Multiple Flash Indoors

You have to love wide angle lenses. The "stretch face" curse has become so commonplace that viewers look at these images without giving it a second thought. Unfortunately, the challenge of incorporating key visual elements within the confines of a photograph often forces me to choose the widest lens I have and live with the curse.

Flash indoors should have become obsolete with the advent of high ISOs on our digital cameras. But available light isn't always the most flattering. Indoors, light almost always comes from above, making for deep-set eye shadows and extremes brightness variations between the shadows and highlights. Sure, you could expose for the shadows and have completely blown highlights, or expose for the highlights and let all shadow detail disappear. But in the end, a photo that compromises one for the other will never reproduce well when it is finally printed.

Now there are many who might say that adding artificial lighting while making a photograph is "altering" the environment in an unethical manner. I agree that it does alter the look, but not necessary the content. I consider lighting as a tool to reveal, not conceal.

Supplementing exiting light gives me a chance to present to the viewer a scene that more closely resembles how the mind recorded it. The human eye, coupled with the human brain, is capable of compensating for the extreme variations between the highlights and the shadows. All the additional lighting does is make the image closer to what we remember, giving back the detail that was lost to the shadows. I consider this as "moral" as the flash bulb fired by a Speed Graphic, or the Vivitar 283 attached to a Nikon F. Now the bother of setting up additional lights? That's another story.

The event was "Fashion For  Compassion", and fundraiser for the Peninsula Humane Society. The animal fashion show was a bit if kitch, but always challenging and fun. As in all fund raisers, the tables closest to the stage are a bit more expensive, and to insure the highest returns on this prime real estate, packed closely together. This limits one's choice of shooting positions, so looked for a spot as close to the stage as possible to gain maximum control of the photo. When shooting up close at a low angle (don't block the view of the paying guests!), you get a lot of ceiling to contend with. The beautiful chandelier identifies this as the Airport Hilton, a detail that improves the local angle.

Now for the key light. I mounted an SB-800 on a light stand after I gelled it with a full CTO to match the incandescent lighting in the room. I placed the light stand right next to the mounted speakers to protect it from being bumped. I extended the stand as high as I could so the light would travel over the heads of the guests nearest the stage. This can be checked by simply standing or kneeling on the stage and looking for the light. If you can't see the light from the stage, you'll know that your subject won't be lit in that particular location.

Here's the view from the stage. You can see the flash in the background, next to the speaker box. At first, the balloons were actually casting shadows on the stage. Luckily for me, the balloons would be popped as part of a raffle.

The next test shot showed that my key light was casting a shadow on the ceiling. I added a Rogue Grid to the flash, and with the light now concentrated away from the ceiling, the shadow disappeared. That being done, I adjusted the exposure by photographing my hand while standing on the "mark", or point of focus. I programmed the key light to 1/4 power manual, based on this test. Finally, the fill light. I simply dialed the on-camera commander to a minus 2 stop output, gelled it with a full CTO, and I was ready. Here again is the selected shot.

This was my favorite from all of the runway shots. Making the photo was a bit difficult since the dogs really don't care about photographers and usually don't stand on their marks for very  long. Close inspection will show that I was a bit off focus, as the nearest dog is a wee bit soft. But sometimes a photo opportunity is a gift, one that you take as it is presented and simply say thank you, even if it's not what you really hoped for. 

The fill light is a bit strong on the near dog, something that is going to happen, no matter what. But the highlights are quite salvageable, and a few quick passes with the Burn Tool will fix this right up. The significant advantage to the off camera key light is in the shadows. Notice how they extend from camera left to right, just discernible on the runway carpet. The fill light does cast its own shadow, but you would have to really look for it. The chandelier on the ceiling maintains a textured appearance, and there is enough light to clearly see the audience. Yes, it's a flash photo, but the ambient light is certainly given its due.

Since it was a secure location, I frequently left the main presentation area and went looking for photos. I was now free to use ceiling and wall bounce by simply changing the output of the on-camera commander to plus 2/3 of a stop, my normal output for bounce flash. I do this because I prefer a slightly overexposed image when bouncing since it is "safe" light and doesn't block up the highlights as direct flash often does. 

I wanted to use bounced flash for the shot, so I positioned myself with my back toward a light colored wall, and asked these dog lovers turn so that they faced me. By using an ISO of 1600 and a relatively slow shutter speed, I was able to keep detail in the background. It was all a matter of waiting for Joey, a black chihuahua mix, to give a "look", which he eventually did.

Ceiling bounce was used in these two photos. The young woman on the left was speaking to somebody just outside of camera range. Just then Charlie looked up and I made this shot.

Poor Cupcake is feeling a little hot and tired. I found out the she was born deaf, and was trained to respond to hand signals. She had an incredibly sweet disposition, and the few minutes I spent with her reminded me how much I missed having a dog in my life.

Three On A Stick: Multiple Flash Main Lights

I had been postponing an article on multiple speedlights used as your main, or key light. I was waiting an opportunity to make a photo using the two Lastolite Tri-Flash brackets that I have personal experience with: The original Tri Flash and the Joe McNally unit.

The original Lastolite unit was the first one that I purchased. It holds three speed lights in a series of cold shoes that appear to be pre-formed into an aluminum extrusion. The most significant shortcoming is the lack of any secure mechanical retention. There is some clamping action provided by the foot of the speedlight, but not enough to inspire any level of confidence. I found that whenever I used them, I spent most of my time worrying about the speedlights' slipping out of their respective shoes.

The McNally unit had some major bells and whistles. I was taken by the fact that the cold shoes retained the speedlights using an actual clamp. However, both of the McNally units I purchased lacked sufficient clearance to properly clamp onto a flash. I wound up deepening the channel with a flat file. Once sufficient clearance was established, the unit worked fine. One nice feature is the rotating cold shoes. This allows you to rotate the flash body to get the best line of sight for reliable (hmmm...) iTTL synchronization.

Now this was all well and good, and I did use multiple speedlights in conjunction with some sort of umbrella light modifier. But after many, MANY dollars spent on these units, a third contender comes along that satisfies nearly all of my concerns at a fraction of the cost.

Adorama Triple Shoe Adapter. At about $20.00, I was skeptical, but bought two just the same. Well, you get what you pay for, but the functionality goes far beyond the price. It's an adapter that allows you to mount 3 speedlights onto a small base unit, but with a significant twist. First off, each shoe is a hot shoe, and all three units can be fired by using the built-in mini microphone jack.  Now if you have a radio controller that accepts a microphone jack (think Pocket Wizard), you can use fire all three flashes.  Secondly, the speedlights are retained by the retractable pin in the foot of the current Nikon speedlights, making it much easier to mount, and dismount, the speedlights. Granted, there doesn't seem to be any build quality in the unit, but if you already have a conventional umbrella bracket that uses accepts a 5/8" spigot to attach some sort of cold-shoe, this adapter is definitely worth the money. My advise would be to handle the unit with care and don't stress the mounted speedlights.

In the field, the Adorama unit worked exactly the way it should have. Using iTTL and 4 speedlights, the set-up was quick and easy. I used 3 lights, one for each shoe, in the Triple Shoe Adapter, all set to Group A, Channel 3. I used these settings so the remote units will work with my D70 camera's built in iTTL trigger which can only use the 3-A settings. It turns out that this setting works with my P7000 camera, but that's another story.

Planning The Shot: The lead photo was promoting a charity luncheon and fashion show that had a "safari" theme. As it turned out, their logo was a Giraffe. Now it just so happens that we have a bronze giraffe in Central Park, and my editor suggested that it might make a fun background. But what props could I add to carry the safari theme? I thought that if I went on safari, I'd be sure to bring a pair of binoculars and a camera with a long lens. So I rummaged up a pair of large binoculars and mounted on telephoto lens on non-functioning SLR body. I was good to go.

On the day before the shoot, I went to the park, and scouted for an angle that would allow me to bet a clean background around the giraffe's head. I made a mental note of where to stand to get the giraffe in the background, free from clutter and easily recognizable. I would have preferred a blue sky with some fluffy clouds but was forced to settle for a "leafy" background, courtesy of some background trees. There wasn't any way I could get enough light on the dark bronze surface to render any detail, so I was content to have just the silhouette.

Ready To Shoot: Luckily for me Ahnna, the publicist, came along with my two models, Tara and Liat. She volunteered to help hold the key light which allowed me to mount the key light on a hand-held paint pole instead of a light stand. I used three speedlights in the Triple Shoe Adapter and a Zumbrella in the shoot-through mode. Once everything was powered up and tested, I positioned my myself so I could the a clean outline of the giraffe. Next, I moved my models (forward and back, left and right) until they were properly positioned within the frame. This was a real time-saver because the relationship between the camera and the background was now a constant. Once I had Tara and Liat in place, I positioned Ahnna and the paint-pole key light about 6 feet away from the subjects with the umbrella held about 8 feet off the ground. Since I was almost 15 feet away, the light from pre-flash from the master unit actually bounced around the inner surface of the Zumbrella and eventually found its way into the sensors on each of the 3 SB-800s, which were set to add 2/3 of a stop of overexposure. I had dialed the output of the camera mounted controller to - 2 2/3 stops of output to just barely fill the shadows. Based on the previews, the fill appears to have been much greater than I had anticipated, but still nicely filled.

On thing to remember: Exposure is based on the distance between the key light and the subject. I could have been across the street and still achieved the same effect, providing the pre-flash could be seen and properly interpreted from that distance.

All in all, a pretty easy shot to make. It did require some careful planning, but the result was worth the trouble. and everybody was pleased with the finished product. I was done in 15 minutes, another plus.