Trying to be a strobist...

  • So, I completed Lighting 101 from strobist.blogspot yesterday, and was full of brilliant ideas, ready to conquer the world (or, my small town of 9,000 at least). While building a float, I set up 2 strobes on tripods with my little wireless transmitters and started shooting. (shooting other people working)

    2 problems:

    I felt like a total weirdo setting up so much equipment for taking pictures of something so simple
    My pictures suckedCombine those two, and you have problems 3, 4, and 5. 3) even with all that equip my pictures sucked, 4) even with all that equip my pictures sucked, and 5) even with all that equip my pictures sucked. These three problems make me look like an overconfident loser who has too much money to buy equipment that he doesn't know how to use.

    Have any of you found yourselves in that situation when first learning new techniques?


  • http://www.smugmug.com/gallery/1427850
    That looks similar to 'A Better Bounce Card (http://www.abetterbouncecard.com/)'.


  • Something else I have heard about though never tried: If you have trouble visualizing the shape and distance of your flashes light, get some sidewalk chalk and find a parking lot somewhere and draw out a shoot. Draw the camera position and the subject's and where you think you should place the lights as well. Using different color chalks, draw the out line of the flashes light at an aperture you decide upon (use the guide number calculations for this) and them walk around the drawing to get the feel of everything. If you want two or three different apertures just use different color chalks to draw the light's outline.

    To get an idea of the shape of the flashes output, have someone hold the flash against a wall and take a photo of the wall using your wireless trigger. One shot with the flash flat for the vertical pattern and one shot on it's side for the horizontal pattern.

    I spent an entire night in a hotel out of town one night, just
    taking pictures of the flash pattern at different distances and
    zooms just to see what they looked like. Heh. As stated before,
    YAY digital!! That was also how I finally figured out the relationship
    between the flash and aperture. Long night. :)


  • It is, it's just a bit more of a refined design. It also has about twice the surface area making it more effective, plus you can modify it to go from some ceiling/wall bounce to practically no bounce for more distant subjects.

    Remember that the light from a flash is a single point light and follows the inverse square law, once it's reflected off of something it then reverts to simple optical laws. In other words not only is this softer than a direct flash, you don't loose as much power as you would with something in the way like a semi-transparent diffuser. The diffuser in this case does not effect the light source and the inverse square law is still in effect with them.


  • Well that is the beauty of digital it costs nothing to screw up.


  • I've read through most of 'lighting 101' and there is plenty of good info there. The one thing that doens't seem to get a lot of attention, is how to figure out the metering or power of the flashes. The guy running that site, has obviously been doing that for some time...and it comes very easy to him...knowing where to set the power on the flash and what aperture to use etc. It's not really that easy for most of us.

    A flash meter would be a good learning tool and would help to nail down your settings....but this is something that will come with practice and experience.


  • Something else I have heard about though never tried: If you have trouble visualizing the shape and distance of your flashes light, get some sidewalk chalk and find a parking lot somewhere and draw out a shoot. Draw the camera position and the subject's and where you think you should place the lights as well. Using different color chalks, draw the out line of the flashes light at an aperture you decide upon (use the guide number calculations for this) and them walk around the drawing to get the feel of everything. If you want two or three different apertures just use different color chalks to draw the light's outline.

    To get an idea of the shape of the flashes output, have someone hold the flash against a wall and take a photo of the wall using your wireless trigger. One shot with the flash flat for the vertical pattern and one shot on it's side for the horizontal pattern.


  • There's a big difference between reading something and doing something.
    Now you know your pictures sucked, do it again. And again, and again. Eventually it's stop sucking and you start making practical sense of the theory in your head.


  • ...knowing where to set the power on the flash and what aperture to use etc.

    Flash guide number divided by distance to subject equals aperture for normal exposure.

    Things to watch out for:
    guide numbers are usually listed for ISO 100
    make sure the GN you are using is for the unit of distance you are using (feet or meters)
    common lore is that flash manufacturers overestimate guide numbers, so personal testing will give you a more accurate assessment of what the real GN is.

    If it's too hard to do the math in the field, then read your flash manual. Many on-camera type flashes either have a mechanical calculator, or show the calculation in the LCD panel (all the upper end Nikon and Canon flashes do this). If that still isn't working for you write out the settings for particular distances on a piece of tape, and stick it to the flash.


  • So, I completed Lighting 101 from strobist.blogspot yesterday, and was full of brilliant ideas, ready to conquer the world (or, my small town of 9,000 at least). While building a float, I set up 2 strobes on tripods with my little wireless transmitters and started shooting. (shooting other people working)

    2 problems:
    I felt like a total weirdo setting up so much equipment for taking pictures of something so simple
    My pictures suckedCombine those two, and you have problems 3, 4, and 5. 3) even with all that equip my pictures sucked, 4) even with all that equip my pictures sucked, and 5) even with all that equip my pictures sucked. These three problems make me look like an overconfident loser who has too much money to buy equipment that he doesn't know how to use.

    Have any of you found yourselves in that situation when first learning new techniques?


    Keith... I feel your pain. I have taken a few gems with my crap wireless setup.
    Not sure how many exposures it took to get those few though. Heh.

    I recently ordered the 1 step up from crap Gadget Infinity wireless set up. I
    hope to get better results with this one. So far, everything has been an
    awesome experience. Even if the photos are crap, getting out and shooting
    to PRACTICE and KNOW they are crap is half the battle. It has taken me what
    seems like FOREVER to get the aperture/flash ambient/shutter speed+aperture
    combination figured out. I am feeling a bit more confident with it now, and I
    am pretty excited to have the new wireless stuff show up.

    I am using 2 SB24's and an SB600 as my set up. The SB24's only drop to 1/16
    power, which seems a little limiting, but I figure if I can work around that, I'll
    have it made.

    Don't give up man... I haven't yet. :D


  • 2 problems:

    I felt like a total weirdo setting up so much equipment for taking pictures of something so simple
    My pictures sucked

    Fortunately for you there is one solution for both of your problems: practice!

    The more you practice, the easier setting up the gear will become, your understanding of light will improve, and your photos will get better.

    If it makes you feel better... I've been making 100% of my living from photography for over 4 years now. I just bought a bunch of Pocket Wizards, and boy howdy, all of my recent off camera lighting shots are sucking too!! But I'll figure it out, and so will you. Don't practice when you have to get the shot, practice on your own time when getting the shot isn't important.


  • *Phew.... Breathes a sigh of relief*

    I'm on the same path as you dude, read most of 101 and have just ordered a remote set up and a flash gun, I'm sure I'm about to take lots of crap photos :lol:


  • pssssssst.. flash meter


  • I have recently started using 3 SB-800 Flash units in some photos. Inside and outside.
    http://www.eielson.af.mil/shared/media/photodb/web/070724-F-4127S-150.JPG


  • What ever you do however you do it, take notes. really.


  • There's a big difference between reading something and doing something.
    Now you know your pictures sucked, do it again. And again, and again. Eventually it's stop sucking and you start making practical sense of the theory in your head.

    Hahaha. that makes my day.



    Well I played some more. I took pictures in the privacy of my own home, taking about 300 pictures of my #20 Tony Stewart hat (did you see that KS race??). I figured out how to calculate distance, and exposure and all with my sunpak 383. There were a couple concepts I simply could not figure out, but then turned out to be so obvious. I can't wait to actually use these concepts for real life subjects (hehe.. my wife's gonna kill me if I don't stop using her for lighting practice)


    The Float (I complained about it in the original post)
    As for the float pictures (the ones that turned out super bad the other night) I have been thinking of the situation... so here it is.

    The Scene:
    24' Gooseneck Trailer in the middle of a small field. A very small tree on one side of it. Framing a miniature house, so on the trail/'>trailer are people and 2x4's. Then a bunch of power tools. People had tool belts, head-lamps around their heads, pencils behind their ears, hammers and tape measures in hands, and were holding nails between their teeth. Seemed to be a good place for pictures.

    Thoughts - problems and what I would have done different.
    I didn't have anything to reflect the light off of to spread it out, so I could really only use hard light. The hard light cast a lot of uncontrolled shadows from all the 2x4's If I were to do it again (might tonight) I would pull a white truck/car up beside the float, and point a strobe at the white truck/car...at high power. Seems like that would spread the light around real nicely, to light up the whole area. My goal is not to get some fancy artsy pictures, but rather to capture real quality pictures of people working on this float. This float is the heart and soul of a dorm of a baptist university (http://www.sbuniv.edu) in town, and nobody has good pictures, since most of the work is done at night.

    Suggestions? Comments?
    I'll be working literally all night on this float (parade is tomorrow) and there will be probably 30 people staying up with me. Any tips for my scenario? Tonight, the float will be about 20 feet from a brick wall (side of dorm) and a parking lot 20 feet on the other side. So, basically same situation as before, but just with a brick wall somewhat nearby.

    I have a Canon 430EX and a Sunpak 383. My wireless transmitters work great, but settings are manual. Any suggestions?


  • When I use my SB-600 off camera, I ALWAYS set the flash to manual and start at 1/4 power, and than go from there. That way, it's more like studio strobes. i-TTL sometimes complicates things by metering every time, and although it's consistent, I lose that much control everytime. It's also not that big of a deal to shoot in manual because I can control the flash power from my camera.

    So, with the total control I can get from my camera, putting the flash at a distance where the inverse square law works to my advantage, I can get great results.

    This for example was done with one SB-600. The 600 was the key light, and I used the sun as a kicker, even though it looks like it was another strobe, it wasn't!



    I put my SB-600 to 1/2 power, and my camera to 80mm, f/4, ISO 200, 1/500th. At half power, I was able to get my strobe far enough away to where the lighting was even all across her body and still provide enough light for a proper exposure, with f/4 I still got nice DOF, and my ISO at the lowest to be clean. 1/500th is my max flash sync.

    All of this was done using Nikon's i-TTL system, no pocket wizards, no radio anything, just the flash on my tripod, 8 feet away, and my D70's flash popped up as a commander.

    This is why I encourage off camera flash as much as possible, it gives amazing results with ease when you learn it.


  • Try a flash diffuser. With all due respect to the strobist style I find that I loose too much power with an umbrella- the light has already traveled 3 to 4 feet by the time it gets back to where the flash is on it's way to the subject. I first saw one of these reading one of Chuck Gardner's sites. He seems to have changed things up and I couldn't easily find a link to his but here is a link to one just like it.

    http://www.smugmug.com/gallery/1427850

    It is amazing how well these work and you really can spend under $5 for one.. btw, I use the full sized ones and I glued mine though you might want to go ahead and use the staples if you are in a hurry.

    ok, it occurs to me that someone might not know who Chuck Gardner is so I did find the link... http://super.nova.org/DPR/ and http://super.nova.org/PhotoClass/







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