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Syl Arena

Speedliter's Handbook: Learning to Craft Light with Canon Speedlites 1st Edition

by Syl Arena (Author)

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Getting your Canon Speedlite to produce the light you need can be a real challenge. For those new to flash photography—or for anyone who has previously given up out of frustration—Speedliter’s Handbook is a revelation. Photographer Syl Arena takes you on a journey that begins with an exploration of light and color, moves through a comprehensive discussion of the Canon Speedlite family and all of the accessories and equipment available to the Speedliter, then settles down to crafting great light in one photo shoot after another. Whether you want to create a classical portrait, shoot an event, or simply add a little fill light to a product shot, Speedliter’s Handbook shows you how.

A fantastic in-depth resource illustrated with over 500 images, Speedliter’s Handbook covers:

how to see the various characteristics and properties of light itself, as well as the differences between how your camera sees versus how you see
all the buttons and dials of the entire Canon Speedlite family
the basics of on-camera flash…and the necessity of getting your flash off the camera
how to beautifully balance flash with the existing ambient light
all the equipment necessary for great Speedlite shots
how to get amazing shots with just one Speedlite
how and when to use E-TTL versus manual flash
the use of color gels to balance color, as well as create dramatic effects
how to tame the sun—or any really bright light—with hi-speed sync
and much, much more

Whether you’re shooting portraits, events, or sports, Speedliter’s Handbook is an essential resource that teaches you how to craft the light you need for any type of shot you want.

ISBN-10

032171105X
ISBN-13

978-0321711052
Edition

1st
Publisher

Peachpit Pr
Publication date

May 26, 2012
Language

English
Dimensions

7.48 x 0.87 x 9.25 inches
Print length

391 pages
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Editorial Reviews

From the Back Cover

About the Author

Syl Arena studied commercial photography at Brooks Institute and fine art photography at the University of Arizona. Over the years, Syl has shot for newspapers, magazines, and catalogs. He has been recognized for his expertise on color-critical workflow and his ability to turn noon to night by firing off a dozen Speedlites simultaneously. Syl covers the world of photography on his blogs, PixSylated.com and Speedliting.com, and he serves as the Director of the Paso Robles Workshops.

Product details

Publisher ‏ : ‎ Peachpit Pr; 1st edition (May 26, 2012)
Language ‏ : ‎ English
Paperback ‏ : ‎ 391 pages
ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 032171105X
ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0321711052
Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 2.09 pounds
Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 7.48 x 0.87 x 9.25 inches

Best Sellers Rank: #275,173 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #7 in Flash Photography
- #11 in Photography Lighting (Books)
- #168 in Digital Photography (Books)

Customer Reviews:
4.8 655 ratings

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Syl Arena

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SYL | 'sill'

1. short for 'Sylvester'

2. rhymes with 'Bill', 'Phil' and 'Will'

3. not pronounced 'Sile' or 'Sly'

Shortly after Neil Armstrong stepped onto the moon, Syl Arena "borrowed" his father's newfangled Polaroid camera, climbed a tree, and made his first photograph. Syl was in the third grade. He has wandered the world of photography ever since.

In college, Syl studied commercial photography at Brooks Institute and fine art photography at the University of Arizona (BFA, 1984). Among his more noteworthy accomplishments in school was the construction of a pinhole camera that used 20" x 24" litho film. True to his eclectic style, Syl then printed these giant negatives as cyanotypes, carbon prints, and screen prints--a early indication of Syl's willingness to explore the boundaries of photography.

Over the years, Syl has shot for newspapers, magazines, and catalogs. He has been recognized for his expertise on color critical workflow and his ability to turn noon to night by firing off a dozen Speedlites simultaneously.

Widely known for his teaching ability, Syl is the author of the bestselling Speedliter’s Handbook, and he has taught lighting and photography at Maine Media Workshops, Santa Fe Photo Workshops, and Dubai’s Gulf Photo Plus. Syl covers the world of photography on his blog, PixSylated.com.

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4.8 out of 5

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Charleston Dave

THE essential reference on Speedliting

Reviewed in the United States on April 8, 2011

Verified Purchase

Syl Arena's magnum opus on tilt-head portable flash technique and equipment dwarfs every other book on the topic.

I'm not usually prone to breathless hyperbole, but if you light with Canon Speedlites, or are thinking about it, you need this book. The only comparable texts in the field are NK Guy's text (not as useful a reference, dry and technical) and Joe McNally's books emphasizing, well, Joe's rambling writing style, Joe's sense of humor, Joe's killer imagery and Joe's Nikon speedlighting. For the Canon guys, and anybody wanting to understand basic flash lighting design, this is the go-to. Every page has well-organized information about how particular equipment works and how to accomplish a particular lighting effect.

Syl's underlying message is that your pictures will look better if you get your Speedlite off the camera. Triggering the off-camera flash is then done via (a) a long cable running from your hot shoe to the flash, (b) radio triggers working wirelessly to send a signal from your camera to the flash, or (c) on some Canon models, a pop-up flash can be used to trigger the off-camera Speedlite similar to the Nikon CLS approach. If you have more than one Speedlite available, Syl teaches you how to use the first to trigger the others to give increasingly sophisticated lighting. And if you wonder about flash modifiers and general lighting equipment (softboxes, gels, grids, stands, clamps, etc.) Syl very comprehensively covers the state of the market in this category of equipment. I have no doubt the book would pay for itself if you are a beginner wanting to be careful with a limited budget.

This book is about equipment and technique. It does not contain tear-out art images suitable for framing. It may disappoint you, for example, if you expect it to develop your creative vision beyond the creative capability you will gain by knowing how to light things that you didn't think you could light, or capture images you didn't realize were possible. It has the tone of a good buddy who just happens to be a world-class expert taking you under his wing on a Saturday morning and explaining just what all those oddly named buttons on your flash really do, and why his photos invariably look better than yours. Every technique is explained and illustrated and feels achievable, although Syl's explanations and illustrations are so clear that you won't feel like you need to reproduce it just to understand how to do it. Much like home cooks embark on odysseys where they cook through every recipe in a favorite cookbook, I could imagine a serious student of photography wanting to reproduce as learning exercises the shots Syl includes.

Syl begins with general lighting theory and includes opinionated (in the best sense of the word) remarks on light modifiers, flash equipment, and so on. He concludes with 2-page tutorials where he shows how a given shot is achieved using one or more Speedlites. Again, imagine going to the store with your expert buddy alongside explaining why you shouldn't buy X but should buy Y and why. Imagine that buddy explaining why, for example, might small tilt-head flashes be superior to more powerful studio strobes? What should you do if the sun is so bright that the slave flashes can't see the IR trigger from the master flash? Why would you want to zoom or gel a flash? And so on, in detail that is meticulous but so well-organized that you can find answers to specific questions quickly, or just read casually for general education.

I attended an extended workshop with Syl in 2010, and had seen a preview of this text. I ordered pre-release knowing how good it was going to be. It exceeded my expectations.

My only quibbles with the book are
(a) there are occasional minor editing glitches with photo captions,
(b) some of the glossary material feels a little superficial. Bokeh, for example, is more profound than just "the shape of out-of-focus elements created by a wide aperture."
(b) the equipment discussions in the book will quickly become dated as new equipment is introduced. For example, Canon has already outpaced Syl's book with the introduction of their new Speedlite 270EXII and Speedlite 320EX, which are not covered by Syl in this text. The same problem exists with reviews of flash modification equipment. The longer the book is out, the more likely a specific piece of equipment is not going to be included. Maybe a wiki is the only way to keep up. Regardless, the learning principles and lighting philosophy should be timeless.

2 people found this helpful

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All about gear, oh, and then light and pictures

Reviewed in the United States on April 20, 2013

Verified Purchase

I am the happy owner of a copy of Joe MacNally's Sketching Light which is gorgeous but did not fulfill my expectations for a couple of reasons: it does not cover much of the technical aspects of lighting; it usually assumes you have a crew and a minimum of ten grands worth of lighting equipment and modifiers with you and it is quite Nikon-centric.

I am a Canon shooter, and I was looking more for a technical discussion of the nuts and bolts of the canon flash system, so I procured Syl Arena's Speedliter's handbook - this book.

Photography books authors usually fall into two categories: they tend to be good at making pictures or at explaining how to do it but rarely both. With this book, Syl Arena falls clearly in the second category. As other reviewers noted, the pictures are short of mind-blowing, including the cover one (coming from Joe McNally's book didn't help either) but that's OK with me as this is not what I was coming for.

While the general principles exposed in this book would work regardless of the camera gear you have, most details are purely for Canon equipment. This book is much less about artistic feel and mood than it is about the nuts and bolts of flash photography with Canon speedlites - no big studio strobes here, although you will be showered with gear, gobos, scrims, battery details etc. (How about being showered with umbrellas?)

The book is just short of 400 pages divided in 5 parts with a few chapters each:

Part 1 is basics of light and photography - could be useful as a refresher course for the amateur but nothing very new under the sun here.

Part2 is exclusively about the Canon flash, except for a short last chapter dealing with mixing canon gear with other stuff - obviously needed but over too fast.

Part 3 deals with everything that goes around the speedlite. Be ready to be doused in gobos, Justin clamps, light stands and other grids. Amazon can thank Syl for my spending spree after reading this section - the list of what I procured would not fit in this review...

Part 4 (Finally!) deals with what to do with all this stuff, i.e. how to light shown by the example. He obviously indulged himself with pictures lit with a pole covered with speedlites. C'mon Syl! Nobody's going to do that! We don't have the budget.

Part 5 is a collection of odds and ends aptly dubbed "Appendices", mostly useful for pages 374 to 375 (included) which resume pretty well the approach for lighting.

If you are looking for a more general-purpose introduction to digital photography and lighting, I found that Digital Photography Lighting For Dummies does a great job at that, to a surprising level of detail.
If you want a reference on lighting styles, check out the Master Lighting Guide for Portrait Photographers which is really good at that without dwelling too much on the tools.
If you want great pictures and their stories, then procure the Joe MacNally's Sketching Light already mentioned.
For reference guides on photography, including history of the technical aspect of things and all, get Ansel Adams' Camera and Negative , although they are not for the faint of heart. Brace for the zone theory.
If what you are yearning for are more one- or two-pages-long tutorials on how to do this or that, have a look at Scott Kelby's The Digital Photography Book and Part 2 and Part 4 (and yes, skip the part 3, I found it useless.)

Now if what you are looking for is a light-hearted, detailed description of the Canon gear, how it fits in the big picture and how to use it, you are in luck, this is the book for you.

The rating I came up with is based on my recent reading of a collection of other photography books. I also factored in my personal guidelines: below three stars I regret the purchase; at three I am satisfied but no more, at four this is a good value for the money.
This is a four stars for me.

6 people found this helpful

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Carl

Great Book in New condition

Reviewed in the United States on August 8, 2023

Verified Purchase

I owned this book before. But I got rid of in moving

This was used But Band new condition

A must have book for flash photography

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Boing

Can't Praise it Enough

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on March 19, 2011

Verified Purchase

If you have ANY interest in flash photography, this book is the new modern bible. It really is. Syl Arena has managed to produce what I would call "a thinking manual" which teaches you the best way to THINK about how flash influences photography, and how to formulate strategies for exploiting its effects. The book is largely based around the Canon system but I would say that the vast majority of the theory and principles taught are brand-independent, and users of other brands may feel a bit nauseous reading it but they will learn just as much.

Although some readers have criticised Arena's style, I find him to be clear in what he is trying to explain (although sometimes not all at once: as is the case with many technical books sometimes he mentions a concept but only really explains it later on). If you are using the book to learn technique and see what's possible then you don't strictly speaking need to waste any time imagining how smug the author is! Even if he does try to sell you his "long ETTL cord" every three paragraphs.

The order of topics in the book is quite logical, starting in the "what are Speedlites and why would you want to use them" area, and building up throughout the chapters until you know how cameras perceive light, how flashes affect exposure, what kit is available and what you'd use it for, and how to achieve a whole raft of portrait styles and special effects. The material is arranged in such a way that you can either dip in and look at the parts you want to know about, or read it cover to cover to build up comprehensive knowledge. The author himself recommends the former rather than the latter!

The book itself is slightly let down by being printed on paper that is quite thin and slightly corrasable (meaning that if you grip the edges of the pages with slightly greasy finger tips to turn the page, you may find you smudge the print). This almost gives it the feel of a thick magazine which considering the retail price I thought was a bit cheap of the publishers. The content is so very useful that this is easily forgiven, and doesn't even come close to costing this excellent book an Amazon star!

Whether it is for learning or reference, you will find it hard to beat this book. If you own even just one Speedlite, buy it.

One person found this helpful

Mr. R. Pengelly

Look no further- if you are a Canonista this is the book for you!

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on January 6, 2012

Verified Purchase

If you are reading this, you will already know that there are a bewildering number of publications on this subject; some specialised to Canon and many that are not. Be warned however that this book is of limited value to anyone other than Canon owners. If you are wise enough to have chosen a Canon camera and want to move into Speedliting, in my view this book has to be the definitive guide to what happens next. In fact I suggest you need to read this book before you even buy a Speedlite so you get the kit you really need and not what you think you will need.

The book can be used as a reference as well as a step by step guide. Nothing is taken for granted about the level of reader's knowledge. Without patronising, the book moves you from a very basic understanding of the mechanics of digital SLRs through to the fundamentals of flash. Not just a technical guide, the book examines how lighting can be used creatively to produce really high quality phootographs worthy of any professional. The book is written in plain English, jargon is kept to a minimum and where used is carefully defined. I particularly like the way that almost every page includes a box called "Geek Speak" which delves into the science (for those who feel they need it) and another box called "Speedliter's Tip" in which the author's own hard won experience is imparted.

Of quite a large number of photography books I own, this book has proved to be the best investment I have made ...by a country mile. I have only spotted one minor discrepancy in the entire book being a failure to mention that the 60D (as well as the 7D which is mentioned), has wireless cabability via the on - board flip up flash unit.

Overall, this book is inspiring and has raised my understanding and confidence with both Speedliting and other forms of lighting to a high level. I am having a huge amount of fun using all that I have learned and producing some amazing shots. You will too.

One person found this helpful

DJBostonlover

Wonderful Resource

Reviewed in Canada on January 6, 2013

Verified Purchase

In the last year I have purchased quite a few photography books. This is without a doubt one of the very best. If you are a Canon user and have a Canon Speedlite of the 430 EX 11 or 530 EX 11 variety, this book is for you. Author Syl Arena is not only a great photographer, he is a great teacher. His book is extremely well organized. Every concept he teaches is accompanied by a photograph or diagram. And you never have to turn the page you are reading to look at those photographs or diagrams. They are right there. Also, he provides the camera and flash settings he used. Great diagrams show his lighting setups. The book covers virtually every topic needed to start taking better flash pictures both indoors and out. The book is very current. For any gear that he suggests a person might want to purchase, a photograph is provided. You never have to guess or imagine what he is talking about. Quite honestly, I think I would have had a hard time learning how to use my Speedlite effectively without this book. The manual for the flash unit leaves a lot to be desired.

I know that I will be referring to Mr. Arena's book over and over again. If you are serious about wanting to take better flash pictures, I can highly recommend it to you. It is so comprehensive in its coverage that there is likely no need to purchase any other book on the same topic. This book does it all in a down to earth, easy to understand fashion. And with the exception of some very specialized lighting setups (detailed near the end of the book) which are really fun and interesting, this book talks to those of use who do NOT have professional studios. It is directed mainly at those who have one or two Speedlites and probably won't ever have more than this. Mr. Arena is also very practical when he suggests additional equipment such as stands and light modifiers that we amateurs might like to acquire. Great book. I wish all books were this good.

2 people found this helpful

Steve H

About as in depthy as you ever need to be...

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on September 26, 2013

Verified Purchase

I got this for my kindle, bit of a mistake as you cant see the images described in the book in different lighting, only a B&W image as on the kindle, so you can never relate to the example.
However, if you have ann understanding as to the effect being created thats not too much of a problem.
I have a fair understanding on the aspect of flash photography, most of it is going to be down to practise, trial and error.
Now, I dropped it a star because.... this book, in places, is VERY indepth, infact a lot of it is manufacturers instruaction manual type stuff. Now I know when describing different stuff the author has decided to tell you how to use it, but what a lot of wasted pages, so much info, I will never need to know.
However its a very comprehencive book, and I guess if you have the time and resources, you could come up with results like the average photographer never would.
If you need it as a reference book and generally know what your doing, the kindle version for B&W versions is probably fine, although it wasnt clear you would need a colour one. The book would be for someone who needed to know in more depth.

The best info I got from the book was about metering ambient light and then using flash to add, normally a lot of flash pics blast the ambisnt light and are over powered, you find out with this book why your flash can go down to 1/64 or 1/128 power, sometimes its all you need.
I havent finished it yet, I keep reading bits and skipping a bit and picking up what I need too.
Although its probably dedicated to canon, it is useable by anyone.

One person found this helpful

Richard Huggins

Excellent resource for those starting out in the world of flash

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on October 29, 2013

Verified Purchase

As a new hobbyist where portraits are my thing, I decided to venture into the (initially terrifying) world of flash photography. This book is very complete (for a beginner), explores all aspects of off camera flash lighting, and is refreshingly opinionated in suggesting and recommending the most appropriate tools of the trade.

I have followed Syl's recommendations in a number of cases, for example: the Lastolite 54x54cm Ezybox Hotshoe Softbox with Bracket , which really provides beautiful soft light.

The book is excellently presented; where complicated topics are dealt with in plain English, a simple layout, and plenty of supporting photos. My favourite parts of the book are the chapters at the end where he deals with specific scenarios, and demonstrates how he set them up, with step by step photos demonstrating how each image evolved. Superb.

My only small criticism (not worth losing a star for) is that the discussion of speedlites is too Canon-centric. Yes, I know the clue is in the title and the word "speedlite", but they are very expensive, and there are cheaper alternatives, particularly for those comfortable with using optically fired manual slaves such as these YONGNUO YN-560 II ELECTRONIC SPEEDLIGHT SPEEDLITE FLASH FLASHGUN With The Standard Hot Shoe for Nikon , Canon , Fuji , Olympus , Pentax , DSLR Digital Camera by eimo . I have 2 and can vouch for their functionality and build quality. Some discussion of these would have made the book more complete.

Overall, a must buy for newbies in the world of flash. Go buy it.

One person found this helpful

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