September « 2008 « Neil vN

sparklers ..

September 30, 2008

[ click on the photo to see a larger image]

I’ve had a few people ask me about this image which I posted as the opening image of a slideshow of a recent wedding I photographed. The question was how I lit this, and if I had used flash. The answer is perhaps a very reassuring one .. I only used the light from the sparklers, and no flash was used.

What helped here was that there were numerous sparklers, giving a fairly even light over the bridal party. The light from the sparklers is very short-lived, so you have to be all set to grab as many frames as you can when this opportunity arises.

With only the light from the sparklers and no flash at all, it immediately becomes obvious that I had to have used a high ISO and a fast aperture.

For that image (and the others in the sequence), I was at 1/80th @ f1.8 @ 1600, with my WB set to Incandescent. (I still had to adjust the overly warm image as part of my raw workflow.) I used the Canon 24mm f1.4 lens for the series of images of the bridal party here. The relatively high shutter speed enabled me to not lose too many images to blur as the people moved around. My exposure mode was manual, and I adjusted my exposure every few frames by checking my LCD preview.

As simple as all that.

For anyone who is hampered by a slow zoom lens, I would strongly recommend looking at some of the affordable fast primes such as the Canon 50mm f1.4 and Canon 85mm f1.8, or the Nikon 50mm f1.4 and Nikon 85mm f1.8 - sometimes you just need that fast lens where a slow lens (even with vibration reduction / stabilisation) won’t suffice. These fast primes will allow you to take photos in much lower light, and even handhold in low light when necessary.

Filed under: technique — Neil vN @ 3:16 am

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workshop views: Grand Rapids, Chicago, Indianapolis

September 24, 2008

Last week was a whirlwind visit to 3 cities where I presented workshops on flash photography – Grand Rapids (MI), Chicago (IL) and Indianapolis (IN). The format of the workshop is now established and presented in the same way as I first did with the Denver workshop last month.

Here are some images of some of our models, where we used different technqiues with flash, whether on-camera and bounced off reflectors or different surfaces, or off-camera with a softbox.

Thank you to everyone who attended, and a special thanks to our models who were all patient and great to work with.

Filed under: workshops & seminars — Neil vN @ 5:59 am

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review: RadioPoppers P1

September 9, 2008

[ click on the photo to see a larger image]

Apathy Angel against the backdrop of the Manhattan skyline.

The settings for the image above was 1/2000 @ f1.6 @ 100 ISO, and the reason for the wide aperture was that I wanted to have the skyline appear as that dreamlike haze in the background. The bright light though, forced a very fast shutter speed. In this case 1/2000th would let the background over-expose a little and blow out somewhat, but give me some detail. But to control the lighting on my model more specifically than just the available light, I used flash.

For the lighting here I used a speedlight in a Westcott Halo softbox (B&H) held up on a monopod by an assistant. This would give me directional but soft light on my model, Apathy Angel.

A year ago, to trigger an off-camera flash, you would have to rely on radio transmitters (such as Pocketwizards for example), or wireless TTL control.

With the traditional radio transmitters, there is no intelligence, and the off-camera flash would be in manual .. which has worked very well over the years. A real limitation would be that you’d hit a ceiling with the maximum sync speed. This in turn would force a specific aperture on you unless you started using neutral density filters and such to give a wider aperture in bright light.

Wireless TLL, in conjunction with high sync-speed flash technology would allow you to to go much higher shutter speeds (and hence wider apertures.) This does come at the cost though of reduced power (and therefore reduced range.) One of the big problems with wireless TTL, is that you need line-of-sight to control your other speedlights. This eliminates using the speedlight in an enclosed softbox, or in a position out of sight.

In the past year there has been incredible buzz about a new product, the RadioPoppers, which would allow any speedlight and camera capable of wireless TTL flash, to be controlled even when not in the line of sight of the master speedlight or flash controller on the camera. This is a huge benefit to photographers that need a reliable way of controlling TTL flash without the hassle of staying within a specific range and direction of the slaved speedlights.

The additional benefit is that high sync-speed flash photography can also be used with much greater ease and without the need of line-of-sight control.

That’s the background. Here’s the review … do the RadioPoppers work? Yes, very well!

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