How to improve available light in 10 minutes - on location - with 3 Nikon speedlights

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Nikon D700 and lens Nikkor AF-S 85mm f/1.4G. Taken hand held at ISO 640 and f/3.2 (upper picture) and f/4 (lower picture). The upper picture had to be taken at a low speed (1/13s) to register the light from the room lamp. The picture below had to be taken at higher speed (1/160s) to eliminate from the picture any continuous light coming from the lamp.

In this quick example of my wife working behind her computer and lit by a naturally bad lamp, I wanted to illustrate how easy you can completely alter the lighting and the mood of the scene with little hassle for both the photographer and the subject. Assuming you already have the speed-lights mounted on the radio receivers pocket wizard TT5 and batteries are already inserted in the pocket wizards and flashes, it took me exactly 10 minutes to position the three speed-lights, measure the right amount of light needed playing with flash compensation system on the AC-3 controller, and finally make the successful shot (for those who do not know what is a pocket wizard and its benefit, please read infos on the last two pictures of my photostream on flickr).

Set-up:
- one Nikon Speedlight SB900 with blue gel shooting straight up to the white ceiling to create this blue cast (night mood).
- one speedlight SB700 with orange gel which I placed near the lamp on the right side of my wife to simulate with a better lighting pattern the warm lamp stand: to avoid the direct harsh light of the original lamp I made the SB700 bounce its light against the side wall instead of aiming the flash head at her face.
- one SB910 Speedlight positioned below the screen she is looking at to simulate the lighting coming from the screen (not powerful enough to be registered at the speed, aperture and ISO I chose).

Why did I chose this set of ISO, aperture and speed? Well my wife did not want to be bothered by my testing and one of the conditions to let me play with my lighting system was that she did not want to shut down or dim the (ugly) light coming from the lamp. Because of that I had to overpower it with my 3 flashes by choosing an exposure that would not be enough to register the lamp (therefore the high speed 1/160s, almost 4 stops difference. Also I chose a smaller aperture (f/4 instead of f/3.2) to have a total of 4.5 stops underexposure of the lamp. It had the consequence of making the light coming from the screen invisible as well, therefore the need for the third flash.

Like I said it is not a photo for publishing, but to illustrate and share the tips of on-location lighting with portable Nikon Speedlights and pocket wizards. By the way the radio signal of these pockeet wizard were necessary in this shoot. There was no direct line of sight between two of the flashes and the camera so the Nikon IR control system of the Commander/Slave flash mode system would not have worked here !

Taken on: March 19, 2012

Tags:

Nikon

D700

wizard

SB900

SB910

SB700

night blue gel

incandescent orange gel

flash

radio controlled

portrait

on-location

improving light « less

Sets appears in: • Tests, Tricks & Tips • Nikon 85mm f/1.4 AF-S

Stats: 2,731 views / 8 comments

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