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"One light stand" saga continues
Nikolai
Registered Users Posts: 19,035 Major grins
I'm continuing to play with my "one light stand" (Sunpak 555, 10' stand, 48" brollybox, PocketWizard radio trigger, Sony 828).
So far I shot:
* one indoor "formal" event (anniversary)
* one outdoor event (HS band concert)
Today my youngest was participating in her middle school awards ceremony, of which I decided to try to take the pictures of *all* the kids, not just my Helen.
The challenges I encountered were:
* it was in the gym, so light was scarce, and there was no ceiling or wall to be found anywhere near the spot
* I could not control the position of the principal and the kids
* I could not position my light in the most beneficial place since it either would block 30% of the audience's view:-), or would be destroyed by quickly moving students
* Each award takes mere seconds (I knew that from experience) - they have about 200 students to receive some sort of awards, so the really push for time, it's a conveyor belt:-)
I ended up being about 5 meters from the spot (I blatantly used the empty handicapped seating). Since I could not elevate my stand I set it on the lowest position, so essentially the brollybox was next to my camera. It was kinda using a huge soft flash:-)
Since I still didn't have a chance to by a light meter I took about a dozen test shots while the whole thing was setting up. I was very glad to find out that I can use 1/64 or 1/32 flash power (at this rate it can fire many-many times without going into recycle mode), with ISO 100, f/4 aperture and 1/60sec shutter on average.
I used Yehuda's method to find the exact distance (focus on auto, pre-focus-switch to manual - read the distance), so I was able to set the camera on full manual mode and thus save time on prefocusing etc.
Still there was a noticeable pause between shutter press and the actual flash firing (I'm still trying to figure out why), about quarter of a second, so I had to "predict" the movement and depress the shutter a bit ahead.
All in all I took about 170 shots. Only 2 or 3 were out of whack, few were taken at the wrong moment, but most came out good enough at least to tell which kid it was the picture of (Helen amazed me by knowing the names of almost 70% of them when we were checking the results).
I have no idea what I'm gonna do with all those shots. However, the good news was that nobody tried to harass me with a question like "why are you taking pictures of my kids":-) And maybe some parent will remember about a guy with a big light when it will come to some BD party or something:-)
Just wanted to share an experience.
So far I shot:
* one indoor "formal" event (anniversary)
* one outdoor event (HS band concert)
Today my youngest was participating in her middle school awards ceremony, of which I decided to try to take the pictures of *all* the kids, not just my Helen.
The challenges I encountered were:
* it was in the gym, so light was scarce, and there was no ceiling or wall to be found anywhere near the spot
* I could not control the position of the principal and the kids
* I could not position my light in the most beneficial place since it either would block 30% of the audience's view:-), or would be destroyed by quickly moving students
* Each award takes mere seconds (I knew that from experience) - they have about 200 students to receive some sort of awards, so the really push for time, it's a conveyor belt:-)
I ended up being about 5 meters from the spot (I blatantly used the empty handicapped seating). Since I could not elevate my stand I set it on the lowest position, so essentially the brollybox was next to my camera. It was kinda using a huge soft flash:-)
Since I still didn't have a chance to by a light meter I took about a dozen test shots while the whole thing was setting up. I was very glad to find out that I can use 1/64 or 1/32 flash power (at this rate it can fire many-many times without going into recycle mode), with ISO 100, f/4 aperture and 1/60sec shutter on average.
I used Yehuda's method to find the exact distance (focus on auto, pre-focus-switch to manual - read the distance), so I was able to set the camera on full manual mode and thus save time on prefocusing etc.
Still there was a noticeable pause between shutter press and the actual flash firing (I'm still trying to figure out why), about quarter of a second, so I had to "predict" the movement and depress the shutter a bit ahead.
All in all I took about 170 shots. Only 2 or 3 were out of whack, few were taken at the wrong moment, but most came out good enough at least to tell which kid it was the picture of (Helen amazed me by knowing the names of almost 70% of them when we were checking the results).
I have no idea what I'm gonna do with all those shots. However, the good news was that nobody tried to harass me with a question like "why are you taking pictures of my kids":-) And maybe some parent will remember about a guy with a big light when it will come to some BD party or something:-)
Just wanted to share an experience.
"May the f/stop be with you!"
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