RDU to Chicago/O'Hare

Waiting room

Aren't they so kind?

Impromptu

Trusty (well... not entirely) wireless triggers in hand, I was off and about in this world of ours. On todays agenda, helping "The Girlfriend(tm)" prepare for a move!

As we were rummaging about I came across this pretty snazzy full finger `ring' as it were and thought, "Hey! That's pretty snazzy!" Keeping tabs on it while we were working, it became the object of my attention the first break we took.

The initial setup was fairly simple. We had plenty of boxes laying around to use as a platform and a box lid for the back support. The background itself was simply a sheet of printer paper ramped up against the box lid, and a second sheet across the lid itself to give me a semi decent bounce surface from behind.

As for the lighting, the room lights were fairly low, so it wouldn't be too hard to over power them with the small strobe. I tried a couple of different angles and positions for the flash holding it in hand but all of them produced rather hard shadows, even the the diffusion plate down. So, I looked about and found an appropriate place to situate the flash for a bounce off the ceiling.

The one thing I didn't consider was how close the flash was to a the wall. It added an additional bounce surface but also a much smaller point of light. If you look closely, you can see a faint yet rather sharp shadow under the arch, caused by the offending wall.

In the end, it took me all of two minutes to set up, maybe 5 minutes to shoot, and another minute to break down. After a couple of test fires, I ended up shooting a 1/8th powered flash at f/11 and ISO100. In retrospect, I probably could have upped the power another notch or two and used an even narrower aperture as well as upped the ISO to 200 or 400.

Never the less! Practice practice practice! *hurls a chair*

Cactus

Great news folks! My package from Gadget Infinity arrived in the mail today! Woo Hoo!

Anyway, the contents included the following items:
- 4-Channel Wireless Flash Trigger V2, aka Cactus Trigger
- an additional Cactus Receiver
- Wireless Shutter Release for my RebelXT (350D)

Gadgets abound! So I figured I'd take the triggers along with me, as I was invited to dinner at my best friend's residence. After the initial hellos and whatnot, I immediately broke out the flash+wireless trigger and started messing around. Seeing what I could get out of the ambient lighting etc.

I finally came up with this. A 1/8th powered flash with a CTO Tungsten gel bounced off of a relatively white ceiling. The flash ended up being positions approximately one foot above and one foot to the right of the camera body. Nothing too fancy, just having fun with the new toys.

As for the items now. The wireless shutter release seems to work flawlessly. The 16 channel remote/receiver plugs right into the camera's remote shutter control port. I haven't distance tested it yet, but I can't imagine a need (yet) for being more than 10-15 feet from the camera anyway.

The Flash triggers were a little more iffy. Made of fairly durable plastic, they seem rugged enough. It would seem the pivoting shoe mount on the receiver was replaced with a segmented pivot, having discrete locking positions, rather than a free floating set up. The plus is that the piece actually locks in place. The down side, well, fewer positions. Though I suppose all of that can be corrected with the light stand swivel mount anyway.

The other thing I noticed was a tendency for misfires. In channel 0 (switch 1 and 2 in the Off position) everything works fine, with only an occasional misfire (read: once or twice since I got it). In any other channel pairing, they misfire like crazy, ranging from once every couple seconds to 2-3 times per second. I suppose this would only be bothersome in a large group of people using the same triggers, never the less...

In any case, for a total of about $80 on the flash and camera triggers/receivers, I'd say I'm quite happy with the results. In other news! Lighting 102 approaches! Less than one week to go!

Bleargh!

So, here we go with round two. The general set up was a hair more complex this time.

Just finding a spot was probably the hardest part. Going through each room in the house I was met with obstacle after obstacle. For every one wall that was open and did not have enough room to set up the equipment, there were two more that had enough room with various pieces of furniture obstructing the wall. Grr. Etc. Finally I just decided to go with a wall in my bedroom, some room and slightly more comfortable for the model, aka "The Girlfriend(tm)" than being in front of everyone at home.

Now, for the set up of the background. I already had a fairly white wall, recently painted and whatnot so, the background wasn't much of an issue. I knew I needed fairly bright so as to come out as close to white as possible. After a few tests, I found just off white was a more pleasant tone than pure white, but I digress. It was a pretty straight forward problem. White wall, not enough light. How do we fix it? More light, of course!

So, I grabbed some Halogen Lamps my brother had, a single 500W floor lamp and a pair of 250W lamps on a tripod. The single was placed on the floor to the left of the camera, behind the subject, angled upward and toward the wall. The 250W pair were similarly posed on the right and adjusted to fill in the falloff of the single lamp. All said and done, it produced a fairly even light on the background.

Now, as for the lighting of the subject. Again, the light itself was fairly simple. Getting it all set up was difficult. The best spot for the light stand just happened to be directly below a ceiling fan. Of all the luck. So, I got the umbrella on and all set up and wedged it right up against the blub. Set it up to half power and added the CTO Tungsten to balance with the Halogen Lamps.

Now, the only down side to this whole set up was the close proximity of everything. As such I could not put as much space as I wanted between the subject and the back wall. This caused the halogen lamps to spill a little bit of light onto her face. Also, with the low ceiling, the lamps were also bouncing light all over the place adding to the ambient light a bit.

Alright, now admittedly this is not exactly the most appealing pose a person could strike. But I did have permission as it is arguably the best shot from the entire shoot. Once again, what luck I have. In any case, there we have it folks! Until next time!

Round One!

Light?!

...

Ok... that was terrible, I admit it. Never the less, here we have it folks! The results of my first attempt at using my strobist equipment properly.

My best friend came over and I some how managed to convince her to pose for me. Really it was quite free form. She sat down and we started talking, all the while her moving about trying different poses. Etc, etc, etc.

My own critical review says I probably should have used a little more strobe and a little less background light. Also, a narrower aperture to capture that little bit of the elbow that didn't make it. Otherwise, I'd say I'm ok with this being my first attempt.

As for the set up, the background light is that of a bare CFL blub approximately 10 feet from the camera/background to the camera's right. About 10 feet to the left is my 430EX at 1/16th shooting into a 43 Inch Silver Umbrella with a CTO Tungsten for fill. Nothing too fancy.

More to come as `The Girlfriend(tm)' heads over to try her hand at it. And more complex setups too!