Here's the more interactive and fun side of what goes on behind the pictures taken for 
I got the usual suspects out tonight in the middle of my kitchen. My Canon 40D, the 580EX II flash, the PocketWizard MiniTT1 and FlexTT5, a tripod and my 5 in 1 reflector. Oh, also the Canon 70-200L IS. I cleared out an area of our kitchen where I could set up a chair where I could practice taking self portraits and enlisted the help of my wife before she went to bed. I had her manually focus on my face as best she could so I could skip over trying to do it myself. I hate doing it myself.
I set up a tripod with the 40D and the MiniTT1 about 8 feet away and then positioned the 580EX II with the FlexTT5 almost 90 degrees from that position, using myself as the "pivot". I wanted to work on side lighting of the face to enhance the dramatic effects on a certain picture style I was wanting to create. Something very black and white...contrasty...gritty. Usually, what I start with envisioning and what I end up with come out completely different, but in this case I think I got what I wanted.
I made sure to position the antenna for the Flex TT5 closest to the camera, but I will have to say, I had close to 100% firing accuracy all night. A couple of blown out shots and a couple non fires, but for the most part, the PocketWizard system worked great. Now, from what I've read, the effectiveness of the MiniTT1 and FlexTT5 are vastly improved in an indoor environment since the radio waves can bounce around and off the walls. On some other tests I've done indoors earlier on, I can say I never got this sort of consistency. Which, in it of itself, is inconsistent when you think of it. To say I expect the FlexTT1 and the FlexTT5 to work just as good next time with the same setup, well, that is anyone's guess. But tonight, they worked great!
I took about 150 shots in about 2 hours. Getting up and down...up and down, hitting the timer delay button on the camera and then briskly walking to my spot and sitting down just in time for the shutter to go off. I also killed all the lights in the kitchen, save for the small aquarium light in the other room that I used so I wouldn't run into anything and make noise to wake up the sleeping family!
The only other change I made as I was shooting was to put a white plastic trash bag up in front of my 580EX II to diffuse the light a bit and give it a bigger area to flash through. It would be nice in the future to have better equipment (light stands, umbrellas, etc...) but taping a trash bag to the cabinets in front of the flash did the trick. It actually made me feel good that I McGuyvered something! My reflector was on the opposite side of the flash to add some fill light and through the night, I practiced moving it around and finally behind me to try and get some separation light from the back ground and some faint rim lighting - but it really didn't work as well as I thought it would. Probably need another flash for that purpose and keep the reflector for regular fill lighting.
So here is the set of pictures I got and ran through Lightroom. Cleaned them up a bit, but again, I was going for a very gritty, grainy look.
0 comments:
Post a Comment