The Nikon Speedlight Still Impresses

Old Friend To The Rescue: My last assignment at the Fox Theater in Redwood City reminded me how truly great the Nikon SB-800 and its predecessor the SB-80 DX, were so far as design was concerned. My Nikon speedlights have been demoted to second tier for two reasons. First,  Nikon DSLR cameras are no longer my camera of choice for field work, and second, I usually need the higher output and faster recycle time of the Godox flashes and their proprietary lithium batteries. My years using Nikon speedlights have taught me to always carry spare batteries, or alternately, attach an SD-8a external battery pack if "sustained fire" was required. 

The event was a dress rehearsal of Peninsula Art's Hip Hop Nutcracker, and I decided to attend and use my three of my newly acquired Zeiss lenses on my Sony A7. Now manually focusing a lens mounted on a mirrorless camera is always a challenge, but add an indoor venue and one's troubles immediately multiply. Still, I was up for the challenge of high ISO settings and occasionally poorly focused images. As assurance, I packed an SB-800 speedlight, partly because the Sony A7 does not have a built-in flash of its own. Luckily for me, the speedlight that I grabbed had a pre-cut CTO gel taped to the head. I found a diffusion dome, stuffed it and the speedlight into a belt pouch, and considered myself ready.

To pass the time before the performance, I set about checking the white balance of the house lights. By changing from my normal Cloudy to the Incandescent White Balance Preset, I corrected the rendition to something closer to daylight. You can see the difference in this before and after comparison.

1/5 second, ISO 1600, Aperture not recorded. Fill flash with diffuser and  CTO gel installed, 45 degree inclination.

The final image was a little clinical, so I warmed it up using the temperature slider in the Adjust Color For Skin Tone option during post production. The flash had both the diffusion dome and the CTO gel installed. And now I had a base-line for any crowd images I might attempt after the performance. Incidentally, I made these images before the performance started. Photos and observations from and about the performance can be seen here.

1/8 second, ISO 800, Aperture Unrecorded. Flash assist.

Fast Forward: When the show ended, the cast members walked up the aisles, giving High Fives to as many hands as possible. I managed to re-position myself by the exit as the actors approached, and managed to get this single shot of when this actor paused long enough for me to establish focus and squeeze off a shot. The gelled flash with the diffusion dome gave me a color-corrected light source, and by tilting the head up at a 45 degree angle gave me a little more distance from the lens axis. I've used this technique before, and have found that it gives surprisingly good results considering its ease in application.

Reigning Champion: Here you can see the uncluttered control panel of the Nikon SB-800. It is the picture of exquisite simplicity. All of the buttons are raised and easy to depress. What's more, the buttons are always active. When you press the [+], it always increases the output by 1/3 of a stop. Likewise the buttons controlling the zoom angle. Multiple trees equals a wider spread, the single tree a narrower one. The [SEL] button serves as both "Menu" and "Select", since this gives the user access to the multiple options that are not frequently changed. The [MODE] button governs the four  flash control and output options: TTL, Manual, and Multi (stroboscopic), as you would expect on any flash. The fourth option, Aperture, provides non-TTL flash exposure output adjustment, a feature that nobody seems to have offered since the introduction of iTTL (Through The Lens) flash metering. Nearly all older Nikon speedlights (SB-600 and SB-400 excluded) have this feature, up to and including the SB-900. The take-away is that pushdown buttons are much easier to use than the rotating selection wheel/ring of the Godox, which I'll describe in a moment. This is especially important when you only have one hand with which to make your adjustments. Use your thumb to make your selections and the other four fingers to support the speedlight. Easy Peasy, especially when working in near darkness.

Original Photo can be found here.

The Young Upstart: The Godox flash is a far more advanced flash so far as features are concerned. I suspect that the engineers, when designed the basic body design for use over multiple platforms, chose to put as many controls as possible on the flash itself, making it easier to transition to different camera brands without having to adopt a different skills set. While the Nikon zoom and output controls require only a single touch for each increment of change, Godox makes it a three-step process. For example, to change the output you must first press the serrated rotating control wheel at the 9:00 position and rotate the wheel clockwise or counter-clockwise to increase or decrease the output. Finally, you need to press the unmarked center button to lock in your adjustments. Running and Gunning as I do, I usually forget this important last step, and later discover that my random movements across the back of the flash affected some change in the output. In my mind, that's way too much to remember.

I may rethink my flash carrying habits and start packing my Just In Case Bag in the trunk of my car. Everything I would need, including some spare batteries for my Fuji cameras, would already be there.

Bee Happy!

 

Happy Holidays, and may

2024 be free from angst!

The Hip Hop Nutcracker

 

This was an assignment I hadn't planned on taking. I wanted to try out some new lenses on my Sony A7 body during a walk in Marin County. In addition, I also wanted to test the practicality of using a manually focusing battery of prime lenses on an actual assignment at some point. These two pet projects converged during a performance of the Hip Hop Nutcracker, presented by Peninsula Lively Arts and performed at the Fox Theater in Redwood City, a venue and city I knew reasonably well.

Recently my friend Meshelle gave me four Zeiss Contax/Yashica lenses along with two Contax film SLR bodies, all of which had belonged to one of her friends. I carried three of those lenses with me that morning; a 25mm F 2.8 wide angle, a 50mm 1.4 normal, and a 85mm F 1.4 short telephoto lens. Along with these three lenses and my one Sony body, I carried a single Nikon SB 800 with its diffusion dome and a CTO gel taped to the flash head. I would be shooting in an indoor venue, and since it was a staged production, the lighting was sure to be "creative".

This photo of the sleeping Clara shows that when lit by a conventional incandescent spotlight, proper coloration of the subject is indeed possible. However, the colored gels that were added for effect complicated obtaining a color rendition that was reasonably accurate. To complicate things further, many of those tinted lights were spotlights aimed at one specific portion of the stage. This resulted in areas with differences in both the color tint and brightness within different areas of the frame.

The Money Shot: Focusing was also an issue. Focus peaking works best when you have lots of light and a high-contrast foreground subject, which was not the case here. For this shot, I focused on the dancer's foot, as there was a good chance he would stay "anchored" to that location long enough to get at least one well-focused shot. Add to that the dancer's constant movement and you'll get many "near misses" when it comes to selecting one image with a pleasing composition. Fortunately for me I found this single image in a veritable mountain of near misses.

This selection represents 9 of the 11 images that were initially taken. In addition to focusing errors, there was the problem of the subject moving in and out of the shaft of light that Illuminated him. I suspect that I quickly reviewed the take and felt that the final image was going to be one of the selected images.

1/250 second, ISO 1600, Aperture Unknown.

This is a cropped version of the last image. It is as sharp as can be expected, considering the high levels of noise that gave the image a granular, film-like appearance. In addition, the subject in this frame is fully in the spotlight, something that can't be said for many of the images I rejected.

1/8 second, ISO 800,  Incandescent Preset, Aperture Unknown, 

Pressing The Flesh: At the conclusion of the performance, the cast walked up the aisle, high-fiving as many hands as they could reach.  I realized I was in the wrong place if I wanted a photo, so I literally ran up the aisle from my perch at Stage Left, crossed the lobby, and re-entered the theater on the opposite side. The Nikon speedlight with its dome diffuser and the CTO gel was retrieved from its belt pouch and mounted on the hot shoe. After checking to see if the white balance was set to Incandescent, I angled the head up slightly to increase the size of the diffusion source, and then took a few photos to fine tune the exposure. This can be tricky, since there are three factors involved: the flash output, the shooting aperture, and the ISO setting on the camera body. I don't remember doing to because these adjustments because, over the years, they have become second nature to me.

Final Thoughts: Attempting to shoot an assignment without the benefits of autofocusing made this a very challenging assignment. Fortunately for me, I wasn't sent by the paper, which is to say that if I messed up, I could keep it to myself and nobody would be the wiser. I also learned that I need to keep a small flashlight on me whenever I have an indoor assignment. You never know when you have to make an adjustment that requires actually seeing the various settings. And finally, I was reminded of just how well designed the Nikon SB800 was. Both output and zoom angle  are adjusted from the outside using a rocker switch that is far easier to manipulate than those found on the Godox family of flashers, and that they are easier to do in the dark. If the Nikon SB800 only had a dedicated lithium battery, I'd still be using them today.

I'll rant on that more in a future post.

The Holiday Train

Dashing: Cal Train schedules a special Holiday Train to  make the run from San Francisco to Mountain View and Menlo Park. The train makes its first run on Saturday and stops at several stations along the way. On Sunday the train makes a second run to visit the stops it missed the day before. I would have preferred to photograph the train on Sunday, as the stops include three cities in the center of the Journal's readership area, but could only attend the Saturday run where the only "local" stop would be Redwood City.

As it turned out, the Redwood City Holiday Parade was scheduled for the same evening, so the assignment was a welcomed "twofer". The Parade started at 4:00 pm, well before the Train's 6:10 arrival, so I knew that I would have plenty of time to make the Money Shot. After some desperate minutes spent securing a parking space, I went to find the parade. Luckily for me, I spotted the staging area with dozens of marchers, so it was easy to find them after my car was secure. Since the Parade wasn't part of the assignment, I spent some time experimenting with my flash held off camera and triggered by a shoe-mounted radio controller.  The Fuji TTL metering system has always been iffy at best, so I opted to determine the exposure manually.

This photo was sent to me by Jay Minares, a photographer who I know from the annual Bethlehem Christmas recreations in Redwood City. During the parade, I used this off-camera flash technique using a radio controller mounted on my Fuji X-T2. It was the technique used for the two parade photos, In the first example, the flash was properly directed towards the subjects, giving me even illumination right down to the marcher's shoes. The second shot shows the flash pointed slightly upward, a happy accident that emphasized the closer marcher without overexposing her legs. It can be difficult aiming both the camera and the flash at the exact same spot, and near-misses are common.

1/30, F 6.4, ISO 6400

I am pleased with these two marching shots. You can see from the exposure that I was stretching the capability of the camera, as the ISO setting was the highest value available to me. 1/30 of a second was obviously not enough to prevent the motion blur of one marcher's waving hand.

1/60, F 8.0, ISO 6400

When this second group of marchers appeared, I knew that I would have to cut back on the flash output. If memory serves, I was running at 1/128 power, so I opted to stop down one stop. Coincidentally, I decreased the exposure time by a full stop in an attempt to recover the lettering on the theater marque in the background. This might have been an interesting photo to submit, although it was heavy on context and light on content.

Exposure Considerations: As ordinary as these two photos appear, there was a lot of exposure juggling behind them. First, there is the foreground, whose exposure is determined by the flash output and the aperture. The second and third exposure settings are the Fox marque and the sky, which are controlled by the exposure time. Underexposure can correct the overexposure of the marque, but will consequently darken the sky. In the second shot, the sky/marque exposure were reduced by 1 2/3 stops, a combination of a reduced aperture size to compensate for the decreased subject/flash distance, and the decrease in exposure time. The balancing act was made more arduous by the difficulty in adjusting the flash output using the on-camera flash commander. More on that in a later post.

Parade Chasing: Parades are moving targets, and the photographer is confronted with a choice. One can stay in one spot and wait for the perfect image to appear, or one can find a suitable subject and move along with it, photographing it whenever an opportunity presents itself. I chose the former approach when I found that the Fox Theater made a great backdrop, and the my wide angle lens could accommodate the evening sky, and my subjects in the foreground. 

The Train Station was a short walk away from the  parade route. I arrived with plenty of time to prepare for the train's arrival. 

The decorated Holiday Train arrived right on time. Barricades were arranged on the boarding platform to provide an unobstructed path for Mr. and Mrs. Claus,  Rodolph, Frosty, and Victorian Era Carolers to parade before the audience, This was my first Holiday Train photo assignment, and I was surprised to see how popular the event was. Nearly all of the photos were made from the "Hail Mary" technique, the one where the camera is held high overhead. 

Children of all ages stood behind the barricade. Wherever I went I was in danger of accidentally stepping on some small munchkin, so I did my best to keep a safe distance and go for the high-overhead shot. The flash technique was changed from my earlier off-camera technique to simply mounting the flash on the camera, adding a diffusion dome and adjusting the flash head to about 45 degrees to maximize the flash coverage and raise the flash's height just a smidge.

Rat-Tat-Tat: Because the flash output was so low, I was able to set the camera to the Continues Low Speed Burst mode. This allowed me to fire bursts of three to five shots before the flash was exhausted. This is a manual-exposure-only technique that can help capture those fleeting moments as the entertainers walked back and forth only the barricade in an effort to give a smile to every spectator.

If you examine the four-shot sequence, you can see that the Polar Bear is giving Low-Fives to members of the audience. Only in the last shot is the paw (more) clearly delineated against the background. Had I not made a Santa photo, this shot would have my first choice.

When photographing at relatively short distances (I was using a 10-24 F 4.0 zoom lens) the relatively modest elevation of the shoe-mounted flash can provide just enough height to provide some modeling on my subject's face. But when working in such cramped quarters as I did this evening, a shoe-mounted flash with an angled diffuser dome is the best you can do. I did have a Gary Fong Light Sphere in my bag, but was afraid that it would be easily knocked off of the flash head and lend where it couldn't be retrieved. However, the burst-firing of my camera coupled with the high ISO setting and minimal output of the flash worked out well on this assignment. Not particularly creative, but it gets the job done.