PigPog

I wanted some pics of a few things I’d bought while we were in Birmingham. I used the black paper the mug was wrapped in, set the camera to control a remote flash, and hand-held my SB-800 flash. I used an Apple Store bag wrapped over the flash head to diffuse the light, and left the built-in flash to fire, but at -2.0 stops so it only filled in a little. Turned out reasonably well:

I spent a while last weekend playing with strobes, using a chair as a model. It was useful, but doesn’t give too much idea what will work with a real person.

Today, I persuaded Sam to do some modeling for me, which was probably more fun for me than for her. I took a whole bunch of photos, all with the same background and zoom on the camera, but all with different lighting setups. Between each shot, I drew (or modified) a diagram of what the setup was for that shot, and photographed that. I was left with a load of photos, all in pairs, so I could match up the photo with the lights and settings that made it.

I found some deeply unflattering ways to set up a couple of little strobes – one at each side for two upward-pointing nose-shadows is an especially bad look!

Diffuse light is better, but a strobe on one side coupled with the on-camera flash at a low setting worked really quite nicely too.

Anyway, if you’re starting out with lighting, it’s a great way of trying out a load of ideas in a reasonably short time. Make sure you have your diagrams either kept or photographed, so you can match them up later, and you can see what worked and what didn’t.

After all the mentions on Strobist, I finally got around to picking up some ball bungees, from fretland on eBay (UK). Quite cheap, free postage, and gives me a few more options for attaching flashes all over the place.

I’m sure there must be plenty of other uses for these little things, too, with a bit of imagination.