Why You Might Want a Stand for Your Flash

Most of us don’t have the luxury of having an assistant to hold and position our wireless flash for us, so we either wind up holding the flash in our left hand (so our right hand is still free to press the shutter button), or we put our flash on a lightweight light stand and position it where we’d like it. You can buy a standard light stand, like the 7.75′ Bogen/Manfrotto 1052BAC light stand, for around $70, and then you’d need a flash shoe mount (about $13 from B&H Photo), which lets you mount your flash on a light stand like the Bogen/Manfrotto. This mount has a little plastic hot shoe on it, and your flash slides right into that hot shoe to hold your flash securely on top of the light stand. That $13 flash shoe mount is surely the inexpensive route, but the downside is you can’t angle your flash head downward—only upward, and that’s why the Justin Clamp, while more expensive, is really the way to go. So, once you’ve got your flash on this light stand, where do you put it? There’s no single right answer, but I’ll give you a good starting point—put it to the left, and in front, of your camera, up about a foot or so higher than your subject. That way, if you have your flash mounted on a Justin Clamp, you can aim the flash head back down at your subject, so the light is more like studio light (or window light) and helps to create that all-important directional light.