Remote Flash at the Sea

Another walk with David after working hours (way after...). This time we were hanging out on the west coast of Sweden, having Lysekil night lights right in front of us. Came across this view with old peer poles in foreground:

Again a perfect time to pull out a wireless flash. And this time as David was here we had two SB-800 units to play with!

Click the link for the result and details!

So, one of the SB-800 was triggered via my Skyport. The other was set to the SU-4 Manual mode and triggered by the first one flashing. Camera on tripod, both of us become VALs and here it is:

Did not put any gels on the flashes in order to keep the light colder than the city, this way the old wood stands out much better.

A bit more life to the ghostly silhouettes, added their own reflections on the water and done.

Enjoy!

OK, a few days of digestion and here is the final image:

White background for red chilli peppers

While picking these hotties up in the grocery store it hit me that I could practice on them before they become food.

One Nikon SB-800 flash, a Lastolite shoot through umbrella, white sheet of paper, two chairs and some string later:

Setup is hiding inside the post!

It was really cool to get this done with just one flash. Though light reflections on the pepper are unavoidable in this case... Tried playing with a polarizer a little, but that did not really help. Wonder if it would be possible to ditch the reflections if there would be two light sources on both sides of the chillies... That's something for the future!

Here is how the setup looked like:


Naturally, there were strings visible in the original image. Cloned them out with The GIMP. Also the background did not get completely burned out in some places, but it wasn't visible on my monitor...

And jeah... My GF thought I was nuts when I started putting it all up in the living room :)

Cheers!

Flashing the boats

A nice sunday evening walk. Weather was great, -5°C chill, not a single cloud in the sky. And here it was- a perfect opportunity to use the off-camera flash on something else, not a human!


To be honest, I made this shot about a month ago for the first time. But then did not have my gear with me, so it was an ugly hand held mess of noise from my mobile.


Knowing the destination of our doggy walk, I rigged up this time. Sun went down, tower lights lit up... It was time to freeze the hands off!

Set the camera on the tripod, on the shoreline. Set up for propper exposure (a few clicks using manual mode and you see if it's fine in the LCD). Composed the shot. And here it is, with two silhouettes in the water...

Had to light them up somehow. Full CTO gel on to the SB-800. Set to manual 1/2 power, triggered with the still propperly working (right back at ya PW users! :p ) Elichrom Skyports. Remote fired the camera with Nikon ML-L3 radio trigger. The first test shot showed there was not enough light on the boats and the boulders on the shore had some light spill on them.

One more time. Full power on the flash, holding it with one hand above my head, using the other hand as a GOBO to cover light spill on the rocks and triggering the camera with my third hand... Oh wait... Have only two of them... It's great to have a girlfriend when you run out of hands :) It was actually her pushing the button.

Here is how the setup looked like in the end:
And this produced the first shot of the post...

The only thing I missed in this whole gig was warm gloves... It took only 5 minutes or so, but my fingers were about to fall off... Next buy is propper heating equipment, not a new lens :)

And jeah, some day, when I have as many SB-8/900s as Joe has, I will try and light up the wooden peer in the background... And maybe the bridge too!

Cheers!