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Feed Provided By Strobist

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Today's Special: Gourmet Speedlights Al Fresco

I love letting the new submissions to the Strobist Flickr Pool build up for a few days, so I can spend a few hours looking through the thousand or so photos that have dropped in since the last edit.

That's a lot of images to look at in one sitting. But every now and then a photo really jumps out and grabs you. Such was the case with UK-based photographer Nick Turpin's series of portraits of thriller writers, shot for Arena Magazine.

They are sophisticated, stylish and bathed in pools restricted light. And they were done entirely with a few SB-800s and voice-activated light stands.

More, including Nick's video and links, after the jump.
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I hope you enjoy this movie as much as I did -- I probably watched it half a dozen times. Take a look, and then keep reading for some of the thought process behind street shooting with multiple SB's as light sources.




Nick says that began as a pure street photographer, and then started evolving his look to include small flashes. The street has since become his impromptu studio, and he is free to choose his settings on a moment's notice. He is now shooting magazine work and advertising campaigns, using gear that would be right at home at a Strobist meetup.

My guess is that he often is able to work without location permits because he is not setting up stands or tripods. And from the look of this video, this series was shot over the course of a single day.


When shooting outdoors in the daytime and using small flashes, there are three things to consider: Ambient level, balance and lighting direction(s).

It is helpful, though not mandatory, to work in shade. This keeps the ambient light at a manageable level. Still you'll want to start out at you highest normal sync speed speed, to give yourself a reasonable aperture.

Take a "properly exposed" photo and look at your frame. It will probably look okay. But likely a little boring, too.

Next, keep your shutter speed where it is, and start to underexpose your ambient light by dialing down your aperture and chimping the back of the camera. This will set the mood and contrast range of your photo. What you are doing is basically setting an ambient "floor" on your overall exposure via your chosen aperture.

How far down should you go? One stop? Two stops? Five stops? That is entirely up to you and depends on the look you are trying to achieve.

Now, bring in your lights. You will have to dial them up to a power level sufficient to properly expose your subject at the aperture you have chosen in the last step. Nick is using multiple SB-800's, snooted and aimed (via the VAL's) to create multi-directional pools of light on his subjects.

This is where it gets more difficult. Nick's eye for narrative (and humor, if you look at some of his other work) is what defines where he places his subjects and his lights. Sometimes he motivates the light with objects on the set (i.e., the lamp post) and sometimes he goes for pure, seemingly random whimsy. Your photos probably will not look like Nick's because you will bring an entirely different eye to your settings, body attitude and light placement.

But however you do it, cool things start to happen when you balance multiple hard lights against soft fill. It is as if your subject wandered into an area of interesting, mixed light. Texture happens. Depth happens. Interestingness happens. Sure, the light from the strobes is hard, but the shadows are only as deep as you set them with your baseline ambient exposure. So it is all under control.

What are your thoughts? Were you as surprised as I was to find the photos were done with speedlights and VALs? I found myself thinking back to Gregory Crewdson, mostly because of the sense of place defined by those pools of light.

Pretty amazing, when you think of the comparative amounts of gear being brought to bear on the shoots.

I love that VAL street lamp boom. To be honest, I love all of the photos in this series. It's amazing how he can be at once both sophisticated and mobile.

You can the whole series of portraits of thriller writers at Turpin's website. (More projects, and another video, here.)

Speedlnks: Sept. 8, 2008

Quickie batch of bonus speedlinks for Monday morning, after the jump:
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• PDN ran a piece on Tim Kent's amazing car photography, thus justifying Ken Brown's subscription for the next ten years. Don't miss the companion OA-style sidebar, too.

• If you live in eastern Canada and are a fan of Martin Prihoda, you may wish to check out a big-lights seminar he'll be doing in Toronto later this month.

• My bet is most of us get a steady stream of requests to shoot photos of friends and family. This is how you might do it if you were contributing SI shooter (and current cover boy) David Bergman. If that SI thing does not work out, Dave, you would make a heckuva yearbook photographer...

• If you are willing to give up your email address -- and can read German -- California Sunbounce is giving away 450 day passes to Photokina.

• Finally, in case you haven't seen it yet: Vincent Laforet takes a video stroll through Pocket Wizard heaven at the finish line of the 100m sprint at the Olympics. (Patrick Smith, if you are reading this from a public computer, you might want to put a pillow over your lap before you watch it...)

Los Angeles Lighting Seminar Registration Opens

UPDATE: Saturday's seminar has sold out. There are still a few seats left for Sunday.
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Registration for the October 4th and 5th lighting seminars is now open. Continue reading after the jump for details and links to register.


LOCATION:

We will be at the Culver City Courtyard by Marriott, at 6333 Bristol Parkway in Culver City, CA. You can get a Google map of the location here.




WHAT WE'RE ABOUT:

With these seminars, my goal is threefold: To refine your approach to creating light, to fill you with as many ideas as possible in a day's time and to have fun doing it. We'll start with a roadmap for the day, which I will do my best to keep us on. But each session will take on somewhat of a life of its own. Which is a good thing.


Our Anticipated Schedule

Morning check-in/setup: 9:00 a.m. - 9:30 a.m.

Please plan to arrive between these times, as we will still be setting up before then and still waiting for the caffeine to kick in.


Morning session: 9:30 a.m. until approximately 12:30 p.m.

We'll talk about gear (I'll have a good gear selection there for a petting zoo) and take an extended, integrated look at what is essentially the Lighting 102 material in it's entirety. If you have seen the lighting DVDs, this is the roadmap we will follow for the day. There have been some new example photos added (I am always trying to evolve the material) but the general course structure is the same. Afternoon shoots are always improvised, so they are always different.

The focus will be on taking all of the things we talk about on the site in a day-to-day sense and integrating them to gain more of a holistic approach to lighting. Everything really is interrelated.


Lunch Break

On your own, approx. one hour, and we'll be looking for your nearby suggestions in the Flickr discussion thread related to this seminar.

We get a special all-day parking rate of $6.00, but no in-and-out privileges. There are several nearby restaurants listed here, including some within easy walking distance. The hotel has the typical hotel restaurant onsite.


Afternoon Session:

~1:30 p.m. - 5:00 p.m.

Assuming we have finished the theory stuff, we'll move into the practical/demo session. (Sometimes we go into a little overtime on the theory.) We'll get into some real-world lighting exercises photographing some models I will have cleverly hidden around the room disguised as ordinary attendees.

This is basically a lighting version of "Whose Line is it, Anyway?" with a focus on improvisational lighting based on available gear, the room, found objects, lighting mods, etc. I never know what ideas we will come up with, which is what keeps me equal parts interested in and petrified of the afternoon session. It's a good thing.

Shortly after each shoot, we will view each setup and discuss the results onscreen. This instant feedback in a group environment is a wonderfully efficient way to drive home the thought and technique process. We can read and write all we want. But for photographers there is nothing better than "monkey see, money do."

The goal will be to incorporate lighting theory, room environment, assignment constraints and our available gear to create a photo that seeks to produce an photograph that is an appropriate response to our situation.

Working within that framework will allow us to concentrate on better freeing ourselves in the other areas: Creativity and subject/photographer interaction.

The entire day will be a nonstop flow of ideas and techniques, punctuated by spur-of-the-moment Q-and-A. I want you to bring lots of questions, and to feel free to voice the ones that pop into your head throughout the day. In fact, if you do not ask me enough questions, I will start throwing some questions at you.

You might want to bring a notebook and pen. (I will have a URL to download the presentation, so you don't have to spend all day scribbling.) And please bring a camera if you want to shoot the setups as a visual reference. And dress is exceedingly casual, so you won't feel out of place if I show up in shorts.

I travel with cameras, projector, lights, stands, mods and clothing, which pretty much maxes out my baggage allowance. So if you happen to have a collapsible-type of background, feel free to bring it with you. More options is always better.

As with my philosophy for the website there will be no secrets and no posturing. This stuff is not rocket science. It's light. And the first step in learning to light is to realize that anyone can get very good at it.

We will plan to wrap up at about 5:00. But if we are still going (and they don't kick us out) who knows. Normally, a fair number of people come back to the hotel bar after dinner, where we discuss lights, darks, ambers -- whatever. Always fun.

If, for some reason, you require a cancellation after booking, refunds will be granted up until September 25. After that time, you would be responsible for transferring your seat to another attendee.

Very Important: If, through events beyond my control, I am unable to present this seminar, refunds will be limited to the ticket price. As I already have airfare, hotel room and our venue rental paid in advance, I do not anticipate this happening. But I just wanted to cover all of the bases, in case I get run over by a bus tomorrow, or one of those Big Macs finally catches up to me.

Bases covered, I would note that I am very much looking forward to this trip and especially to meeting many of you. As I do more of these seminars, I find that each session develops a vibe of its own. You put a few dozen photographers who are all eager to learn in a room, and what starts out as a simple stack of talking points turns into a rich, organic discussion that ends with everyone - including me - having a head swimming with new ideas.



Feedback from Previous Seminars

London:
Post-seminar thread | Extended report

Seattle:
Post-seminar thread | Extended report

Paris:
Post-seminar thread | Extended report

Northern California:

Extended report I | Extended report II

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Registration Details

The cost for either seminar is $159.00. The two seminars cover the same material, so you would register for either day, but not both.

To register for either seminar (with any major credit card) please click on the link at the bottom of the post, which will take you to PayPal. A PayPal account is not required to register.

VERY IMPORTANT: If you are in the process of registering and the seminar sells out, your fee will be refunded by the end of the day -- usually within the hour.

Please leave your name and phone number (and a working email if different from the PayPal address) in the info box on the PayPal page, in case I should need to contact you.

I look forward to seeing you there. The discussion thread for this seminar is here. Please save either your PayPal receipt or your confirmation email and bring a printout on the day of your seminar.


(Saturday is sold out.)

Register for Sunday, Oct 5th

Lighting Q and A, 09-05-08

Last week, I asked you to submit any questions you might have about lighting, and promised to do my best to answer them. I am now sitting on a truckload of questions (some of which are quite good) and it is time to start chipping away at the pile.

This week, we'll visit white balance, lighting groups more evenly and how to turn down the volume on an "all-or-nothing" manual flash.


White Balance

David, from Denver, CO (USA) asks:

"What is your default white-balance setting?


David, that depends on how I am going to be lighting my photo. The vast majority of the time I shoot on daylight. I never use the "flash" setting, and here's why.

It is designed to warm up the whole frame, to compensate for the fact that flash is usually a little bluer than daylight. But for me, that's too blunt of an adjustment -- why warm the whole scene up just because the flash is too blue?

The most obvious situation to illustrate this is flashing someone outside on a nice, sunny day. That "flash" setting will fix your strobe's light, but it will also take some blue out of your sky. Not good.

Much better to shoot on daylight and fix the flash's problems at the flash itself with a slight warming gel. This way, your strobe light can be made to look neutral -- or warmer than neutral. I really like a 1/4 CTO gel on whichever flash is going to be my key light. It goes just a tad past neutral, which looks nice on most peoples' skin.

Of course, sometimes I am trying to balance with tungsten or fluorescent light. In that case I will balance the camera to incandescent or FL and then place a CTO gel or a window green gel on my flash to match it to my new WB setting. (See here for more.)



Also, you can purposely shoot in a daylight environment on the tungsten setting to create a color shift in your photo (examples here and here) but my guess is that you were talking about the daylight vs flash settings as described above.


Even Lighting for Groups


Rebecca, from Australia, asks:

"How do you modify the off-camera lighting techniques when shooting groups of people - families, for example. How do you ensure that the exposure across the group remains consistant?"


Rebecca, there are a few tricks that you can use in this situation. And they all boil down to distance and/or direction.



As we learned in L102 - 1.2, backing your light up will make it fall across a large subject more evenly. In the basketball shoot above, the entire gym back wall was pretty evenly lit with just one flash, because it was at a pretty far distance from the subject.

So, distance helps, but it will cost you some f/stops as you back the flash up. A good way to get some cheap distance when shooting a group is to throw your flashes up into the ceiling if working inside. Not always possible (ceiling too high, weird color, etc.) but when you can it works great.

I like to move them a little away from the subjects (maybe as far back as the camera, on the 45's) and shoot them straight up. The place where the light hits the ceiling becomes your new light source. It is a big splotch of light not unlike an umbrella -- but further away because of the height. (More here from the example at left, in which the frontal light was just from one speedlight.)

Don't think of caroming the light off of the ceiling -- think of placing your light source where you want it. The hotspot will work as your source without the angles needing to match up precisely.

Tommi, from Finland, asked about this, too. I like to shoot them straight up, from right below where I want my light source to be on the ceiling. If I angle the flash and try to bounce it, I am likely to get some direct spill -- not pretty.

So, backing up and ceiling bounce are two options. Both require power -- you will be working at 1/2 to 1/1 power to get a decent aperture. Be ready to wait for recycles for a few secs between frames if you are using small strobes.

The third trick is to "feather" the light (if you are not bouncing off of the ceiling) by aiming it a little away from the near side of the group. So, if your light was on the left side of a five-person group you might want to aim at the person on the right side instead of the one in the middle. Maybe even at the area a little in front of the person on the far right side.

This way, you are trading angle for distance. The person on the left is closer to the flash (and thus would be hotter) but the flash is aimed somewhat away from her. So the light is not reaching her efficiently. So now she is not as bright as she would normally have been.

If you try this out a couple of times and do a few test shots, you'll see how easy it really is. The closer your flash is to the group, the more you are gonna have to change that angle away from the nearest people to get even light. But it totally works.

Another quick cheat: Place the people in darker clothing (and/or with darker skin) on the side of the group nearest to the light. Sneaky, but that works, too.


All or Nothing

Phillip, from Harrisburg, PA (USA) writes:

"You are shooting a model, at dusk. You only have 1 speedlight, which will not shoot at less than 100% power. It will fire off camera though. What would you/could you do in this situation?

This could benefit some newer people who have some hand me down equipment. My first speedlight was a SB50DX which didn't work at anything less than 100% on my camera!"


Phillip, that is one case where always getting 100% from your equipment is not necessarily a good thing. That "manual dial down" ability is the most important capability to look for when shopping for a flash. But free beats the heck out of perfect, and I would not go so far as to advocate someone turning down less-than-ideal hand-me-downs.

There are a few things you can do to fix this problem. But bear in mind that they are all band aids -- you will just be bleeding excess energy from the flash each time it pops. So make sure you have at least 6-7 seconds of BS to spew to your model between shots while you are recycling to full power each time.

The first two tips are similar to those offered to Rebecca, above. First, back that flash up to bleed power. Back it up and additional 40% (i.e., from 5 feet to seven feet) and you will lose a stop. Add another 40% distance for another stop, etc.

But that will also make your light look smaller -- and harder -- to your model. So you might want to weave in some extra BS about how her skin is so good it can take hard light. No worries -- you'll have plenty of time to talk with those full-power recycles.

A better idea is also related to the evenness thing. Feather your light -- up. Tilt that umbrella up and bleed some power that way. You'll also get a nice gradient down your model's body. Yet more BS material while that flash whines away interminably.

A third thing you can do is to knock down the flash with some neutral density gel. You can get all different strengths in the Rosco sample packs, or just buy a 20 x 24" sheet (~$7.00) of one-stop ND gel and stack multiple pieces as needed.

Better yet: Get 1/2-stop ND gel and stack those for the ability to get partial stops of power out of your flash. Mind the heat build-up, though, by leaving a little air space between the flash and the gel(s).

Another quick fix: take a sheet of typing paper and make a primary diffuser to knock down the light before it gets to your umbrella. Put a piece of tape on the top and bottom of the paper, and tape it to the sides of your flash in a big "U" shape.

Yet another fix: Next time you get hot and sour soup from your local Chinese joint, save the container. Not only does it make a great, <$2.00 substitute for an unnamed, overpriced diffuser, but it will also knock a stop or two off of your flash before it goes into the umbrella. Just cut an "X" slit in the lid and friction-fit it to your flash as shown.

Bonus: The light in your umbrella will be more even this way, so your model will look better. Note: Yet more BS material for the wait between flashes.

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So, there's QnA week one. I am stoked at the large selection of questions we already have in the bank, and look forward to being able to get to as many answered as time permits in the future.

If you have more questions, just stick them in the comments of any of these QnA posts. I will moderate the comments and discussions that are on-topic to this QnA post, and reserve the new questions to be added to the crop we already have.

Strobist Lighting Seminar: Los Angeles - Oct. 4th and 5th

Just a quick note that I am finally getting out to L.A. Just scheduled myself for a nose job (and a quick Botox touch-up) to better fit in with the locals next month at the Oct. 4th and 5th lighting seminars in Los Angeles.

We will follow the same setup as in this previous seminar in Phoenix. So read through that if you want more info, links to reviews, etc. Registration opens on Sunday at 8:00 a.m. local (LA) time -- watch this space. We'll be at a hotel (TBA) near LAX.

More details and full registration info then.

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TTD Video: How They Roll in Belgium

Thanks to Didier Jouret, who sent me a link to this video from a Pieter Van Impe "Trash the Dress" -type shoot.

This one is not so much about lighting, but it does include all of the typical stuff: Beach, sunset, trippy beats, happy couple, some champagne, a little nipple pinching, a kite-mounted Canon G9 for overheads, ... wait, WHAT?

Dude, I so want that G9 kite mount. He uses the G9 on a monster light stand, too.

Related links:
:: Pieter Van Impe ::
:: Tom Museeuw ::
:: Bridseye Kite Aerial Photography ::
:: Didier Jouret :: (Videographer)

Dustin Snipes on Quality and Quantity

Quick, what's the first image that would pop into your mind if you were assigned to go to a basketball camp and shoot seventy portraits in two days?

Picture day in seventh grade? I Love Lucy at the cake factory?

L.A.-based shooter Dustin Snipes shows not only that it can be done, but it can be done with quality and style. Check out his blog post for the details. And dig around for several more OA-style posts he has for you, too.
(Thanks, WSP! | Photo ©2008 Dustin Snipes)

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Lighting 102 - 7.2: Time in a Bottle

Before we get to the assignment for this last unit in Lighting 102, I have one more technique for you to consider when using time as a variable for your flash photos. It's very useful, because it acts as a gear multiplier for those of you who may not have as many strobes as you'd like.

Given that a flash can record it's subject in an instant -- even if the exposure is spread out over a long time -- there are several ways to stretch a flash into looking several light sources when shooting a static object.

You'll remember Jonathan Boeke's cool shot from July in which he ran around during a time exposure popping his green-gelled flash from behind several trees to create this photo. It's a great idea, and you can easily see how it can make one flash look like a whole bag full of lights.

But you'll need a very dark environment and a long shutter to have time to make all of your locations for popping the flash. And if you screw up one pop, your whole photo is shot.

Another way to approach this is to use your camera's multi-exposure setting, if it has one. Some do, some don't. If your camera is so equipped, this gives you great flexibility and time to spare when you are lining up your various light locations.

If you do not have three PW's (one to manually trigger, one on the camera in relay mode and one on the flash) you'll want to wrangle a button-pushing friend to help. The camera, obviously, should be on a tripod.

If you'll remember, we set up a tag cloud for others who wanted to try this technique. You can see their resulting photos here.


For my take on Jonathan's night woods shot, I chose the multiple exposure route because it allowed me to control the ambient light. There was still plenty of twilight when this photo was taken, but since I shot each multi-exposure pop at a 250th of a sec, I could totally control my ambient.

I could even have chosen to lay down a, say, three-stop-underexposed ambient frame to flesh out the rest of the photo if I wanted. But I liked it better on black.

I tried the straight multiple exposure method about ten times (all pretty time consuming, too) and never got one I liked. So I decided to cheat. I use that term loosely, as there are no real "rules" for this kind of shot.

As far as I am concerned, any tool you have is fair game. So I decided to do this multi-exposure on separate frames and combine them in Photoshop. I shot each frame separately, and added each new photo a layer at a time, and combined them using the lighten mode. This simply compares the two layers, pixel by pixel, and the lightest pixel in a given location wins.

Which means it pretty much works like a multi-exposure -- except you can tweak each layer / flash pop before you add it to the final photo. You can shift the color, exposure, etc. It's a fantastic trick for shooting large scenes with one speedlight. I used my single loaner SB-900 for this one. (It turned back into a pumpkin last week and had to go back to Nikon.)

Thanks much to Photoshop Honcho Ben Willmore for the heads-up on the lighten technique.


The best way I can explain the advantage of being able to build this exposure around the totally controlled ambient is to say that I shot the photo at left almost an hour after the multi-pop photo. I think that kind of control is pretty cool, when you consider you are getting it with just one speedlight.

The soft look in this photo came from the fact that I used a plastic Holga lens (more on that here) on my D3. Kind of ironic, really - a $50 Holga lens on a D3. But I love the look, when combined with hard strobe.

And that's exactly what I did here -- camera on tripod, ambient underexposed a stop or two and a 30-second exposure. Just tripped the shutter and walked up to the side of the tree (out of the frame, tho) and popped the flash manually.

My choice of shutter for the multi-exposure shot above turned day into night, and the long shutter for this one turned night into day. Understanding flash / ambient control lets you do some cool stuff.


Speaking of Doing Cool Stuff

Now, it's your turn. You have just about everything I have to give on time manipulation of your flash photography. So for this, our last L102 assignment, your job is to shoot a still life. Your photo should contain a combination of flash and some form of time-based manipulation.

That's pretty wide open, I know. I wanted it to be that way because I thought we would make this one a little more interesting.

At the close of this assignment I will choose one shot, and the winner gets a set of Lighting Seminar DVDs, shipped anywhere in the world. Hopefully that will add a little layer of fun to the last assignment.


The Details

The deadline for this assignment is midnight, local, September 20th. Please make sure your photos are in Flickr and tagged before then. If you are a newb to Flickr, go ahead and sign up now (it is fast and free) and drop some photos in so you can get through the week-or-so waiting period before they let your tagged photos show up.


Here are your tags:

Strobist
Lighting102 (Note: no spaces)
Assignment
TimeInABottle (Note: no spaces)

and for your best shot, include the tag:

Final

You can see all of the take here. You can see the final edits here. Discussion is here.

Judging will be by a committee of one (yours truly). I will choose based on technique, creativity, how badly I wish I would have taken it myself, my general disposition at the time, what I may have had for breakfast in the morning, etc.

PLEASE NOTE: Please do not enter pre-existing photos into the running for the DVDs. I would like to award them to the best photo shot specifically for this assignment. We are doing this one on the honor system, but make sure your EXIF can back you up...

Best of luck to all, and I am looking forward to seeing what you come up with!

Labor Day Weekend Speedlinks

Summer is almost over, but not before one more round of white-belted speedlinks. The latest batch, inside:
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• Vivitar, the maker of the (once) ultra-dependable 285HV flash, has been sold from one conglomerate to another conglomerate. We'll have to see if that helps the manufacturing quality, hurts it, or if they kill the 285 altogether.

• Robert Benson (who you may remember from his SPOY win and this awesome repeating flash volleyball shot is now blogging. Some very good commercial shooter -related stuff so far.

• Rachel, over at S!TB, riffs on Monte Isom's amazing shoot for Adidas. Most important tip: How to get a field full of Chinese talent to smile... (Thanks, Nathanael)

• WIRED shows you how to get wired: Charlie Sorrel's newb SB-24 tutorial.

• From left field, but worth the OT trip: Richard Hernandez, from Multimedia Shooter, on how to mount your 35mm lenses on you camcorder.

Starting Next Week: Lighting Q and A

UPDATE: Thanks for all of the great questions coming in! Lighting Q&A is already off to a great start.
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One of the best things about the internet as compared to traditional print media is that the information flows both ways.

Given that we are on the last section in Lighting 102, I wanted to make sure we had something in the wings to keep the two-way info going. So, starting next week, I am going to try to incorporate a regular Lighting Question and Answer series.

Hit the jump for more details.

First of all, I still recommend the Strobist Group on Flickr as a source for answers. In terms of helpfulness, camaraderie and sheer information exchange, I think it has grown to be the best lighting knowledge resource on the web. And that is all thanks to you guys.

On it, you'll find over 30,000 members and over 20,000 discussion topics (uh, try a search or two before posting) to answer your questions. But even at 30,000 members, that means that less than 15% of you are benefitting from the group. Alas, Flickr is blocked in some countries, so I understand that it is not an option available to everyone.

But looking at the quality of many of the questions I see pop up in the comments of archived posts makes me think that many people could benefit from a regular Q&A session on the main site, too.

So, fire away.

Obviously, we will not be able to respond to every question. But if your question seems like it would be of interest to a broader group of people, there will certainly be other readers who will benefit from the answers. So those will get a close look.

If you need a question answered quickly, the Flickr group is still your best bet. But I think the Q&A's could grow into one of the most helpful parts of the site. That, of course, will depend on the quality of both the questions and the answers. So we'll see.


Guidelines

Try to ask your question in a way that balances detail with brevity. Three or four sentences is ideal. I will likely edit most of them down a little. So if you want to err on the side of a little extra detail, that's cool.

The questions can be about anything related to off-camera flash. If you have read something in L101 or L102 several times and it still does not make sense to you, ask about it. There will certainly be others in your shoes, and it will also help me to identify areas of weakness in the core reference sections of the site.

If English is not your first language, please don't be shy about asking your question. I will smooth out any language issues before publishing. Readers who regularly point out the litany of typos and misspellings on this site will note the irony in that last sentence.

Speaking of other countries, please tell us where you are from. Include your first name, last initial, city and country (and your state, if from the US). Frankly, it is amazing to me, the geographic dispersion of the site's readers. Over the course of a typical month, you all log on from about 175 different countries and/or territories. That's pretty cool.

To ask a question, simply leave it in a comment on this post. Questions will not be moderated into publication but rather pulled and filed for future use. Please include your name and geographic info in the body of the question, rather than relying on the various ID mechanisms used by the comments feature.

The first dozen or so questions to come in are missing this info, so let me put a little boxy thing around this and say it again: Please include your first name, and your geographic location with your questions! (Thanks!)

If you want to include URL of your photo-oriented website for possible linking in the event your question is published, feel free to do so. Bear in mind that this is primarily a way to learn more about who is asking, and not a way to publicize your made-for-Adsense, manhood-enhancing herbal pills website. Also, understand that people may be able to glean your contact info if you include your URL.

You may want that, or you may not. Just a thought.

Lighting 102: 7.1 - Flash Zoom and Stone Soup

Remembering back to our last post in Lighting 102, we talked about panning, rotating and selective diffusion as a means of altering your photo after the flash has popped but before the shutter has closed.

The fourth time-based manipulation I frequently use is zooming through the exposure. And last month we pulled that technique out of our as.. bag of tricks during the "stone soup" shoot in NYC.

Having thrown down the gauntlet for a local shooter to come up with a subject and venue, I was at first a little underwhelmed with the response. I mean, this was NYC, fer Pete's sake. There had to be something interesting going on.

Then Tim Herzog popped up, with not one but four separate ideas. His strategy: Throw everything against the wall and see what sticks.

What stuck was an invite up onto the roof of one of those amazing apartment buildings on the Upper West Side overlooking central park. Not a bad location, you know, if you have to slum it... Here's the view, looking northeast, right after sunset. It is a five-shot stitch shot on a D300 and assembled in CS3. (Thanks for the easy pano tip, Ben!)


If you are not the jealous type, click on the pic to see it bigger. Michael (who granted us access to his rooftop) just stood there enjoying the view with us, with the serenity of a man who has chosen a kickass place to live.

Timothy, ever the gracious host, had also brought along puppeteer Patrick Zung as our subject. And Patrick is not one of those "sock puppet" makers, either. He builds these cool puppets used for stop-motion animation. The joints were made out if pool balls -- genius. It was cool and creepy, all at the same time. Like something out of the movie, "A.I.," if you ask me.

The view was amazing. But logistically, I knew the photo was gonna be tough. The park pretty much went to black after the sun went down. And the Midtown buildings, along with the rooftop's layout forced us to shoot in a way that was tough to get the good lights in the frame unless we crammed up against the edge.

Also, we had no way to light him from the far side. Unless you had a 300-foot light stand. Or Spiderman.


So, as our light started waning, I lit Patrick and friend with an umbrella'd SB-800, ( front camera right) secretly wishing I had invited Peter Parker along to assist. We really needed that light out on the far side for separation.

As our ambient started to drop further, I added a couple of accent lights to add some shape to our subjects.


As you can see, one came from back camera right and another from underneath the puppet. These gave a more 3-D look to our guys. Also, I gelled those flashes with a 1/2 CTO and a fluorescent green combo, which gets you a neat, sodium vapor feel without going all of the way there. Sort of the way sodium vapor looks to the eye, rather than to the camera. It is more logical. Straight white light would look weird and contrived in this environment.

Shooting handheld with a 70-200/2.8, our ambient light was dropping fast. Patrick's black top was not going to separate without some light from the left, and things were getting darker by the minute.

As my shutter speed inched toward the Hail Mary range (~1/4 sec) I started pulling the zoom as I shot. This gave me another look to the lights -- and a more abstract look to the photo. Suddenly the environment was not necessarily a New York rooftop. It was a weird, swooshy thing that really started to fit well with the creepy futuristic puppet vibe.


So we decided to let the black top go dark and just hint at the separation with the swooshed city lights. (I could vary the background light by opening up the shutter.) I really liked the effect that zooming gave the background. And the up-light on the puppet (and Patrick) added some nice form. FWIW, the form on the shirt comes from the back/right light.

It is important that the ambient light level on Patrick was lower than that in the background. Otherwise he would ghost badly during the burn-in time. We had scads of sodium vapor up there, so we knocked it down some with a piece of black foam core that is always with me in my bag. We simply "A-clamped" it to the light fixture.

I would have used Tim as a gobo, but he was already working as my voice-activated back-right light stand. There is still some ghosting on Patrick, but I think that little bit works okay within the abstract feel of the photo.

Another thing on the zoom -- start the zooming (wide-to-tele in this case) before you hit the shutter. This makes for a smoother effect without the jerky looks you'll get otherwise.

We finished it out at about the one-second at f/2.8 (ISO 400) light level. When it gets that dark, it is time to call it a night. Plus, there was to be food involved at this point.

In NYC, you are never more than a few minutes walk from some good food -- and Tim delivered there, too.


NEXT: L102 7.2 - Time in a Bottle

Nikon D90 Video, from You-Know-Who

Now I know why Chase Jarvis has been grinning like an idiot for the last few months. He had, like, five pre-production, gaffer-tape-disguised Nikon D90 cameras to play with. And he couldn't say a peep about it, until now. Looks like a great camera for PJ's who are being asked to shoot web video as an add-on.

On thought: They certainly are not flapping that mirror up and down at 24FPS for the 1080p video.

Which means that it might have some kind of electronic shutter. Which means that it just might be one of those magic, high native sync bodies.

I am trying to run it down now. If you happen to work at Nikon (Silverman? Corrado?) and you can find out, hit me in the comments or call me on the Bat Phone. 'Cause we need to know, like, yesterday.

UPDATE #2: So far, looking more like garden-variety sync -- video is apparently being pulled from the live view. Arghh -- I wanted it so bad....

Lots more over at Chase's site.

More on the process behind this, the full brochure and your comments, after the jump.


So, What is This? An Ad?

Rewind a few months. Chase gets the gig from Nikon to shoot the product brochure for D90. This is standard practice for every new camera model that comes out. It has to be done way in advance, with preproduction models. The secrecy is air-tight, the NDAs fly and it is all timed to be available when the camera is released.

This is something very few photographers ever get to do. But those brochures magically appear, full of photos, before the cameras are even on the shelves.

(Little secret: The photos from some camera brochures are not even shot with the actual cameras. Production timelines, or preproduction bugs preclude it.)

Chase's idea was as new as it was simple. Rather than just shoot a bunch of still photos for a brochure, why not wrap a video around the whole process. After all, it would be pretty cool to be handed a bunch of gaffer-taped, top-secret cameras from the future and told to go nuts with them. His bet was that photogs would think it was cool.

Chase is an A-list shooter, and one of a very few living his photo life in the fishbowl. So this kind of a multimedia was a natural for him -- and it was his idea. If you had to define it, that might be kinda hard. To my knowledge something like this has not really been done before.

It's part commercial, part On Assignment, part made-for-YouTube, part underground-end-user thing (that really was his crew shooting D90 stills and video) and part MTV video.

To me, it is interesting because of the mold breaking that is going on with this project. It is also cool that a company as big as Nikon would allow their new baby to be introduced this way. If you think about it, that's a lot of control to give up to a hipster shooter from Seattle and his peeps.

Could it fail? Absolutely. And the failure would be written on the video's YouTube page every day, for ever and ever, amen, in the form of the view count number.

Will it fail? I think probably not. Released at midnight, it already had been picked by dozens of sites by 3:00 a.m. Not exactly rush hour on the internet. But the whole thing was timed to launch on Japan time, so that's when it lit up.

And the fact that it spread so fast is a validation to several things: One, the power of the medium. I would hate to be a magazine right now, unless I was a magazine that could figure out the whole Web Thing.

Two, the decentralization of eyeball-grabbing power from the publishing conglomerates to the universe of individual bloggers. Any one of you could choose to run the video on your site -- or not. The media consumers define the level of success.

Last, the most important validation is the idea that a photographer, more than an ad agency, knows what is cool and entertaining to other photographers. Yeah, duh, but look how long it has taken to get here.

Chase and his crew got to play, we got to watch and a very cool little camera got to be born in an all-new way. Interestingly, I find the product brochure (available here) to be way more interesting, having seen the MTV version of the behind the scenes. But I am pretty geeky like that.

I basically watched it unfold at the last minute as a close outsider -- no financial interest, but a very keen interest in the gear aspect and the leveraging of the medium. Taken to the Nth degree, it is pretty cool (and/or maybe a little scary) to think just how far this decentralization could go.

So, where are you on this? What did you think of the whole process? And for curiosity's sake, did you watch it more than once? That's always my mark for whether a video resonated with me.

Feel free to join the fray in the comments.
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:: Nikon D90 Final Product Brochure ::

Lighting 102: 7.0 - Time-Based Variables

Way back when, we talked about the idea that you could balance your flash and ambient light levels by leaving the shutter open long enough for the ambient light to burn in.

But during that "burning in" time, there are also lots of things you can do to add layers of interest to your photos. And that is exactly what we will be covering in the last unit of Lighting 102...

The beauty of altering your camera's settings, focus, focal length or position during a flash/ambient exposure is that you can merge two completely different sets of circumstances into one single frame. It's a little like in-camera Photoshop -- with a nice, creative randomness attached to it.

Today, I want to go through a few of the ways in which you can manipulate your photo during burn-in and show some examples of the end results.


Flash and Pan

For this shot of a soldier in the woods near Ft. Meade in Maryland I based my exposure on the ambient light level. The first value chosen was the shutter speed, which was chosen to create the best pan effect.

Having chosen the shutter, that also gave us the aperture for the proper exposure. Then, it is just a matter of adjusting the flash to the correct power to light Robert's face.

So, why even use flash at all?

First of all, because the flash adds a nice margin of error to a pan shot. Since the flash happens instantaneously, it will freeze your subject. This works best if the background is brighter than your subject. If you expose for the background, your subject will be dark -- and ready to be frozen by the flash without any ghosting.

Second, it gives you control over the relative exposure level between the subject and background. I could have raised or lowered the background level, for instance, without changing the tonal values on Robert's face.

(More on how this photo was made here.)


For this shot of an up-and-coming local hip hop artist, I spent a few frames grabbing a flash/pan look even though he was not moving during the exposure. It was an assignment that appeared to be doomed form the start, so I was grasping at straws.

(Perversely, I kinda enjoy the challenge of situations like that. As long as they do not happen all of the time.)


The top frame is a static shot, and this is the panned version. The rapper (who performs as "Bossman") had just been signed by a record label and his ego was in overdrive.

I am sure he thought he deserved to be surrounded, nonstop, by a dozen of those dancing hotties from MTV and BET. And as such, was far too cool to waste his time on a lead photo in the Features section in the local metro daily. So (once I pried him out of his living room) anything I wanted to try for variety had to be done without changing the setup.

But even when pinched for time I am always looking to burn a few seconds trying something different just to see what it looks like. And even if this one did not work out very well (we went with the still version) the point is that a quick change of the shutter speed and moving the camera could give me a second look -- without wasting any more of His Majesty's precious time.

(You can read more about this blood-from-a-turnip shoot here.)


Will it Go 'Round in Circles

Another way to add an abstract layer is to rotate the camera during a flash exposure. When I am shooting with just a point-and-shoot and built-in flash, this is sometimes the only way I have to amp a flash-lit photo.

In this shot of Danny Ngan owning Chase Jarvis on Guitar Hero, rotating the camera during a flash exposure helped to make the background a little more abstract.
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Whether you are panning, or panning or rotating, you want to begin the action before you press the shutter. This will give you a smooth effect, without the jerkiness that happens if you wait until you start the exposure to start the movement.

As before, it also helps if you are working against a brighter background.


Diffuse the Situation

Using time as a variable during a flash exposure does not necessarily mean moving the camera, either. You can shoot one portion straight and the other portion heavily diffused, for instance. Or filtered. Or both.

In the "Winter Book Club" assignment show at left, I started the exposure by firing blue-gelled flash from the back while there were about eight layers of plastic wrap over my lens. Then I removed the diffusion and finished the exposure painting with the modeling light on a second SB-800 with a CTO gel attached.

All of this has to be done in a darkened room, of course, or you will get (unwanted) burn-in from the ambient light. You can see more detailed look at how this photo was made here.


By now, you should be starting to get other ideas on how you can use time to manipulate your images while they are still being formed. You might, for instance, choose to light someone against a sunset and the defocus the camera during the ambient portion of the exposure. If you need for the image to stay in register during the process, a tripod is obviously a big help.


NEXT: L102 7.1 - Flash Zoom and Stone Soup

Keaton Andrew's Got Next

UPDATE: After all of the sour grapes hand wringing over the KA's post production work, he was kind enough to upload the naked version of this photo to his Flickr stream. Check out his aluminum foil slave helpers, too. (Thanks, KA.)
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The first three sentences of photographer Keaton Andrew's Flickr profile pretty much sum up his mission statement:

"Hello, I am Keaton. I am 18. I am determined to become one of the best photographers in the industry."

He just might, too. When I came across his senior portrait of a baseball pitcher, it made me think about motivated lighting in a way that I never had before.

One of the things I like most about the crop of teenage shooters in professional photography's on-deck circle is the fact that they are not bound by convention.

Andrew has clearly studied at the school of Dave Hill, and picked up the idea of multi-shot compositing without going for the whole "heavily post-produced" look.

Take the baseball shot above, for instance. Shot with three AlienBees, the rims would have looked incongruent in this (polarized sky) day shot, which in itself was composited via a series over a darker exposure. So Andrew simply added the stadium lights in, in post, to motivate the effect of the rim lights.

Which never, ever would have occurred to a 43-year-old fart like me. Heck, to Andrew, Dave Hill is an Old Fart, too.

(Ha! You reading this, Dave? You are now officially an Old Fart to someone.)



People like to complain about the different-looking, heavily-post-produced stuff by young guys like fellow teenager Joey Lawrence. But seriously -- take a close look at what these guys are accomplishing at such a young age.

Then take a long, hard, honest look at what you were producing at eighteen years old. What do you think they are gonna be doing when they are 43? Hope I am around to see.

To see more of Keaton Andrew's work, check out his Flickr portfolio and/or his website.

A Little Light Fare

They say: Half the world doesn't know how the other half lives.

I say: Half the world doesn't know how. The other half lives.

Dinner with me is as likely as not to be a pizza bagel (pepperoni, if you rate) and a Diet Mountain Dew. But when Chase Jarvis invites you over to dinner, don't be surprised if is it catered by a hotshot chef. With professional musicians. In an 30,000 sqaure-foot airplane hangar. With photo and video coverage.

Hit the jump below for a little background on how in the world you would light such a thing, or just head over to Chez Chase for video and photos...

When Chase first told me about this thing, I just smiled a shook my head. I'll give the guy this: He thinks big. Then I started thinking about how you would light something in an environment that big.

For the record, it's the same cavernous place you see in the Seattle Uber-Meetup videos. Having been there, I can tell you that it is big and dark. His first solution is to crank the ISO. This way, he can kill both the photo and video lighting birds with one stone by using continuous lights.

But you still have the problem of where the light will come from in such a big space, and how much area to light. As you can see here, he went with four tall-boy stands to enable a variety of lighting schemes on the dinner area.

He had an additional spot that he added for the performances. He didn't necessarily use all of the lights all of the time -- just kept them around in case they were needed.

The stands were on wheels, which means that they could easily move them around on the spot, making a variety of different light setups. As the evening went through its visual iterations, the lights could be rearranged in a matter of seconds.

Visually, the whole gig was self-aware enough to occasionally include the lights in the photos. Which certainly makes things easier.

Bear in mind that the outside ambient light would be dropping like a rock through twilight. So when the lights were mixed nicely, he chose to include ambient through the windows in the frame. After dark, he composed for the group and just let the background go dark.

It is important to have light coming from the back in a situation like this, or at the very least from the back/sides as rims. You need that separation from the dark background.

So, next time someone from Pearl Jam is hanging out for dinner at your airplane hangar-sized house, you'll at least have a head start on the lighting.

Chase blogs about it here, and there's lots more good stuff (including recipes) at the Songs for Eating and Drinking site.

Coming in November: Annie's 'On Assignment' Book

Mix equal parts talent, ego, resources and schtick and you'll end up with A-List people shooter Annie Leibovitz. You'll remember her from the annotated Queen Elizabeth shoot video, among many other high-profile sessions.

Her upcoming book, Annie Leibovitz: At Work, looks to be a behind-the-scenes study of some of her more famous shoots, including the royal shoot referenced above.

I have always had a "love-eyeroll" thing for her, having heard too many stories from people she has worked with to avoid the latter. But I very much enjoy her work and absolutely learn something every time I get the opportunity to study her photos more closely.

Amazon has it available for pre-order at $26.40 (list is $40.00) with price protection between now and when it ships.

"On Assignment: Annie Leibovitz" for that kind of coin?

Heck yeah, I'm in.

(Thanks to Charles P. for the heads-up.)


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Art on the Wing: Bradford Fuller's Fly-In Studio

I am probably not the only one who has noticed Bradford Fuller's beautifully lit bird photos in the Strobist pool. His artful mix of flash and ambient against a 2-D background gives the photos a lyrical feel. And the red stamps added in post at the bottom make them seem as if they came from faraway lands.

If you pull back the curtains, and you'll see that Bradford is doing all of this with a Nikon D200, a single SB-800 and a piece of mat board.

That, and a lot of imagination...




The photos look as if they are paintings from another time and place -- a look Bradford achieves via his artful mix of flash and a shutter speed designed to either freeze his subject or to allow its movement to paint through the flash exposure. But his "exotic location" is in Maine in the northeastern US, right next to his house.

Using flash for bird photography is easier than you might think. The key to getting photos like this is to realize that if you can control the light and the backdrop, you can control the overall look of the final photo. Add to this the beauty of a natural subject -- and the unpredictability of the flash/blur combo -- and wonderful things can happen.

Bradford's "studio" is much more spartan than the final photos would suggest. He uses a feeder, of course. So he knows where the birds are going to be. That makes everything else an exercise in geometry.


As for the backdrop, it is simply a piece of mat board, made all the more interesting by the many rains it has endured. He places it on an easel, knowing the birds will pass in front of it on their approach to the feeder. This controls his background, and give the photos the look of a 2-d painting rather than a photo of a 3-D scene.

The light is from an SB-800, placed outside of the frame to one side. From the photo at left, he appears to be using a Cactus PT-04 remote trigger, or some other equivalent "eBay" remote.

The mixture of flash and ambient is of course controlled by how he balances the two sources -- usually choosing to lead with flash and fill with ambient. At close range (and with bare flash) his SB-800 easily puts out enough power. He then works on them in varying degrees in post processing.

Bradford says that his work, like many other things, is about 90% "showing up," as per the popular Woody Allen saying. And for him, showing up means shooting through a hole in the screen of his window.

After all, why suffer for your art if it is not required?


His photos have intrigued me to the point that I will trying some of my own this winter. I am already thinking of what the photos would look like with the birds cross-lit on the 45's from top and bottom.

The possibilities for a fly-in studio like this are endless. Given that you are only going to be shooting an a small area (defined by the location of the background) you could choose to develop as complex a lighting scheme as you wanted.

But the simplicity and beauty of Bradford's bird shots will keep me coming back to his portfolios again and again.

You can see more of his work in his Flickr set, and on his daily blog. If you try this on your own, and get a great shot, please share it with us in the Strobist Flickr pool.

Learn SEO While You Help to Feed People

UPDATE: Someone unloaded a can of whup-ass on me in the comments, to which I responded and uploaded yesterday's inbound search-related metrics. So if you would like some background info, it is there. But let's keep it civil, if at all possible...
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If you are in the Baltimore/Washington area and are interested in learning more about Search Engine Optimization, I will be speaking on SEO as it pertains to photographers at a "Photo Nights for Charity" event on 9/17.

If you are a shooter who is on the web, SEO is key to increasing your online footprint. This is not technical stuff, either. Anyone can do it.

One hundred percent of the money raised will benefit the Maryland Food Bank, which can really use our support right now. And there is a cool photo-related perk for attendees, too. I hope you will join us.

More details here.

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Keep a Lighting File, Version 2.0

Back in Lighting 101 I wrote about the importance of keeping a lighting file. And having made the jump to the iPhone, keeping a lighting file is now way easier -- and more accessible.

Hit the jump for more on this -- and two iPhone apps that are great for location shooters.

Now that the 3G is out and I have (finally) taken the plunge, I will no longer have to put up with every other photographer I know telling me to get one of these things.

Alright, already, you guys were right -- it is made for photographers. I considered the idea of putting my portfolio on the phone, then ditched it in favor of uploading several different versions of my portfolio. That way, I can immediately choose which set of photos are best suited for the person who is about to see them.

In addition, I have merged the lighting file into something I have labeled as an "inspiration folder". It's filled with my favorite shots from guys like Dan Winters, Gregory Heisler and Peter Yang, along with a few dozen of my absolute favorites from the Strobist reader gallery.

I come across ideas that I want to save all of the time. Recently, I have started shooting them right into the iPhone with the built-in camera. This, of course, sticks them right into your camera roll along with all of the blurred photos of the cat snapped by your kids between games of JawBreaker. (Okay, I am addicted to that one, too.)

As smooth as he iPhone interface is, iTunes won't let you treat the camera roll as an accessible image folder as far as I can tell. But if you launch iPhoto (which I normally hate) while the phone is attached, it'll let you import the photos directly.

Then just export them to your designated iPhone-synching photo folder on your computer and they will pop up wherever you wish to put them.

Even more than the idea of a physical lighting file, I love the that, (a) I can snap a cool magazine page whenever I see it, and (b) I always have the photos with me. I have had an inspiration folder on my laptop for a couple of years now. Now I keep the photos with me everywhere I go. Way better.

The photo up top, BTW, is from this month's Fast Company magazine and was shot by Brent Humphreys. You may remember him as having shot the WIRED Magazine cover that was blogged with lighting diagrams.

I just spent fifteen minutes looking through his portfolio, and I think I just found some more inspiration.

Do you have an inspiration folder? Who is in it?


Photo-Friendly Apps

I spend a lot of time on email and Google reader, which lets me easily follow a couple dozen blogs very efficiently. One button and the are all queued up, ready to read.

But two other apps stand out as being particularly useful to location shooters: Weather Bug and Photocalc.

Why Weather Bug? Because, unlike the standard weather app, Weather Bug gives you the ability to see local weather radar. So you know how much time you have left before you are gonna have to bail from an outdoor shoot during transitional weather. And it is free, too.

And Photocalc, which is loaded up with mostly useless navel-gazing photo calculators to justify the $2.99 price tag, has one thing that is very useful: It grabs your location and will display the exact time of sunrise and sunset in your area.

That's a big help when you are doing the sunset backdrop thing and your subject is asking you what time to show up.

It also has a mini-spreadsheet-style guide number calculator, shown above, which will help to train your mind for faster flash power estimation.

If you want to learn more about Photocalc before foregoing 3/4 of a cup of Starbucks to buy it, check out WIRED blogger (and longtime Strobist reader) Charlie Sorrel's review.

Time to Give Away Some PocketWizards

The votes are in, and the July winner for the PocketWizard / Strobist "Going Wireless" contest is...

Ryan Allan.





Congrats to Ryan who took a skateboarder shoot / lighting demo and turned it into art. Not that art is required to win, but it just stood out from the other entries and was the unanimous choice for July's winner. His was chosen from those videos entered before the end of July.

Several other vids stood out, and they (like all of the other videos) remain in the running for future months. Get those videos in and tagged, folks. We had a total of 24 videos entered in time for this month's judging. Them ain't bad odds for a free set of PocketWizard Plus II's.

Little hint, there are over a hundred Strobist-tagged videos in the system which could be in the running for the coming months. All you have to do is add the tag "pocketwizardstrobist". Don't strain yourself with the extra workload.

Already have some fun stuff coming in this month, too. The earlier you get your videos in, the more chances you have to win.

Full details on the PocketWizard / Strobist video contest here.

How to Break your SB-800's Little Neck Like a Chicken

UPDATE: Thanks to Eric, in the comments, for the surgery-based workaround (see comment at 11:58 a.m. on 8/13/08). And yes, I know the vid was way too drawn out. Which is why I told you where you could skip to...



Peter Gregg spends two minutes and 40 seconds admonishing you not to do this. Then shows you exactly how he strong-armed his Nikon SB-800 speedlights so that they will now go 135 degrees to the left. (Clarification: When you are looking at the flash from the front.)

The SB-800s of normal photographers only go 90 degrees to the left.

Many CLS-ers lament the inability to turn the signal receiver window to any angle needed when shooting multi-light, off-camera. This (insane) little mod would seem to rectify that.

FAIR WARNING: I am not going to do this to any of my babies. In fact, I get a little squeamish just watching it. But if you are stupid brave enough, it might give you access to every click-stop through the 360-degree range.

Or it might get you a $320.00 paperweight.


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One-Light Real Estate Photography

While down in Florida last month, I found out that my parents' next-door neighbors (and good friends) were selling their house. I was a little bummed, as they are good folks and you hate to see them leave.

But I was even more bummed when I saw the point-and-shoot specials the real estate agent had thrown up on the "for sale" page.

We only had one working flash. But certainly we could do better than that...
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One House, One Strobe, No Problem

Okay, to be clear I did bring two SB-800's down to Florida. But I only brought two sets of AA batts, too. (Hey, trying to travel light here.) And when one set of batts gets liberated by the kids to power yet another few hours of continuous Wii playing, two SB-800's become one SB-800.

And to be fair, I am no Scott Hargis, either. He is a magician at speedlighting a house to within a hair's breadth of Architectural Digest. But one SB-800s is better than no SB-800s, so we gave it a whirl anyway.

The trick, as always when using a small light to light a big thing, is to wait for the ambient to come to you.

We wanted to do four looks, with one strobe, in one evening. Each would be an exercise in flash/ambient balance. And each would need to be shot at a different time -- but all at twilight.

First stop was the interior, seen above. For this, we needed to balance flash with two ambient sources -- one fixed and one declining.

The outside light would be constantly falling, and the lamps inside would be constant. Because the flash would be lighting a large area, we needed a decent ISO speed and a large aperture.

If memory serves, we went with ISO 400 at f/4. Don't quote me, but it was at least close to there for the reasons listed above.

So, the f/4 becomes the anchor for the exposure. Using f/4, you chimp a little on the shutter speed to see where the lamps will look best. You want them bright, but not nuclear.

Remember -- they do not have to light the room. The flash will do that. They just have to look good.

Once you get the f/stop and shutter speed, it's simply a matter of waiting for the outside ambient light to drop down to where the windows look good. At that point, we pulled everything together by throwing a flash into the ceiling to bring up the rest of the room.