Edinburgh Strobists

While at the Edinburgh Meetups event at Prestongrange I stepped up to take the group shot. I had an idea to take the picture using an old railway carriage and so started thinking about the lighting. Rather than changing the various flashes already attached to stands to use my Pocket Wizards I used the Elinchrom Skyports that were already attached. This wasn’t a big deal, but when I took the first few the results weren’t what I expected.

Those of you who have come across this before will no doubt recognise the problem straight away, but it took a few minutes for the penny to drop what was wrong. The image below shows the problem image.

The problem turned out to be the sync speed. Using the PW’s with my SB800’s and 1/500th/sec of a second was working fine, but given that my cameras flash sync speed is 1/250th/sec this was more luck than good judgement! Reducing the shutter speed to 1/250th/sec cured the problem and allowed me to get the image I wanted.

When I bought my SB-800’s they came with a pair of sample gels. I’d always thought that I should use them at some point, and given the recent discussions on strobist about using gels last night I decided to bite the bullet. using a CTO gel adds a warmth to the picture that straight flash lacks, but how much warmth do you need?

This shot was taken using the CTO gel.

This shot was taken without the CTO gel for comparison.

Personally I find the full CTO gel to be too much. It adds an unnatural amount of warmth, making people look more “cheap St Tropez” than sunkissed

CTO gels do come in other “strengths” and so I’m planning on getting some and experimenting. Overall I liked the extra warmth, ust didn’t want quite so much of it.

Has it really been almost a week? I guess life has been too busy for me to take stock before now, but it was a great afternoon. We met at 2pm and went into the museum where we wandered around the upper levels and setup and took some shots. The rear stairs, with their large open spaces, red walls, subdued lighting and interesting objects on the walls. It wasn’t too busy either, so we were able to setup and try some shots.

The museum lived up to their reputation and were very photographer friendly throughout our stay. It’s a shame they’re closing for 3 years!

After the museum we went to the pub and then for a wander round the Grassmarket area to find some more locations. This produced mixed results and once again brought home how careful you need to be when setting up shots in the street. Unlike normal street photography, strobist street photography often involves leaving expesnive kit in places where it can’t be seen by you, the photographer, but it can see the subject. Having a group of people helps, but areas where there are pubs spewing forth their clientel really aren’t suitable

As usual, here are the pictures from the event!

Created with Admarket’s flickrSLiDR.

Created with Admarket’s flickrSLiDR.

The first meetup I went to that was specifically for strobist activities was in October 2007 and we went up to St Anthonys Chapel (now a ruin) on Salisbury Crags in Edinburgh. It was an excellent night, though a bit chilly - not the biggest surprise for October!

Last night we went back and the differences spoke loudly about the progress that I’ve made in strobist activities. The group had grown from 3 to 8 people and the number of flashes had more than tripled. Last time we had nothing but a tripod and I was using CLS to trigger the flashes but this time there were lighting stands, tripods and skyports and pocket wizards were the triggering mechanisms being used. How things have changed.
The weather wasn’t much different though, as it was very cold and windy!

The evening was great fun with a good bunch of people and some good shots taken. It was nice to see people being open to ideas and suggestions from others with everyone taking turns at being a subject and photographer.

We’re hoping to have another meetup in April and then at least one meetup a month, so if you’re in the East of Scotland why not visit the flickr group and come along?

Following on from our previous tutorial evening, we found a larger venue and ran it again in March 2008. As many people already had a familiarity with using off camera flash, this time around we ran a smaller tutorial and had more scope for people to experiment. There was a large amount of off camera flash equipment on display!

Created with Admarket’s flickrSLiDR.

As David has said, planning lighting for a shot is never easy. Sometimes it’s trial and error when your initial idea and setup doesn’t look quite right, maybe adding another light, changing positions, or simply masking light using a flag (like a barn door flap to stop the light going in a certain direction).

The staircases at my office (the old school) are very confusing, but they can have their advantages too. Here’s another example with a shot showing the lights used.

Lighting Info:
Canon 580EX II @ 1/8 power flagged (& CTO gelled) on 3foot high stand to book left; Nikon SB800 @ 1/16 power through white unmbrella high to front for ambient; Finally, Canon 580EX II in James’ lap, @ 1/4 power fired at chest for bounce on book and rim light. Fired wirelessly by Pocket Wizards.

This was a joint idea and lighting setup with Neil. The book is an Opus, it’s what I work to create during the day. Thanks to Neil & David for assist and to James for being blinded a lot!

Recently a few of us got together in an old school in Edinburgh for a few hours of strobist fun. It was an interesting building with 2 intertwined but independant staircases and very blue walls. The shoot was a little impromptu and fitted in between other activities, but was still good and produced a few pictures worthy of posting.

Figuring out how to light and shoot the vision you have is always hard and so it was for this shoot. The staircases made it slightly more awkward, but they also gave rise to the opportunity for the first image above. The lighting setup I used is shown below.

The result wasn’t quite what i had in my mind, but it was closer than I thought it might be. It was only afterwards that I realise the SB800 I was using for the background illumination wasn’t setup correctly, but it still provided enough light to bring the background into the picture, though not as much as I’d have liked.

Any comments or thoughts on improvements to the lighting setup are welcome

One of the great things about the people who contribute to strobist activities is that they are willing to share their knowledge. The strobist movement has been fascinating to watch as it’s really exploded thanks to a huge base of people sharing their knowledge and co-operating when shooting.

Given this, it’s heartening to see Chris Malcolm following in those traditions and posting lots of detail on his recent pictures and experiments with his radio triggers. The details may not be of interest, but the details and pictures he provides for his setups are useful. Thanks for your efforts Chris and keep up the good work!

I’m starting this as a thread to discuss experiences with using and modding these.

I decided to get these because of the combined package of trigger and tiltable stand which can hold a flash by hot shoe either on a tripod screw or a flash shoe. With care, repair, and modding I hope to be able to get past the various well-known range and reliability problems.

I have three flashes to get to work with them.

1. Sunpack 30DX. Already works fine with the triggers.

2. Vivitar 283. Needs modding to lower a high trigger voltage.

3. Sony F32X. Has smart shoe and cable incompatible with simple shoe or cable connection. Need to make up a compatible connector.

Testing suggests as they came out of the box they’re reliable up to about twelve feet, and get pretty iffy by about twenty. So my first trigger mod will be extending the transmitter aerial.