best flash technique in dark.complicated situation

wlriv

i went exploring with a few friends this weekend to the 'vanalden cave' which is basically an area that has VERY soft walls where people carve faces/whatever into the walls.

i tried adjusting the power and angle of my sb-600, but got really meh results. what are some good techniques i could try out?

here is a gallery of the shots to give you an idea of what im working with.

http://wlriv.smugmug.com/gallery/2570247#135283199

LiquidAir

Get your flash off the camera. Hold it near the wall so the light rakes across the surface. That will give you shadows which reveal the texture.

Better yet, put the camera on a tripod and use a flashlight rather than the flash. Then you can use long exposures and and hold the flashlight to get the best look. If you need to you can move the flashlight around during the exposure to light more of the rock.

pathfinder

I agree.

When we see carving with the naked eye, it seems easy to identify, but frequently the contrast is low, and photographs poorly.

Sidelighting to the rescue. Off camera flash or handlighting with incandescent lamps like flashlights. Or even LED flashlights.

wlriv

thanks guys. i (once again) run into the problem of my d70's onboard flash not firing - so that 600 has to stay on the camera. i will try and bring along some external lights and play around with them.

ziggy53

wlriv wrote:

thanks guys. i (once again) run into the problem of my d70's onboard flash not firing - so that 600 has to stay on the camera. i will try and bring along some external lights and play around with them.

Alternately, take the flash off the camera, and set the camera on a tripod with a fairly long exposure, maybe a half-second if you're in a dark section. Manually fire the flash from the desired position when you hear the shutter open. You would have to play with the exposure a bit.


A handier method is an inexpensive RF slave unit:

http://cgi.ebay.com/4-Channels-Wireless-Flash-Trigger_W0QQitemZ170052096893QQcategoryZ64354QQssPageNameZWDVWQQrdZ1QQcmdZViewItem?hash=item170052096893

Discussed here (the link in thread no longer works, but this is the same dealer above):

http://www.dgrin.com/showpost.php?p=366421&postcount=11

mmroden

whoa!
So that link looks pretty tasty, Ziggy.

Something not touched on in the original post, or maybe it was:
Does that unit you've got there act as unreliably as the one you posted about in the thread you also linked to? As in, could I expect maybe a 1 in 3 chance of getting a lemon flash?

Would it be possible with these kinds of flashes to use an sb800, but then some older Nikon flashes, or even (blasphemy!) non-Nikon flashes at the same time? I was thinking that if I could grab that thing there, and then a couple of older flashes for cheaper than $100 each, then I could get some sweet lighting on the cheap...

rjpat

For off camera lighting resource, check out strobist.

ziggy53

mmroden wrote:

So that link looks pretty tasty, Ziggy.

Something not touched on in the original post, or maybe it was:
Does that unit you've got there act as unreliably as the one you posted about in the thread you also linked to? As in, could I expect maybe a 1 in 3 chance of getting a lemon flash?

Would it be possible with these kinds of flashes to use an sb800, but then some older Nikon flashes, or even (blasphemy!) non-Nikon flashes at the same time? I was thinking that if I could grab that thing there, and then a couple of older flashes for cheaper than $100 each, then I could get some sweet lighting on the cheap...

The curious thing is that Canon sometimes recommends 1/2 normal flash sync speed for full studio flash synchronization. So if your camera normally syncs at 1/250th, you would use 1/125th for studio flash. I'm not sure why that is, but it might have something to do with my experience.

I haven't tried them with Nikon equipment, so that's a good question. My father has some Nikon digital stuff, so I'll see if he has a Nikon flash to test.

trippy64

With the D70, and the SB 600, i beleive you can fire it remotely with the camera using the built in IR. You need to set the flash on remote as a SU Unit, and it will fire in sync with the D70. It's pretty cool.

Shane422

mmroden wrote:

Something not touched on in the original post, or maybe it was:
Does that unit you've got there act as unreliably as the one you posted about in the thread you also linked to? As in, could I expect maybe a 1 in 3 chance of getting a lemon flash?

I use that unit to fire a SB600 and I've never had it misfire yet. But I don't use it a lot (~500 fires). They reportedly work very well with all Nikon units, but not so much with Canon. The new Vivitar 285HV (~$100 new) also has some problems with it, but there was a post on the Strobist about a fix for that.

They defintely are not Pocket Wizards, but for $30 a set, they don't have to be.