Contemplation – How to get this shot

Contemplation by Tukay Canuck
Contemplation, a photo by Tukay Canuck on Flickr.
Here’s how I got this shot.
I took an Elinchrom D-Lite 4 with a big beauty dish and gold reflector, put it on a boom arm on a C-stand, and had it camera right. It was quite a distance from the model, so I cranked it to full power (400w/s).
I put a Nikon SB900, put it on a light stand with Honl grid, and zoomed it to 200mm. It was quite close, so I powered it on manual to low power (1/64 or 1/128). The SB900 was set to SU-4 mode, so it would fire when it saw the Elinchrom fire.
The camera was set to ISO 100, 1/200sec, f11. I think the Elinchrom metered at f8, but if I had listened to my light meter I would have overexposed the background and the punchiness of the light I think is just right.
There was minimal editing of the photo, just a horizontal crop and a slight change to the white balance.

…To not snoot


Self Portrait 2

Originally uploaded by Tukay Canuck

Here is the same setup, but by bouncing the light from the flash off the ceiling, and using the Honl snoot as a bounce card instead. (The bounce card catches some of the light from the flash and sends it into my eyes, where the rest of the light is soft and diffused as it is spread out from the ceiling).

You’ll observe that this picture is a lot softer, less harsh, and arguably less dramatic.

Extra details: The SB900 flash, is off camera, left of the camera. It is angled 45 degrees towards the ceiling, and a bounce card is used to bounce some of the light straight at me instead of towards the ceiling.

To snoot or not to snoot?




Self Portrait 1

Originally uploaded by Tukay Canuck

A snoot is a device that narrows the light from a strobe to make a harsher, narrower field of light. This is a self portrait using an SB900 flash, with a Honl 5″ snoot, camera left. (i.e. the flash is NOT attached to the camera, but triggered remotely).

The next post will show you what it looks like without the snoot.