A Nurse with a Gun

Saturday, January 30, 2010

posted by Xavier at 6:32 AM

2 Comments:

Blogger Keith Alan K said...

It still startles me when I finish a gun post and scroll down to find Strobist stuff on the same blog.
No other site combines my main interests like you do, so I just wanted to say thanks.

9:33 PM  
Anonymous TJP said...

Excellent!

I found that an off-axis strobe produces irregular coverage with hot-spots. I have bounce head strobes and adjustable shoes (which tilt the strobe body 90 degrees), so I can get the flash as close to the axis of the umbrella pole as possible. It requires a little choking up (because of the length of the strobe unit) and maybe sandbagging the stand. This way where the pole points is where the light goes, and the illumination is nice and round. I either put on a wide angle adapter or set a "zoom" strobe for wide.

It's not so much hollow poles that are the problem, but open-ended steel ones that are paper-thin. I have a couple cheap ones, and slightly crushing the pole is unavoidable. I also have a JTL brand shoot-thru that I bought from Adorama, and it is aluminum with capped ends. It's fairly inexpensive and so far, crush-proof.

I was not aware that optical "dumb" triggers worked with Nikon digitals, or any digital SLRs. Since off-the-film sensors no longer work with super-shiny CCDs/CMOS chips, all of the flash metering is done right before exposure instead of during. Since I come from Minolta-land, I don't know if digital Speedlights have wireless, HSS and ratio flash for off-camera strobes. I know that old, single-pulse units fire too early because of pre-exposure metering, (and pre-flash wireless communication.) Dumb triggers did not sync on the D40, Sony Alpha 100 or a K-M Z10.

The pop-up unit on the D40 is so good that I'm not worried about it, but the Sony's is so blue that I have to set the WB to overcast to get something resembling warm tones. My solution was to purposely use an incompatible film unit strobe. It doesn't understand most of the new protocol, but it does understand the Fire! command, so I use the full-power pulse to set off the dumb triggers--all of which aren't nearly as small and delicate as the pop-up, and can be gel-ed to correct for cold hues.

I love these guys,

http://lightenupandshoot.blogspot.com/

but some of this strobist stuff can be a bit too dramatic for my taste.

12:25 AM  

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