Aleona (model) « Neil vN

Tangents

Aleona (model)

June 20, 2009

Aleona - lit with an off-camera Q-flash T5D-R, using Quantum’s wireless system,
and a 24×32 softbox on a lightstand.
camera settings: 1/1000th @ f4 @ 200 ISO.

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20 Comments »

Hi Neil lovely balance with the lighting, looking forward to the video.

Comment by John Lewis — June 20, 2009 @ 8:09 am
Nice shot! I presume you shot from a kneeling position pointing slightly upward?

Comment by Stephen — June 20, 2009 @ 9:27 am
Stephan .. have you seen the New York streets!? I wouldn’t want to be kneeling in any of that grime. But I did crouch as low as I could to get that shot to accentuate her legs.

Neil vN

Comment by Neil — June 20, 2009 @ 10:46 am
How did you get the Qflash to sync at 1/1000s?

Comment by Bob — June 20, 2009 @ 12:03 pm
Yes, how did you get the Qflash to sync at 1/1000?

I didn’t Qflash supports high-speed sync!

Comment by Randy Dutton — June 20, 2009 @ 4:34 pm
Bob and Randy .. well spotted! The Quantum system doesn’t support high-speed sync flash (yet). However, I did shoot that at 1/1000th with the Q-flash on a camera with a max sync speed of 1/250th.

I’ll have a detailed explanation ready in a few days, as soon as I have the illustrative images ready. :-)

Neil vN

Comment by Neil — June 21, 2009 @ 8:43 pm
Hi Neil,
I can only speak of Manhattan (I commute to work there), but some streets are clean enough to kneel down on one knee to take a shot. Denim jeans are good for this. :-)
I wasn’t expecting your whole body to be on the floor taking these shots (although some photographers will do just about anything to get that shot, i.e. Joe McNally).

If you took this photo in one of the other 4 boroughs of NYC, then I don’t know how good the sidewalks are.

Comment by Stephen — June 21, 2009 @ 10:39 pm
I haven’t tried this out but I believe I know how you shot at 1/1000th of a sec, with no black curtain in front of your sensor. If you shoot indoors past the sync of your camara, you’ll get that nasty black curtain in front of your sensor, But if you shoot outdoors, the ambient light make it a lot less noticeable (like a vingenette). If you’re camara sync is 1/250th, then at 1/320th, the bottom one third of your sensor will be covered. At 1/500th, half of your sensor will be covered as the curtian moves up or down (Depending on your camara) Now check this out! If you shoot at 1/1000ths of a second, which is twice 1/500ths of a second. The curtain will move over the remaining half of your sensor, giving you no noticeable curtain at all, but a darker image since it’s at 1/1000ths of a second. Correct me if I’m wrong, but if you are shooting @ f4 @ 1/1000ths of a second, aren’t you darkening the image by 2 stops as if you are shooting @f8. It took me a while to figure it out. I think it’s a really cleaver trick.

Comment by Ron — June 22, 2009 @ 7:59 am
Ron .. that’s quite correct in how the flash sync normally works … except .. except .. in this case, you can see the model is lit up with flash if you look at how the light falls on her face. You can also see the slight flash shadow behind her legs on the sidewalk.

So there definitely is flash.

Solid try though. ; -)

Neil vN

Comment by Neil — June 22, 2009 @ 12:23 pm
Ok my turn, it’s a square image because you cropped the dark part off, hooray for big sensors :)

Comment by Steve — June 22, 2009 @ 3:13 pm
Steve … nope. That’s not it either. With the D3 (as in most (all?) digital SLRs, the shutter curtain runs vertically. So if I were to chop off part of the image that wasn’t lit by flash, it would be a vertical crop, not a horizontal crop.

Sooo .. there’s still flash adding light to the model.

Neil vN

Comment by Neil — June 22, 2009 @ 4:25 pm
Ummm…you got to test the unreleased version of the new pocket wizards for Nikon before anyone else! (I’m hopeful anyways…)

Cheers!

Comment by Trevor — June 22, 2009 @ 5:01 pm
Neil,

You used an on-camera sb900 in HSS mode to trigger the quantum (possibly an optical slave trigger, or using the pc jack on the sb900 as an output) early enough to avoid the black band across bottom, and relied on the longish flash duration to cover the whole sensor? Feathered the softbox to compensate for the fading flash pulse?

David Graham

Comment by Dave Graham — June 22, 2009 @ 8:53 pm
Nope & nope. :)

Just a single Q-flash at full power .. triggered wirelessly.

The wireless triggering has nothing to do with it .. but being at full power has everything to do with it.

Here are two clues: t.5 and t.1

(I’m hoping to hear from the people at Quantum in the next few days to clarify a few specific technical details .. and then I’ll write it up with a proper explanation.)

Neil vN

Comment by Neil — June 22, 2009 @ 9:14 pm
Maybe at full power the flash is so insanely bright that it glows for the full 1/1000 second or longer? Even a relatively weedy SB-900 has a quoted flash duration of 1/880 second at full power.

Comment by Damian Leonard — June 23, 2009 @ 10:08 am
That should have been 1/250 second, of course.

Comment by Damian Leonard — June 23, 2009 @ 10:16 am
Or, to be precise, 1/200 second (1/250 s curtain travel time + 1/1000 s lag between first and second curtains).

Comment by Damian Leonard — June 23, 2009 @ 10:38 am
Here it is .. an explanation of the way I understand how I was able to get flash exposure at a shutter speed much higher than maximum flash sync speed.

I’d love to hear comments and any corrections.

Neil vN

Comment by Neil — June 26, 2009 @ 4:03 am
Hello Neil….always a pleasure to read your posts. After watching your las video with the three models in Manhattan, I got motivated and went with my doughter to shoot. I used my 20×20 softbox with one Vivitar 285 manual wireless, since the Vivitar….well is very simple.

Came back to see that the pictures did not end up like yours…ahahah!!! no wonder. Anyway, I was wondering how can you achive that deep yellow soft like light and the bright colors…from de video you can see that the scenery is like your everyday scenery, but when you see the final result is like Wao!!!!.

My flash light looks white and with no real definitions. I have used several of your techniques indoorrs with on camera flash and is getting better, but outside the light looks white…like is not even there…and the picture in RAW format lacks deep color.

After reading some more, I saw your comments when shooting Aleona, that your Speed was 1/1000……wao, I never thought of that. Obviously, my 18-80, does not go bellow 4.5, but I guess higher speed and higher aperture is the way to go to try to achieve that hugh?

Thank youm keep them comming.
Antonio

Comment by Antonio — July 2, 2009 @ 9:45 pm
Hi there Antonio ..

In this case, the actual settings, 1/1000th @ f4 didn’t gain me anything over what I would’ve gotten with 1/250th @ f8

It was really just an exercise for me to figure out something more about flash, and using some aspects about the actual flash pulse, to sync flash at higher than the max sync speed.

If your photo lacks impact, it is most likely a combination of your lighting and post-processing.

Neil vN

Comment by Neil — July 2, 2009 @ 9:51 pm