Hi-ho,
Thanks...
The 'setup' shot:
Setup
The three flashes are (From left to right) a Vivitar 285, Hanimex 855 and a Nikon SB-24. Camera was the Powershot G5. The 'reflectors' are just bits of paper taped on, and bent to sit in front of the flash heads.
The 'Studio' is the lounge floor, complete with Baby's toys.. The backdrop is one I created in the gimp using the 'Plasma Cloud' filter, then desautrated and faded out at the bottom and center. It's printed on a large format printer we have at work (A1 in this case, but it can do A0).
The SB-24 is fired off a hotshoe adaptor (Cable sitting on the floor) The Vivitar 285 is fired off a slave remote it's sitting on, and the Hanimex has an inbuilt slave cell. Camera is set to manual, ISO50, 1/250th, F/4.5 in that first shot.
All three flashes are in 'auto exposure' mode. the SB-24 is set to ISO50 F5.6, the Vivitar F/2.8, the Hanimex to F/2.0. So in theory the Nikon is the 'Key' light, and the other two are about one stop down. In reality the flash sensors seem to interact and the resultant difference in this case seems to be about 1/2 stop. I normally just take test shots and see what I'm getting.
For people portraits I use the same set of flashes, but with a couple of home-made umbrellas, and normally with manual power settings to keep things more consistent. Using auto-exposure with multiple flashes that don't talk to each other can be a bit random.
The Cat food in the bowl was a bribe to get Clyde back for a second try, which gave me this shot:
Model Cat Mk2
This time down to F/3 but the same settings otherwise. This shot is also full-frame, and just scaled with slight USM, the first one I played with curves a bit, and cropped it.
I think I might give up on trying to take photos of people, this cat is much better as a model. :-).
Cheers, Chris H. |