If you have old cameras, flashes, lenses etc.  We are happy to help you unload some of the old goodies that haven’t seen the light of day for awhile.  If you have questions regarding trading in products for something new or would like us to buy some of your antiquated equipment, drop us a line here. A little birdy told me that earlry May will bring our always popular “Cash For Cameras” event during the Spring Expo.  If you don’t want it, there’s a great chance that our buyers do.

As I said, we are happy to assist you in your efforts to offload that equipment; however, if you’re the self-reliant kind of patron and prefer seller to buyer or auction transactions to clear out the back of the closet, then you need to know presentation is everything.  Ever been searching around the internet trying to locate an old MF-21 for your N8008 that you just refuse to stop shooting (hint: there’s one right here?  Did you realize you’re more prone to considering a purchase when you can see the front, back and sides clearly, the lighting is set properly and the exposure is spot on?  Ever wonder how to shoot such grand images?  Its much more simple than you might think.

Enter the  Light Tent.  If you have a bright sunny day and a point and shoot camera you can setup one of these tents outside in the early afternoon and shoot a lot of products in a very short period of time.  No knowledge or extra gear required.  If you live in Alaska and its still night for 22 hours of the day, you might think about picking up some inexpensive constant light to go with your light tent.   Do you have things to photograph larger than the monstrous 48x48x48″ tent?  Go to a seamless paper roll (available in 53″, 108″ or 140″ wide rolls) super white or black and a pair of high wattage heads with big softboxes and stands.

This image was lit with three Nikon Speedlights shot through a light tent.  The flashes on the sides were set as my key light (f/22 @ ISO200) and the flash on top was dialed down about a stop and a half.  The third light serves as fill to open up the shadows caused by the cross lighting from the side flashes.  There really isnt anything to fancy about this setup.  Keep in mind when you are photographing items with reflective surfaces you aren’t really lighting the item, you are lighting the area surrounding the item and capturing the reflections.  This is key when placing your lights.  For some of the jewels (especially the multi-facted ones) the placement of the light will allow the light to penetrate the sides of the jewel or stone and bring out the color.

I was shooting approximately one hundred pieces of jewelry in the same lighting scenario.  This task can be accomplished in a short period of time if you keep the lighting constant.  A word to the wise: put your camera on a sturdy tripod if you are shooting more than one piece.  Lint, dust, fuzzies and the like will inevitably work their way onto your backdrop (i.e. this black, felt sweep is notoriously great at grabbing hold of  white lint).  If your camera position doesn’t change, then you only have to clone out or remove the dust once in post processing and then copy that process onto the remainder of the images.  One of my biggest pet peeves is spending hours cloning dust spots off of images.  This is a huge time saver.

Now that you have some cash in your pocket from all the house cleaning and a smile on your loved one’s face because all that “junk” is gone, go treat yourselves to a nice dinner.  Or better yet, capture some family memories with a new pocket vidcam like the Sony Bloggie.  Its super easy to use, captures fullHD video, hi res snapshots and links up directly to all the popular sharing social media websites.  And the best part, its an iota the size of that VHS camcorder that you picked up a for great deal back in 1987.

The grid holder is all of 1.2″ deep, and the whole package with the adjustable tension strap for mounting it to your flash weighs just 3.5oz, which makes this one of those no-brainer tip-ins for your field kit. And, just in case you’re wondering why you’d want a grid, the picture below does a pretty good job of showing just how the progressively tighter grids affect your light output.

Pricing will be coming soon, as will their presence on our website. Keep your eyes peeled.

The Carmel location now has a completely functional lighting department.  I am still waiting on some product deliveries, but the display is up and running.   Whatever your lighting needs, from small flash to the big 2400 w/s generators, we can service your requests.  Please stop by to check us out and let me know what you might like to have on hand and regularly available.  Hit the jump for more info!

Featuring lighting from Elinchrom, Photogenic, Westcott, Promaster, Photo Basics, Smith Victor, Fotorosa and Lowel.  Rigging and supports from Manfrotto, Promaster, Interfit, Fotorosa.  Modifiers from Westcott, Photo Basics, Chimera, RPS Studio, Lumiquest, Honl, Fotorosa.  Paper rolls and fabric drops in various sizes and colors.  The list goes on and on.

Thanks for letting us be your go to source for all your imaging needs.

Here’s a few of the great bargains we have available right now:

Westcott# 2332 features a 43″ umbrella with removable black cover, an 8′ stand and shoe mount umbrella bracket.  Call us for special pricing.  This is a while supplies last deal and its hot, hot, hot!

A new favorite of mine is the Apollo series from Westcott.  The #2202 28″ collapsible softbox built on an umbrella frame comes with a speedlight adapter so it can be used with hot shoe flashes or regular studio strobes.  This is one soft mother of a modifier for 1/2-3/4 length portraits and portable enough to easily go on location.   It also works beautifully for a table top photography setup.  Use a lightweight boom like our Fotorosa LSB 1720 to hold the Apollo over your work area.  Or boom the Apollo over a model’s head and throw a basic reflector disc under the chin for gorgeous head shots.

If you havent tried green screen shooting yet, hold on to your hats.  Its never been easier on the wallet or easier on the brain than it is right now.  Check out the Westcott ULite 655H.  This kit offers two 20″ softboxes with 500 watt flood lamps on 6.5′ tall stands, a 9×10′  and a 5×7′ green screen background, over 100 digital backgrounds, an educational DVD to help you from start to finish AND the Photo Basics Green Screen software (normally $69.97) is included in this package for FREE.   Limited supplies on this kit.

Green screen is for video or stills.  Its for professionals, hobbyists, or for making fun images of the kids.  Young athletes can have their very own trading cards.  The possibilities are nearly endless.  If you want to shoot on the 9×10′ backdrop I highly recommend getting a backdrop support system and some A-clips to hold the background fabric tight.  The most important part of lighting a green screen is keeping an even key of color across the entire surface.  Any waves or creases in your background will cause you grief in your post processing on the computer.

Happy shooting.

To follow up Marc Lebryk’s excellent post on the Beta Pocketwizard units for Nikon, i wanted to tell you a little about my own use of the units and how they performed under my testing.  For my day to day purpose of standard flash use, the SU-800 and CLS handles almost all my needs.  My testing of these units was all about freezing motion with extremely fast shutter speeds.  One of the greatest features of the Flex/Mini units is what Pocketwizard terms Hypersyncing.  This feature, much like the Nikon AutoFP capability, allows a shooter to use faster than normal sync speeds (shutter speeds) with high powered flash output.

My D700 allows me to sync the flashes (in normal usage) a 1/250th of a second shutter speed.  AutoFP allows the flashes to sync and properly expose the image at faster shutter speeds by pulsing the flash instead of using one steady burst of light.  I have written about this feature before. The problem with using AutoFP with moving subject matter is the pulse flash.  Because the flash pulses numerous times during the length of the exposure, you cant perfectly freeze the subject.  The light emission of the flash hits the subject each time while the subject is in different places, positions, etc.

Hypersync picks up where AutoFP leaves off.  Pocketwizard re-engineered the communication between the camera and flash to make use of some power loss (initial discharge of the flash capacitor happens before the exposure).  By doing this they essentially milk the flash for all it’s worth and enable faster than normal sync speeds by as much as 1.5 stops.  This means through normal flash usage (1/250th sync speed without pocketwizard) your camera will be able to sync at approximately 1/500th-1/700th of a second.  This is all depending on which camera and flash you use.  Thankfully, Pocketwizard delivers a fairly easy to use software utility that allows the user to fine tune the offset for their own system.  They even went so far as to test it all for you in various camera and flash combinations and publish the info on their website. Unfortunately, the info is only currently available for the Canon Flex and Mini units.  Hopefully pocketwizard will update this info soon as the Nikon units are soon to start shipping in the US and have already begun shipping overseas.

So, now that ive used a LOT of technical jargon (its like reading the manuals for your gear; boring, but extremely important), here’s the simple breakdown of what these little radio triggers will bring to your photography.

A faster shutter speed brings two VERY important aspects to shooting pictures when using flashes; control of ambient light and freezing subject motion.  Especially when you want to do both of these things simultaneously.  AutoFP allows for the efficient control of ambient light with non-moving (or slowly moving) subjects.  It also allows for the use of wide open apertures and therefore faster shutter speeds.  When shooting with a fixed sync speed of 1/250th, the control of ambient light falls to your aperture.  The problem of using your aperture to reduce the exposure value of the ambient light is it severely taxes your flashes.  Each stop down reduces the capable flash distance drastically.  So, bottom line is AutoFP (Canon calls it High Speed Sync or HSS) is a wonderful thing.  Now bring in the action, like in this example:

This image was photographed at f/4.5 @ 1/1000th @ 800ISO.  Two SB-800 speedlights were used.  The flash to the subject’s left was in a Photo Basics 17×50″ Strip Bank with the interior baffle removed.  The 2nd flash was opposite bouncing into a white wall and zoomed to ~85mm to control the spill and produce a higher contrast effect.  Pocketwizards Hypersync allowed me to shoot this image at 1/1000th of a second and completely freeze the subject.  The flashes were set in Manual mode at around 1/2 to 1/4 power during the entire shoot.  After all my years of shooting studio flashes and controlled studio environments i am literally blown away by the performance of today’s small flashes.  When coupling speedlights with amazing accessories like pocketwizards, my need for big lights is further diminished.  I can also go completely portable with this setup and not have to worry about finding an AC outlet or drag out 50′ extension cords.   The simplistic use of walking into a location and being setup and ready to shoot within just a few minutes is almost priceless to me. 

To the right is a detail shot cropped from the first image.  Note the detail rendered in the hair.

Below is a detail from the dress.  Note the texture of the cloth and the pattern in the clothing.  Fine details are capable of being rendered because of the extremely fast shutter speed used to capture the image.

You could certainly argue that similar images could be photographed with large high-powered studio strobes and smaller apertures and normal sync speeds.  This is accomplished using extremely short flash duration to freeze motion in dimly lit environments.  These lights are neither lightweight, portable nor (relatively speaking) inexpensive.  They might be portable and set you back a few months’ paychecks or bulky and heavy but more affordable.  Shooting speedlights with accessories like the TT5 and TT1 allow for a great entry level price point into high quality lighting with the performance and portability too.

Lighting on location is something i do a quite often.  So i was very keen on using the Pocketwizards out and about.  I started rock climbing early fall a year ago and have become increasingly interested in new, stylized ways to shoot this fast paced and technical sport.  When i learned i would have access to beta test these units, ideas for images immediately popped into my mind.  Shooting in a climbing gym requires staying out of everyone’s way.  Speedlights were certainly the best way to go for the small size and small support gear needed.  The ambient light level in the gym isnt exactly full on sunshine, but its enough that would create a muddy mix of light and disallow for shaping the light and showing life-like dimensions of the climbers and their surroundings.  I clamped a single SB800 to a half-wall using a Manfrotto Justin Clamp and also had it plugged into a SD8a (the SD9 is available for the current model SB900)  power pack for faster recycling from shot to shot.

Working in a large open environment is a place where Nikon’s CLS control from a SU800 starts to fail.  Triggering off camera lights though line of sight transmission works great in smaller venues with the ability of bouncing light off of walls, floors and ceilings.  In a situation where the position of your lights relative to camera position arent able to be triggered though line of sight, a radio trigger is down right necessary.  Again, when you want to freeze the motion and control the ambient level, a fast shutter speed makes your life much easier. 

The image to the left shows a climber frozen in midair as he propels himself from one hold to another.  The only ambient light still viewable is from the fluorescent banks on the ceiling.  These lights provide a strong leading line through the image  and help move the viewer’s eye.  Not that i would have been able to completely kill off the ambient light from them, but i chose to leave them as dominant in the image for the purpose of compositional aid.

Left:  f/8.0 @ 1/1000th @ 3200ISO

Below: f/6.3 @ 1/1000th @ 1600ISO

Yes, she climbs and dances.   For the image on the left a single SB800 through a 45″ umbrella on a Fotorosa Multifunction Boom/Stand and bare flash SB800 zoomed to 105mm and snooted were used.  The umbrella light was a soft fill about 1.5 stops over the ambient light value and was elevated to the climbers position on the stand.  The bare flash creates a nice rim light from behind and under the subject.  This creates separation from the darker background and also bounces a bit of fill light off the light colored walls to help illuminate the right side of her face.  The image below uses only the umbrella light.  Exposure settings were exactly the same for both images: f/5.6 @ 1/640th @ 3200ISO.  Left: shot @ 48mm at nearly closest focus distance on the Nikon 24-70G lens and Below: shot @ 70mm from approximately 10 feet.  This shows how changing your distance to the subject as well as your focal distance inherently adjusts the overall look of an image.  Adding/removing one light can create an entirely new style to an image without making any exposure adjustments.

f/6.3 @ 1/1000th @ 3200ISO

Above, the chalk is frozen mid-air with a very fast shutter speed.  One SB800 boomed over the subject and shot through a 45″ umbrella.  I asked the subject to clap his hands together at full speed.  All the light you see in this image is from the speedlight.  Using the exposure settings i was able to completely kill off all ambient light from the florescent banks above.

I had a few similar issues to what Marc experienced and completely expect the final production units to be in great working order.  Hardware and Firmware adjustments were being made even as i had the units in my possession.  I look forward to having them in my bag of tricks.

For you Canon shooters, the word from Pocketwizard is that they have, with the last few firmware updates, resolved the minor remaining connectivity issues caused by the RF emission of the Canon Speedlites.  Make sure you are up to date on all your gear’s firmware and get to shooting with these marvelous pieces of technology.  Pocketwizard has been the professionals choice for nearly 20 years and has been my choice of radio triggers since the late 90′s.  Reliability and compatibility is what the Pocketwizard brand means to me.  Amazingly, even today’s newest and most advanced triggers are compatible all the way back to the original Wizard the company first produced.  Check out their story.

Dont forget to preorder your Flex TT5 and Mini TT1

Please note that we’ve been waiting about 2 years for these bad-boys, and that we won’t have ‘em until we have ‘em, and that pre-ordering them on our website gets your name put in line – it doesn’t guarantee you a product. Once we have them in stock in quantities to satisfy out back-orders, we’ll put them up for sale online.

In the mean-time, check out Mark’s write-up and think about what you wanna use these TT1 and TT5 units for.

The biggest problem with shooting through midday light isnt so much the angle of the sun or flat color value.  It’s the blinding brightness.  Film and digital sensors can only render so much range of color and light.  This is referred to as dynamic range or exposure latitude.  Ansel Adams used the famous zone system to establish his shooting exposures.  He separated the overall latitude of his images into multiple zones or tonal values so he could create a proper mid-tone and also know where the shadows and highlights would fall in his images.  Thus, he knew which portions of his image (if any) would be over or under exposed.

Our job in these more challenging lighting environments is to compress the range of information so that the camera can record as much color and detail as possible.  A very simple way to do this is use an additive source of light.  By controlling your exposure for the ambient value and adding in light for the foreground or subject you compress the overall latitude of the image into an obtainable range.  An additive light source doesn’t have to be a flash.  Reflectors are a very nice way to control lighting.  As with anything, there are pros and cons to using reflectors.  I typically shoot without assistance, which makes reflectors a nightmare to manage.  Also, to make use of a reflector, there must be sufficient light to reflect.  This pretty much rules out anything less than mostly sunny days.

i will typically use the sun as either a key (main) or separation light.  The added light source will be a fill light or a key light when the sun is striking the subject from behind as a separation.

This image is shot at approximately 3PM with the sun as a separation light high and to the back left of the subject.  The flash is from the front left.  I used a speedlight to light this and first tried to remote trigger the flash using CLS (remember CLS?) .  Shooting into the bright sun drowned out the flash pulse trigger and the remote flash did not fire.  I tried switching over to SU-4 mode on my SB unit which makes it a manually-controlled, optically-triggered slave unit.  This is a much more sensitive triggering system than CLS with TTL control as it is just a single strobe from the main flash to trigger the off camera speedlight.  Unfortunately it was intermittent at best.  I always keep a SC29 TTL cable in my flash bag for just such an occasion.  I was working in close proximity to my flash and subject so one TTL cable was all i needed, but you can usually connect up to three cables and maintain full capabilities of the entire system.   The TTL cable enables your flash to act exactly the same as when it is directly in the camera’s hot shoe.  The flash was set to TTL BL FP (Focal Plane sync, or high speed sync) which enabled auto flash exposure at higher than normal shutter sync speed (1/250th) and metering that balances the flash illuminated foreground subject with the ambient background light.  By using FP mode on my speedlight i was able to shoot at around 1/1000-1/2000th of a second and still have a fairly wide open aperture for controlled depth of field rendering.  The sky is still mostly overexposed and i had a few more stops i could have pushed the light to bring the blue sky back into the picture, but i would have started underexposing the trees in the background and lost the little bit of color i was seeing.  Also, the faster shutter speed you use in this mode the shorter the exposure distance of your flash.  Combine that with the diffuser dome and softbox which reduced my light output and heavily taxed the flash.  This results in slower recycling speed and going through AA’s batteries much faster.  When using larger light modifiers out in bright sunlight, i will put multiple speedlights in one light source to increase the capable power or decrease the recycling time.

equipment used:

RPS-4030 20″ softbox, Nikon SB-800 with the diffuser dome attached for more evenly distributed light inside the box, Fotorosa boom stand,  Nikon SC-29, Nikon D700, Nikon 50mm f/1.8.

This simple portrait was shot with a SU-800 triggering a speedlight in a large umbrella mounted on a boom stand.  I knew what distance i was shooting at so i controlled the flash in manual mode through CLS.  Working in the shade allows for extensive control of ambient light.  ISO200, f/2.0-2.8, and a shutter around 1/125th got me there.  Simple and effective.  The SU-800 controller works great indoors and in the shade, but transmits through IR light and is practically useless in bright sunlight.  I use booms quite a bit when putting lights up on location as they allow for a very precise placement of the light.  The Fotorosa boom comes with a sandbag and is very necessary for counter-weighting the boom.  I also use a couple of RPS Sand Bags for the legs of the stands in extra windy situations or when the flash and modifier go to heights greater than six feet.  I especially like the RPS bags for the visibility, but they are all black on the flipside which makes for a nicer appearance when shooting at all those black tie affairs.

The last image was shot around 4:30-5PM with the sun to the back left of the subjects.  You can see the sunlight working as a rim light to separate the subjects from the background.  It also filters beautifully through the leaves to bring out the fall colors.  Fill light is from one speedlight off to the camera’s right and triggered through CLS from a master flash on my camera.  I used a bare flash in this setup as the light was approximately 30 feet away from the subjects and a 20×20″ softbox would be almost negligible as a diffused source of light.  It would also rob my power output too much.  When working at this distance FP sync is not an option without using several speedlights to increase the overall power.  I shot this at ISO200, 1/250th, and f/9.0-f/11.0.  The speedlight was emitting 1/2 power in manual mode.  On a compositional note, i framed the image into thirds and the middle third where the subjects are placed is brighter than the top or bottom.  Autumn leaves are both colorful and pretty to look at, but i don’t want them to distract from the subject of the photograph.  When shooting on location, especially in nature, be very aware of your background.

Generally speaking there are a lot of rules in photography that can be bent or broken.  Contrary to popular belief there is no perfect f-stop or shutter speed or focal length to make a perfect picture.  However, photography is based on math and physics, so there are some fixed values and ideas to wrap your minds around.  The following information is basic instruction to control your photographic lighting.

When mixing strobes and ambient light, there are two camera settings which will independently control both zones of light.  Whether you are trying to completely remove the ambient light or make it the dominant key light, the camera’s shutter speed will dictate how much ambient light your sensor (or film) sees.  To put it another way, when you leave the shutter open for a longer duration of time  the sensor has more time to gather light.  All light, strobe and ambient is collected during the time that the shutter is open.  However, the strobe’s output will be mostly unaffected by the shutter speed because the amount of time that passes during the duration of the flash pulse is a MUCH shorter period of time than the shutter is open.  For example, 1/125th of a second is twice as much time as 1/250th of a second which yields twice as much ambient light.  Even an inexpensive high powered hot shoe flash at full power will have a flash duration in the ballpark of 1/500 – 1/1000 of a second.

The lens’ aperture will control the amount of light received from the strobe.  The larger the hole in the lens (f/stop) the more light is allowed through.  FYI: the “f” in f/stop is Latin for fenestra, meaning window.  If you open your aperture by one f/stop (f/5.6 to f/4.0) the sensor receives twice as much light.  Unlike a shutter which can be a determining factor of collected light over a long period of time, the aperture remains a constant for both the ambient exposure value and the strobe exposure value.

Lets put this into practice.  Things you need:
A camera with manual independent control of both shutter speed and aperture
A flash with manual control
Something simple to photograph, preferably a non-moving, inanimate object like a bowl of fruit.
A tripod or flat surface to support the camera.
A moderately bright room.

Attach the flash to your camera’s hot shoe and put it in manual mode at 1/16th power.  The ISO value on the camera should be at a low setting and remain  a constant throughout this process.  The first exposure will be lit dominantly by flash.  Camera settings are as follows shutter speed = 1/250th, aperture f/8.0.  This exposure will most likely look awful.  Remember, you’re not trying to win a Pulitzer just yet, get the basics under your belt so you can put this into practice in the real world.  Here’s my example:

First thing you must do is find the proper exposure for the subject.  This can be accomplished in a few different ways.  For this example, i will use the aperture to adjust for proper exposure value (EV) of subject.  We started at a middle aperture so we can adjust up or down for the exposure from the flash.  A shutter speed of 1/250 is the fastest flash sync speed for most cameras.  using 1/250 gives us the most control over ambient light.  Also it helps to stop subject matter motion and control camera shake.  Decrease the shutter speed until the ambient light is “filling in” to the amount you desire.  For your own edification, try decreasing the shutter speed one stop at a time to see the effect of each image as the amount of light gathered adjusts the style of the image.  1/250 -> 1/125 -> 1/60 -> 1/30 -> 1/15 etc.

Take note that when i adjusted the aperture form f/8.0 to f/5.6 the background and the reflection of the background on the glass surface became brighter.  Aperture will control the flash power, but it still contributes to the overall ambient exposure.  The trick is to find a balance between shutter speed and aperture to allow enough ambient light into the camera.  And by “enough”, i mean however much you want.  This is largely a subjective control.   As the shutter drops below 1/125 the ambient light begins to overpower the flash output.  Only in the heavier shadowed areas of the image (e.g. just underneath the word Nikon above the lens or in the pinch area of the lens cap) does the EV remain mostly constant in all of the images.

This is the basic groundwork for any image shot using a flash.  I cringe anytime i hear someone say, “i hate flash photography”.  When you know how to use it, you will love it.  The amount of precise control additional lighting brings to your images is an open doorway to expanding your photography.

One hot shoe flash placed on top of the fireplace mantle on the left side and bounced off the ceiling.  Used a wide open aperture for lots of ambient light and shallow depth of field and faster recycling flash because a big aperture demands less power from the flash.  I wanted the windows to go almost completely overexposed to get rid of the distracting scene outdoors.  A longer shutter speed allowed the light from outside to filter in and brighten the sheer drapes on the window.  This also balanced the lighting zone outside with the zone i created inside.

Exposure time was around 20-30 seconds.  Camera on a tripod (absolute must!).  somewhere around f/11 and ISO 400-800.  During the exposure, i used two speedlights and ran around the pool popping off multiple flashes to create the illumination in the water.  You can see one of the flashes near the middle of the image.  I should have used a snoot or gobo to cover the flash so the lens couldn’t see it.  White Balance was set for daylight to render the landscape lighting a warm tone and the flashes were gelled with a 1/4 cut of CTB (Color Temperature Blue) to make the water look extra cool.

Coming soon: real life application of these techniques and using proper color control.

To continue our small flash theme from last week, lets talk in detail about some regular uses of speedlights.  In an effort to keep this simple, i will limit this post to two styles of photography: macro (close-up, high magnification) and portrait photography.

Macro photography offers a view of the world in a way that most people don’t have a chance to see it.  The trouble is you are often shooting into dark places and a little extra light can make a really big impact on your photograph.  In the image above, i used a single SB900 Nikon Speedlight triggered wirelessly with the built-in Nikon CLS control, a Nikon D90 and the AF-S 105mm f/2.8 VR Micro.  CLS is the “Creative Lighting System” and it offers some of the very best abilities in the flash photography market.  Nikon has always been pretty serious about speedlights and the role they carry out in photography.

Its a good thing today’s flashes have a lot of power output, because when you’re this close to your subject with a 105mm lens you need a small aperture to achieve good results in depth of field control.  I shot this image at f/18 and my flash setting was manual at 1/5 power.  Now you might ask me, “why would you shoot manual flash with Nikon’s fancy iTTL (auto flash) ability tied into CLS?”  I’ll tell you; that dark background wasn’t so dark in real life.  I was shooting into the eastern sky in the mid-afternoon.  It was awash with low contrast light and it was ugly.  This also means my image was almost completely back lit.  TTL flash would have nver figured that one out for me.  I could have exposed for the subject’s front side and let the background go a couple of stops overexposed, but then i would have lost all the beautiful color in the flowers and plants.  You could ask, “why don’t you change your composition and put the sun behind you?.  I’ll tell you; bugs don’t like to cooperate and they certainly don’t hold still for very long.  I hand held the flash approximately 3 feet away from the subject.  Shooting at a fast shutter speed kills off as much ambient light as possible.

The image is lit entirely by flash, but doesn’t have the look of a standard flash photograph.  The flash was up high over the subject and the size of the flash is quite a bit larger than our flying friend.  This means it will appear to be a fairly diffused (soft) light source.  By comparison, if we used a 6 foot tall light source to take a picture of a person, we would achieve a similar diffused value.  Small subjects are perfect for small flashes.

Portraits are my mainstay in photography.  Its the subject i first learned to shoot and it is what drives my passion for this labor of love.  In general, most people take pictures of people.  Family and friends, young and old, pictures provide memories of those we care about.  I remember sitting next to the living room window on this delightfully tacky, blue ottoman while my dad snapped frame after frame of my siblings and me.  The pictures are fun.  Cheesy smiles, gapped teeth, it was us.  I look at those pictures today and fondly remember it happening, but i don’t see the people i know as much as i see a couple of good looking kids.  It is said the eyes are a window to the soul and for a portrait to have life you must see the soul.

This image is a very basic setup in a studio environment, but could have been shot practically anywhere.  Essentially there is one light on the model (SB800 Speedlight inside a small softbox, a Lumiquest Softbox III would also work nicely) and one light on the background (SB800 bounced inside  a 45″ umbrella).  Here is where the control of CLS plays a major roll.  Using Nikon’s built-in control you can shoot multiple lights at different power levels and control everything from your camera or the master flash connected to your camera’s hot shoe.  By controlling the power levels of my flash units independently i can make the ratio between the two lights as even or contrasted as i want.  I can make the background go black or an extremely crisp and high key white.  The softbox was in very close providing a very diffused light.  This is a nice effect of softening skin and helping to reduce the appearance of blemishes or lines on a face.  If you light this image properly, you can avoid wasting way to much time touching up your image on the computer.  Grab this PDF FastTrack To Wireless Speedlights (open the link in a new tab or window and right-click for windows users/control-click for Mac users to download the file) for a Nikon guide on how to setup CLS with different cameras and flashes.

The image to the left is a very simple portrait shot during the afternoon in direct sun.  Even though the top half of the subject’s face is still shaded, you can see the catch light in the eyes (if the eyes are completely shrouded then the portrait has no life).  The setup was a Nikon D80 and 50mm 1.4D lens shot in aperture priority and a flash mounted on the camera and set in iTTL.  Basically, everything was set in near automatic.  Heck, i didn’t even look through the viewfinder and shot this one from the hip to have my camera well below the subject’s face.  This perspective eludes to a sense of strength or power from the model.  Using a speedlight outdoors helps to even out the brazen sun light and illuminate portions of an image that would otherwise be near black in shade.  If i hadn’t used a lens with a big aperture, i wouldn’t have been able to shoot this image very well.  Big apertures (commonly f/2.8 or greater) on your lenses will increase your flash power.  Each stop of your aperture i.e.  f/4.0 to f/2.8  gains double the power of a flash.  A simple 50mm from Canon or Nikon will allow not only for shallow depth of field rendering and great separation from the background, but also a much more capable flash unit.

In the final image to the right, I shot with a 4 speedlight setup.  A single SB800 in a 24×32″ softbox one on each side of the model provides a simple rim light to show contour and shape of the subject and the chair.  They are mounted up high with the middle of the box at nearly head level allowing for a nice falloff of light towards the bottom of the frame.  This keeps the attention up towards the face.  The other two SB800′s were bounced into 45″ umbrellas with black covers as background lights.  The black cover keeps the light from spilling forward into the scene which would  contribute to the exposure of the subject and cause lens flare reducing the contrast rendering of the lens.  Contrast is extremely important in this style of image because of the subtle shift of whites to light grays in the shirt and background.  I shot this image with a Sony A900, Zeiss 24-70 f/2.8 and  Pocketwizard PlusII’s to trigger one SB800.  I only needed one receiver connected to a flash because the SB800 and SB900 (newer version) have built in slave eyes.  A slave eye will trip the slave flash when it sees another flash fire.  This is an extremely handy feature and i refuse to purchase a flash without it.  Sorry Canon users, since your speedlights don’t have this capability, i guess you’ll just have to settle for using Pocketwizard’s incredible Flex and Mini radio triggers.  The only catch to the using the slave eye on the SB units is you lose your remote control ability.  Essentially your flashes turn into standard studio strobes.  However, once your ratios are set for the lighting pattern you want you don’t have to adjust anything.  Manual flash control provides consistency.  My lighting pattern here was in the ballpark of 1 to 1.5 stops up on the background to where my key lights (sb in 24×32″ softboxes) were metered.

Next time: Product photography and working outdoors and on location with strobes.  Stay tuned…

Today’s flashes are more powerful and faster recycling than ever before, and can be accessorized with secondary power packs like the new Quantum Blade to further increase performance.  RF transmitter/receiver systems like Pocketwizard’s Plus II’s have supplied reliable triggering devices for years, and most recently the TT1 Mini and TT5 Flex from Pocketwizard have TTL (auto flash) capabilities which further increase the level of quick, precise control.  Light modifiers (e.g. umbrellas, soft boxes, snoots, grids, beauty dishes) are now built specifically for small flash usage.  The bottom line: its never been easier to shoot high quality flash photography.

Im certainly not saying there is no reason to own studio equipment, and some of the newer strobes are almost as small as Nikon’s and Canon’s Speedlights.  For example Elinchrom’s Quadra RX are powerhouse units and weigh in at a measly .25Kg or about a half a pound.  More to come on the Quadra system.  Studio strobes will generally put out much more power than small flashes which will allow you greater control of ambient light.   However, a strobe will not travel as easily, always have its own portable power system or be able to sync at faster shutter speeds than today’s small flashes.

In the next post i will talk in depth about how to control small flashes in different situations.

Stay tuned…

As mentioned, it’s free for most circumstances. Per their site:

The Online Lighting Diagram Creator is free of charge for non-commercial projects and for professional photographer websites, photography blogs, photography forums as long as the OLDC services and products are accessible by all visitors at no charge. All free of charge use must include the footer with the credits.

For books and DVD illustration, a donation of at least USD 10 is required.

If you are giving [sic] paid for tuitions, then a donation of USD 50 should cover for a year.

So, if you need to diagram out some lighting set-ups, this is a handy and easy tool. It took me maybe a minute to make the diagram above (which I used once while, I kid you not, shooting zombie pin-ups). And, did we mention free?