CLS-Beyond

Tweet

Welcome back everyone. I hope everybody enjoys the comic strip WTD. I have to tell you that It's one of my favorite comics. Today I want to do a little more on the Nikon CLS system. We've already talked about how to get the flash off of the camera. We talked about the beauty of the Radio poppers, we talked about a little technique. What we haven't talked about are those times when we need more light than one unit will provide. Say for example you are lighting a large group of people, and you have them standing in 4 seperate rows, what now? I'm going to cover that today, as well as some of the other settings availible in the wireless mode besides TTL. So lets jump right in.


In the example I gave above, you want to light a large group of people but you still want to be mobile, meaning you don't want to have to carry a heavy stobe setup on location. When you have a large group like this(more than two rows deep) you start to have problems with light falloff past the second row. This happens because of something called the inverse square law. Without getting too technical the math end of it, what you get is every time you double the distance of your subject from the light source(the flash) the light hitting the furthest subject will be 1/4 of the intensity of the light coming from the flash. So what this means to you is, the light hitting the people in the 4th row, will be 1/4 the amount of light hitting the people in the 1st row. This will result in very poorly exposed subjects in the rear. The way to combat this is increasing the amount of light you are putting out. Nikon CLS is great for accomplishing this. With the aid of a bracket similar to the one shown in the photo above, you can effectively mount two flash units with one umbrella/softbox. The really nice thing is that since the Nikon flashes are fired wirelessly you don't have to add any additional hookups or cords. All you have to do is mount it and shoot. The TTL will take care of the rest. Remember that TTL is Through The Lens metering. The meter in the camera says what the light output has to be to light the entire scene, the camera will adjust the flashes accordingly. This takes the pressure off of you as a photographer to be creative and not have to worry so much about the technical aspects. You can focus on the more important things like composition, and subject rapport.

What if you find that because of a particular color on the background, or becuase of a particular color that the model/subject is wearing TTL isn't adjusting the flash output properly? What to do then? There is a setting labeled M in the CLS controls on the master flash/camera. In this setting you can manually adjust the output of the flash from 1/1 down to 1/128. This is a lot of range for a flash. This is especially useful if the background is black/white. I ran into this very problem two weeks ago shooting the awards for gymnastics in Covington. The trick was to set the flash to M(manual) mode and adjust it accordingly. I can and will do posts on how to get the proper exposure when adjusting your flash in manual mode, but the BEST online resource I have found for this is over at the Strobist . David Hobby does the best job I have ever seen when it comes to off camera flash. There is more information on that site than I will ever know. So if you want to know how to adjust for the proper exposure and can't wait for my post on it, check that site out. There are a couple of other options on the menu of the flash, but we'll talk more about them next week. See ya tomorrow. Jason Read more on this article...

CLS in Action and Filters

Tweet


So this is what we use CLS for. Also in this photo you can see the use of the Radio Poppers . We set these flash units up then crossed the street to shoot through the window. We wanted to see the lettering on the windows, as well as the table through the window. Overall it worked out well, but I don't have any of the finished images to show you. Shad is working on them and then they're going to the Jr. League people for their cookbook. Shad will have them up on his site soon. Speaking of Shad's website. He had enough of my constant torment so he broke down and built a website. Ok well he bought all of the software to do it. Either way, it's almost ready to go, when it is I'll post up the link for everyone to check out.

Today down and dirty on filters. Which ones do I need? Which brand do I go with? The first and most basic filter that I have on every lens that I own is a UV filter. UV filters,(sometimes referred to as Haze filters) are really nothing more than a clear piece of glass on the front of your lens. So why would you want one? One word PROTECTION. A "good" UV filter only costs between $40-$60. Much less than replacing or repairing your lens. If you drop your lens, if you drop something on your lens, or if you accidental get something like salt water on the front of your lens you'll wish you had one on there. I really like Hoya Filters. Hoya filters are good quality filters. They have essentially two different versions. They have single coated filters which us just a clear protective coating to prevent scratching. They also have Multi Coated lenses. These lenses are coated with multiple thin layers of metal that prevent glare, and ghosting. I prefer the multi coated filters because of the decrease in glare. The multi coated filters are about twice the price of the single coated filters. I have mentioned that I like Hoya, and Hoya is what I use, but there are other quality filters out there as well. Tiffin makes a nice filter, as well as Cokin. The main advantage of a Tiffin Filter is thickness. They are much thinner than most other filters.

So by now we know that we should all have a UV filter on our lenses at all times. No matter day or night. The next filter that I have found particularly useful is the circular Polarizer. Again I prefer the multi coated versions. The Circular polarizer is a filter that reduces glare caused by the sun, and cuts through the haze. They should have been named the haze filters, but that name was already taken... Anyway these filters aren't cheap. Expect to pay $100+ dollars for a good version. This is an essential filter for anyone wanting to do any kind of landscape photography. It will make a night and day difference in your photos.

Next we're going to talk a little about Neutral Density filters. There are many versions of the filter, but before I talk about all of them, I want to talk about what it actually is, and what it's used for. Neutral Density filters are filters that have a dark tint to them. They darken the light coming into the lens, much like a pair of sunglasses darkens the light that comes into your eyes. This is useful for two things, number one, if it's a bright sunny day and you want to use a large aperture like f/2.8 you may need something to reduce the amount of light coming in so you can get the proper exposure. This would allow you to have a very shallow depth of field when it's very bright out. The second reason to use a neutral density filter is to darken overly bright areas of the photo. This is the job of the split neutral density filter. They are only tinted on half of the glass. This allows you to turn the filter to cover either the top half of the scene, or the bottom half of the scene. Also there are varying levels of "tint" on the filters making some darker than others. Everywhere from 1/4 of a stop up to 4 or 6 stop difference.

These are the main filters that I use. There are other filters out there. They make warming filters, cooling filters, etc... These filters are mostly used for film because with film you don't have the ability to change white balance. Hope this helps some of you make a decision on which filters you need and want. See everyone tomorrow. Read more on this article...

Nikon CLS part 2

Tweet
Wow, what a busy few days. Between the inches of snow and working on a business plan for this upcoming year, I have been burning it at both ends. I hope everyone made it through the snow storm ok, luckily I have 4wheel drive so I didn't get stuck anywhere. On to some more CLS. So we ended the last segment with enabling the wireless on your flash units. Today we're going to talk about what to do with them now that you have them wireless.

The first thing that we should note about the CLS wireless capabilities are the limitations. The limitations for the units are theses. The units have to be within line of sight of each other. This means that the small IR (infrared) eye on the side of the "remote" flash has to be pointed at the camera. Sometimes you can get away with them being pointed not directly at the camera but that's only when you are in a tight enough space that the remote flash can pick up light that is being bounced off of the ceiling/walls. If however you are using the SU-800 wireless controller, there isn't any preflash to bounce off of the walls, or ceilings so you HAVE to be within line of sight. (Shad and I found this out last weekend the hard way)

So now you have your flash off camera, what are you going to do with it? Well there are a lot of things that you can do with it. Lots of different lighting scenarios that are now an option because your light source is movable. Now instead of your light source being trapped on top of your camera, you are free to move it anywhere within line of sight that you want, and you can attach any kind of light modifier that you want. My favorite modifier is a simple light stand and shoot through umbrella. The reason I prefer a shoot through umbrella when working with hot shoe strobes is because of power. Hot shoe mounted flash units don't have a lot of power so you have to make use of every little bit that they have. The shoot through umbrellas work at closer distances, and in my opinion they have less harsh light output. When you use an umbrella, or softbox, or shoot through panel, you are taking your light source from a small concentrated point and making it a much larger, softer diffused light. Also with the addition of two flash units and two light stands, you can light a large group of people, something that is not possible with an on camera flash. The really great thing is that the flashes auto adjust in TTL. This means that you don't have to go to each flash when you add a new unit, they automatically adjust output to compensate. This is a huge time saver, and it also keeps you from having to buy a flash meter to get the exposure just right. But what about when you want to place a flash out of the line of sight, then what do you do? Read on...


Here's the scenario. You have a Model setup and posed. You have two flash units on stands with umbrella's. One high on the camera right and one lower on camera left. You take your shot, and it looks ok, but you don't have much separation of the background. It's hard to tell where the models dark brown hair stops and the background begins. You need a background light. So, you want to place a speedlight on a small stand behind your model facing the background. But wait How are you going to do this? There isn't a strait line of sight, and yes you may be able to pick up some of the bouncing flash to trigger it, but for this example lets assume that you can't. What do we do now? We hook up a set of these:




This is a Radio Popper . These little beauties are gods gift to CLS users. What it does is, it mounts on top of your master flash unit attached to your camera(or the SU-800) and reads the flash trigger signal from the master unit. It then transmits that signal via RF(remote frequency) to the receiver units attached to your remote flashes. This allows you to place your flash unit outside of the line of sight and still fire it wirelessly, while still keeping the total control of your system on your camera. You can shoot through walls, This is an amazing add on to the Nikon CLS system, and to be honest, I don't know why they didn't have the units communicate through RF to begin with. There would then be no need for this aftermarket unit. I don't work for Nikon but if there is anyone reading this that does, please lets have some RF on the next version of CLS...

That's if for me today. I have a shoot tonight where we're going to be using between 6 and 8 speed lights all working in CLS so I'll take some setup shots to show you. Jason Read more on this article...