More Flash For Your Cash?

WARNING: THIS IS A RANT – NOT A COMPARISON REVIEW!

The other day I had a conversation with someone who was mentioning that he and his crew now only use the SB900 and they have all but thrown out their SB800 flashes.  I mentioned the fact that the SB900 was not worth the cost cost difference for the few added benefits.  He disagreed.

First off, both flashes are excellent folks.  But I have a hard time shelling out an extra hundred bucks over the price of a new SB800 to get a fresnel that zooms to 200mm, a fancy selector switch, 3 selectable light patterns, a flash head that rotates 270 degrees and a little more light output.

Now, the above my sound like a lot and some of you may even think I’m nuts for arguing that they aren’t worth the money.  Why would I say that?

1. 200mm fresnel zoom – if you’re using 200mm glass and throwing light that far from on camera then you deserve the horrible pictures that will follow.
2. The selector switch is nice, but it’s fluff.  It’s a thing of convenience.
3. 3 selectable light patterns – If you want to change the light coming from your flash, there are a great many options out there to change the shape of your light.  Most of them can be made for less than a cup of Starbucks.
4. 270 rotating flash head – Designed for CLS users, this feature allows you position the flash to more easily be able to get it to see the signal coming from your Commander flash.  I hardly ever use CLS, so this is useless to me.
5. More light output – the difference in light output isn’t even equal to one whole stop of light.  This would be the most important of the key features and the thing I would be willing to pay money for.  But for $450.00 (B&H pricing) I can buy a Calumet Genesis 200 and an Alienbees Vagabond II battery pack and have a battery-powered strobe that puts out FAR more light than an SB900.

I’m not saying the SB900 isn’t a great flash.  It is.  It’s just not worth the cost difference to me since I use manual flash and trigger them with CyberSyncs.

So which is better?  In my opinion, the SB800 is.  It’s got almost all the same features and just about as much light output for $100.00 less new.  They are still a really popular flash and I see them all the time going for $350.00 used and that was their new price at B&H.  I’ll probably have to wait another 8 years or so to be able to pick them up used for $150.00 like my SB-80DX flashes.

How’d You Like to Win A Nikon D300s or a Canon 7D?

I’ve got some killer news to share with you!  Lexar is offering up a Nikon D300s or a Canon 7D and some glass to boot as the Grand Prize in their sweepstakes that started on July 1st.  The sweepstakes runs through July 31st so you had best get your entry in NOW!

Grand Prize:
One Grand Prize winner will get their choice of a Nikon D300s and a Nikon 16-85mm VR II lens or a Canon 7D and a Canon 18-135mm IS lens.  Included in the package are (2) 16GB Lexar Professional 600x Compact Flash cards and a choice of a Professional UDMA Dual-Slot Card Reader or a Lexar Professional UDMA Firewire 800 Reader.  Not bad!

Second Prize:
(10) Second Place winners will receive their choice of a 16GB Lexar Professional 300x Compact Flash card or a 1GB Lexar Professional 133x SDHC card.

Here’s the link with all the details and how to enter.  Good luck!

Full Frame or Sub-Full Frame Cameras: Which Is Right For You?

There are a lot of heated debates going around the interwebs about whether or not you should be shooting full frame or sub-full frame cameras. While I’m not really big on arguing over gear (especially on the internet), there are advantages that each format offers. In today’s post I’m going to talk about each sensor type in an effort to demystify some of the hype.

First off, both sensors are capable of providing outstanding image quality. Let’s get that straight right out of the gate. The sensors in today’s cameras are the best around – leaps and bounds ahead of where digital imaging was ten years ago.

Megapixels Don’t Matter
Camera manufacturers have been battling back and forth for years, bragging about how many megapixels their newest camera has. This is not much more than a sales gimmick. Megapixels translate to resolution, which only is a concern when making very large prints. A 6 megapixel sensor in a camera will yield excellent print results up to 20″ x 30″, and maybe even a little bigger.

In fact, the more pixels that you have on an image sensor, the less sensitive to light it will be. Think of it in terms of buckets of water. If I have a 24′ x 36′ surface, I can fit 864 buckets of water that are 12″ in diameter. If I use 6″ diameter buckets I can fit 1,728 buckets on the same surface area, but each bucket holds less water. Camera sensors work the same way in terms of how each pixel holds light.

Full Frame
Camera bodies that are considered to be ‘full frame’ have an image sensor that is 24mm x 36mm, the same size as a 35mm film negative. The advantage to these sensors is that larger pixels can fit on the sensor while retaining the same resolution as it’s sub-full frame counterpart. This also translates into better image quality at high ISO settings as there is less noise in the image.

Another advantage lies in the fact that full frame sensors don’t have a magnification factor. If you enjoy shooting really wide angle photos, a full frame digital camera will yield image results identical to a 35mm film camera in terms of composition. A 12mm lens is super wide, which really excites the wide angle fanatics out there.

Sub-Full Frame (APS-C or DX)
I know that I made full frame cameras sound really good in the couple of paragraphs above, but don’t worry because sub-full frame cameras have their advantages too. First off (and likely very important to most of us) is cost. Smaller sensors are less expensive to make and that translates into a less expensive end product.

Since APS-C or DX sized sensors have some sort of magnification factor (usually 1.5x or 1.6x), this means that you will get more bang for your buck out of your telephoto lenses. For example, Nikon DX bodies have a 1.5x magnification factor which means that my 70-200mm lens performs like 105-300mm lens. That extra reach really helps out if you are shooting sports or wildlife where the object is to get as tight a crop as possible on your subject.

Today’s smaller sensors still perform remarkably well in low light at high ISO settings. For example, the Nikon D90 and Canon 50D do an excellent job of keeping the noise low at ISO settings as high as 3200.

Which One Is Right For Me?
You are the only one that can really answer that question, but you should base your decision off of what you are going to be shooting in order to make a practical choice. If you are an architectural photographer that will be shooting buildings and indoor spaces, a full-frame sensor will net you the most gain because wide is REALLY wide. Wedding shooters will also appreciate the better high ISO performance since they are almost always shooting in low-light situations. If you shoot sports, wildlife or people, sub-full frame cameras will get you the most out of your longer glass. There are several sports shooters today that use a full frame camera for their wide shots and put their 400mm lenses on a full-frame body in order to take advantage of the magnification factor.

Given the advantages and disadvantages of each type of sensor, you simply have to choose the format that best suits your shooting needs in order to capitalize on your sensor type.

Photo News and Other Happenings

Thursday is here and the week is almost over. Rather than waste time, lets get right down to what’s going on around the industry:

• Nikon has announced two brand new lenses, the 24mm f/1.4G and the 16-35mm f/4 VR. You can read all about ‘em here, and I don’t know about you but I think that 16-35mm lens is gonna sell like crazy. It’s Nikon’s update to the much older 17-35mm lens and while this new version isn’t f/2.8, it’s got VR baby!
• I listened to Gary Vaynerchuk’s audiobook called “Crush It” and if you are in business and haven’t read this book or downloaded the audiobook from iTunes then you’re missing out. I’ll have a review up here before too long.
• Don’t forget that my ‘Winter’ themed photography contest kicks off right here on Monday! For more details be sure to check out my original post. Good luck and thanks to BlinkBid for sponsoring the contest!
• I was the host photographer for Don Giannatti’s Lighting Essentials workshop last weekend, right here in good old San Diego. We had a great time, the attendees learned A LOT, and we made some great images. If you’re interested in learning how to light, I highly recommend his workshop! Here’s the link.
• Last but not least, Apple released Aperture 3 and it really looks awesome! I haven’t had a chance to do much more than examine the interface, but so far I REALLY like what I see! More on that coming soon… after a solid test drive.

That’s it for today. I hope you guys have a great rest of the week and weekend too! Don’t forget to go backup your images and clean your cameras! Have a great day!

Christmas 2009: Shot on the D90

Today I’m sharing a short video that I put together for our family, since most of them live far away from San Diego. I shot the video and stills on my D90 and put it all together in Adobe Premiere Pro CS4 (which I am really loving by the way).

The convergence of still photography and video is growing more and more everyday. I didn’t buy the D90 for the video, but I have come to really enjoy it and I’m glad to see that Nikon included it on the D300s and D3s. Will we see a D700s? I hope so! I doubt that Nikon will release any new DSLRs that don’t have D-Movie mode from here on out. And the great part is that the video quality will only get better!

Adobe Premiere Pro CS4 has been great to work in thus far, having come from Final Cut Express 4. The look and feel is much the same, but I REALLY like the auto rendering and I don’t have to wait around nearly as much as I did with FCE. I’ll talk more about Premiere Pro in the future and for now I’m certainly a big fan!

That’s it for today, I hope you’re having a great week! The last few days of 2009 are upon us! What’s your creative resolutions for 2010? Share in the comments!

D90 Still On Top of Image Quality Mountain

If you’re a Nikon D90 owner, you’re got something to really be proud of! Oh, and I wouldn’t go out and spend that $1800.00 that you’re about to spend to upgrade to a D300s either. Why? Because in terms of image quality, the D90 is the #1 sub-full frame DSLR on the market according to DxOMark’s Sensor website.

The D90 falls in at the number 15 spot, but the only cameras ahead of it are either full frame DSLRs or Medium Format digital cameras. That’s a helluva lot of bragging rights for anyone who owns the D90 (including me).

(Screen capture of DxOMark Sensor showing the Nikon D90′s rank.)

DxOMark Sensor was created by DxO Labs in order to provide a one-stop shop for photographers looking to find out more about the image quality of camera models, without solely relying on manufacturers websites or literature. Their testing methods were devised with three types of photographic situations in mind: studio and portrait work, landscape work, and finally sports and photojournalism.

Now, I’m not going to go into the whole ‘upgrade or don’t upgrade’ debate here, because the bottom line is it’s your money and if you want to spend it then be my guest. However, if you do upgrade to that D300s you’ll be dropping to the number 19 spot. Oh, the D300? It’s in the number 22 spot. If you have questions about upgrading, feel free to hit me up in the comments and I will be happy to help.

Image quality is what we’re all after as photographers. We want the best possible image quality for what we can afford, and it should be more important than weather proofing, bracketing, frames per second, or any other bell and whistle that a camera may have. Nikon really got it right with the D90, and DxOMark Sensor proves that. Coming from a trusted name in the industry like DxO Labs, you know that the data is accurate and trustworthy.

Shooting Tethered on Nikon – For Free!

Alright, it’s time to kick of the week right. Since the Holidays are here and everyone is out spending money on gifts, travel expenses, etc., I thought I would toss out a tip for something free! Now, this only applies to Nikon shooters because if you shoot Canon you already have a free solution.

In the past, if you wanted to shoot a Nikon DSLR tethered into your computer (be it laptop or desktop), you had to spend money on Nikon’s Camera Control Pro software. $150.00 wasn’t worth it for most people to be able to shoot tethered, so they went without. (More on tethered shooting another day.)

That’s not the case anymore! I came across a great free application for the Mac that allows you to shoot tethered and it gives you full control of your camera. The app is called SOFORTBILD and it’s available to download free right from their website.

The guy who developed SOFORTBILD is Stefan Hafeneger from Germany. He is currently doing an internship with Apple up in Cupertino, CA. Thanks Stefan for creating this great application and letting the world use it for free! Amazing!

Check out this screenshot from their website:

I’m going to give this app a full test drive in the next week or two, but if you don’t want to wait on me, then go download it for yourself and give it a go! Just remember, you’ll need a Nikon DSLR, an Apple desktop or laptop computer, and our USB cable.

I’ll be posting my results and findings with any likes/dislikes about the software so be sure to check back and find out what I think about it after I’ve had time to put it through it’s paces.

That’s it for today. I hope you guys have a great week and don’t forget that there is only 11 more days until Christmas! Get your shopping wrapped up so you aren’t fighting the mad rush right before Christmas!

Tuesday News Stuff

Good morning and Happy Tuesday! For most of us, the work week is almost over as the Thanksgiving holiday approaches. So right in theme with the short week, here’s a few news snippets from things going on around the industry.

• Nikon has released an iPhone app for photographers called “Learn & Explore”. It’s a free app and you can download it from the App Store on iTunes. Here’s the link to Nikon’s website were you can read up on it. Check it out!
• Speaking of Nikon, the latest issue of Nikon World Magazine features Jennifer Concepcion, wife of RC Concepcion, on the cover. She is a dancer that was photographed by Joe McNally. RC is looking for several copies, so if you happen to have one you don’t need let me know so we can get it to him. Here’s the link to Nikon World.
• If you’re into plug-ins, OnOne Software has released the latest version of it’s suite, Plug-In Suite 5. They have improved their already awesome plug-ins and they are sure to be a big hit with the photographer on your shopping list. Here’s the link.
• Scott Kelby has released Part 1 of his 4th Annual Gonzo Holiday Gear Guide. Be sure to check it out because this year he added a lot of lower-priced items which is great! Of course, there are still a few on there for that brain surgeon you’re shopping for.
• Yesterday, WordPress featured my blog on their homepage and drove a lot of traffic to my post from yesterday. Thanks to the WordPress folks for considering my post and blog worthy enough to be on their homepage. I left all the comments up – good, bad, and indifferent.

That’s it for today. I hope your day goes well as we cruise through the halfway point of the week before gorging ourselves into turkey and stuffing oblivion on Thursday.

CyberSync “Sledgehammer” High Speed Sync vs. Nikon CLS Auto FP

In my post from Saturday, I explained how you can trigger remote flashes at shutter speeds that are above what your camera’s max. flash sync speed is. I thought what I was getting was High Speed Sync, but according to my buddy David Hobby it’s not quite the case. Here’s what David had to say about it:

What you are getting is not HSS, but rather a single pulse that is timed to last throughout the time the slip travels across your frame on a <250th speed. That is why you are only getting f4 at that ISO in that close.

It does work (no frame blackout) but you lose so much of the power of the flash (wasted on the blocked out part of the shutter) that it is pretty much a wash vs the CLS way. In fact, dollars to donuts I would bet you get less light via the “sledgehammer HSS” technique used here.

That said, it does apparently work, if not very efficiently. Kind like frying one of those geese with one of your radars does technically make it a microwave oven …

So what I set out to do next was compare the CyberSync method to traditional Nikon CLS and see how the two stacked up against each other with regards to power. Both methods prove to be very inefficient, but will work in a pinch if you get caught in a situation where your ambient is just too bright to knock down with shutter speed alone.

The Results
I shot these outside in early evening when the sky was still nice and bright. I metered the background at f5.6 @ 1/800th ISO200. I put an SB800 with only a diffusion dome on a lightstand, another on my D90, and connected the CyberSyncs. I set my shutter speed to 1/1000th to underexpose the background a bit. The light was 36″ away from my subjects (my daughter and her friend) whom I was able to convince to stand still for a couple minutes. The SB800 on the stand was set to full power and here’s what I got:

Obviously, it was a little too hot so I stopped down 1/3 of a stop to f6.3 and recomposed. This is what I got:

Much better. So now it was time to try out CLS. I disconnected the CyberSyncs and then put the SB800 on the lightstand in Remote and put the SB800 on my D90 in Master. I set the remote flash to Manual mode at full power. This was the result:

If you notice where the kids are in relation to the trees compared to the shots above, you will see that I actually had them standing CLOSER to the SB800 when using CLS and the shot was a little underexposed.

What’s the Take-Away?
Although the “Sledgehammer” method (as David called it) is very inefficient, it’s actually a little better than the CLS method. However, so much power is being wasted here that my NiMH batteries for my Speedlights hurt just thinking about me putting them through this kind of abuse.

To be very effective at all, you’d need to have two or three speedlights (at least, more if you wanted faster recycle times) and your shooting pace would be rather slow. It would work if you had no other options, but it isn’t really a “go-to” solution.

High Speed Sync using CyberSyncs

So I get an e-mail from my buddy and fellow D90 shooter Levi, and his e-mail contains a link to a photo that he took of a couple of flashes, triggered by CyberSyncs, f11 @ 1/4000th of a second! I was blown away! I had to go and test it out for myself and low and behold… it worked! I shot the photo above with my D90, SB800 on camera @ 1/128th power with the CyberSync CST transmitter plugged in via included mini plug to PC Sync cable, SB80DX flashes @ full power triggered with CyberSync CSRB receivers, f11 @ 1/4000th of a second, ISO200!!! WOW! Wanna learn how? Read on.

What? No hack?
No. There’s no hack that you have to perform. You need a couple of things to even think about doing this. First, you need a Nikon SB800 or SB900 and a camera that’s capable of the Auto FP High Speed Sync mode. In this day and age, that means a D80, D90, D200, D300(s), D700, or a D3. (Some older Nikon bodies are capable, but I’m not going to list them all.) Of course you’ll need the CyberSyncs (CST transmitter and CSRB receiver). Lastly, you’ll need the included mini plug to PC Sync cable that comes with the CyberSyncs. This is how you’ll connect your SB800/900 to the CyberSync CST. See the photo below:

And this is what your flash will look like with the CST connected to it before you place it in your camera’s hot shoe:

Once your flash is mounted in your camera’s hot shoe, you’ll need to make sure that the Auto FP mode is turned on. (For D90 users, go to Menu > Custom Settings Menu > Bracketing/flash > Auto FP (e5) and turn it On. Once you’ve turned Auto FP on, then you can power on your flash. I then set my SB800 to Manual mode @ 1/128th power and positioned the flash head at 90 degrees (straight up). FYI, you could set the power higher and point it towards your subject for a little on-axis fill if desired. Then, as long as your other flashes and CyberSync CSRB receivers are powered on, you’ll be good to go and flashing away at ridiculously high shutter speeds that you never thought you could have with your CyberSyncs!

Got Power?
Look at the above test shot of Benjamin that I lit with 1 – SB80DX through a Lastolite Ezybox at f4, 1/4000th, ISO200. I had the 24″ x 24″ softbox in nice and close and you can see how quickly the light will fall off with a shutter speed of 1/4000th of second! Keep in mind that the SB80DX was at full power. To pull this kind of thing off with speedlights, you’re going to need more than one in most cases. If you can shoot really wide open, you might be able to get away with it… however you will need to have your light(s) in nice and close. This is where a Lastolite Triflash would come in REAL handy. To really do this right, you could use a high powered studio strobe like an AB1600 or the like.

Further Testing Needed
I only played around with this in the house tonight because it was already dark when I got the chance to have some fun with it. I want to test this outside in full daylight with a few more speedlights to see what I can come up with. I also ran into one small issue while testing this: if I put the camera down and it went into “sleep mode”, my SB800 would sort of “lock up” and my camera would default back to the max flash sync speed of 1/200th of a second. Not really sure why this was happening. I couldn’t use the power button to shut of the flash, but a quick opening of the battery door and closing it again did the trick.

So there you have it folks… High Speed Sync without using Nikon’s Creative Lighting System. RadioPoppers have been doing this for quite awhile now, but they are most well-known for extending the range of your flashes when using CLS. With the CyberSyncs, you have to do everything manually still, which is what I prefer. I’ll have more to follow later on this week, which will include testing this outside… in full daylight. Stay tuned!