Perfect Exposure

I recently shot a wedding, and as it’s that time of year the couple left the reception in the dark. The parents had a plan to use sparklers to form an archway for the happy couple to leave through. I didn’t know that this was planned so I had to act fast… which I did.

Fortunately, the sparklers were huge and would be mistaken for RPGs in the middle-east. And because they were huge they would sparkle for three or four minutes which was more than ample for the photography I had in mind.

I grabbed my tripod, camera and SB-600 flash and made a dash for the final part of the archway (which disintegrated in chaos within a few seconds) so I could shoot through the sparkle. I set the camera to shutter priority at 1/15th of a second and changed the flash to use rear curtain. I’ll explain that in a moment as it wouldn’t do any harm, and could help with what I wanted to accomplish.

Without warning (my shouts were unheard in the commotion), the bride and groom appeared walking through the archway of flames trying to smile and not be blinded by errant sparks. I started shooting without the flash and quickly check the results on the camera’s display… which were okay but didn’t show the movement that I was looking for… so I dropped the exposure to 1/4 second and shot again. The results had movement, but the camera was firmly mounted on the tripod so no camera shake.

When the couple got within ten feet of me I signaled them to stop and turned the flash on using 2 stops under indicated for TTL flash and took a test shot… not bad so I changed the camera setting to manual after observing the “correct” exposure and started playing with the (then) manual flash output to get as many shots as I could (8) before the sparklers died or the couple were blinded, and I could get the result I wanted. Which I did.

FYI, the rear curtain flash make the flash fire at the end of the exposure. It’s particularly useful when photographing vehicles as it gives the illusion of a car with light steaks behind it. If you use standard flash settings, the streaks will be traveling “forward” and it will look odd.

I have been working for a while to solve a inscrutable problem, and it is not fixed. It cost me just $3 plus $3 shipping. I bought 2 for $10 delivered. Here’s the problem, and how this $3 device fixed it.

For some time I’ve used studio strobes to light the background when I shoot weddings. My problem is that if I shot into the strobes to back-light the subject - usually the bride and veil, then the subject’s face was in shadow so it took a lot of effort to bring out the detail in post processing.

My plan was to use an on-camera strobe set to minimal output so I could brighten the shadows, and leave the big strobes to handle the background. The problem was that my wireless trigger caused the strobe to lockup, as the Nikon SB-800 couldn’t deal with the trigger. FYI, the SB-800 has a jack to facilitate using accessory strobes, but it doesn’t work as advertised as once you switch the camera off the strobe will freeze powered up and you’d have to take the batteries out to reset it. During a wedding, you don’t have time to mess around for this. Enter the solution…

I bought an accessory hot shoe which fitted between the strobe and the camera. In that way, when the shutter sends an electrical pulse to fire the on camera flash, it must pass through the $3 doo-dad. And that doo-dad has three accessory sockets to allow for multiple devices - a wireless trigger to be connected to one of them with two left over. Now I don’t have any problems, although I have to shoot on manual which isn’t a problem. The SB-800 works fine, as does my SB-600s. The wireless trigger works every time and nothing locks up. Problem solved.

No, I’m not recommending which type of bag to carry your groceries around, but I am making a change in my studio and will save you time and money if you follow these recommendations.

I recently attended an excellent fashion photography class. In addtion to learing some interesting lighting, and lighting ration techniques I paid close attention to the backgrounds used. For a long time I have used standard linen/muslins. While they allow nice graphics if you like that, they aren’t that good in the standard plain flavors - white, black, grey, etc. While I just dealt with the wrinkle problem by moving the model well away from the background and using a large aperture to throw the background out of focus I never pursued an alternative until now.

I found that the class paper background were far superior to mine as they were clean, unwrinkled, fairly inexpensive and produced very nice unobtrsive results. So I plan to change soon. Take my advise, and don’t bother with the plain muslins. They aren’t worth the time and effort.

When you photograph a wedding reception, particularly at this time of year it often gets dark very quickly. As such, it becomes more and more difficult to produce good images as the background soon turns black and the dancing and other events begin. You can use this to your advantage using what I call the V Spread. It’s simply using two studio strobes on tall light stands in an approximate V surrounding the dance floor or where the garter or bouquet toss takes place.

If you position yourself between the V, you can take many fun images and produce great edgy shots. Focus on the newly married couple and you’ll probably get one really good image out of every five clicks. You’ll need a reliable wireless trigger’ you’ll need to turn off the strobes’ optical senors or put some tape over them and you’ll have to trust auto-focus. Other than that click away and blind everyone with the colossal flashes that emanate from the strobes. It gets to be like a disco from way back.

Other than discussing the merits of various wireless fash triggers, I thought I’d post a note as to why they are so valuable.

Imaging a situation that you want to add a little edginess, or separation of your subject to your background to your photograph. How do you do it?

The standard method is to have the subject face the camera with the sun over their shoulders. In this way the sun creates some nice rim lights. But if you’re indoors or its cloudy, or the background doesn’t work for you using this simple technique, you can use a remotely triggered flash to simulate this effect.

There are three methods to trigger the remote flash - one, use a long flash cable, two, use an optical trigger, and three, use a wireless trigger. I like the third option.

Although a physical wire works well, you always run the risk of falling over it, or it not being long enough as it has to be positioned where the lens can’t see it.

An optical trigger also works well, but works best in a small room where your use an on camera flash to pulse light at the remote sensor and fire the remote flash. If the sensor is hidden or too far away, or outside it probably won’t work.

Which brings me to the wireless triggers. They use a part of the wireless spectrum to send a fire command from the transmitter on the camera to the receiver attached to the flash. They are both reliable and have a very long range. An expensive trigger can fire a flash over 1/2 mile away. Don’t ask me why you’d want to do that, but they do have the bragging rights.

Finally, you’ll need to buy some adapters so that your flash can use a receiver and the camera, transmit assuming that neither have that factory installed feature. One word of warning. I’ve bought over 10 triggers through the years, and found that the cheap eBay Chinese products either don’t work, only work within a few feet of the camera and are unreliable. You can get reliable triggers for $125 a pair and up. Stick with those.

If you are shooting weddings, you’re shooting the dress. Period. In order of importance, you have the bride, her dress and then her mother. If you get them right, you’ve done a nice job.  Be sure to get a few of the groom, but don’t worry. As long as he shows up, sober he’s fine.

In all seriousness, shooting a bride and groom together is a problem. No sensor in daylight can accommodate both the white dress details and the black tux. So what to do?

Expose for the dress, use RAW files exclusively and sort it out in post-production. It’s much better to have a solid black tux, than screw up and overexpose the dress so all of the expensive detail is lost. On occasion, that’s fine but as a rule of thumb, the bride will examine your images for dress details, and that will be her make or break position on how well you did. If you err slightly to underexposure; you can tell from the histogram then you’ll be okay.

I love to use big, studio strobes at weddings. I think that I’m the only one, but that’s fine. Someone has to be right. As long as you have a white ceiling, preferably 12-15 feet high, and white walls if possible you can position a big strobe in the corner and shoot the light out towards the room ceiling center and you’ll get very nice soft directional light. You can add a small 1/128th manual setting on the on-camera strobe for fill to taste and you’ll do very well. If you shoot against the light, or farther down the room, just change the manual to 1/64th or similar and view the LCD for results. Of course, the strobe and wireless trigger must work together.

I had the occasion a few days ago to take some open air bridal portraits of a wonderful woman, of whom her wedding I’ll be photographing in a few weeks.

As I am convinced that preperaton is key to a good night’s sleep I brought a variety of redundant equipment to the shoot. And I needed it.

All went well, except that my wireless flash trigger - the CyberSync trigger stopped working. I thought that it may have shorted, but I couldn’t open the transmitter case without damaging it. Having thought ahead, I hunted through my case and found not only a long cable to connect the studio flash to the camera, but also the camera adapter to make it work. It turned out that the transmitter just needed the battery removed and replaced, but the cable saved the day.

The moral of this story is to think through each shoot and bring enough equipment that you can bypass a disaster.

Lenses are expensive. They are expensive for various reasons, but the main one is because of what is known as the maximum aperture. Maximum aperture is the lens setting that lets the most light through in any given moment. By letting in relatively more light than a less expensive lens it allows for a faster or briefer shutter speed, and limited “depth of field”.  And a limited or shallow depth of field means only the focal point and slightly in front and behind this point is in focus, and that can be attractive.

But there is a problem… and the problem is that the most popular types of lenses - zooms are one of compromise.  And no manufacturer has been able to make a lens that’s tack sharp at all aperture settings, and all zoom settings. The truth is that the manufacturers build lenses that are sharpest at mid-zoom range, and at mid-apertures.

Here’s an example. Let’s say you don’t want to spend $2,000 on a f2.8 70-200mm zoom lens but are enamored with the idea of a lens that is wonderful to shoot “wide open” or at f2.8. Unfortunately, this lens will probably not be tack sharp until the aperture is reduced to f5.6 or f8, 1/4 to 1/8 of its maximum light transmitting capability. And then only when set to a medium magnification, let’s say 130mm.

All is not lost, just buy the next level down lens for about $600 which will have a maximum f4 aperture (1/2 the light gathering power) and use this lens at f8. You’ll get the same quality images, but save a huge amount of money.

So why spend $2,000 when you can spend $600. The old answer was that the extra light gathering power was really useful when shooting weddings in dark churches, or that the camera focused easier. But with new camera designs. that isn’t a big problem any more. The cameras can be set to a higher ISO or “speed” so that the shutter speed can be set to a non-shake setting, and the auto-focus mechanisms do a much better job than before.

It’s only going to get better.

I love tripods. No one else seems to but I love super sharp pictures. It’s odd, my fellow professional photographers will shoot images with 2-300mm expensive telephoto lenses and not get sharp results. Even with image stabilization and fast shutter speeds.

I’ll shoot the same subjects but use a tripod and the results are so sharp that I could almost shave myself with them. Almost.

The problem with tripods is that they are awkward and sometimes heavy. If you indoors with a group of people, you’re asking for trouble to have a tripod in the middle of the group. Not only is someone going to trip over it, and break your camera but they may break something as well. So if you want to use a tripod be very aware of where to place it to avoid problems. In the open, it usually isn’t a problem and having a stationary camera is a way to create discipline in camera usage. It will force you to think about what your want to photograph and why from that angle.

My favorite combination is a tripod with a pistol grip and quick release plate. The pistol grip is squeezed to release the position and release to lock the tripod head at whatever angle you want. This works for light weight camera/lens combination. If you have a big heavy lens, not only does the lens have its own mount to attach to the tripod but it will also have a tripod collar with a locking knurled screw The mount provides the best balancing point of the camera and lens combination to avoid stressing the camera by having a lens heavy combination. The tripod collar screw is released slightly to allow the lens and camera to rotate from horizontal to veritcal so it’s a snap to change the image format. If you changed the pistol grips position to the side it would likely sag with a heavy lens and be difficult to work with. A collar is clearly preferable.

The quick release plates are really useful. For example, if you’re shooting a wedding you’ll place the flash near the back of the church and run back to into for the recessional. You can quickly mount your telephoto camera to it and shoot the bride and groom as the leave the church. If you left a camera mounted, it could vanish! These plates are of a standard size on higher grade tripod heads so if you have two camers with plates attached to the cameras you can mount either in seconds.

Try an experiment. Get you favorite telephoto lens and take some test pictures at 1/30th to 1/125th of a second. Then repeat the pictures with a moderate cost tripod you can buy for $3o at Wal Mart. You’ll be suprised at how much sharper the tripod pictures are. Now, I not really recommending a $30 or $40 tripod but you can always take it with you as weight won’t be a problem. If you actually get a heavier tripod you’ll see better results as it will be more resistant to flexing.

I’ve tried monopods (a single legged “tripod”} but get iffy results. Tripods are much better, although the monopod does double duty as an off camera flash pole. You can attach your strobe to it and hold the combination high into  the air for interesting results, but that’s another post.

Here’s what you may be seeing in my previous post. First of all you need to know that the camera manufacturer states that the strobe’s maximum sync speed is 1/500th for this camera. That actually isn’t true as you can see. The full, underexposed frame, even at 1/4000th., is fully if somewhat underexposed.  What is the truth about this experiment?

1     Well Nikon needs for it’s strobes, that are mounted atop the camera, time to communicate with the camera to set the exposure according to its processor. And any speed much faster than 1/500th of a second it is too brief a time for this to happen consistently. So they are very conservative. If you place the strobe atop the camera, you cannot even set the shutter speed faster that 1/500th. You can actually bypass this limitation if you put some Scotch tape over 2 pins on the flash thus stopping the camera from detecting the flash’s automatic system from working. It will then allow any manual setting you want to use but still trigger the flash when you press the shutter release.

2     You will see that when the shutter speed is slower than the correct exposure, 1/500th, the image actually becomes overexposed a little even though the pictures were taken in a very dark room. And you will easily see that very brief exposures severely underexpose the images. Why?

It depends on the strobe. I was using a studio strobe for these illustrations. By careful observation you can see that the flash does not instantly output all of its light, but takes time to discharge its energy. Only a fraction of its light was generated at 1/2000-1/4000th. And most available at 1/1000th and slower.

You can actually manipulate the power output of a flash by changing the shutter speed. If you want to increase the apparent power, set the shutter speed to 1/125th. If you want to severely limit it use 1/4000th. You just have to experiment. My Nikon SB-800 discharges it light must faster than the studion strobe so I has a bias to the correct manual exposure at 1/2000th.

In real life you can easily turn day into night. Just set the shutter speed to 1/4000th. Use your flash close to your subject so it will be exposed properly and play with your aperture to provide the right amount of illumination of the background. The higher the f/stop number, the darker the background. Atht he right combination, you can make mid-day at the beach like mid-night.

The key to getting better as a photographer is to experiment. With digital equipment, no cost photography is the rule. And you even get to see the results instantly and can takes a series of shots to get the result you want. Try it.