How many stobes or flashes do I need? Sometimes none!

This picture was also taken in Greg Heislers Workshop at GPP. I will not spill the whole story, but in a tight corner the light stuff you can find in a hardware store, or even a supermarket can be used if nothing else is to hand.

This picture was taken with ONE torchlight. The torchlight gives normally a very defined round beam and a hot spot.  Remember Snoopy? There is a hot spot on the right side of the face, but the light is much more varied and has shadows running through the lighted area. So there is a light modifier involved.

The secret ingredient in this picture is the plastic packing of another little light. The more the plastic is bent and warped the better the effect will be. The good thing is also that you can see the effect as the plastic is twisted and turned because the torch light is permanent lighting.

Camera was the D300s. with the Nikon 85 1.8 lens, aperture was 2.0, shutter speed 1/60.

The Mini Beauty Dish (Flashpoint) Nikon SB800 Review

Recently I read a Forum Discussion about the value of the small Beauty Dishes that can be directly mounted on a hot shoe flash. Opinions of their value were quite divided, with a vocal fraction that came to a "useless" verdict.

A HA!  Time for another strobe-experiment.

For this test I used the Flashpoint (Adorama) Mini Dish and part of its Accessory Kit. The white reflector can be changed against a silver or gold one, and there are three grids with large medium and small grid mesh. The whole set also comes with color filers  which I did not test here as the effect should be obvious.

The Dish comes in two versions. One for smaller flash heads like the SB800 and one for larger flash heads like the SB900. Neither will fit on the Metz 45. One of the big complaint in one other test I read was, that "the Dish (tested) is completely useless because it has a ring of bright light around the center because the Dish and the flash have a very loose fit and there is a lot of light leakage."   If you use the correct version for your flash it will work. If you use the large version on a small flash, you will get a similar result like these testers.  Doehhhh! (Translation for not people who do not speak day to day English: "That result was to be expected as it was bleeding obvious from the beginning.")


THE SET UP
So I planted a SB800 on a light stand about 1,50 from a white wall. It was set as remote slave. On the camera I used the internal flash as commander. Set the internal flash to NIL output. and the remote flash to Manual 1/16 output. The camera was also set to manual 1/250 and f 5.6 to start with. I stood about 5m behind the flash.
 
THE TEST 


1/250, 
f5.6, 
no flash,









That is the picture with no flash. Ambient light is clearly no factor. The little dot is the ready light from the flash.
 

1/250,
f5.6, 
flash 24mm setting, 







I do see a nice distribution of light which falls off from center in a nice curve.
Nothing wrong here. Again it helps to select the right size to begin with!
The zoom head of the flash was set to 24mm.

1/250, 

f11, 

flash 24mm setting, 

The same flash setting  but the aperture closed 2 stops to 11. The picture is underexposed , but one can see the light fall of nicely

1/250,

f11,

flash 24mm setting, 

Same Setting, just a different camera angle to see if there are any hot spots, patterns or rings.

No! All is fine!

1/250, 

f11, 

flash 50mm setting,  

The zoom of the flash set to 50mm. Not much difference 

1/250, f11, flash 105mm setting, 

The zoom of the flash set to 105mm Again not much difference. The flash seems to loos a bit of power and the fall of seems to be a tad softer. 

All in all I would say when not making pictures of white walls it does not matter which way the zoom is set. I would probably leave it at 24mm. 

1/250, f11, flash 105mm setting, silver insert,


Here I kept everything equal, and just switched the white reflector for the silver one. Surprisingly the silver reflector just seems to eat up a stop of light and do not much else.

1/250, f11, flash 105mm setting, gold insert
 
The gold reflector gives golden light and eats about 2 stops of light.

1/250, f5.6, flash 105mm setting, gold insert

Opened the aperture to 5.6 and it is about the level of the picture with the white reflector above. So two stops is about right.

1/250, f11, flash 105mm setting,white insert,
large grid

That  gives a nice spot of soft light.

1/250, f11, flash 105mm setting,white insert, 
medium grid

That  gives a very narrow spot of soft light.

1/250, f11, flash 105mm setting, no insert, 
large grid


Here  I removed the insert completely so the flash shoots direct through the grid.

1/250, f16, flash 105mm setting, no insert, 
large grid


Here I lowered the aperture to 16 nice bright spot, And I am  reasonably happy with the light fall off.

1/250, f16, flash 105mm setting, no insert, 
medium grid


A nice spot effect. The dark area has no lights leaks.

1/250, f16, flash 105mm setting, no dish


This is the kind of light pattern the flash produces without the Dish. The form is quite horizontal.

1/250, f16, flash 50mm setting, no dish


This is the kind of light pattern the flash produces without the Dish with 50mm.

1/250, f16, flash 24mm setting, no dish


That delivers even light for large center spot. 

1/250, f16, flash 14mm setting (additional diffuser) , no dish


Quite even light pattern in the center but still a clear falloff in the corners.

1/250, f16, flash 14mm setting (additional diffuser) , flash head turned up 45 degrees, white card out


This is newspaper photogs favorite. It is actually a nice light pattern with a evenly lit center and falling off left and right. good for the typical three to four people group shot.






CONCLUSION

The Mini Beauty Dish gives a specific pattern of light output. That is exactly what we expect from a light former, not more not less. With the gold insert and the grids it becomes more versatile and can be used in a number of situations. It can not be easily replaced with the on board means from your flash.

Personally I think It widens my possibilities and I have used it at a number of occasions. I am happy with it. I own both sizes and use the one either fits the SB800 or the SB900.


Is it worth your money? That depends on your wallet and shooting subjects.

I find that with the gold reflector it produces  nice skin tones in people with Asian skin tone.

Father and Daughter

The picture was taken in north facing shade and was very cool without flash.


 P.S. Sorry for the baaaaad layout but the "new and improved" blogger editor sucks not only big time but also the will to live out of me. There is a lot of trial and error involved as the stupid editor shows you thing one way and the blog shows it in another, frankly I have given up for today. I will neaten it another time.

As promised in the last post, here comes the final appearance of ED. It is used as a fully manual flash. In our last experiment we found that it has a Guide number of about 11.2. I wanted to verify this with a flat surface.

I moved the set up as described in the last experiment in front of the house and took some shots of the garage door with the 50mm 1.4 lens. The camera was 6 m from the Garage and set to ISO 100 to make the calculation easier. I shot all the apertures from f1.4 to f16 but I will not post all the shots as it might be unhealthy, if you fall asleep in front of your computer and your head hits something hard.



1/4s f1.4 flash ISO100
The shot is a bit too bright.







1/4s f2 flash ISO100
The shot is just a little on the bright side in the highlights but basically OK. Calculation 6m* Aperture 2 = Guide Number 12
Close enough.




1/4s f2.8 flash ISO100
This is clearly too dark. It demonstrates another reason why we want automatic flash. A full stop or even a half or third stop can make a relatively large difference in your pictures. Automatic flash can be any value in between and be therefore much more precise.

I was already in front of the house so I took a couple more shots. First just to see how the old little ED would light a large area.With the guide number only about 11-12 I took the ISO right up to 3200. That gives a good working aperture and the exposure times are not so long.

I set up across the road and determined with a couple of test shots that f8 would give a pleasing flash exposure not too overpowering. Then I made some more test shots without flash to establish that 1/4s will give a nice warm light to the house. However the street was quite dark. Below you see two of the shots for comparison:

1/4s f8 flash ISO 3200
The garage door is slightly lit by the flash, and you see that it is white as the ugly yellow light of the street lantern is overpowered.
The House is nice and warm and inviting in its light. The big dark gray blob of street in the foreground gets some structure. Not at all bad result for the little flash. 

1/4s f8 no flash ISO 3200

The same shot without flash for comparison.






Cross check calculation: I was about 18m from the Garage door. ISO was 4.5 times up - remember doubling of guide number needs quadrupling of ISO. ISO 400 is double the guide number of ISO 100, ISO 1600 is double of ISO 400, two times double is 4 times multiplied by an additional times 1.5 to come from 1600 to 3200. 12 (GN) * 6 (ISO adjustment) = 72 (adjusted GN). And 72/18m = f4.

Uh??? f4?  That is 2 stops off? What went wrong? Nothing!!

Maybe you noted that I used above the words "pleasing" instead of correct. When it comes to light it is all in the mix. In this specific situation I found it pleasing that the flash contributes to some problem-areas of the picture, however you notice that there is still a bit warm light in the garage door. A "correct" picture which would completely overpower ambient light would have been flat and plain ugly. "Underexposure" of 2 stops was the best solution in my eyes.

Now you will understand why manual flash with guide number calculation was such a p*** in the a** in the old film days. Making a series of test shots to zero in on your exposure and light setting mix was only practiced by highly paid professionals with Polaroid backs on their Hasselblads. For everyone else it was trial and error with many many more errors than keepers. That is also the reason why millions and billions of bad flash pictures where produced in the film days. (And I had my fair share in it.)

There are some situation where I still use film for nostalgic reasons, however I currently will not use film in complicated and mixed lighting situations with arranged lights, as the immediate feedback on your LCD is invaluable. I feel that these are the most interesting situations as flat predictable lighting is safe but boring.

 

To further illustrate the point I made a fast forward to today's technology. The following two pictures are taken with the D300s and the SB-900 in the hot shoe. (ED already relegated to the reserve forces.)

1/30s f5.6 flash ISO 400
That extremely ugly shot is the "safe" variant. The settings are: (S) Time Priority 1/30s, Daylight WB, Flash i-TTL BL.

Take a a good look at the harsh ugly and flat light. Many many years most flash pictures looked like that.

0.8s f5.6 flash ISO 400

Same camera and Flash combo only set to P and i-TTL BL to get the long exposure time. Impressive what the little computer can do out of the box. In my personal taste I would dial the flash back a third stop so that it looks more like ED's last picture above.



So what's the verdict: Is it possible to make good use of manual flash? Definitely Yes! Would I do it voluntarily given today's available technology? Definitely No! Rest in peace ED you will most probably not be used again for a long long time.

Next I will write a shot piece on CAT more or less the first automated flash system. (No experiments.) And then we will move on quickly to the Computer-Automatic-Electronic Flash Revolution (the third one) with the introduction of the German-Uberblitz-Wunder Metz 45!