Tag Archives: SB-900

Shooting Alaska Bush Pilot Portraits At The Valdez Fly-In

Dan Bailey's Adventure Photography Blog Posted on by

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Last year was my first time going to the May Day Fly-in down in Valdez, Alaska.

If you’ve never been, it’s basically this: Beavers, Otters, Super Cubs, Cessna 185s, 35-inch bush wheel tundra tires, STOL kits, beach landings, tricked out bush flying mods and guys who can take off and land an airplane in a space that’s shorter than my driveway. Yea, I burned through multiple cards shooting airplanes, airplanes and more airplanes.

However, for this year’s Fly-in, I wanted to push myself with a different creative eye and shoot something besides just more airplanes. Fresh off The Flash Bus and armed with twice as many Speedlights as I had last year, I felt that shooting a series of bush pilot portraits would be the perfect opportunity for me to put to use some of the new gear and off-camera flash techniques that I’ve acquired lately.

Lighting Gear

My goal was to use a simple setup and go Hobby style, all light, fast and mobile so that I could make my way around the tarmac quickly and shoot as many portraits as possible on Friday night, when everyone is hanging around their airplanes and having a great time.

For lighting gear, I packed a single Manfrotto 6-ft Nano Stand, a Manfrotto 175F Justin Clamp, a Manfrotto Super Clamp, and a Lumiquest Softbox III, along with my 3 Nikon SB-800s, the SB-900, the Nikon SU-800 Wireless Commander, a Nikon SC-28 9′ TTL Remote Sync Cord and three Pocket Wizard Plus II Wireless Transceivers. (All of this fits in or on my LowePro MiniTrekker AW camera backpack with the rest of my camera gear.) I figured this would give me enough options for placing, holding, clamping, aiming and diffusing the light that I’d need to light up pilots and their planes.

Constructing The Shots

Since this is what I had to deal with, (see photo right) I knew that for each shot, I’d need at least two different light sources- one for the pilot, and one for the plane, if not more, although one light on the plane often did the trick.

With the stiff breeze that blew across the airport, I decided not to use the light stand, #accidentwaitingtohappen and instead just shot one-handed with the camera while holding a single flash off to the side with my left hand. For exposure, I used Manual mode with matrix metering to get light off of the sky, usually 1/160-1/250 at around f/9, and kicked the EV on the camera down about 2/3 stop to give a bit more drama to the background. TTL flash compensation to make up for the drop in exposure was tweaked, often +2/3 to +1, to get the desired light on my foreground subjects.

For diffusion on the pilot, I used the my new favorite tool, Lumiquest Softbox III, (attached to the flash with the Lumiquest Cinch Strap) which softens the light in a really nice way at close range and does a great job with head and partial body shots, which is what I wanted for these images. The closer you get, the softer the light is, so I tried to hold it as close as possible to the pilot while keeping out of frame. Having never used these kinds of on-flash diffusers before, I’ve quickly fallen in love with this great little diffuser. It gives exceptionally good results and folds up to fit right inside my camera bag.

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Then for the plane, I typically set my SB-900 and maybe another SB-800 on the ground with their included stands, placed them about 20-30 feet away, (or clamped them to something nearby) pointed them at the plane, making sure that the optical sensors were pointed back at me, and zoomed the flash heads anywhere from 70mm to 200mm. For some of the shots, like the first one above, I stuck on the CTO warming gel to add extra warmth. Lens choice was usually the 24mm or the 50mm.

To trigger all the Speedlights, I used an SB-800 as a commander on the camera, with the dome diffuser on, and the head rotated and pointed in the general direction of the ground flashes. The hand held flash was close enough that it picked up the signal no matter where the commander was pointed.

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For some setups, especially during the daytime, (bottom shot) where I was just shooting pilots with a single softbox flash I just connected the Speedlight to the camera via the Nikon SC-28 9′ TTL Remote Sync Cord. This two-piece rig turned out to be light and compact enough to carry around all the time for quick people shooting. Remember, though, when you connect a single flash with the TTL cord, you need to change it from Remote to TTL mode.

Establishing Rapport

Of course, the most important ingredient for shooting great location portraits is the rapport that you establish with your models. During the course of the evening, I didn’t shoot as many different people as I might have wanted to, mostly because I ended up striking up rather lengthy conversations with all the pilots that I photographed. I showed them the results as I went shot and explained my methods for constructing my imagery with all those cool looking flashes.

Not only did this make for more comfortable and relaxed models and better looking portraits, I ended up learning more about flying and Alaska aviation, I made some great new friends and contacts and even got signed model releases from everyone.

Final Analysis

Looking back, I’m really happy with my imagery. In fact, I think it represents a new level of confidence, style and skill for my photography. Did everything work perfectly that night with all the flashes and my lighting technique? Yea, right, that’ll be the day! Did I learn and see things now that I could have done differently? Absolutely, but that’s all part of the learning process.

The exciting thing for me with this shoot is that I went in with an idea, did a whole lot of experimentation and walked away with some photographs that I’m really proud of. See more photos in my Flickr stream.

I detail these lighting techniques and many more in my 83 page off-camera flash eBook, Going Fast With Light.

For other off-camera flash resources, check out The Hot Shoe Diaries: Big Light From Small Flashes by Joe McNally (I’ve learned a TON from this book) and Speedliter’s Handbook: Learning to Craft Light with Canon Speedlites by Syl Arena.

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3 Things on My Easter Photography Wish List

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Easter, the one holiday that never occurs on the same day of each year, is right around the corner. To celebrate, I thought I’d go ahead and put my Easter Photography Wish List out there, in hopes that The Easter Bunny brings me some real goodies in addition to all the chocolate and spring spheres that I’m hoping to get in my basket.

1. Maha PowerEX 8 Cell Battery Charger

With my growing arsenal of Speedlights, and increasing addiction to AA batteries, I need a battery charger that’s up to the task. The Maha PowerEX  MH-C801D will charge 8 of these bad boys in an hour. Enough for a pair of Nikon SB-900s, or 1 and 4/5 SB-800s. (I use the 5th battery compartment.)

Battery chargers are not all the same. The cheap, so called “quick chargers” simply don’t do the job right and are not worth it if you demand high performance out of your batteries. Of course, I’ll also need a few PowerEX AA 4-packs as well to go with my new charger, or a few sets of Sanyo Eneloops, which also get very high ratings from many Speedlight users.

2. HP v115 16GB USB Flash Drive

Can you say small? I mean really small. This thing is barely the size of your thumbnail and holds more data than my first two Macs.

It has no cover to lose, it simply folds into itself and fits on a keychain, around your neck, in your pocket- no wait, you might lose it in there. And it’s small enough that you could fit two or three of them inside a plastic easter egg. Hint hint.

3. Another Manfrotto 74″ Nanostand

I’ve got a couple of these already, but since I just acquired another Speedlight, it might not be bad to have a third. They’re built well, they’re super lightweight, and they fold up smaller than most tripods. Three of these things, a couple of umbrellas and a few flashes will easily fit in carry-on size baggage. Plus they’re only 50 bucks.

Happy Easter!

Lighting the Bike Shop with Nikon Speedights.

Dan Bailey's Adventure Photography Blog Posted on by

The other day I had an assignment to shot the interior of Speedway Cycles here in Anchorage, which is where they build Fatback snow bikes.

Of course photographing any interior can be a challenging… no make that a downright scary proposition, especially when you’re dealing with a mix of daylight and sucky fluorescent lighting. Here’s a straight ambient shot of the store, complete with bad color cast, dark corners and unworkable contrast.

Enter Speedlights.

Armed with my Nikon D700, the Nikon 14mm f2.8D lens, a Nikon SB-900, a pair of Nikon SB-800 Speedlights, and a Nikon SU-800 Wireless Commander. I took charge and attempted to wrangle this scene into submission. First charge was to try and bring a little fill into the left side of the frame, since my job was to highlight the bikes up front and center.

I stuck the SB-900 over there in the left corner and put the dome diffuser on to try and give me some softer, more even light. For the back of the store, I clamped one of the SB-800s (also w/ dome diffuser) onto a fixture and pointed it across the shop.

Here’s the result: Color balance better. The front is lit nice and soft, but right side of the store is still dark. The back doesn’t work very well, because although I see the back wall so much more, I’m losing the middle section of the store- you know, that big rack of finished Fatbacks.

Analysis: Aside from the light problems described above, it’s boring. Nothing stands out and there’s really no dynamic element about the image. Plus you can see that flash in the back of the store.

The fix:

1. Put the CTO warming gel on the SB-900 and zoom the head to 200mm, which will do three things. First, it will warm up the scene and add flavor, second, it will throw light onto that dark right side over by the counter, and third, it will fill that space with some nice strong shadows as it shines through the rack of bikes.

2. Put an SB-800 on a Manfrotto 74″ Nano Stand, raise it up to the level of the orange bike that’s hanging in from the ceiling and put a Lumiquest Softbox III onto the flash head. That help light that hanging bike and also throw some fill into the bike rack up front. The Softbox will soften the light just a little bit, but not so much that it just scatters all over the place and loses focus.

3. Take that SB-800 in the back of the store and clamp it to the shelves on the far right of the shop (out of frame) with a Manfrotto 175F Justin Clamp. For that unit, I took the dome diffuser off, zoomed to 105mm and angled it one click up. That makes it throw nice hard light across the shop, illuminate the middle and back sections of the store, and bring out all those cool looking Fatback forks that are hanging from the ceiling.

Analysis: I like it.

The shop is lit well front to back, the warm color and long shadows add great interest, the bike above it evenly lit, and it stands out against a darker background, since the zoomed SB-900 isn’t bleeding light up on to the ceiling anymore. Plus, that third SB-800 in the back effectively throws a nice spotlight onto all the Fatbacks. That hard patch of light also helps break up the flow and add a sense of depth to the entire scene.

I did try a few different setups, but the one described above gave me the best results. I also tried shooting hard zoomed light through the bikes on the left wall, and I also varied the placement of the back right flash. All the flashes were controlled and trigged with the SU-800, which works incredibly well as a commander.

Looking back, I think I’d like to see a bit more light in the back left corner of the shop- it’s still a little dark over there. I’d like to think I’ve learned for next time.

Oh, and the best part of the whole shoot was when a customer was standing in front of the shelves near the back looking at the selection of energy bars. Since I was shooting up front, and obviously a little wrapped up in what I was doing, I didn’t notice her, and she didn’t notice the SB-800 that was Justin Clamped to the shelf at eye level right in front of her.

Imagine her surprise when the thing went off.

Oops…

Speedliter’s Handbook: Learning to Craft Light with Canon Speedlites

Dan Bailey's Adventure Photography Blog Posted on by

I’m a Nikon guy. I use Nikon cameras and Nikon flashes. So, when I go looking for information and inspiration to learn new off-camera lighting techniques, I turn to the guru of lighting, Joe McNally. I’ve mentioned his book, The … Continue reading →