- Location
- Camden, SC
Nice experimentation. All the first ones are too hot IMHO. The last one at F22 and 1/20 is about perfect balance. You want the flash to illuminate the interior and not overpower the exterior. GJ!
Experimenting with off camera flash
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asp
NAXJA Forum User
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- Westport, MA
My parents gave me a SB-600 to go with my D60 for my birthday a few days ago. It's still in shipping, but I can't wait to experiment with it.
Slightly off topic: Is this forum the appropriate one for photography talk? Or is this one more for people to post pics of their jeeps? Just wondering. Thanks.
Slightly off topic: Is this forum the appropriate one for photography talk? Or is this one more for people to post pics of their jeeps? Just wondering. Thanks.
DrMoab
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- The Utah Backwater
Yes, this is the appropriate forum.
- Location
- Camden, SC
x2
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NAXJA Member #135
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Beautiful images, Jared! Here’s my cheap way to use a single remote flash:
It is a flash cable. Since you already have a camera and a flash that are completely compatible in TTL mode, adding a cable to get the flash away from the camera will give you the same control as the wireless systems. Panasonic says that they make a TTL flash but nobody has them in stock. Panasonic and Olympus flash systems are 100% compatible so I ended up buying another FL-36 for my pocket cam. Ironically, the new version is set up for the Olympus wireless flash system. That doesn’t do me any good buuut there is also an optical slave mode that will work with any camera that has a built in flash, no hot shoe needed. Unfortunately the LX3 has a pre-flash that will trigger the slave and if it is shooting at a high output, the slave will not have any juice left for the actual exposure. So most of my off camera flash usage with the pocket cam involves that cable. Compare the number of contacts on the cable hot shoe vs. the one on the camera. I also had a really hard time locating an off camera flash cable that was compatible with an Olympus/Panasonic flash. It turns out that Canon flashes use one extra contact in the array on their hotshoe. Do yourself a favor and shop for a Canon flash cable, those are muuuch easier to find. Nikon has a slightly different arrangement so that cable and the Canon cable are not interchangeable.
Since you like doing close ups of wildflowers maybe this will give you some ideas of what to do with a portable light source or 2.
This is one of the toads that reside in my yard. You know how hard it is to do macro photography of anything that is 3 dimensional. At close subject to camera distances your depth of field is measured in millimeters, not inches or feet. The easiest way to help stretch out that DOF is to use a small aperture. Unfortunately that requires either a longer shutter speed or more light. You know I hate tripods so my solution was to set up a couple of flashes off camera to make a portrait of our toad. Mr. T. only comes out after dark. He hangs out underneath the porch light because it attracts the bugs that he likes to eat. The lamp has a CFL bulb and the light is weak and of an awful color. All of the light seen here is from my 2 speed lights, one on each side of me. Earlier in this thread I mentioned how you can control the ratio of ambient light to your flash output by varying shutter speed. Mr. Toad’s portrait was done at ISO 400, F/36 @ 1/320. The fast shutter speed prevented any of the porch light from registering in the image. Two flashes had plenty of power to expose properly at such a small aperture, especially since they were only a couple of feet away from him. The inverse square rule of light is normally the enemy of flash photography, but at macro distances you can move the light source close enough to your subject to be effective.
One last photo using off camera flash, also of a subject in his natural habitat. This time it is to overcome a backlight situation:
I’ll bet that turned out much nicer than the photos the creepy taser and gun toting ranger got of you.
hoto:
It is a flash cable. Since you already have a camera and a flash that are completely compatible in TTL mode, adding a cable to get the flash away from the camera will give you the same control as the wireless systems. Panasonic says that they make a TTL flash but nobody has them in stock. Panasonic and Olympus flash systems are 100% compatible so I ended up buying another FL-36 for my pocket cam. Ironically, the new version is set up for the Olympus wireless flash system. That doesn’t do me any good buuut there is also an optical slave mode that will work with any camera that has a built in flash, no hot shoe needed. Unfortunately the LX3 has a pre-flash that will trigger the slave and if it is shooting at a high output, the slave will not have any juice left for the actual exposure. So most of my off camera flash usage with the pocket cam involves that cable. Compare the number of contacts on the cable hot shoe vs. the one on the camera. I also had a really hard time locating an off camera flash cable that was compatible with an Olympus/Panasonic flash. It turns out that Canon flashes use one extra contact in the array on their hotshoe. Do yourself a favor and shop for a Canon flash cable, those are muuuch easier to find. Nikon has a slightly different arrangement so that cable and the Canon cable are not interchangeable.
Since you like doing close ups of wildflowers maybe this will give you some ideas of what to do with a portable light source or 2.
This is one of the toads that reside in my yard. You know how hard it is to do macro photography of anything that is 3 dimensional. At close subject to camera distances your depth of field is measured in millimeters, not inches or feet. The easiest way to help stretch out that DOF is to use a small aperture. Unfortunately that requires either a longer shutter speed or more light. You know I hate tripods so my solution was to set up a couple of flashes off camera to make a portrait of our toad. Mr. T. only comes out after dark. He hangs out underneath the porch light because it attracts the bugs that he likes to eat. The lamp has a CFL bulb and the light is weak and of an awful color. All of the light seen here is from my 2 speed lights, one on each side of me. Earlier in this thread I mentioned how you can control the ratio of ambient light to your flash output by varying shutter speed. Mr. Toad’s portrait was done at ISO 400, F/36 @ 1/320. The fast shutter speed prevented any of the porch light from registering in the image. Two flashes had plenty of power to expose properly at such a small aperture, especially since they were only a couple of feet away from him. The inverse square rule of light is normally the enemy of flash photography, but at macro distances you can move the light source close enough to your subject to be effective.
One last photo using off camera flash, also of a subject in his natural habitat. This time it is to overcome a backlight situation:
I’ll bet that turned out much nicer than the photos the creepy taser and gun toting ranger got of you.
hoto:
DrMoab
NAXJA Forum User
- Location
- The Utah Backwater
I’ll bet that turned out much nicer than the photos the creepy taser and gun toting ranger got of you.
I'd like to hear this story...
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NAXJA Member #135
- Location
- Albuquerque, NM
It is best shared in a proper trip writeup. Hopefully someone will start one somewhere... 
DrMoab
NAXJA Forum User
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- The Utah Backwater
You are talking about Jared here...who is still "getting around" to getting his photos posed from the trip he took in 1982.
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NAXJA Member #135
- Location
- Albuquerque, NM
That "someone" includes me too. "The longest trip report begins with a single keystroke." 
I'm trying to forget about that creepy ranger guy, yikes.
The cable idea sounds good, I shall get one as it will allow me to get the most out of that flash unit. The FL-50R would compliment it nicely I think. I would have loved having the cable at Aztec Butte in Canyonlands the other day. After trying in vein to coordinate a flash via the test button in various ways, I finally slapped the flash back on the camera hotshoe and made use of the swivel head on the FL-36 with a couple different angles to light the ruin to the one side of the composition, still a bit flatter than I would have preferred but it helped exposure at least. It was all for fun, that site begs to be photographed with a good sunset rather than a stormy overcast anyway.
Ryan, I don't know why Alex or Adam havn't written up that trip yet, I wondered if they might be really patient waiting for me to have the honors!
The cable idea sounds good, I shall get one as it will allow me to get the most out of that flash unit. The FL-50R would compliment it nicely I think. I would have loved having the cable at Aztec Butte in Canyonlands the other day. After trying in vein to coordinate a flash via the test button in various ways, I finally slapped the flash back on the camera hotshoe and made use of the swivel head on the FL-36 with a couple different angles to light the ruin to the one side of the composition, still a bit flatter than I would have preferred but it helped exposure at least. It was all for fun, that site begs to be photographed with a good sunset rather than a stormy overcast anyway.
Ryan, I don't know why Alex or Adam havn't written up that trip yet, I wondered if they might be really patient waiting for me to have the honors!
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NAXJA Member #135
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- Albuquerque, NM
Your mention of Aztec Butte reminded me of another photo to share. This is the reconstructed Great Kiva at Aztec Ruins National Monument. I wanted to get the roof detail... can you spot the flash?
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NAXJA Member #135
- Location
- Albuquerque, NM
99% of people viewing that photo would only see the flash because they read this thread. As for that other 1%, I guess I am busted. It does not bother me at all.
It does not bother me at all.
asp
NAXJA Forum User
- Location
- Westport, MA
An easy way to hide that would be with CS5's new content aware fill feature. With a textured background like those rocks, it would work really well and hide it perfetly.
- Location
- Camden, SC
99% of people viewing that photo would only see the flash because they read this thread. As for that other 1%, I guess I am busted.
You are 100% correct :cheers:
DrMoab
NAXJA Forum User
- Location
- The Utah Backwater
99% of people viewing that photo would only see the flash because they read this thread. As for that other 1%, I guess I am busted.
Really? The flash was one of the first things I noticed, it's in the center point of the room and almost the center of the photo. Kind of hard to miss it.
Looks like you could have just hid it behind the knee high object between the people and the flash and still got the same amount of lighting on the roof.
DrMoab
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- The Utah Backwater
