ETTL in the Studio

Strobist info:
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* Key: 580EX II and 430EX II in a Westcott 28" Softbox above, camera right
* 430EX II in Morris 15x18" Softbox, camera left

Background:
* Savage 107" Seamless Charcoal Paper

In my past studio work, I'd use an Alien Bee B800 and several old Nikon speedlights triggered optically and by Pocket Wizards - all in full manual mode. This gives total control, but requires a lot more setup and tinkering. If the subject will stay still, you're set, but if you meter for the subject to be three feet from the key light and they move back a foot, they've just underexposed themselves a little bit. If they move closer by a foot, the difference is even more obvious, and you might clip some highlights.

This is where ETTL (Canon's fully automatic flash metering) really helps out. Here, I used a 580EX II on-camera to trigger three remote flashes - a 580EX and two 430EX II's. The remote 580ex and one of the 430ex's were in my softbox, camera right in group "A" and the other 430EX was in group B.

With ETTL, I can set the ratio of the two groups (A:B) in-camera - their power isn't determined until a split second before the shot. As I press the shutter, the on-camera 580EX quickly sends out coded pulses of light that tell each of the remote flash groups to send out a pulse of light at a known power. The camera quickly meters those pulses, then figures out how bright each flash needs to be. It then sends out another message to the flashes telling them how much power to use, and to fire at the same time. This all happens immediately before the shot - just about too fast to notice.

The drawback of ETTL is that two back-to-back shots might have slightly different exposures, but in the case of shooting children, the benefits outweigh it. If the kid moves forward, the flashes will fire with less power. If the kid moves back, the flashes fire with more. If the kid moves toward one light or the other, each light compensates accordingly.

In this shot, I used A:B mode on the flash with a ratio of 4:1 - the fill flash was 2 stops weaker (1/4 as bright) as key, just to fill in the shadows a little bit. Total flash exposure compensation was +2/3eV, which, sure enough, meant darkening it 2/3 stops in post-processing (but that's okay, because it actually reduces ISO noise to darken a photo). I was impressed at how well ETTL did. The on-camera flash was told not to contribute to the shot - just to master the remote slave flashes.

You may be wondering why I used two flashes in the key softbox - I've never done that before, and I didn't plan on it this time. It was a quick hack at the last second, because the 580EX II key light wasn't recharging as fast as I wanted, so I ball-bungeed a 430EX II next to it. With two flashes, each didn't have to work as hard, so recharging was faster.

How We Roll

(View my studio site)

We might have had a little too much fun tonight.

Strobist Info:
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* Key: Alien Bees B800 studio strobe shot into Alien Bees large foldable softbox with grid, camera right.
* Fill: Nikon SB-28 speedlight shot into Westcott 43" Shoot-Through Umbrella, camera left, 1 to 1.5 stops below key, triggered by Pocket Wizard wireless flash trigger.
* Background lighting: Canon 430EX triggered by Pocket wizard, Nikon SB-26 triggered by built-in optical trigger, both at about 1.5 stops below key, pointed into white back. I used the velcro compartment separators from my camera bag as gobos on the two background flashes

Background: Savage 107" Super White Seamless Background Paper

Floor: Two sheets of white tile board, the front one overlapping the back one, which overlaps the paper.

White Paper Background/Tile Board Studio Setup

Here's a studio portrait I shot of my daughter this weekend. I recently purchased some white tile board for my studio flooring as described by Zack Arias - this was my first attempt with it. Aside from the pretty reflections under my daughter, it also helps preserve my paper background and saves some photoshopping out of creases and folds due to our walking on it.

Here's my studio (basement) when I setup the white background:


If you click the image, you'll see that I have just about every bit of equipment labeled.

Strobist Info:
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* Key: Alien Bees B800 studio strobe shot into Alien Bees large foldable softbox with grid, camera right.
* Fill: Nikon SB-28 speedlight shot into Westcott 43" Shoot-Through Umbrella, camera left, 1 to 1.5 stops below key, triggered by Pocket Wizard wireless flash trigger.
* Background lighting: Canon 430EX triggered by Pocket wizard, Nikon SB-26 triggered by built-in optical trigger, both at about 1.5 stops below key, pointed into white back. I used the velcro compartment separators from my camera bag as gobos on the two background flashes

Background: Savage 107" Super White Seamless Background Paper

Floor: Two sheets of white tile board, the front one overlapping the back one, which overlaps the paper.

Crazy Booth!

I just finished post-processing photos from my first "crazy booth" photo shot. We hosted a party tonight, so I set up the lighting gear and invited my guests into the studio. The only rule was that everyone had to act silly and that they *should* wear or use one of the props I made available.

If you're a strobist, I'd highly recommend giving this a try next time you're hosting a party. Set up your lights ahead of time, making sure to get everything just right. You can get away with a single flash, but make sure to use a shoot-through or reflective umbrella, and keep it around front, 45 degrees from center and a little overhead.

I shot against my seamless 107" charcoal paper background, with three lights:

1. Key light
Alien Bees B800 - above, camera right with large soft box (32"x40") and grid, fired with built-in optical trigger

2. Fill light
Nikon SB-28, 2 stops below key, camera left into 43" reflective umbrella, fired by Pocket Wizard wireless tranceivers.

3. Background light
Nikon SB-26 through Honl 1/4" Grid, pointed down towards background from 7ft, fired with built-in optical trigger

You can see one of my test shots in my previous post, here.

Keep the subjects far enough from the paper that they're not casting shadows on it. I light lighting the background with a grid or snoot, aiming it right behind the subjects. This gives the shot a natural vignette that you can amplify in post-processing very easily. Make sure to keep the lights off to the sides enough for some good depth, and to help prevent reflection in your subjects' glasses. I like keeping my fill like 1.5-2 stops darker than my key - this fills in the shadows while preserving depth and preventing the lighting from being too flat.

One other note is that my basement studio has light green walls which would be a nightmare if they reflected back onto the subjects. To prevent this, I use a grid on my large soft box and a reflective umbrella to keep most of the light hitting the subject and the edges of the background.

Any Resemblance To a Gang Sign Was Completely Unintentional

I set up a crazy booth for a party. The rules were simple - you have to be goofy, and you *should* wear or use one of the props we made available. Here's one of my test shots to get my lighting just right. Normally I delete these, but I just couldn't get rid of this one :).

That's a Sekonic L-358 flash meter around my neck, which I use to test my lights. The added RT-32 transmitter chip inside triggers the Pocket Wizards for me.

Shot against Savage seamless 107" charcoal paper background

With Canon 40D, 17-55mm f/2.8 IS, Bogen 190XPROB tripod legs, Bogen 322RC2 grip action ballhead, and 10-second timer.

Strobist Info:
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* Key: Alien Bees B800 - above, camera right with large soft box (32"x40") and grid, fired with built-in optical trigger
* Fill: Nikon SB-28, 2 stops below key, camera right into 43" reflective umbrella, fired by Pocket Wizard wireless tranceivers.
* Background: Nikon SB-26 through Honl 1/4" grid, pointed up towards background, fired with built-in optical trigger

Shooting the Haas TL-15 CNC Lathe

Winters are tough for photographers. When it's too cold to go outside, you end up pointing your camera at just about everything in the house. So naturally, when asked to shoot a giant computer-controlled lathe in a machine shop, of course I jumped at the opportunity.

Note: The decision wasn't actually that easy. This still required my leaving the house (remember, it's damned cold out). Had I my own giant computer-controlled lathe, I might have declined, but after 15 minutes of searching, I couldn't find one in my house to shoot, so I happily agreed.

As an engineer, I'm fascinated with machinery, so it was fun just getting a tour of JMT Machine Company. The shop recently acquired this machine, a Haas TL-15 CNC Lathe, and wanted some shots for their website and to hang in their front office. While I'm not exactly sure what I'd do with this thing, that doesn't stop me from wanting one. Unfortunately, I'm a little strapped for cash right now, and have a backlog of camera gear that's ahead of this thing in line.

For this shoot, I decided to make the rather boxy machine a little more interesting by shooting up close with my Canon 10-22mm f/3.5-4.5 super wide angle lens. Now, being this close, I was (in retrospect, overly) concerned about getting the back of the machine out of focus. I generally shoot in the 30-55mm range, so I've been burned by too narrow of a depth of field in the past.

So, putting aside all of my ideas on how to shoot this thing creatively and erring on the side of making sure I got a few good snaps before leaving, I decided to be super-conservative and shoot at f/22. In retrospect, this was serious overkill. I should have known my DoF charts better for this lens - but hey, it's a learning experience, right?

If you're not familiar with flash photography, the one major difference between flash and ambient light is that, basically, only the aperture matters. You can't leave the shutter open longer to get more power out of your flash. That's how you get more out of your ambient. If you want to compete with that ambient, your only option is shoot bright and quick, not giving it the chance to burn in. Well, needless to say, f/22 eats flashes. I used a total of four strobes on this thing, spread out and each at 100% power and about eight feet away.

Here's a quick equipment check:
* Nikon SB-26, triggered by a Pocket Wizard radio flash trigger
* Canon 430EX, triggered by Pocket Wizard radio flash trigger
* Alien Bees B800 Flash Unit, triggered optically by the other flashes
* Nikon SB-28, triggered optically by the other flashes

My first thought going into this was to completely overpower the ambient lighting with a quick shutter speed and by cranking up the flash power. Well, as I mentioned, f/22 didn't leave me a whole lot of light to play with, and my first attempts at this were underwhelming at best. The flashes seemed overly artificial. Rather than stress out about that, I decided to try to use the ambient. After all - I was in a cool, grungy machine shop -- why hide it?

As it turned out, the existing light was awesome. Rows of fluorescents overhead and some powerful halogen (?) bulbs lighting up the business end of the machine when the door was open. This gave me some pretty cool color contrast to play with, while using my flashes for nothing more than fill. That suited them, considering how much they were knocked down by my choice of aperture. This gave the shot a more natural feel, adding to the shots.

At this point I had the aperture set, the flashes at the power I needed them, so the only variable left was the shutter speed, and that was all just trial and error. I ended up on four seconds. With my new, trusty, bombproof tripod (Bogen/Manfrotto 190XPROB legs and Bogen/Manfrotto 322RC2 grip action ballhead) and well, the tonnage of that machine, I was guaranteed a pretty still subject.

Overall a positive experience. I walked away with a better understanding of how deep a wide angle lens' depth of field is, how finicky optical flash triggering can be when in a large area (or outdoors), and that I shouldn't immediately dismiss the ambient light. And, the owner sent me home with some of his machined parts to shoot as I find the time.

Other equipment used during the photo shoot:
* Canon 40D
* Canon 17-55mm f/2.8 IS
* Bogen/Manfrotto 7' Pro Stand
* Bogen/Manfrotto 9' Basic Light Stand

Bah Humbug (A Strobist's Christmas)

Even though more likely to celebrate Isaac Newton's birthday or the recent winter solstice (notice the magazine cover?) than anything around the end of December, I still loves me some Christmas gifts. Here, I'm pretending to read the June 2008 issue of National Geographic for a test of my new Honl 1/8 Speed Grid.

I have to say - grids are really useful - I wish I had used them more in the past. It's really something how much control the grid gives you over a snoot or zoomed-in bare flash.

So, enough about that, here's how I shot this... And, if you're not a strobist, and you're thinking "big deal, there's nothing special about this shot!", go try it out for yourself, then come back to finish this post :)

There's a few things I had to consider here. First, I really love the yellow light that the corner lamp produces. I'm big on tungsten. So, I started by testing what the ambient light gave me. It was clear that if I wanted to see any of the Christmas tree lights, I had to take a long enough shot that the lamp greatly overexposed the whole back corner of the room as well as the right side of my face. That was a big shame - I really wanted both the tungsten lamp and Christmas tree lights together. So I setup a fill flash and turned off the lamp. That seemed to do the trick, but the scene didn't look right.

The solution? Either quickly unplug the lamp after a split second, or... fake out the lamp with a flash. I chose the latter :)

Why? The flashes release all of their light almost instantaneously, but ambient/constant light needs time to burn in. If I remove all ambient light from the scene except for the Christmas tree lights, I can control the ratio of tree lights to the rest of the scene with my shutter speed. The flashes only need the first 1/250 of a second to burn in. After that, I'm controlling the brightness of the tree lights alone.

Okay, so... I removed the bulb and attached a Nikon SB-26 flash with a Light Sphere Cloud on it to the lamp, underneath the lampshade, zoomed at 50mm. This was easy enough with small bungee cords. I used a 1/2 CTO gel on the flash to give it some tungsten color. The SB-26 has an optical slave mode to it, which means that when it sees a flash, it quickly fires off its own flash, so I didn't need to use one of my Pocket Wizards on this flash. I'd let my wide-angled fill light trigger it.

I set this "lamp flash" at 1/32 power. This was now the most awkward flash to get to, so I used this as the baseline. The rest of the scene was to be setup using the lamp flash at 1/32 power, 1/2 CTO. After firing off a couple of test shots, I found that this was perfect for ISO 500, f/5.

And now for the fill flash. There's not much to this - I just used a Canon 430EX flash on a light stand at 1/32 power, 35mm zoom, and again with a 1/2 CTO gel on it, behind and camera right. I used a Pocket Wizard to trigger this flash, which then triggered the lamp flash with its optical slave feature.

This was fine and all, but I wanted to make sure that the magazine and I stood out a little. As it was, I just blended into the background. So, to highlight the magazine and me, I set up another light stand above and camera left with a Nikon SB-28, this time 1/8 CTO, triggered by Pocket Wizard. To focus the light on the magazine and me, I used a Honl 1/8 Grid and zoomed the flash to 85mm, using 1/64 power. This produced a very tight flashlight-type light on me. It was perfect. The first attempt left a dark shadow behind my head on the couch, so I raised the light up by the ceiling. This seemed to do the trick.

There were a few small adjustments made to the two light stand flashes to get things just right. I would adjust the power if I was way off, and move the light stands closer or further away for minor adjustments.

All that was left was the tree lights - this was the easiest part. I tried several shutter speeds, and settled on 0.8 seconds. It was somewhat important for me to stay still during it, but remember, I'm almost entirely lit by the strobes, and then basically left in the dark. So, it wasn't likely that there'd be any ghosting in the shot. I used a remote trigger and my Canon 40D's 10 second timer to take each shot. One thing I found funny about this was that each time I'd go back to the camera to chimp, the static electricity I built up would trigger my flashes.

Now that you know how this was shot, it seems obvious that it's not natural. Look how bright the Christmas tree lights are compared to the lamp. Can you imagine what that would look like?

Here's a shot of the setup - click it to see each piece of equipment used.

Happy shooting!


Note: If you're interested, here is a great read on how Ken Geiger shot Stonehenge for the cover of that National Geographic.


Equipment:
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* Canon 40D, 17-55mm lens.
* Bogen/Manfrotto 190XPROB tripod with 322RC Ballhead
* Light stands: Bogen/Manfrotto 7 foot pro stand and 9 foot basic stand
* Flashes: Nikon SB-28 and SB-26, Canon 430EX
* Light modifiers: Gary Fong Light Sphere Cloud II and Honl 1/8 Grid.