Using slave flashes with my D700 ... some guidance please!

[Keith]

A few weeks ago I posted a thread about getting a basic studio lighting kit for product shots. I photograph wheel sets, hubs etc for the guys I work for for their web site with my D700 but was looking for simplicity and consistency to reduce post processing time and to give a more professional look.

We finished up building an open fronted box big enough to contain a set of wheels with a neutral white blind that can be pulled down in the rear. It's made of 3mm white core flute around a timber frame and can be permanently set up ready for use with a minimum of fuss and time. I assumed that if I positioned a couple of slave strobes either side of it fairly close, it should act like a big soft box and so far it appears to do so nicely.

The boys ordered me a cheap basic studio lighting kit from eBay that had what I needed and I now have the slave flashes (250 watt) set up either side on their stands and a trigger for the D700 of course. It works like a charm but I'm flying totally blind when it comes to remote flash shooting and have basically just fudged the settings until until I got something that looked correct ... I'm using a 24 -120 f4 Nikkor zoom.

I do not understand the relationship between flash sync speed and shutter speed at all and looking in the camera's menu (or manual) didn't help much. There seems to be a range of flash sync settings available but I have no comprehension at all of how this all works and where I should start to get the best result. I've noticed I can also vary the power output of the slaves! Is there someone out there who can give me the basic information/settings to get me on track?

Thanks in advance. 🙂

 

[sevo]

What are you triggering the slaves with? Automatic on-camera slave? You need a cord (or wireless trigger), or, if nothing better is at hand, set the on-camera flash to manual at minimum power.

Adjust the slave power and head positions until you get the illumination you like. Set the shutter speed to 1/125, camera speed to minimum (100, 400 - I don't remember what it was on the D700) and use a hand-held flash meter or iterations with the histogram to adjust the aperture until you get a perfect exposure.

 

[Dan]

The shutter speed controls the amount of ambient light in the overall exposure while the aperture controls the flash exposure (after any variable power setting is set). You probably don't want stray ambient light to mess up your shot so set the D700 to at least 1/60 or up to 1/125, the maximum camera sync speed.

After that, decide what f-stop is needed and adjust the power of the flash so that power setting and f-stop combination gives you a proper exposure -- easy, peasy!

If you get adventurous you can do multiple flash 'pops' per exposure by shooting in a really dark environment, using bulb shutter speed and manually triggering the flashes multiple times to build up an entire overall exposure.

Make sense?

 

[pvdhaar]

A good lighting 101 can be found on http://strobist.blogspot.com

If you want the answer to your question straight away, then info on balancing ambient with flash can be found there as well: http://strobist.blogspot.com/2006/03/lighting-101-balancing-flash-and.html

 

[Wburgess]

Have a quick look at joe mcnally's book and website.

Learn from the master.

 

[Frank Petronio]

I thought slavery was outlawed down under? But I am sure you are kind hearted and spare the lash.

With most of the kits you want to be in manual model with your shutter speed at the sync speed or a tad slower. Start with a moderate aperture, f/5.6 - 8. Make sure both heads are firing in spite of the overly complicated sync controls. Leave the camera's flash settings on default/off as you are not using them. Then vary the power on the strobe heads to suit until you get a decent exposure in camera (watch the histogram).

Then you can experiment and add your Keith majik ;-p

Basically try to eliminate all the automation and use the camera as a light tight box, aka a film camera.

 

[yanchep_mike]

Hi Keith,
i do a lot of product shots with my D3 and a 2 sometimes 3 head small system.
Set the camera to manual and set the shutter to flash sync or slower speed, get yourself a flash meter for the future and you select the aperture needed for the ISO selected.
I have to vary the shutter speeds quiet a bit because of digital displays LED and LCD that gets pretty tricky light output of those things is minimal.

Anyhow it is all about fun.
Good Luck.

 

[giellaleafapmu]

A bit late but the principle is more or less this. Flash duration is short, usually much shorter than
even the shortest shutter speed, so the amount of flash light which affects the picture is only a function of aperture and (of course) flash power. Ambient light on the contrary is controlled both by aperture and shutter speed. If you need to know how much ambient light is "affecting" your picture it is not a bad habit to take a test picture without flash at setting somewhere closed to what you plan to use to your final picture i.e. with f-stop as you think you'd need and somewhere into reasonable sinchro speed (remember that unless you are mixing quite a bit of ambient light and taking pictures of moving objects in the end this speed is really not that important, other than for being necessary for it to be slower enough to have at some point the shutter completely open). I do this and have seen famous guys a-la McNally or Heisler doing this, once you have the "right" amount you start playing with the flashes. If you are not somewhere into crazy range of speed or f-stop and you have reasonable power for what you are lighting, and you should be in this situation if you are taking products in a studio, you should have quite a bit of possibilities to play around with flash power. There is then another variable which is color temperature, controlled with gels and/or the WB of the camera, but for that you'd really have a look to a book or the already mentioned strobist web site. Finally, if you are indeed taking pictures of moving stuff and you are not using a camera with a leaf shutter (you are not if you use a D700) it is not a bad idea to have rear-sinchro set. This means that the flash will fire at the end of the shutter aperture and not at the beginning and that if, either by accident or by design, natural light and a longish exposure time create any effect of movement on the picture that will appear on the back of the moving thing and not in front, that is where we expect it to be, in all other cases it really makes no difference, so you can actually leave your camera on that setting and forget about it.

Hope this helps.

GLF

 

[rjbuzzclick]

I'll toss in an experience I had a while back in case you should run into it. I was shooting with two strobes with my DSLR. One strobe was cabled to the camera and the second one was firing with an optical slave (a peanut slave). The max flash sync shutter speed of my camera is 1/180, but at that speed, I wasn't getting light from the optically triggered flash, even though it was firing. There was a considerable delay with the optical trigger and the shutter was closing before the second flash fired. Slowing the shutter down to 1/125 solved the problem.

 

[giellaleafapmu]

In my experience it is never a good idea to mix different triggers. Optical and IR are easy, quick to set up and cheap (if you use something like Nikon creative system or however it is called very fast to set up, even tough not so cheap and limited to small strobes), radio trigger much more reliable, more range and more sure to get actually the bop and cables...well annoying but the way to go if you are into crazy high synchro times, e.g. if you are trying to fight against mid-day sun with only one flash.

GLF

 

[kxl]

Not to fix an issue by buying more gear, but since you already have a DSLR that is completely compatible with it, you may want to consider utilizing the Nikon CLS system. It is absolutely first rate and one of Nikon's strengths.

 

[giellaleafapmu]

Not to fix an issue by buying more gear, but since you already have a DSLR that is completely compatible with it, you may want to consider utilizing the Nikon CLS system. It is absolutely first rate and one of Nikon's strengths.

In the same line of thinking, if money is not a problem, you can also consider the dedicated Pocket Wizard triggers, I don't own them but I think they are called TT1 and TT5 and they should support everything Nikon CLS does and more but are radio triggers.

On the other extreme of the spectrum if you are struggling with flashes (I think we all do at the beginning) you can go directly to LED continuous lights, they are in principle for video and are a relatively new thing in photography but if you don't need a lot of light they might be a good alternative because they are cheaper than flashes, don't require triggering, don't need light modifiers such as soft boxes and the likes and, since they are continuous light you get what you see. I don't have them but I've tried them and are really quite easy to use. They already come in the form of large light sources and can easily be combined to have effects equivalent to a large soft box or a strip light or whatever (almost). I can imagine that these days that 25 ISO films are no longer indispensable, we can get nearly perfect images at 400 or even 800 ISO and often it is necessary to do photography and video in the same section they will become more and more popular. If you are starting now you might as well start with them... The only think they don't do well is punching a lot of light, so if you are using, say, a large soft box and a beauty dish in the same line as main and another large box as fill outdoor then you cannot change the flashes for LEDs.

GLF

 

[Ronald M]

Mark the floor where product, lights, & camera go with tape or paint or measure with string/knots Write down the settings. Every shoot should match..

A whi Bal card will give correct white balance. Set the camera to flash and when it goes into photoshop, WB using the card. Then synchronize the blue yellow and green magenta settings. Remember them for future shoots.

You can get perfect WB if you go into the WB menue of the camera and bias the settings as reguired to say make blue more yellow. There is a grid with two axis there.
Save as a preset under camera settings.

Ambient light will tint flash settings so keep them as low as possible or use them to focus, then turn off for the photo.