I have just picked up a used SB-900, and am hoping to use it for an UrbEx tour I am making this weekend. The camera will be on a tripod, and some of the rooms will be very dark. I will be using ZF21, ZF.2 50MP and ZF.2 100MP on a D3. Unfortunately, it is too close to the tour now for me to learn the usual way I learn, i.e. go through manual, try everything which sounds interesting, look at some online tutorials, etc.
I am hoping to use it for two things: lighting up dark areas, and balancing inside-outside light for single exposures.
I have some questions which I had hoped to get answers for:
1) Is there a particular mode/attachment which makes more sense for this type of work?
2) What is the easiest way to get off-camera flash without investing a mint in an SU-800?
3) Do I need a tripod for the flash, or is hand-holding okay?
4) Anything else?
Help!
I should be more clear: I am not looking to learn every mode in two days, that would be insane. I am hoping that someone can steer me in the direction of a mode which is easy to control, yet allows more control than fully automatic, and then I would focus on that mode. I am willing to do several exposures to get things right, but am hoping that there is something more structured to let me minimize that sort of thing.
1) TTL or Manual. TTL if you move around a lot and the light changes. Manual if you there are less variables and you want to nail down the light coming from the flash every time
carstenw wrote:
2) What is the easiest way to get off-camera flash without investing a mint in an SU-800?
Since you need it this weekend, you may not have time to buy an off-camera iTTL cord. So the best thing is to use bounce flash by aiming the flash head at walls or ceiling, which will then become the source of the light reaching your subject.
carstenw wrote:
...I am hoping that someone can steer me in the direction of a mode which is easy to control, yet allows more control than fully automatic...
Camera in manual; flash in automatic. You get creative control by varying the ambient exposure to control subject:background ratio, but the system will keep the subject properly exposed. (In theory.)
carstenw wrote:
...I am hoping that someone can steer me in the direction of a mode which is easy to control, yet allows more control than fully automatic...
Camera in manual; flash in automatic. You get creative control by varying the ambient exposure to control subject:background ratio, but the system will keep the subject properly exposed. (In theory.)
If I can bounce, I will, but I expect water damage, odd-coloured walls and ceilings, and so on, so it may create too strong a colour cast.
I'll see if I can find a cable on short notice, but other than that, I will probably just make do then. Putting it in TTL mode, using the shutter speed to control the balance between ambient and flash light is probably the way to go, with flash exposure compensation to make adjustments.
carstenw wrote:
I will be using ZF21, ZF.2 50MP and ZF.2 100MP on a D3......
2) What is the easiest way to get off-camera flash without investing a mint in an SU-800?
Yes, seriously. You sound like I missed something obvious, which is entirely possible. Or do you mean that my lenses are expensive, so my wireless system should be too?
I have accumulated my kit over time. I don't want to invest a lot in wireless technology until I know that I will use it often. This is my first foray into flash since 30 years ago...
If I do end up finding it very useful, it is also possible that I will skip the SU-800 and get a Pocket Wizard or similar setup, another good reason not to get an SU-800.
I suppose it depends on what side of the fence you want to sit. Either you shoot whats there as it is. Or you control the light you put there and make it the way you want it to be. Bouncing from your camera adds light, but you have little control over where it goes.
In the 'easy' stakes the SU-800 makes it as easy as you can get, but a second Speedlight might be a more useful option. I'd never suggest buying an expensive radio system unless there was a need.
The SB900 has a built-in SU-4 mode which can be triggered by another camera mounted flash (needing very little output) or even a flash covered by a piece of unexposed but processed transparency film. With this, your remote flash could be used creatively and cheaply using Manual or Auto and your on camera trigger flash wouldn't be seen, or even included if you wished.
I want to (more or less) shoot what is there, but the contrasts might make it quite hard to get good shots without getting heavily into HDR, so balancing the indoor/outdoor light with some fill flash is an attractive option. I suppose later when I get better at lighting, I might experiment more with wireless and/or secondary flashes, but for now I will just take baby steps as I learn.
carstenw wrote:
If I can bounce, I will, but I expect water damage, odd-coloured walls and ceilings, and so on, so it may create too strong a colour cast.
If you can capture raw images with your camera(s), just shoot one picture with a neutral gray standard (gray card, WhiBal, SpyderCube, etc.) in the frame and then adjust your colors during post-processing using that object as your calibration target.
If you can't capture raw, you can do a custom white balance; again using a gray or white object of known neutrality under the light you're shooting under.
If you're mixing flash and ambient you may want to gel the flash to be as close as possible to the ambient, and with or without gelling you'd probably want to do color correction in post, or a custom WB.
So, the flash experiment was a huge success, I got a lot of very natural looking lighting on some of my shots, perhaps about 40%. Another perhaps 20% really needed the light, although you can see that flash was added. The rest was shot au-naturel. I ended up following the advice and shooting with camera on manual, and flash on TTL. I used flash exposure compensation to control the balance of the light, generally shooting perhaps 1 shot over-exposed, with flash on -1 or -2.
Here is one example (not the best shot, but one of the best examples), where the added light really adds to the photo, while not looking unnatural. First without, then with flash.
