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.

“Winter” Contest Kicks Off Today!

Today kicks of the “Winter” Photo Contest and I’m really excited to see some of the images that are submitted! Here’s the link to my original post with all the rules and specifics. The winner will receive a copy of BlinkBid, the estimating and invoicing software for creative professionals! Thanks again to BlinkBid for sponsoring the contest.

In other news, I spent some time over the weekend working in Aperture 3 and trying out a new beauty dish for speedlights. So far, I’m very impressed with Aperture 3 and I think that if I continue to like it as much as I do now, I may not upgrade to Lightroom 3. But only time will tell. As far as the beauty dish goes, I’ll have a full review up here later this week so be on the lookout for that!

And finally, I’m starting to work on some short video tutorials where I’ll talk about techniques, gear, and software. I may even make it into some sort of podcast, but I can assure you that it won’t be super high-tech, but rather more raw and real. Should be fun. Unfortunately, a little case of laryngitis has put a short delay on the videos. You guys would never come back if you heard what’s left of my voice right now.

That’s it for today, I hope you guys have a great week and for those of you that aren’t working today enjoy your day off!

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!

Small Flashes – Big Light Photo Contest

Yesterday afternoon I spent some time patching up two of my kids. My daughter fell off her bike and skinned her knee (photo above) and my youngest son wanted to see if one of his toy planes could fly. And fly it did, but the landing sucked. The plane came down and hit him in the face, right above his right eye. Lucky kid. Lucky me! Boys will be boys though.

Alright ladies and gents, it’s time to kick off another photo contest. This time around there’s one of my FlashStrap + Gel Kits up for grabs. Given the prize, I thought an appropriate theme would be Small Flashes – Big Light.

So what does that mean exactly? Well, making big light from small flashes. Thanks to Joe McNally for the idea! So in order to enter, you need to shoot a portrait using small flashes and create big, beautiful light to grace your subject with.

Now For The Rules:
The contest runs from today, June 11, 2009 until July 4, 2009. All images have to be taken during the period of the contest. Your entries will be uploaded to the SZ Photography Flickr Group. Photos will need to have EXIF data that shows the date that it was taken. Also, in order to keep honest photographers honest, you will need to include a setup shot with your subject there so that I know that you’re using small flashes and not studio strobes. I will be the only judge and all of my decisions will be final. I will judge the entries based on lighting technique, originality, and creativity.

The Goods
The chosen winner will receive a FlashStrap + Gel Kit shipped to them completely free of charge. You can read more about the kit here.

Bonus Giveaway
If you use Twitter and re-tweet my tweet about the contest, I’ll give away a FlashStrap + Gel Kit to the 25th person to re-tweet it.

Good luck with your entries and I look forward to judging them. The last contest that I ran for the MB-D80 Battery Grip had some really great photos!

Review: The Hot Shoe Diaries – Big Light From Small Flashes by Joe McNally

I had mentioned several days ago that I had bought and was reading Joe McNally’s new book, “The Hot Shoe Diaries – Big Light From Small Flashes” and now that I’m finished reading it, it’s time for a review! This is Joe’s second book, following “The Moment It Clicks” which was a huge success. Let’s take a closer look at what is one of the hottest photography books this year.

The Hot Shoe Diaries starts off with the usual tribute and acknowledgements. I mention this because of the way Joe writes, I recommend reading this book cover-to-cover. It’s worth it. There isn’t a single piece of text in this book that I consider useless.

The book is broken down into four parts and each part has several texts, each of which tie back to the broader subject of the part. For example, Part I is titled, “Nuts ‘n’ Bolts” and it breaks down what gear McNally uses and why he uses it. It’s a basic run down of how he works, right down to how he holds his camera. He talks about camera bodies, glass (lenses), speedlights, grip gear and more. What an incredible insight into the gear bag of an A-List shooter.

Part II covers all sorts of lighting scenarios that Joe has been in where he has only used one single light. He talks about the many ways you can make one small light seem like a bigger light. Couple his detailed setup descriptions with his amazing images and you have a clear, complete, mutual understanding of how to re-create his setups. This is a springboard for your own shoot ideas and I have personally gotten a lot of inspiration from this book.

Part III expands on Part II and as you might have guess, now McNally’s using two (or more) lights. The content is more of the same, but now he’s building on the foundation he laid in Part II by adding and shooting with a second light source.

Part IV is where Joe really shows off. It’s titled “Lotsa Lights” and he writes about a setup in which he used 47 speedlights! This is the part of the book where you can see how Joe works down to the very smallest of details. This is the level in which we all strive for as photographers.

Throughout the book, McNally’s casual and straight-up style of writing kept me intrigued, smiling, laughing, and interested. I didn’t want to put down the book and I picked it up every chance I could until I had read it all. Joe doesn’t get too far into the weeds with tech talk, but instead explains the details in a simple and easy-to-understand method. He credits his ability to do this to his wife, Annie, whom he said kept him reeled in when it came to the technical details. Even the back of the book has a guide where Joe illustrates how to operate Nikon’s SB800 and SB900 flashes.

Not only does he talk about Nikon flashes and Nikon’s Creative Lighting System (CLS), but he also talks about lenses, light modifiers, grip gear, locations, models, and more. I really got the feeling that I was sitting and talking with him rather than reading a book.

In short, if you have any interest whatsoever in using small hot shoe flashes to light your subjects then you certainly should read this book. Now, Joe is a Nikon shooter and therefore everything in this book is about Nikon equipment. That’s not to say that the techniques don’t cross over, but you won’t see or read ANYTHING about the 5D MkII, a 580EX II, or an L Series lens. If you want to learn how to light like Joe McNally, read this book!

The image above was inspired by this book and it was a self-portrait that I created using 3 Nikon speedlights and a Nikon D90. It’s a lot easier than it may seem. The image below was from the perspective of where I was sitting when I took the shot. My youngest son Daniel wanted me to snap a shot of him, so here you go Danny!

I hope you have a great week and I’ll have the Lastolite Ezybox review up this week too!

Speedlight Gels (and kits) Are Here!

I’ve talked about getting these together for quite some time now and I’ve finally got them available for you! If you have no idea what I’m talking about, let me just break it down for you. Until now, I’ve used the infamous Roscolux swatchbook gels in order to color correct my flash, for color effects, and the like. However, there was a problem with those little 1-cent wonders: you had to tape them to your flashes. Gaffer’s tape works well, but doesn’t stick that great in cold weather (unless you’re using a ton of it). If you leave it on there for too long (several days), you’ll get a nasty residue on your flashes. Same thing with velcro. No fun.

There are some pretty cool, commercially available solutions out there, but frankly I think they’re overpriced. $30.00 for 10 gels is a little too steep for a small piece of gel and some velcro. Now, if I were a full-time pro making lots of cash I probably wouldn’t see it this way. I’d see them as a bargain. But I’m not and I’m guessing that you’re probably not either. Maybe so.

I’m a DIY kind of guy so I decided to come up with a little DIY FlashStrap and a Gel Kit. What’s great about them is the gels are large enough to fit over a Diffusion Dome or Sto-Fen and can be cut to size if need be.

The FlashStrap is make of rubber from bicycle inner tubes, using velcro on one side for the gels or other attachments to fasten to. The FlashStrap goes around your flash and fastens to itself via the velcro. No mess, no fuss.

The Gel Kit includes 10 of the most frequently used gels. You get: Full CTO, 3/4 CTO, 1/2 CTO, 1/4 CTO, 1/2 PlusGreen, 1/4 PlusGreen, 1/4 CTB, Light Red, Primary Blue, and Moss Green.

So if you’re not the DIY-type, I’ve made these Gel Kits, FlashStraps, and gels available to you on the cheap. No fancy manufacturing here: just me, a rotary cutter, gels, velcro, and bicycle inner tubes baby. The gels may even come with a fingerprint from the manufacturing process… I’m just sayin’.

Pricing:

• FlashStrap – $5.00
  
• Gel Kit – $10.00 (Includes 10 gels)
  
• FlashStrap + Gel Kit – $15.00
  
• Individual Gels – $1.50 each

Here’s the link to my Store where you can find out more info and even order your own. The FlashStrap and Gel Kits will be shipped via USPS Priority Mail and Individual Gels will be sent via First Class Mail. This is the easiest and most cost effective way to ship these babies. If you need them faster than that, just contact me and we can work out other arrangements.

As always, if you have questions, hit me up in the comments section below. I hope you all have a great week and I’ve got some cool stuff on the way for ya!

Have a great week!

Stephen

Weekend Updates

Well, the weekend’s here again and I wanted to let you know what’s going on and what’s coming up next week on the blog.

• I’m planning on posting my review of “The Hot Shoe Diaries: Big Light From Small Flashes” by Joe McNally. The review will be a little lengthy but I’m going to break down each section for you. If you haven’t read this book yet, you’ll want to after you read my review.
• In these times of economic uncertainty, it’s hard for us to part with our hard earned cash for new gear. Wanna know my solution? Buy used gear! Check out websites like Craigslist and eBay for awesome deals on glass, flashes, and the like. I recently picked up a Nikon 85mm f1.8 lens for less than half of what it costs new! You can’t go wrong with that and I’ll be buying a couple more lenses the exact same way. Of course, I’ll have a full review up after I’ve put it through it’s paces.
• My Lastolite Ezybox came in on Thursday… I’ll be engrossed this weekend shooting with it. So far I’m really jazzed about this thing… the quality of light is amazing!
• I’ve been shooting a lot more photos with my iPhone than usual. (See photo above.) I was inspired by Chase Jarvis and his collection of iPhone photos. I process them with native iPhone apps like CameraBag and Cool FX by Tiffen. This further proves that the best camera is the one that’s with you.
• I’ll be out and about this morning in Carlsbad for a Mentoring Session. You can read more about this right here.
• Last but not least, I hope to have photos and gel kits up and available in my “store” on Monday. I’ll post a little more about them and how you can make them yourself. But if you’re not much of the DIY’er you can buy them in my store for cheap.

That’s it for me, so I hope you all have a great weekend and I’ll see you back here on Monday! Keep clickin’ the shutter release!