Truth be told I dont use off camera flash that often (partly because it's a bitch) The idea of "OCF" is the flashgun is not on top of the camera, but maybe off to one side. Then the camera triggers the flash by remote control for better lighting, in theory.
The problem is setting it up. Many cameras have a built in trigger system, and many camera brand flashes have the receiver built in, so it should be easy, but it's not.
The biggest problem is the options for setting them up are often hidden in the menus, not is it intuitive usually, indeed some makers go out of their way to make it harder (cough Canon cough) At least compared to Nikons much simpler system.
That leaves us photographers with more or less three options. One is figure out the system for your make and model camera, this sometimes requires the cameras built in flash to fire too. And is usually different from model to model.
Two is to use a simple cheap trigger system from Amazon or Ebay, these have two parts to them, a small transmitter that goes on the cameras hot shoe, and a small receiver that you put the falsh gun on. This works in manual flash only (mostly) and to alter any flash setting you have to go to the flash gun and change the power on it.
The third option uses the same idea as above, but with a dedicated trigger thans designed to work with the flash guns built in receivers (note not all flahses have this) in most cases this offers the option to change the flash power from the camera trigger, and in some cases offers ETTL flash as well.
Personally I gave up on using Canons own system years ago. So for the most part I used the second option of cheap simple triggers and receivers, and it's worked a treat when I've needed it.
But, I also had a proper trigger system and the dedicated flashes for it, so yesterday, I sat down and took the time to set it all up. You see to be able to change the flash power from the camera each flash has to have a different code number, or group, so it knows which one your changing.
Thats the time consuming part. Setting up two different triggers for eight different flashes was a PITA!. The trigger is the easy part, the hard part is setting each flash to a different group, I was luch to have four flashes the same model, so one you've done the first one you know how.
The other flashes however are different newer models, and is two case stupid complicated, to add insult to injury, one of those is a newer model of the easy ones. But instead of using the same system, they made it a hundred times harder.
That said one you have them all programed, all you have to do when you need OCF is to bung the transmitter on the camera and turn the flash to receiver mode, you dont have to program them every time, thank fuck!
