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!

Time and Aperture with Manual Flash Set Up

I want to use a small old Canon flash, called ED, to experiment with time and aperture. I am too lazy to use a film Camera and it is NOT save to attach ED to my digital camera.
I came up with this set-up. Camera on Tripod in manual mode. Attached by remote cord is a SB-900 set to manual, 1/128 power and 200mm zoom. Having the SB-900 dialed down as much as possible and pointing away from the scene should ensure that it has no effect on the picture taken.
Another word of advice: Did you ever wonder why Pro photographers seem to be fascinated with the color black in their fashion choice? Remeber the GPP shootout? All three photographers  and all assistants wore black T-shirts.
Well, on this occasion I also wore a black t-shirt because I do not want to act as an unwanted reflector. Which might have had an influence in this set-up when the trigger flash points towards me.

ED is attached to the Chinese DP1 photocell. The SB-900 in manual mode does not emit any pre-flash, so I could have taken any photocell. I used the DP-1 to run a mini test. (No pictures)
When I set the SB-900 to manual and the DP1 to expect a pre-flash, it does not fire when I take one picture. When I take two in quick succession it does fire. When I set the DP1 to normal operation it fires reliably. No pre-flash in manual mode! This is the kind of useful information which is either not in the manual or buried somewhere so it always handy to run the tests.

Another little side remark: I took the picture of the set-up with a fairly recent point and shoot the Canon Power Shoot A2100. You can see in the first picture above that I forgot to switch off ED so it fired and nuked the SB-900 and the plant. When taking the picture from the front I thought to keep it on and make a number of pictures in succession. I thought that the recycle times of my 2009 Digi-Knips would surely be faster than ED from the year 1975. (He is older than most participants in Davids GPP workshop.) So I hoped to get one picture with ED firing and the next one without. Man was I wrong! ED kept up the recycle times right with the Powershot all pictures had ED firing. I had to switch it off to make the shot above. Way to go ED!!! (If you look at my reflection in the glass door you see that I really wore a black t-shirt.)

I used a stuffed Toy of my dog Wolfi as a model and placed it exactly 4 m away from the flash into the lawn.

Now the set-up is complete and I am ready to go.






At least that's what I thought!
Wolfi thought: "Oi! That is MY toy!"
I could convince him to lend me the toy for a good cause in the end and I will post the example pictures tomorrow.

The Little Canon Flash

The small REVUEtron flash has been retired forever. In the last blog I sang his praise which was appropriate as he did indeed good service and it was his retirement speech after all. He is now gone and we can confess openly that he could be a pain in the ass at times.

The manual flash is not very precise as distances have to be estimated. (In advance.) It is completely unpractical in fluid situations when distances change rapidly. In Situations when there is sufficient time to calculate exposure and aperture, like in macro or still photography, the distances from Objects to flash and/or camera are so short that small errors of estimation make a noticeable difference, so one actually needs to measure them.

The (photographic) world was longing for some flash automation.

I planned to make some experiments with the little manual flash and then introduce two automated flash systems. Unfortunately the little REVUEtron left us so that I will jump right to the first flash system, CAT from Canon.

The idea of the CAT system was simple: The lens of the camera is focused anyway to the most important part of the picture, so one can use the focusing information from the lens and translate it somehow into an electronic signal to vary the flash output. (When the DSLRs appeared and the film based TTL did not work anymore. The technique of reading the focusing information from the lens was re-introduced.)

One catch of the Canon CAT system was that it worked only with cameras which where built specifically for it (a trend started by Canon that has become widely the norm today) and it worked only with a few select lenses.

For SLRs the CAT flash was the Speedlite 133D.
For compact cameras without interchangeable lens it was the Canolite D
For the Datematic and the Canon 110 Pocket camera it was the Canolite ED.

The Canolite ED, or short ED, is .... you might have guessed "The Little Canon Flash". I think I never owned a camera which would work with ED. So I really can not remember why and how I bought it. I am however pretty sure that it must have seemed like a good idea at the time. (In the picture ED is connected to a Mecalux 11 optical trigger from Metz.)


It works perfectly in manual mode and has a guide number of 14m. I will use ED for all the experiments I intended for the REVUEtron. ED is still in perfect working condition and I guess that it has to do with the fact that ED is powered by two AA batteries. ED has a flash ready lamp on the back and a guide number table for ISO 100. Any other ISO must be calculated. ED has no manual release switch! The recycle times with fresh batteries are about 3 to 4 seconds. Much faster than the REVUEtron Not bad.


I will not use the flash on a film camera because I am too lazy and to cheap to make the many intended test shots on film. Therefore I needed to trigger ED with a digital camera.

First a word of WARNING. Old flashes can have VERY high voltages on the contacts. Do not ever attach an unknown and/or old flash to your modern digital camera. Always consult your manual about the voltage your camera can take and then measure or look up the flash voltage.

A second word of warning: Your measurement might be very imprecise, but looking it up might not be safer as you put your trust in results that might be manufacturers specs of a new unit. Internet search for trigger voltage might produce a result, but it was measured by someone you don't know. And you do not know how good his equipment and method was.

How does ED measure. My Multitronic measurement device is very slow and therefore not very good in this situation. The problem is, that the flash fires the moment you connect the measuring probes of the Multitronic. So my readings when first charging the flash and then measuring were about 85 V. However I tried a second method by leaving the measurement device attached and then switching the flash on. It will charge and the voltage raises. At some point it will fire.
The reading in this case was about 165V. Hmmm that is the voltage when the flash will EARLIEST fire. I still do not know the voltage when it is FULLY charged, which might be considerable higher.

The Handbook of the Nikon D300s specifies 250V maximum. Sorry ED you will never be attached to it!

At this point I got sidetracked by the question how best to use photocells to fire ED when using Nikon i-TTL.

I have two models of all round photocells available: The Metz lux 11 and the China Import DS-1. The China Import claims to be specifically suited for digital flash systems with pre-flash. The half page manual is in a bit of a garbled English but makes a lot of sense once you ignore the grammar.

I tried three i-ttl flashes on my D300s: SB-800, SB-900 and Metz MZ54 4i

I got some expected and some unexpeced results:

The Metz photocell performed as expected. It did not work at all with any flash. The ED was fired by the pre flash and contributed nothing to the picture.

A flash picture of a flash! So far so good.

But listen to this: I tried the China gadget and it does NOT work with the SB-800 however it does work reliably and repeatedly with either the SB-900 or the MZ54 4i.

Why? I have no clue !


SB-800











SB-900: Hurray the ED fired in time!


More fun with the ED in the next post.