Light Fare From Martin Prihoda

A little while back I did some surveying on this site. Among other things, the survey told me that the readership of Strobist skewed male. Overwhelmingly, pathetically, ninety-four-percentingly male.

So I am thinking today that roughly six percent of you will react to Hamish's shotgunned beer burp with an "Ewww, gross," while about 94 percent of you will hold up signs with ratings from one to ten.

Vancouver-based shooter Martin Prihoda is back, squeezing a little end-of-day fun out of some lighting gear rental, and walking through the process of shooting a guy in a monkey suit against a sunset.

And when we say "monkey suit" we are not talking about a tuxedo.

(Thanks, Martin!)
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Related, more serious lighting video:

:: Martin Prihoda Shoots Delerium ::

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Mount Your Mods with Speed Straps

Having spent much of my 20 years as a newspaper shooter with sticky-velcro-covered flashes, I have recently become a big fan of velcro speed straps for mounting all of my light mods to small flashes.

Hit the jump for why you want 'em, where to get 'em, and how to make 'em -- plus a whole mess of archive DIY links.
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At one point in the 1980's, I think my go-to SB-24 had so much velcro stuck to it that it looked like a burnt Chia Pet. The problem with the stick-on velcro is if when it wears out, it doesn't hold worth a crap. And it is a pain in the butt to unpeel and swap. To that, add the fact that you have a limited amount of surface area unless you want your flash to look like mine did.

With all of today's lighting mod options, you really want to have some kind of velcro mounting system on your flash. And the speed strap route is the way to go -- you can easily remove them and/or swap out for a new one if the velcro goes. Plus you get a whole lot more mounting real estate, compared to the typical amount of stuck-on velcro.

Truth be told, these little guys are not expensive. They are less than $10, so many of you may well choose to go store-bought in this instance. You can get them from LumiQuest ($6.95 - smaller size) or from HonlPhoto ($9.95 - bigger, w/more surface area and grip).

They are the basis for most light mods mounting systems, including those from LumiQuest and HonlPhoto. Quest Couch from LumiQuest notes that, for larger light mods, you can use two straps (strobe - strap - light mod - second strap on top) for a super strong hold.

If you just use one or two strobes, it probably makes sense to tap the Visa card. But if you are broke have a whole case of strobes and would be buying straps by the half dozen, you might want to consider making them. They are cheap and easy, especially of you wait until the next time your bike inner tube goes flat.


To make them, you'll be using the inner tube as a base. It's cheap, holds well and is nice and wide.

You can make a strap in less than five minutes, using the inner tube and some sticky velcro (available at craft and hardware stores.)


1. Cut your tube into sections long enough to fully wrap around the head of your flash with a full overlap on the wide dimension. Go a little long, then you can cut it for an exact fit when you are done.

2. Cut a length-wise strip from the tube, making a flat piece of rubber about an inch-and-a-half wide. There will probably be injection mold lines along the tube to make for easy, straight cuts. Mountain (and trail) tubes work better than the smaller road bike tubes. If you use the portion of the tube that would come in contact with the ground (if it were a tire) you'll avoid the curve of the rubber that would otherwise make it harder to fit.

3. Very important: Wash the rubber thoroughly with soap and water, and dry it well. It will have grime on it, and a powder residue on the inside -- both of which will cause problems if it is not clean and dry.

4. Totally cover the inside of the rubber section with two long strips of the "loops" part of the velcro. Trim along the edges to fit if necessary.

5. Cover the other side of the tube (formerly the outside) with "hooks" velcro at one end, to a length equal to the width of your flash head.

6. Wrap the strap around your flash, overlapping on the long end, and trim to length if necessary.


That's all there is to it.


Here's a view of the reverse side, which should make everything self explanatory. It's very important to make sure the tube section is totally clean and dry, or your sticky velco won't hold.

Normally, when I run a DIY post I get a few condescending comments from the deep-walleted DIY haters, which serve to offset the comments I get from the starving artists when I mention, say, Profotos. So, as long as they are gonna be pissed off anyway, here are lots more DIY posts dusted off from the archives:
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Selected DIY Posts

:: DIY Cardboard Snoots and Gobos ::
:: DIY Tupperware Diffuser ::
:: DIY Household Sync Cord Extension ::
:: $10 Macro Studio Box ::
:: Two-Cent Micro Studio ::
:: HD RIng Flash Adapter ::
:: $8 Flat-Fold Ring Light ::
:: Coffee Can Point-and-Shoot Ring Flash ::
:: Engineer Lamp Light Stand ::
:: Ball Bungee Softbox/Speedlight Mount ::
:: PVC Speedlight Aqua Housing ::
:: OMG DIY Off-Camera TTL Cord ::
:: DIY Beauty Dish ::
:: DIY Cardboard Grid Spots ::
:: DIY Macro Strip Lights ::

DVDs Back in Stock

If you missed out on the Strobist Lighting Seminar DVD set, the second printing is in. All backorders have now been shipped, and remaining DVDs are available here.

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Nikon SB-900 Foot: Size 16 EEEE

The new Nikon SB-900 Speedlights are dropping into stock pretty much everywhere, albeit on allocation.

But before you buy, you might want to check this thread for a running update on what the flash shoes the newly designed foot will -- and won't -- fit. Please feel free to add to this list if you find out anything first hand.

And remember that they do ship with an AS-21 foot, which can be swapped out if your system is 1/4 x 20-based. But mind that plastic thread if you are swapping out frequently.


RELATED:

:: SB-900 Review ::

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Speedlights, South Africa Style

South African photographer (and Strobist reader) Robert Miller, whom you may also know as "Panascape" on Flickr, has been showing up in PIX African Photo Journal so often he should be paying them rent.

Back in the March edition, Miller wrote and photographed a story entitled, "Welcome to Strobist." He got four pages for his story and another four pages about his photography in the form of a monolith/Q&A piece. Not a bad month.

Then he pops up in my mailbox today with a stitched, HDR panorama with embedded lit portrait on the current, triple fold-out cover -- which is basically a PIX magazine geargasm to the new Nikon D700. (It wraps around to the back cover, too. Craziness.)

We'd never do the ad / cover / fold-out ad thing like that in the States. But seeing that kind of stuff is one of the reasons I love reading foreign photo mags. Even as an old Chinese Wall newspaper guy, I have to admit it is pretty friggin' cool for PIX to announce a long-awaited camera like that.

Links and a diagram, after the jump.


Top Photo: How it Was Lit

Here's the setup for the top photo. Two umbrellas and a ring light. Click the diagram to read more info in Robert's comment stream, where he talks about how he built the flash and ambient ratio for the shot.
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As far as my photo, which pretty much looks like a little turd compared to Robert's stuff, I stuck an SB-800 at camera left and exposed for the flash at about 1 stop above the ambient. Location: My mail box.

For more info (and a diagram) on Robert's tri-fold, high-dynamic-range panorama cover shot, check out his Flickr page for the photo.

Hands-On Review: Nikon SB-900 Speedlight

I got a chance to play with a new Nikon SB-900 speedlight over the last few days and I gotta say, it's a pretty sweet flash. Long story short: Nikon has just extended their lead in the flash department.

The only drawback I can see is the "perfectly good" status of the current SB-800. And that $500 price tag, of course.

Should you get one? Swap out all of your SB-800s? Be on the lookout for cheap, used SB-800s and add more?

Hit the jump for the Full Monty review, and a few things you might want to consider.
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First impression: It is much bigger than the SB-800. Didn't really seem any heavier, but definitely takes up more space. This is a consideration for a couple of reasons. One, cubic inches matter when on the road. Not so much on a single flash basis, but if you are packing half a dozen SB-900s, you could probably cram seven SB-800's in the same space.

Also, the head is a totally new design and size. This means that your current light modifiers may or may not fit the SB-900, depending on their size and/or mounting flexibility.


So here's that big ol' honker of a head. First glance, it looks to be pretty much the biggest speedlight head going, save maybe the Vivitar 285 HV. It looks bigger than an old SB-26, and certainly bigger than an SB-24.

If you can get past the size, they have done some really cool things with the extra space. The 200mm zoom rocks. Not because I am gonna direct flash with my 70-200 racked out. But because it will concentrate the beam, of light into a smaller area when used off-camera.

Why would you care? Because it effectively gives you a more powerful flash when large swaths of light are not needed. Like doing a hard-light, multi-flash portrait outdoors, for example. You usually would not want to light their feet anyway.

Rather than eat up that needless beam angle with a snoot or grid, you can zoom it in, and get some extra f-stop with the more concentrated beam. This translates into more control over the ambient light level (you can get a darker working f-stop at 1/250th, for example) for more choices in your ambient tones.

Of course, you can get a Better Beamer to stick on just about any flash to do this, but it is not built-in.

The Big Head Advantages do not stop there. It's the most sophisticated refractor/reflector system I have ever seen on a flash. They actually modulate the tube with respect to both the front fresnel and the polished, rear reflector. This gives you the ability to shape the internal qualities of the beam, too.

You can choose a normal (slightly concentrated) pattern, an even more concentrated pattern (again, yet more energy to the center for situations described above) or a near-perfectly even light distribution depending on your lighting needs.

That's a real breakthrough in speedlight design, and brings to a (relatively) small package more of the capabilities of an interchangeable-reflector studio strobe. Big props to Nikon for that.


Other advantages that argue for switching are the new CLS interface. You'll get back the time you spend wading through the CLS menus on your master flash. This would not be a reason to swap out, say, four flashes. But it might be good reason to get one to use as a master.

It's basically a manual switch and a wheel dial -- a very fast an intuitive combo for switching setting in very little time. It took a little digging to find the SU-4 mode, which we like because it activates an awesome built-in slave, but I can confirm it is included and does work it's manual-power slaved-flash magic.

I actually used that mode to sync all of the flashes used to make the shots in this post. More on that later.


Big on the advantage list: Recycle time absolutely rocks at 2 seconds with no accessory battery back. Better circuitry uses the same power source -- with much faster recycling. This is a dream with Ni-MH batts, and the fifth-wheel option is no longer needed for fast shooting. For some, this will warrant swapping out their main, on-camera flash.

The accessory SD-9 battery pack walks that already fast recycle time down to about a second at full power. And it can hobble along on just four extra batts if needed, according to the Nikon guys I spoke with.

Interesting point: The power plug on the SD-9 has two extra nubs which means it will not fit other flashes. But the design looks as if the current SD-8-type plug may fit the SB-900. This is important if you are going to be migrating other existing battery packs to the SB-900.


Thankfully, the PC jack is still there. Big ups to Nikon for including the old-school synching, in addition to the fancy-pants CLS stuff.

One other noteworthy change is that the SB-900 swings both ways -- you can go reverse 180 in either direction. This is especially useful, in that whichever way you mount a remote flash you can have the receiving window facing the master light source.

Before, there were situations in which you had to cheat that angle and lose wireless range as a result. Every flash should have this feature, IMO.


In Sync:

1. It comes with a gel holder, which totally rocks. No more tape and/or velcro. And the dome diffuser fits right over the gel holder, allowing both to be used at once. The bar-coded Nikon gel thing is a little gimmicky -- it sets your camera's WB to the "appropriate" setting. The special Nikon gels could easily be duped with a template and some liquid paper. You will not need to re-up with the official Nikon gels ($$) if you do not want to.

2. Goofy, but cool: At full power, the discharge sounds like a blaster from Star Wars ("pew, pew, pew"). Recycling is almost silent. And oh-so-fast.

3. My seven year-old boy loved the battery compartment: Individual cylindrical battery holes -- like loading a revolver.

4. Thermal shut-down protection -- which can be disabled if you are completely stupid. Cool detail: A "thermometer" in the rear display shows you if you are starting to red-line it.


Out of Sync:

1. Five. Hundred. Dollars.

2. The hot shoe is a new, thicker size that will not fit many current accessory shoes. McNally dropped one out of a Justin Clamp, which is a staple lighting tool. (The Nikon guys mentioned that about 5 times this weekend, Joe. They might be sending the black helicopters after you shortly...)

3. The new AS-21 foot must be used because of the new shoe size. Which would be fine, except for that the metal female 1/4 x 20 insert in the AS-19 has been replaced by mere molded plastic in the AS-21. This will be a problem for people who repeatedly use the AS-21 on an umbrella swivel. That's a design whiff that should not have happened. (More on that here.)



Decision Time

So, that to do?

My biggest problem is, I absolutely love the SB-800s. IMO, many of the added features are great. But I do not think I can justify switching everything out wholesale. Buying just one might be a very good idea -- I can see many instances when those extra features would make for a more useful single flash.

My other problem: They may well choose to discontinue the SB-800, which would be a crying shame. It's either that or create a whole new production line for the SB-900. The SB-800 is small, powerful and does everything. Many will continue to prefer it to the SB-900, given price difference and the fact that the core functionality is the same. Seriously, what's so wrong with this current flash?

But of course, that's how my grandmother felt about her rotary-dial ATT phone, too. I am officially old now.

I know one thing -- if they do drop the SB-800, the '900 is gonna sell a crapload of SB-600 flashes. Thats a huge price gap which many amateurs will not be able to rationalize. And the smart move for new CLS'ers might be one '900 and a few '600's. Who knows.

The SB-900s are already pre-selling like crazy. So Nikon is clearly doing something right. My hope: SB-800s go out of vogue with the doctors, dentists, and rich soccer moms and they all wind up in the used dept and on Ebay for $200 a pop.

'Cause if that happened, I'd pimp out my lighting bag like McNally's. (Only, he'd have 72 SB-900s by then...)


Lighting These Photos

For the top photo (shown again here) I set the subject flashes on SU-4 slave mode in manual, at 1/128th power. Since they were only a few inches away from each other this would be my limiting factor, even dialed down to 1/128th. A quick pop-and-chimp, and I was adjusted to the aperture that gave me a good exposure from each other's close-in light.

I shot these with a new Nikon D700, BTW. We were absolutely swimming in new toys this weekend at Shoot! The Day in NYC. Awesome little camera, that '700. D3 guts in a D300 body. Expect iPhone 3G-esque wait times for a while if you want one.

Anyway, once I got the best shooting aperture for the flash-to-flash light from the subject flashes, I manually adjusted the other lights to look good at the chosen aperture, which I believe was f/16. I shot at a 250th, to nuke the ambient away. I put the flashes on a shiny black table and shot low, to maximize the reflection.


Other lights were:


• An SB-800 aimed at the background from under the table, using the frosted diffuser for an even gradient.

• Two SB-800's as rim lights, which edge-lights all of the shiny black surfaces.

• An on-camera flash in a Ray Flash adapter, which gave me the specular highlights on the front surfaces.


You Tell Me

Nikon shooters: Are you gonna get one? Are you gonna swap out your SB-800s? Why? Why not?

I'm on the fence, and looking for feedback...

One-Light Night Landscape

New in the Strobist Reader Gallery is Jonathan Boeke's night shot of a stand of trees.

It's done with multiple pops, during a time exposure. And it is easier than you might think. Keep reading for a few tips on creating shot like this, next time you are alone in the woods at night...

For this shot, Jonathan walked to a spot behind each tree and fired a Nikon SB-600 with a green gel back at the camera while the shutter was open during a time exposure. (You can click on the pic for the comment thread, and his explanation.)

If you have a camera that supports multiple exposure, you can eliminate a lot of noise (and logistical problems) from the frame by shooting the frame as a sequence of higher-shutter speed multi-exposure shots.

But you'd need a shutter cord and a third remote (or a helper and a tripod) to do that. You can see how to do the channel-hopping relay mode here.

If you wanna go multi exposure, you can do it with no remotes at all. Just open that shutter and start running. I've pulled together a few ideas to help your photo, and save some work in post production.
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• Wear dark clothing. Nice to have a dark hoodie, too, just in case you do not have one of those face-hiding ninja masks lying around.


• Snoot the flash just a teensy bit. You still want a nice, wide beam, so just do a half-inch or so. Black gaffer's tape works great. But that little ridge will help avoid blowback in the exposure, which can light you up if you have limbs visible to the camera.


• Mount a very dim light source close to the vertical axis of the lens at the camera. Maybe an LED flashlight, aimed up, mounted to the hot shoe. This will let you know when the tree is hiding you (and your flash) from the camera very precisely as you walk around in the background.


• Consider varying your distance from behind the trees as you pop each flash shot. You can throw light a long distance, and light up big chunks of your background that way. Be sure to crank up the power some (adjust with a few test shots) to account for the increased flash-to-blocking-tree distance. And multiple pops could be your friend here, too.


• If you aim the flash up a little (or a lot) you'll light the leaves in the trees better. Especially in the background, where more height from the trees will be visible to catch the light. This will also avoid the hot spot being visible at your feet.


• Remember that the light behind the far trees acts as a nice rim for the nearer trees, so take that light-to-subject distance into account when planning how far back to get behind the rear light pops. (Remember L102 Position -- evenness increases with distance.)


• Watch your ambient lights, to keep from tracking. Gaffer tape everything that would give off light while you are busy walking around in your frame. Your flash ready light and info panel backlight need to go dark. Ditto anything else that might be glowing or blinking, like a Pocket Wizard status LED.
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If you are gonna try this on your own, tag your shot "strobist" and "backlitforest" (the latter is all one word) so we can see all of them at once by clicking here. I am thinking of trying one myself, and it might be fun to revisit in a future post.