Turning one light into two...

Tim Kamppinen · September 14, 2008

I posted a self portrait a couple of days ago, and in the thread I mentioned that though I was pleased, I wished I would have had a second flash to give separation from the black background I was shooting against. Today I was playing around in my garage and found a rather effective solution to my one-flash dilemma. I positioned my SB-600 on a lightstand so that it would be roughly behind my neck in the frame. This ensured that there was a good crisp separation light around my head and shoulders, and prevented lens flare since the light was blocked by my head. The flash itself I aimed slightly to the side at a foamcore-and-tinfoil reflector that was positioned about a foot from my face at roughly 45 degrees. The flash was set at 1/2 power with a sto-fen (actually a $3 hong kong knockoff) diffuser. It was about 3 or 4 feet from the back of my head, so about 5 feet or so from the reflector. With this setup I was able to get a full power key light from the reflector while still getting the separation light direct from the flash. I also tried adding another reflector for fill on the other other side, and it worked quite well, although it wasn't the look I was going for in this shot so I ditched it. I also masked the bottom half of the reflector to minimize the light in the bottom half of the frame and keep the face the center of attention. Here's the final result, with PP done (the only thing lighting-wise that I had to clean up was some overexposed hair on the rim light, but it wasn't anything too horrendous--it would have been acceptable straight from the camera):

One caveat with a this setup is that it does require a fairly fast lens from what I can tell. I was shooting at f/2.8 to get the reflected light up to snuff. However, without the diffuser and at full power, a slower lens might have worked out.

So, all you people like me out there with only one lonely flash to your name, give this a try next time you feel like experimenting. Oh, and as always, C&C on the image, please.

Trevlan · September 14, 2008

Tim Kamppinen wrote:

I posted a self portrait a couple of days ago, and in the thread I mentioned that though I was pleased, I wished I would have had a second flash to give separation from the black background I was shooting against. Today I was playing around in my garage and found a rather effective solution to my one-flash dilemma. I positioned my SB-600 on a lightstand so that it would be roughly behind my neck in the frame. This ensured that there was a good crisp separation light around my head and shoulders, and prevented lens flare since the light was blocked by my head. The flash itself I aimed slightly to the side at a foamcore-and-tinfoil reflector that was positioned about a foot from my face at roughly 45 degrees. The flash was set at 1/2 power with a sto-fen (actually a $3 hong kong knockoff) diffuser. It was about 3 or 4 feet from the back of my head, so about 5 feet or so from the reflector. With this setup I was able to get a full power key light from the reflector while still getting the separation light direct from the flash. I also tried adding another reflector for fill on the other other side, and it worked quite well, although it wasn't the look I was going for in this shot so I ditched it. I also masked the bottom half of the reflector to minimize the light in the bottom half of the frame and keep the face the center of attention. Here's the final result, with PP done (the only thing lighting-wise that I had to clean up was some overexposed hair on the rim light, but it wasn't anything too horrendous--it would have been acceptable straight from the camera):

One caveat with a this setup is that it does require a fairly fast lens from what I can tell. I was shooting at f/2.8 to get the reflected light up to snuff. However, without the diffuser and at full power, a slower lens might have worked out.

So, all you people like me out there with only one lonely flash to your name, give this a try next time you feel like experimenting. Oh, and as always, C&C on the image, please.

Tim, I can't see the picture. One question, if you don't mind. I just purchased an SB600 and I can't figure out how to make it fire off camera with my D40. I purchased an SB800 last night to get a 'commander' but if I can shoot with the SB 600 off camera, I would love to know how to do that. The instruction manual just said it could only be a slave. Please shed some insight, thanks.

Scotty_R · September 14, 2008

Very clever use of what you have on hand, Tim. The halo around your head though is a bit distracting and not appealing to me. Try this next time...keep the reflector where it is, raise the light behind your head to about 30"-36" past the top of your head, take some black construction paper and make a snoot to wrap around the end of the flash gun (gaffers tape works well to attach).

Point the flash down towards the top of the head and fire away. If the snoot is the right lenght, then it should put a nice hair light on the crown of your head, a little light on your shoulders and still provide plenty of light to hit the reflector. The challenge is not to make the snoot too long or too short. Too long will really narrow the light too much, too short and the light will be too broad. Just an idea.

Shane422 · September 14, 2008

Trevlan wrote:

Tim, I can't see the picture. One question, if you don't mind. I just purchased an SB600 and I can't figure out how to make it fire off camera with my D40. I purchased an SB800 last night to get a 'commander' but if I can shoot with the SB 600 off camera, I would love to know how to do that. The instruction manual just said it could only be a slave. Please shed some insight, thanks.

The D40, D50, and D60 do not have "Commander" modes for firing the SB600 off camera. You could do this with a set of wireless triggers such as Pocket Wizards, Elinchrom Skyports, or check eBay for the seller Gadget Infinity. The Sb600 will have to be used in Manual mode though, no TTL.

Nikolai · September 14, 2008

Clever idea indeed!

However, the hair/rim now seems to be way too bright. While it can be good for some special effects, it's a bit of an overkill for usual portrait scenarios.
Did you try the reverse scenario, flash up front and a reflector or two in the back?

Tim Kamppinen · September 14, 2008

Nikolai wrote:

Clever idea indeed!
However, the hair/rim now seems to be way too bright. While it can be good for some special effects, it's a bit of an overkill for usual portrait scenarios.
Did you try the reverse scenario, flash up front and a reflector or two in the back?

Thanks for the comments everyone; I tried reversing it, and it works alright, but not really the same. It ends just looking like some extra fill rather than an actual rim light. I agree that it's actually too bright, but for what it is, I can't complain too much. I tried the overhead flash idea, but there were two problems: the light stand was visible in the shot (not that big a problem, as it could easily be cloned out) and more importantly, there was massive amounts of lens flare that ruined the contrast. However, I didn't use a proper snoot, but rather some makeshift gobos that I pieced together with some cardboard and tape. These didn't work in reducing the flare; however, I'll probably try again with some snoots and see if I can make it work. It's probably a just a matter of the right angle and length as you said.

Trevlan, I trigger my 600 with the cheap gadget infinity radio triggers that are available at www.gadgetinfinity.com for $30. I'm 95% sure that you can put it in slave mode and trigger it off camera with an on-camera sb-800. This is optical though so you might need direct line of sight, I'm not sure about that. But yeah, no commander mode on the D40, which sucks for me too because that's what I shoot with as well. With the SB-800 triggering the 600, I'm pretty sure you can use i-TTL, too. If you picked up the cheap radio triggers, you might be able to trigger the 800 with those and then trigger the 600 through the 800, all off camera. Someone more familiar with the 800 than I could confirm that for you, I'm not sure. In that case, though, you wouldn't have i-TTL.

Tim Kamppinen · September 15, 2008

Here's another using the same method, with a much better looking model--although this one admittedly required a lot more work. There was a lot of stray hair that was getting blown out by the flash, so I turned it down only to have her face underexposed by quite a bit. I liked the pose, though, so I couldn't resist going through all the trouble. I think it came out pretty good, especially considering what the original looked like. I had to do a lot of cloning on the hair but I think it ended up looking much better, though it's definitely not perfect. I've definitely got to come up with a better background solution, because the black hole of death look is getting old... Let me know what you think:

Paulcao · September 16, 2008

I think your idea is great

. It's always good to think of new ideas to get around equipment restrains. On to the second photo, I'm not trying to be overly negative, however, the second picture of the girl looks too soft to tell if the lighting technique is really working well. The light looks like it could be ok,, but the photo looks soft and the hair highlights are too cut and blown. It looks overly cut and pasted (even if it's not). While the subject in the second photo is admittedly more attractive

, I think the execution in your original picture post is better. Also, I think you're right in thinking your should move away from the black hole look. I hope this helps.

Tim Kamppinen · September 16, 2008

Paulcao wrote:

I think your idea is great . It's always good to think of new ideas to get around equipment restrains. On to the second photo, I'm not trying to be overly negative, however, the second picture of the girl looks too soft to tell if the lighting technique is really working well. The light looks like it could be ok,, but the photo looks soft and the hair highlights are too cut and blown. It looks overly cut and pasted (even if it's not). While the subject in the second photo is admittedly more attractive , I think the execution in your original picture post is better. Also, I think you're right in thinking your should move away from the black hole look. I hope this helps.

I agree with all of this... to be honest, the original was a wreck straight out of camera... the focus was off, it was underexposed, and the hair light was blown out. So, it's not the perfect example for this, but I figured I'd play around with it anyway. Incidentally, I took another look today and didn't really like the final product that much, so I re-worked it and came up with a much better, though still flawed, version. I tried to tone down the hair light, but it still looks a little cut-and-paste:

mrlassiter · September 17, 2008

"I purchased an SB800 last night to get a 'commander' but if I can shoot with the SB 600 off camera, I would love to know how to do that. The instruction manual just said it could only be a slave. Please shed some insight, thanks."

The SB800 CAN be used as the commander, find the setting for commander mode in the SB800's menu, it has to be on the hotshoe to do it though I think. To keep it from getting in the way of the photo, simply power it down as far as it will go and even aim it at the ceiling, it should still trigger your sb600...which you need to set to the squiggly wire symbol for remote operations... make sure the group/channel numbers/letters match and it should work. Experiment with it a bit.. I love triggering my sb600 remotely with the D200...
And if someone else answered this, sorry, I got excited that I knew hehehe...

Shane422 · September 17, 2008

You should check out this thread on the Strobist Flickr discussion group. Someone is trying to make one light into four lights (main, fill, hair, and background), and they are getting decent results.

Tim Kamppinen · September 17, 2008

Shane422 wrote:

You should check out this thread on the Strobist Flickr discussion group. Someone is trying to make one light into four lights (main, fill, hair, and background), and they are getting decent results.

Thanks a lot for the link! Very cool, I'll definitely try that. Using mirrors is something I have been thinking about anyway, since they're so efficient, but then they're probably to harsh for anything but hair and background lights... we'll see.

Turning one light into two...

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