Flash photography tip: Flash brightness is indicated by its power
Thursday 12 February 2026, 16:08 by Elja Trum | 1,691 views | 1 commentThis article was translated from Dutch with the help of AI. Read the original.
When you use flash, you do so at a certain brightness. This is indicated by the flash power as a fraction. Full brightness, or maximum power, is shown on your flash as 1/1.
If you turn down the flash power, you might go to 1/2, for example. You are then only using half the power.
Halving the light also means 1 stop on your camera. So, if you take a photo at f/8 and need full power for a good exposure, you can expect the same correct exposure when you photograph at f/5.6 while your flash is set to 1/2.
Just as you can set your camera to 1/3 stops by default, you can usually do this on most flashes too. You can usually set flashes from 1/1 to 1/64. Sometimes even to 1/256.
With each step, 1/1, 1/2, 1/4, 1/8, 1/16, 1/32, 1/64 and 1/128, you halve the light output of your flash. It is useful to have a flash whose power you can turn down considerably.
About the author
Elja Trum is the founder of Photofacts and online photography course website Photofacts Academy. He has been writing about photography since 2006. Elja is also the author of (Dutch) books on composition, black-and-white photography, flash photography and portrait photography.
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1 comment
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jozef Dumon wrote on Wednesday 18 February 2026 at 08:26 | replyThank you for this basic explanation of how to set the flash manually. I was missing that. I’ll definitely read through your flash bible
Translated from Dutch.
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Elja Trum
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Would you like to take better photos and keep up with what is happening in photography? Photofacts publishes articles that teach you something about photography — from a product announcement to a practical shooting tip or a look at a website. Photofacts covers photography every day and is a hobby project of Elja Trum's that got out of hand. The articles are written by a team of volunteer authors. If you would enjoy writing one or more articles for Photofacts, do get in touch.More about PhotofactsPhotofacts is made possible in part by
