Ashley - Strobe Camera Left

This is an exploration into the mind-numbing voodoo they call flash. As of last night, I have only tried this one time – yes one – so you get to learn from my mistakes and watch as I figure this out (hopefully).  But be forewarned – I utterly suck at this strobist stuff, so these next few posts will be me learning, out loud.  I will post some good stuff, I hope – and most likely a shitload of pictures that look like total ass.  It’s all part of the process.

Research

Step 1 for me was joining the Flickr groups, Nikon CLS and Strobist.com.  I firmly believe in researching what I want to do before I try it out.  OK, not firmly.  Half the time I jump in with both feet before I realize I don’t own a life preserver.  But I should always begin with research.  Anyhow, these two groups have some excellent examples of shots done with various lighting setups that have really good results.  I spent quite a bit of time searching images (that’s read, stealing ideas from their comments and EXIF) and reading threads in both groups.  Knowing nothing about lighting other than sticking up the flash and pointing it at the object you want bright and shiny, this was a logical start for me.

Setting Up

Next, I had to figure out how to get my light and camera to play nice.  When I first pulled the SB-600 off the camera, it gave me the middle finger and told me to piss off.  Harsh.  I knew I wanted to have my flash off-camera and I wanted to control how much light came out of it, but that was about all I knew.  I had to learn to take control.  Reading through the manual (imagine that) I found the steps I needed to get my Nikon SB-600 Speedlight to be a slave to my Nikon D700.  Here’s a rundown for this shot:

On the SB-600

1. On your SB-600 – get into the CLS mode by pressing the zoom and the minus (-) sign.
2. Scroll until you find the CLS icon and then press MODE to change it to ON.
3. Hit the power button and your ready.

On the D700

1. On the D700 – press the MENU button
2. Scroll down to the edit menu
3. Select Bracketing/Flash
4. Select menu e3 (Flash control for built-in flash)
5. Go down to Commander Mode (C with a lightening bolt)
6. I then changed Built-in Flash to “–” meaning it will not fire.
7. I changed Group A to mode M (manual) and the power to 1/128.
8. Then I set my channel to match my flash (3 in this case).

From there, I jammed the Gary Fong LightSphere diffuser on top of my flash and set it on the table next to my daughter (to her dismay), off to her right and slightly below chin-height, about 3 feet away.  Fired a few shots, realizing I was blinding the poor child.  Rather than paying for a seeing eye dog and retinal surgery, I grabbed the SB-600 and I adjusted the zoom on there and set it to 50mm and toned down that power.

The next shoot I took (with her rubbing her blinded eye) is the one I posted.

What I Learned

That’s easy – I learned I suck wind at lighting and have a lot more reading to do.  But I learned the more I played with it, the more I was starting to understand about distance, power, etc.  I’ll be spending a lot more time in the coming months with light.  Learning to bounce it, diffuse it, angle it and basically whip it into submission.

Any pointers you care to share would be greatly appreciated.