.

TTL does all the hard work of calculating how much flash power you need. I take a shot, the TTL tells me what it thinks it needs, and I make an adjustment from there.

Then comes the really clever part.

Using the Westcott trigger, I use the TTL to Manual function and the trigger shows me exactly what the power output is. Once that's locked in, I can carry on shooting and get the exact same flash power shot after shot after shot. It's such a great way to work and removes any need for a flashmeter.

This coming week I'm in Manchester, and I might even dive a little deeper into that TTL to manual setting, because it's genuinely useful.

I'm loving this road show.

Loving meeting the people, and loving seeing folks get excited about something creative in their lives.

Bring it on.

Here’s a ( LINK ) to the remaining road show dates and locations … it would be awesome to see you there!

No Studio, No Problem: Teaching Portraiture at the Wex Summer Roadshow

Over the last few days, I've had the absolute pleasure of being out on the road with Wex for their summer roadshow, and what a brilliant experience its been. Thursday saw me arrive in Leeds, and Friday was the day it all came together at the Wex store, and I have to say, it was a fantastic from start to finish.

The team at the Leeds store, led by manager Levy, made me feel incredibly welcome, as did every member of staff, and what struck me most was the constant flow of people coming through - getting hands on with new kit, attending free seminars, and crucially, wanting to see how I work in practice. That's where the "no studio, no problem" practical demonstrations came in.

The concept is simple but powerful: I wanted to show people how I create portraits using minimal kit in tight, compact spaces. Rather than being locked away in a studio, I was demonstrating this right there on the shop floor, so people could watch the process unfold, step in front of the camera themselves, and see the results happen in real time.

The Setup

I kept my kit intentionally lean. I brought my X-drop pro background support and Vintage Gray backdrop, and for lighting, I was using the Westcott FJ250.

My camera was the Fuji X-T5 paired with the Westcott XT-1M remote trigger, and I was shooting in manual mode to set my scene, then letting the flash work in TTL - and honestly, it's a dream combination for portraiture like this.

The Moments That Mattered

One thing that really stood out was a fella who couldn't quite believe how quickly the whole thing came together. I showed him how I position the lighting to achieve the kind of Rembrandt lighting I'm after, and from start to finish, we were ready to shoot in about sixty seconds. He was genuinely shocked at how simple and efficient it could be.

People were really impressed too seeing my Fuji X-T5 tethered to my iPad Pro via Capture One Mobile. Nearly everyone who watched the workflow commented on how instantaneously the Raw files appeared on screen after I'd taken the shot. That instant feedback - being able to review a Raw file moments after capture, really drove home how modern tools can streamline the entire process.

I also had the privilege of getting Joe Cornish, a renowned landscape photographer here in the UK and one of the other speakers at the event, in front of the camera for a portrait. He's got such a distinctive face for portraiture … I couldn’t resist convincing him 😃

What the Community Showed Me

What genuinely touched me was how many people came along specifically to meet me. That means more than I can express. The local photography community turned out in force too, and there was this palpable sense of genuine excitement about photography and a real hunger to learn. Questions kept coming back to TTL and how to use flash effectively, and I was delighted to show people just how powerful and reliable that technique can be when you understand it.

In Closing

It’s so good seeing people's faces light up when they understood something new, watching them realise that you don't need a fancy studio to create beautiful portraits, and knowing that I'd been able to share something that genuinely mattered to them.

That, for me, is what it's all about.