Sail On Strobists - With The Sale On Honl

Regular readers of the blog will remember the ones about Honl - the accessory company for strobists. We've been selling their softboxes, grids, gels, and camera wraps for some time now.

Time has come to declare a 20% off sale for these - to continue until the current stock is exhausted. This is a good opportunity for all users of portable flash - Nikon, Canon, Nissan, Promaster, etc. - to take control of that flash out there in the real ( dark) world and do some professional portraits.

Note for users of off-camers flash systems that depend upon IR to control the flash:

The Honl softboxes that fit on the front of the flash do so in such a way that they do not obscure the IR receptors on the flash units. This is a problem for some other brands and you get misfires if the IR port is shielded. Honl can be used with the SB 700 with confidence.

Well That'll Teach You...

See what you get for opening this blog on Monday morning. You'll know better next time.

My sentiments exactly when I went to a family party last Saturday. It was a cheerful affair - a 21st birthday - and things seem to have moved on somewhat form the 1960's. In this one the boys did eventually mingle with the girls. The girl guests were still better dressed and better looking than their male counterparts, but at least the strict segregation of sexes has been relaxed - no morre keg to stand around.

Where was I? Taking party photos with the D 300 in a dark cave of a restaurant in Cottesloe. SB700 on top, diffuser on the front, 400 ISO and TTL Bl. 1/125 of a second and f:8. It could not have been easier - push the victims together ( " Grip and Grin, Kids..") press the little button on the front of the handgrip, and look round the place to see where the girl with the tray of spring rolls had gotten to. Every. Picture. Worked.

I expected no less as the Nikon system has a seamless integration of the pre-flash, the camera computer, and the main shot. The little diffuser on the front of the SB 700 is not as good as a Gary Fong Lightsphere II but if you angle it a little it spreads things out. You will get enogh power from the flash for a good shot with a little of he ambient light as well - if you want more ambient, drop the shutter speed a couple of steps and open up a stop. Simple.

I found it sobering to watch some of the partytographers try to do the same thing. Equipment ranged from telephones to full-frame DSLR's , and the former more successful than the latter. I zeroed the settings on the DSLR and set it up for the lady who was using it but I am afraid she was not convinced that it was a good idea - she changed them all evening. I do not envy her the time she will spend on post-production...

Moral of this is simple - it is moral to be simple when the situation demands. Nothing is fully automatic, but you can set yourself up to be nearly so, and then just go and trust to your eye to find the subject. And make sure that you watch the kitchen door, because that is where the girls with the trays of food come from.

The Adventitious Photographer _ By Kaye-Sarah Serah

The philosophy of " What will be, will be " has been useful for centuries as an excuse for not planning properly, not behaving properly, and not taking responsibility for what has actually occurred. Didn't work out so well for the Austro-Hungarian empire in 1918 but was a real money-spinner for Doris Day in the 1950's...

With that in mind I packed the roller bag for yesterday evening's belly dance shoot in Wellard. Not normally known as the capital of Middle Eastern culture, the suburb was playing host to Shimmy Skirt - a Khaleegi group. Khaleegi is colourful, if noisy, and demanded equal colour in the photos.

I've decided to keep the studio Elinchrom flash units in the studio. These days for an outside shoot I pack three Nikon speed lights, three or four different folding light stands or clamps, and a small Lastolite folding softbox. Together with a dreadful old background stand kit, a couple of muslins, and an umbrella, this comprises a pretty good mini studio for groups up to 8 people.

What sort of lighting setup do you get with this? Main through the softbox, fill into the umbrella, and choose whether No.3 light will be a background wash or a hair light suspended from the crossbar of he backdrop set with a Manfrotto nanoclamp. ( Yay nanoclamp. Small and useful.)

As it was Khaleegi, I wanted washes of colour - Honl speed light gels did that - I have indulged in two more packets of assorted colours. If you fire through them onto a light backdrop the colour is pastel - if you fire into a dark backdrop it is intense - so simple. If you look straight into the flash when you fire it you don't see squat for the rest of the evening.

Note that in the small space of a mini studio, the command system of the Nikon D300-series cameras ( and the others of the ilk...) is great - you can order the intensity of two additional groups of flashes as well as the one on the camera and you can vary these right from the camera position itself. It is a light-code control rather than a radio signal, but as long as the remotes can see the command flash, it works brilliantly. If you need to, you can code it up so that the flash from the camera does not actually appear in the final exposure.

So - what was, was. Thank you Doris. And what was looked pretty good - because I planned the shoot and took the right gear. Please come into the shop and let me bore your ears off with other how-to information. They pay me to do it.

Uncle Dick