Umbrella Stand and Backdrop

I'm very excited about what the UPS man brought to our house recently! In the Adorama boxes were a light stand, a Westcox 60" umbrella, and the universal umbrella clamp.

On the right side of the photo, you can see the umbrella stand, umbrella, and attached flash.  And in front of the window, directly in front of the camera on the tripod, is the backdrop stand that Doug helped me create.  Basically, we bought  pvc piping, sawed some of it in pieces, drilled holes, bought elbow connectors, and hung a shower curtain on it. Unfortunately, there are some vertical stripes in the shower curtain. It works well enough when I blow out the background in processing. I think I need a few more holes in the pvc piping to have more options for the height, and might try some other kinds of material for the backdrop.

Oh, and the weird little toys on the floor, including the shredded stuffed animals, all belong to Ruby.

I'm slowly working my way through Zach Arias "One Light" DVDs on external flash, and Neil van Niekerk's book, "Off-Camera Flash."

So little time, so much to shoot! (But then, Doug says that too, but about squirrels!)

I'm in love with my SB800!

I've been working hard at understanding two new things to me: off camera flash, with my Nikon SB800, using the D300s as the "master", and the SB800 as the "slave", set on remote.

The second thing I'm working on is using my SB800 on manual rather than TTL or TTL-BL. (I know, I know. . . I've had the flash for over two years, but it's only now that it all seems to be coming together for me now!)

One thing which has made a huge difference was picking up the "One Light" DVD by Zach Arias on eBay, and it is incredible! He is making the concepts so clear that I'm finally making some headway with this!

The second thing that has been helpful has been getting a copy of Bryan Peterson's "Understanding Flash Photography." The only down-side is that he focuses pretty heavily on the Nikon SB900, which is difinitely different from the SB800, BUT he focuses extensively on putting the flash in manual. What a difference this makes!

Now, I can finally read some of the information on Strobist, and chunks of it are making sense to me now! Like, whole sentences full!

Literally, I can barely sleep at night, wanting to play with my flash now. (Doesn't that just sound wrong?)

Anyway, here are two rather serendipitous shots of Ruby, shot immediately after first learning how to put my camera in off-camera remote, the flash sitting on the couch next to me, Ruby walked up, and I "shot" her.

She's such a good sport! Like Bonnie, she knows Camera=Treat. None of the rest of my family will work so cheap for food.

Flowers Just Because

Several times a year, I get a nasty 48-72 hour migraine. This weekend, that, coupled with some arthritis flare-ups, left me rather. . . . subdued. My dear, sweet, husband, for no reason at all, bought me flowers!

The perfect thing for practicing with my external flash! I shot toward a bright window, ISO400; f 18; ss:1.3", exposure compensation on camera -.33, and I think the exp compesation on flash was set to +.7.

I've been trying to figure out a good approach to using my flash. Here are the 3 methods I've found, at least in the way I understand them:

1. Set your camera to ISO: 400; f 4.0; shutter speed 1/40 and shoot. The reasoning is that ISO and shutter speed control the ambient (background) lighting, and the burst of light from the flash will "freeze" the action so the slow shutter speed will be fine. The slow shutter speed is suppose to allow the background to have at least some light. With this, I think that sometimes an f of 4 will be ok, like for one person, but in other situations, on want much more of an area in focus and want more than an f of 4.0.

2. OR, With ISO 400, first take a shot in P mode, of the background area, without your intended "model" in the foreground, and the flash off. Look at what the settings are that the camera picks. This is going to determine a good exposure for the background, which will be controlled by the camera settings. Now, set the camera in M mode, using the same settings determined by this "test" shot, turn on the flash and shoot. Camera may set flash correctly, or I adjust the exposure compensation + or -. What I don't like about this is that I'm not sure I'd always like the aperture (f) chosen by the P mode. However, I do have more control over the ambient lighting (background) than I would in the first method.

3. OR, With ISO 200 or 400 (depending on light conditions), shoot in A mode. I pick the f stop that I want. Set the camera exposure compensation at -1.0 (this will slightly darken the bacground); set the flash at +.7 and shoot. Again this may be exactly what you want, although may decide to increase or decrease camera exposure compensation, or flash exposure compensation. It might take some adjusting the exposure compensation on camera and on-flash to get what I want, but I should have more control over the outcome.

So, what do all of you think? Playing with external flash(es), what kind of settings do you tend to use?