What is Reddit's opinion of On-Camera Flash Techniques for Digital Wedding and Portrait Photography?

From 3.5 billion Reddit comments

Strobist is for off camera flash and not a good place to start for event photography. Instead read Neil van Niekerk's book On Camera Flash (you can find it online for free as well)

 

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This is just me, but while the Strobist is an amazing site to teach you lighting and off-camera flash, don't go there just yet. I think before you can go to the Strobist, you should a) have mastered the exposure triangle and be very comfortable shooting in M mode on your camera, and b) have hit the limits of on-camera bounce flash.

It's much much easier to learn off-camera flash if all you have to buy and learn about at first is the flash. And the difference between on-camera flash and off-camera flash is whether you're shoving a flash in your bag or you're packing a lighting bag to go along with the camera bag. Even after you've learned off-camera lighting, knowing on-camera flash will still be useful for event/social shooting, chasing kids around the house, and packing light. And you'll have all the toys to play with (TTL, HSS). A Godox TT685 would be my blind first-speedlight recommendation. Once you've mastered bouncing with a BFT from Neil van Nierkerk's Tangents website (or the book version), then you can hit David Hobby's Strobist's Lighting 101 or his lynda.com course on lighting with flash.

Bookwise, for this lighting, Syl Arena's Lighting for Digital Photography is also good, and Light: Science & Magic is the standard college textbook.

But. This all assumes you actually want to learn how to light, which is great for portrait and product photography, but maybe not so great for other things. :)

> http://www.amazon.com/-Camera-Techniques-Digital-Portrait-Photography/dp/1584282584/ref=la_B002FSWUG2_1_4?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1428092177&sr=1-4

Thanks! I've been looking for good photography books lately!