See, I am slowly trying to get back on track and post a new blog a little more regularly than I have been of late. Today I wanted to quickly share a couple of images from a shoot I did on the weekend for a young family.
The brief for the shoot was fairly straight forward. We would be shooting in the mid afternoon sun, about 3.30pm to be precise, and we would be on a privately owned fruit orchard. Cool! As it was private property I didn’t really get the opportunity to do any scouting ahead of time (as I often like to do) but none the matter; I’d have to put into practice all that “thinking on your toes” wedding stuff I have been raving about recently.
I did know two things that I wanted to do before I got to the shoot. Firstly, I wanted to use off camera lighting. Secondly, it was a gorgeous afternoon and the light falling through the valley that we were going to be shooting in was amazing so I knew that I wanted to use the daylight to backlight my subjects as much as practicable. I have been getting more and more frustrated with my Pixel i-TTL radio triggers to the point that I refuse to use them any longer, as the results I get from them vary so wildly that it makes them pretty much impractical to use. This meant that I would obviously have to use a different method to trigger my Nikon SB-900 which was firing through a 24” collapsible softbox. I could have utilized Nikon’s wonderful CLS to trigger the flash, but with the ambient light so strong it would have proven to be a little unreliable also unless I was within a few feet of the remote flash.
So, enter stage left a newly purchased but until now untried 10m flash extension cord. Yup that’s right, 10 meters. And I got say, right off the bat this thing saved my hide. It worked brilliantly. Yeah I know it’s not a fancy radio trigger “Radio Popper” but for now it suits me just fine. I know that Pocket Wizard are now in beta testing with their “Flex” and “Mini” TTL radio triggers for Nikon but there is still no firm release date for them. So 10m extension cord it is.
As for the camera settings for the images, it’s pretty simple. Manual mode. Matrix metering. ISO200. Use the camera meter to establish what correct exposure would be for the entire scene, no flash. Take a shot. Check your LCD to ensure that you are getting enough highlights around your subjects. If you aren’t, move your shutter speed back and forth until you do. Remember not to try using your exposure compensation dials here as we are in manual mode, and although the camera will let you make the adjustment to the dials it will have NO effect on your image. Only use exposure compensation when in Aperture Priority, Shutter Priority or Program mode.
For me, correct exposure ended up being 1/2000th second shutter speed @ f/2.8, ISO200. I then turned on the flash and left it in TTL mode and set the camera to high speed sync mode so I could still use the flash at this high shutter speed. Of course the trade off with high-speed sync is that you lose a little power. But this was ok as I had the flash positioned nice and close anyway, at only about 1 ½ meters away. That’s it. Take a shot. Wait a couple of seconds for the flash to recharge. Take another shot. Repeat this process. Job done!
We took a bunch of shots in some different locations around the orchard that afternoon, but these ones sitting in the grass were my favourites from the day.
Keep shooting what you love and I’ll talk to you soon.
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