Flash Settings — Manual, Direct
Starting points. Adjust from here.
Daylight flash (fill / Parr-style):
Power 1/8 | Aperture f/8 to f/11 | ISO 400 | Shutter 1/180 (sync speed) | Distance 1 to 2 metres
Night flash:
Power 1/16 to 1/8 | Aperture f/5.6 to f/8 | ISO 800 to 1600 | Shutter 1/180 | Distance 1 to 2 metres
Shutter drag / slow sync (night):
Power 1/8 to 1/4 | Aperture f/5.6 | ISO 400 | Shutter 1/15 to 1/4 | Distance 1 to 2 metres
Adjust power first. If faces are blown out, drop power one stop. If background goes too dark, open aperture one stop. Don't exceed your sync speed.
Daylight: 1/8 power | f/8–f/11 | ISO 400 | 1/180. Night: 1/16–1/8 power | f/5.6–f/8 | ISO 800–1600 | 1/180. Drag: 1/8–1/4 power | f/5.6 | ISO 400 | 1/15–1/4
Run through all three flash modes in one session to understand the differences.
Three recipes, one system
The three setups on this card are not separate techniques — they are one exposure system with the shutter doing different jobs.
Daylight fill runs the shutter at sync speed to hold the bright ambient down, with the flash lifting your subject above it. The Parr-style look: saturated, present, everything visible.
Night flash keeps the shutter at sync speed too, but now the ambient barely registers — the flash *is* the light, and backgrounds fall dark and theatrical. Higher ISO (800 to 1600) claws back some of the world behind the subject.
Shutter drag opens the shutter right up (1/15 to 1/4) so the ambient smears into streaks while the flash still freezes the subject. Same flash logic, different shutter decision.
Understand that split — flash exposure set by power, aperture and ISO; ambient set by shutter — and you can derive any of these recipes from scratch when conditions change.
The adjustment order
When a frame comes back wrong, fix it in this order and change one thing at a time:
Faces blown out: drop flash power one stop (1/8 to 1/16). Power is your subject-brightness dial and touching it changes nothing else.
Background too dark: open the aperture one stop, or raise ISO. Both lift subject *and* ambient — so you may then need to drop power again. At night, slowing the shutter also brings ambient up without touching the subject.
Subject dark but background fine: you are probably too far away. Flash falls off with the square of distance — a step closer is worth a full stop. Fix distance before power.
Black band across the frame: you have exceeded sync speed. Back the shutter down to 1/180 to 1/250 and it disappears.
The discipline that makes manual flash fast is *not* re-metering every frame. Set it for your working distance, then keep that distance with your feet.
Small flash, big flash, any flash
None of this needs expensive equipment. A decades-old manual flash with a working foot does the job, because the only feature the technique uses is manual power control — the one thing every flash ever made can do. Small flashes recycle faster at 1/8 power than big ones at full power, which matters more on the street than raw output.
Whatever you use, learn its recycle rhythm: at 1/8 power most units are ready again in around a second. Shoot faster than the recycle and you get ghost-dark frames — the pulse never fired. Two frames, pause, move. That cadence, plus a fixed working distance, is the whole operational skill.
Field Questions
What are good starting flash settings for daylight street photography?
Manual power 1/8, f/8 to f/11, ISO 400, shutter at sync speed (1/180 to 1/250), working 1 to 2 metres away. Adjust power first for faces, aperture second for background.
What is sync speed and why can't I exceed it?
Sync speed (typically 1/180 to 1/250) is the fastest shutter speed at which the sensor is fully uncovered when the flash fires. Above it, the shutter curtains shadow part of the frame and a black band appears. Stay at or below sync unless your flash supports high-speed sync.
Do I need an expensive flash for street photography?
No. The technique only requires manual power control, which every flash has — including decades-old secondhand units. Small flashes actually recycle faster at the low powers street work uses, which matters more than maximum output.