Rank noob questions about flash

I've only used flash on camera, or w/ a slave fired by the flip flash on a digital. I need to get more savve about flash on film, particularly as fill. I've seen a few pages on strobist.com. They seem to have the tutorial thinking well organized. Would you say this is a good place to study up? Anyone know of a better or additional places to read/get smarter?
Many Thanks in advance.

I expect there are hundreds of tutorials out there… just get a little obsessed, make a text doc to take notes, make a folder to save the good ones as PDFs/etc...

The basics though:

If your camera doesn't have a PC port, you'll need a hot-shoe adapter;

A wireless trigger is the total sh*t - even the $25 amazon specials are pretty good - keeps a cable from hanging from your camera and they are usually hot-shoe based;

There are three main flavors of strobes - the on-camera flash unit stuck on a stand with an adapter; a monolight (which has a modeling light so you get an idea of what the flash will do); or packs & heads (a power pack with cables to light units - they'll have modeling lights as well). Pack & head systems are often really powerful and can be tough to dial-down for less exposure; but some strobes and monolights don't have much power… need to find the middle ground, if you're doing 4x5 tabletop products at F64, you need some real oomph...

Pack/heads (and some monolights) have removable reflectors that let you mount softboxes/etc. For lower-priced monolights, it's often the Bowens mount and there's a ton of aftermarket softboxes and stuff; Speedotron, Norman, etc all have their own mounts.

The camera flash unit on a stand is very limiting for accessories; you can do lovely work with them, but they're a little, I dunno - amateur hour?? As far as being able to do whatever you envision without a lot of extra hardware to add accessories. And modeling lights are really handy and save a ton of time - especially if you can't quickly check your setup with digital or a polaroid back.

You'd be surprised how big you may have to rig something to get soft light - even a 3' x 4' softbox can be challenging for a full figure, vs. making am 8'x 8' panel with fabric and stands (and shooting your strobes through it or bouncing off it).

Early novatron stuff is pretty dependable, but their accessory mount was crap and their stand mounts were 1/4" - a 5/8" stand mount is the standard and will fit most pro stands. Look for a good mount with softboxes, grids, bigger reflectors, etc that are available affordably.

Thank You, M Carter. I have experience at obsessing. There are currently 3 folders on the desktop for just such purposes.

HiHoSilver said:

Thank You, M Carter. I have experience at obsessing. There are currently 3 folders on the desktop for just such purposes.

Click to expand...

Sheesh - I have a 500gb DRIVE for that stuff!!! Swipes & tears and formulas and manuals…

I love researching and obsessing though...

Who's work out there do you like? Lighting is so different from photog to photog...

Annie Leibovitz?
Albert Watson?
Etc?

Once you can get an idea of a style you like, it's easier to send you in a direction
A lot of people over-think flash...it's not that difficult if you think in ratios from key light to fill, and secondary fill.

Large light modifiers mean soft gradation from key light to shadow...eg, the ubiquitous Octabank relatively close to the
subject, a la Mark Seliger. Have a look at some of Albert Watson's images...you'll never see a softbox on ANY set of his.
I assisted him a bunch back in the early 2000's...guy was amazing with flagging light sources. A lot can be done even with
little Canon/nikon flashes if you control the light. Strobist is ok, I guess, some folks there have the idea...

What strobes are you working with?

'Just have a little SB-600.
'Seems strobist likes a Lumopro 180 & manual operation short of studio flash.

HiHoSilver said:

'Just have a little SB-600.
'Seems strobist likes a Lumopro 180 & manual operation short of studio flash.

Click to expand...

Your SB 600 is fine, actually dang fine thank you.

So one accessory I'd suggest is a hot shoe extension cord. Lets you hold the strobe off center.

What cameras will you be using?

600 is okay? Great (wallet dodged another bullet)
Cameras will be 500cm, Super Ikonta, Retina, FE2 & hopefully a rare shot w/ a d7100

I get confused on the chord connectors The old coax PC style connector, present on the lens of the 500, Ikonta & Retina - has no mating connector end on the SB600. I'm guessing there's some adapter that accepts the PC connector and a 1/2" rca-style audio chord for taking the flash off camera (stand, bracket, etc).

Cropdusterman: thank you! My primary interest is for a fill flash to soften shadows, give shadow detail. Good examples being Blansky's selfie and Ken's shot of the B17 motors.

I like the Nikon SB800.

HiHoSilver said:

My primary interest is for a fill flash to soften shadows, give shadow detail. Good examples being Blansky's selfie and Ken's shot of the B17 motors.

Click to expand...

Can't speak to blanksky's image, but here's the very simple fill procedure I use outdoors with my antique all-manual cameras...

(1) Frame the subject composition.
(2) Determine the distance to any significant shadows near the main subject.
(3) Use the flash Guide Number to set the aperture for a full flash exposure at the measured distance.
(4) Close the aperture down 1-2 stops from full exposure. This gives minus 1-2 stops fill to the shadows.
(5) Adjust the shutter speed against the above now-fixed fill aperture to give a full ambient light exposure.

Then just make the picture. The basic details...

* Works best with leaf shutters since they sync at all speeds.
* Mount flash on camera to fill in the shadows that the camera sees.
* Use full manual mode for each fill. Have extra batteries if needed.
* Determine subject distance from the focus scale, or see below.
* No red eye from axis fill since it's usually bright ambient conditions.
* Use -1 stop for bright fill, -2 stops for dim fill, or something in between.
* Parameters not super critical for b&w, but more so for transparencies.

My own personal cheat sheet tricks...

* Wherever possible I use a small handheld carpenter's laser rangefinder for determining shadow distances. Originally purchased for something else, it now stays in my camera bag. Focus rings can be hard to interpolate when accuracy is needed for transparency film. And while I love everything else about my Mamiya C330S TLR, the design and accuracy of the subject distance scale (that rod thingy) is abysmal. Most fill subjects are within 25 feet or less of the flash. So much easier to just pull out the small laser from a sweatshirt, point it at the shadows, then click on, read, and click off. Done in five seconds. Accurate to one-sixteenth of an inch when all I need is full feet.

* Find or rent a flash meter and test your flash's true output. I've never owned an on camera portable flash unit that was anywhere near its manufacturer's rating. They are all one or more stops less powerful. Especially if they are older and their 30+ year old capacitors have aged. Figure out what guide number yours really produces before using that number to calculate distances and apertures.

* And to make it easier to match those distances and apertures, I make a small paper table that replaces the also hard to interpolate flash unit sliders and rings and whatnot. Years ago when I started using flash bulbs that don't come with handy distance sliders and rings, I wrote a small old-school command line software utility to help me do this, since hand calculating full tables is a pain in the butt. I first print, then tape these tables to the back of my Crown Graphic, or keep folded ones in my shirt pocket for reference. Then I just quickly laser the distance, read and set the aperture from the table, and expose.

Here's a sample table I just created. Green is for nostalgia. It's for my own Vivitar 285HV with a flash meter tested GN of 92 (not the manufacturer's 120, mine is about 4/5-stop less), EI 400 film, and a selectable aperture resolution of one-third stops. The five distance columns are in feet. They represent, in order left-to-right, the 285's TELE, NORM, and WIDE zoom modes, in addition to the NORM mode when using a StoFen diffuser cap in both horizontal and vertical flash head orientations. This whole table fits conveniently in a shirt pocket.



Ken

Ken, this is a goldmine. Thank You!
It also sounds completely in line w/ my afternoon/evening's readings on strobist.com. You got incredible motor detail on that B17, and the lighting of today's shot of the young lady & her prize-winning hog show you have a thing or two to say on the topic. I appreciate your kind help.

Sirius - the SB800 seems to come up alot as well recommended. Thank You. 'Have some connection detail to work out w/ the 500 & the other PC linked gear, but I'll get there. Again, thanks for your help.

Well I just flipped through the SB600 manual and I may have to retract my endorsement given the cameras you are using. It'll work fine for your D7100 probably but it doesn't seem to have an auto mode that doesn't depend on the camera. I thought surely it had that. I've even coveted one of these a bit for my D200 but not anymore.

Ok well it will still work manually as Ken suggests but a better tool might be an SB80dx or SB28 that has a true auto mode built in. These will do A mode on digital cameras too.

I have several of the SB80dx's and they work great with about any camera and it has the PC connection too.

Auto or "A" mode makes strobes an incredible tool, the flash metering is done in the strobe so it eliminates a lot of the math manual setting require and IMO is more reliable.

I too recommend a flash with a built in "auto" mode.

I mainly use a big Metz 60 series flash for the purpose, but my relatively smaller Olympus T32 works well too.

In the past, I used a Vivitar 283 with success as well.

In some cases, having side swivel can be handy. In many cases, ceiling bounce capacity can be handy as well.

Here's an example where I used the same five steps listed earlier to apply some gentle fill...

This was made on Fuji Provia 100F transparency film with my completely manual Mamiya C330S TLR mounted with the 80mm f/2.8 lens. From the blue sky one can see that it was a bright sunny day, meaning very harsh contrasts for this film.

Had I simply used a sunny-16 base exposure only, the inside of the aircraft would have appeared pretty much inky black. But that's not how my eye perceived the scene, as I could see plenty of interior detail. So I decided to give a minus 1-stop balanced fill.

First I made an incident reading for ambient light. Then I carefully framed the composition (this is a very nearly full frame scan). Then I quickly lasered that round cylindrical thingy dead center in the gun port to get my important shadow distance. Using that distance I read the full flash exposure aperture from my handy table and set 1-stop less on the lens. Then I set the shutter for the balanced full ambient main exposure using the incident reading.

Worth noting is that it was far more difficult to type that just now than it was to actually do it that afternoon. The whole process was done in about 30 seconds. It took far longer to figure out where to put my feet than it did to figure out how to balance the two light sources.

The interior turned out exactly as my unaided eye had originally perceived it that day. But the price I paid was the tipoff of visibly mixed color temperatures. This is most easily seen in the flash-illuminated white color of the horizontal bar to the right of the fuselage star insignia, versus the skylight-bluish tint of the bar to the left of the star. I knew in advance that would happen, and it was worth the tradeoff to me.

For the record, the aircraft is the restored and fully airworthy Collings Foundation Consolidated B-24J Liberator heavy bomber Witchcraft. According to the foundation this is the only remaining flyable B-24J left in the world. This image is of the port-side waist gunner's station. The picture at the link shows the same gunner's station just to the immediate left of the large "Q2" designation.



Ken

A language issue:

M Carter said:

A wireless trigger is the total sh*t - even the $25 amazon specials are pretty good ...

Click to expand...

I am puzzled. Is such now shit or not??

I believe the younger generation now use that word to mean "the cats pajamas"... a good thing.

I just downloaded an e-book titled "Fast Flash for Portrait Perfection" by Gina Milicia available at: digital-photography-school.com for the intro price of $14.99, go to the sight and do a search by the title name.
I have dozens of books on flash technique but am a sucker for more...also I buy too many cameras, but that's another story.
Anyway, check it out, it's pretty thorough from rank beginner to seasoned user (I've been using flash for many many years but always crave more info).
A lot of good info at a reasonable price.

HiHoSilver...you know, the Nikon SB-26 might be a great little flash for you to pick up a couple of...they have a built in optical slave
and I used to use them a lot. When it comes to fill, it's really easy...with a globe style diffuser such as the Gary Fong LightSphere,
you can really get some decent results...one thing I think that sets a photo apart from others though is some backlighting, and I love
to use the sun for this when possible...that's where the Sb-26's come in, stick them on little plastic flash stands...
I recently saw this low-tech DIY beauty dish (see below) , and laughed! Pure genius I say, pure genius!

Added bonus, you can clean the hors d'oeuvres out of your teeth once the grip-and-grin event is over.

HiHoSilver said:

600 is okay? Great (wallet dodged another bullet)
Cameras will be 500cm, Super Ikonta, Retina, FE2 & hopefully a rare shot w/ a d7100

I get confused on the chord connectors The old coax PC style connector, present on the lens of the 500, Ikonta & Retina - has no mating connector end on the SB600. I'm guessing there's some adapter that accepts the PC connector and a 1/2" rca-style audio chord for taking the flash off camera (stand, bracket, etc).

Click to expand...

I too started with the SB-600. It's a slipperly slop, my friend.

https://www.flickr.com/photos/mrdat/4195656121

I've sold some of the SB-28s because I've gone full on Strobe / Monolights. Now, I'm a huge fan of portable bare bulb flashes.

But I digress, yes, the small speedlights are great for on location fill.

CropDusterMan said:

HiHoSilver...you know, the Nikon SB-26 might be a great little flash for you to pick up a couple of...they have a built in optical slave
and I used to use them a lot. When it comes to fill, it's really easy...with a globe style diffuser such as the Gary Fong LightSphere,
you can really get some decent results...one thing I think that sets a photo apart from others though is some backlighting, and I love
to use the sun for this when possible...that's where the Sb-26's come in, stick them on little plastic flash stands...
I recently saw this low-tech DIY beauty dish (see below) , and laughed! Pure genius I say, pure genius!

Added bonus, you can clean the hors d'oeuvres out of your teeth once the grip-and-grin event is over.

Click to expand...

Way cool

markbarendt said:

Well I just flipped through the SB600 manual and I may have to retract my endorsement given the cameras you are using. It'll work fine for your D7100 probably but it doesn't seem to have an auto mode that doesn't depend on the camera. I thought surely it had that. I've even coveted one of these a bit for my D200 but not anymore.

Ok well it will still work manually as Ken suggests but a better tool might be an SB80dx or SB28 that has a true auto mode built in. These will do A mode on digital cameras too.

I have several of the SB80dx's and they work great with about any camera and it has the PC connection too.

Auto or "A" mode makes strobes an incredible tool, the flash metering is done in the strobe so it eliminates a lot of the math manual setting require and IMO is more reliable.

Click to expand...

The SB800 does have an automode for fill in flash.

Too much automation atrophies the brain.



Ken