Photo Journey

Thai Kickboxing event

Firing my flash remotely (event photography)

As I mentioned in my last post I was asked to photograph an event last Friday. This symposium was held in a large and very stately room right next to the Binnenhof (Dutch Houses of Parliament). When I entered the room I immediately noticed the large windows, covered with heavy yellow curtains. The event started at 15:30 and by 17:30 the light really started to fade. I had pushed up my ISO to 1200 and was tempted to push it higher. Since the event was supposed to last till 20:30 I started to realize I was in trouble: pretty soon there would not be light enough!

I set up a flash, pointed it at the white ceiling, and used my Pocketwizard to fire it. But the light kept fading and I realized I really was in trouble.
I did have a second flash - but not a sync-wire or a third pocketwizard to fire it. That's when I remembered the Nikon CLS system which allows me to fire multiple remote flash units using the small on-board flash. I have played with it before - but never in such a large room!

I set up both flashes to listen to my camera, clicked up my on-board flash (which I never use otherwise), and set the program of the camera (Nikon D300) to control the other flashes.

It was fantastic! No matter where I stood, the other two flashes (SB800s) saw the tiny flash from my camera and responded! This is an amazing system: it allows me to set up multiple groups of flashes, and to control just how much light each of the groups gives off - all from within the camera; I don't need to change any settings on the flash itself.

This picture shows the idea: I am on the far side in the middle of the room (you can see my tiny camera-flash in the mirror on the opposite side of the room. On the right hand side my two flashes fire because my camera tells them to. Obviously this is not my best picture, but it does demonstrate that two SB-800's are powerful enough to light up a room like that quite well!

Such a cool image viewer...

Posted my first web-gallery using 'Tiltviewer'. Have a look - and use the mouse or your arrow-keys to move backwards and forwards. Lots of viewing fun - there are 5 pages of images. Click on the white arrow to 'flip' the image.
I had to photograph a symposium for Board-Directors of Healthcare institutions last friday. The client asked me to make a web-gallery. I uploaded all the images to Flickr and the used this free image viewer made by Airtight Interactive (they rock!). So coooooooooooooooool! And easy to do, really!

Oh - that's how that works...!

I've often wondered how the shutter in a camera works. Once you get in to photography and you realize how easy it is to under- or over-expose you start to understand that the mechanism that opens the sensor to the exact amount of light needs to be incredibly precise. So what happens the moment you push the trigger?

Here is a cool video link that shows you exactly what happens in the Nikon D3 (Nikon's top model right now). I think this is what basically happens in every Digital SLR.