An exploration of dark shiny surfaces in a beauty shot.
Starring: Ellen
MUA by Monera

Black backgrounds, reflections, shining balls… all elements that can confuse the E-TTL flash exposure. To realize this image and achieve a correct flash exposure, I used the ‘Flash Exposure Lock’ feature, which basically works like a flash meter for your E-TTL system. You point the central circle of the AF sensor pattern (spot metering) to the reference area. The best is to choose something close to the reference 18% gray. Caucasian skin works fine, although too light skin might need a touch of positive correction (+FEC) to achieve the right exposure.

If you are into the small flash business, then all your great speedlite features and, therefore the success of your shoot, are completely dependent of the power delivered by these unassuming little power containers… batteries.
The newer NiMH type of rechargable batteries offer an affordable and environmentally friendly means of feeding the power hunger of your flash.

Intelligent vs Smart

The process of recharging your batteries is crucial to ensure a reliable source of power. Many battery chargers are labeled as “intelligent”. In most cases, this “intelligence” refers to the capability of the charger to stop charging the battery when they reache their full load and therefore avoid overcharge damage. Also, in most cases you will have a basic indication of when the batteries are full. Probably a led changing from red to green or stop blinking.

This indication of “full” only says that the battery cannot be charged anymore and doesn’t say much on *how good* the battery was charged. Consider these two sets of batteries:

Two sets of "full" batteries...

The total charge indicator

The really key feature of a smart charger is the total charge indicator, or the total amount of electrical energy stored in the battery. It’s indicated in Ampere-hour (Ah) or often found as mAh in batteries: mili Ampere-hour. Think of it literally like how much juice can you fit into the battery: 2Ah think of 2 litres, which is equal to 2000ml juice, or going back to electricity, 2000 mAh.

Total charge indicator

Once this bad*tery goes flat inside my flash, the total voltage will drop too low to for the other batteries to provide charge to the flash. Result? Black frames. Ashamed face. Lost moment. Hell awaits.

How to use a Smart Charger?

In the normal mode, a smart charger will to the same that all other chargers: will fill the battery up until it’s full, regardless of its current level. It’s like refilling your drink: your glass can be empty, half full or half empty. If you imagine a battery like your glass, the total charge indicator will show you how much drink it was needed to fill it up; it might be a little, or might be a lot but the charge measurement won’t tell you anything useful.

If you want to check how good your batteries are, and know their full capacity, you need to empty the glass first. The best feature of a Smart Charger is ‘discharge’. This will first completely empty the battery and the fill it up with fresh energy. After a complete discharge->charge cycle, the total charge indicator (in Ah, remember?) will tell you how much your energy fits in your batteries. This is a number you can trust and will give you confidence that your speedlites will have all power needed for a successful shot. Great light. Pretty faces. Happy customer. Heaven.

BTW, I’m using a LaCrosse Smart Battery Charger RS-900.
Here’s a good review of this charger. Thanks to PetePixxx for the link.
-Gerard.

Mini Beauty Dish

Some time ago I wrote my initial impressions on the Viewfinder Photography Speedlite Kit. If you read through to the end, I had then noted that the mini dish made the flash get the munchies for batteries. Back then, it was an observation, which got reinforced after some mid-flight out-of-juice issues and the limited power output I was getting from the mini beauty dish.

Technical Testing

A week ago I finally ordered a Sekonic L-308S flash meter. Now, with an accurate measuring device in hand I had the means to setup a controlled test to evaluate the power consumption behavior of the Mini Beauty Dish.

The experiment consisted of fixing the flash and flashmeter to the working surface (my desk in this case). Then I’d simply put the meter in manual reading mode and trigger the flash. As for every experiment, you need a control scenario that gives you grounds for comparisons. My main concern with the beauty dish is the internal convex deflector, which seems to trap the light instead of reflecting it towards the metallic reflector surface. The test will compare the performance of the flash + reflector with and without the internal ‘deflector’.

It’s worth nothing that the bare flash and the flash+ dish reflector are almost equivalent as the speedlite already has a internal fresnel element to focus the light forward.

Mini Beauty Dish test: control frame

Mini beauty dish test: Test frame

With the deflector in place, the same 1/16 power output from the flash results in a meter reading of f/2.8 +0.6 (in 3rd of stops that is aprox f/3.5)

Now, extend your fingers and start counting: f/16 -> f/11 -> f/8 -> f/5.6 -> f/4 -> f2.8. Wow you just used all your fingers, didn’t you!? Well, we need to count only a fraction of the last one, so that makes 4 fingers and a 1/3.

That is an outrageous 4+1/3 stops of light vanished from the exposure equation.

I know I’m living in Belgium, but a ‘power tax’ of 4+1/3 stops is way too much to afford. In the speedlite world, that translates in critically reduced working distances and shortened battery life.

What to do?
If you have bought one of these Viewfinder Photography Speedlite Kit, and want to use the mini beauty dish, there’re few things you can do to:
For soft light:

• Remove the reflector and put on the white snap-on diffusor: That will give you a small source of difussed light. Probably good for a close-up portrait.
• Replace the internal deflector by a diffusing surface, like a piece of white milk-ish plexi.

For hard light:

• The metallic reflector is useful to avoid flare from the flash. The flash effect will be as harsh as with a bare speedlite, but the spread of light is a bit more controlled. I used that technique for this image: Leen
• The reflector and honeycomb combination works quite well for further control of the light beam.

If for some reason you still want to use the internal deflector, put it inside-out. With the round surface facing the light source, light spreads outwards towards the reflector and you win 1 stop in performance. 3+1/3 stops instead of 4+1/3.

Question? Post them here below.

-Gerard.
twitter: @maasg

PS: Some additional test images:

Mini Beauty Dish: light bundle

Shoot with Siegrid at Aksi (De Bottelarij)
MU by Sarina Mannaert (www.facebook.com/sarina.mannaert)

The light here was a bit tricky. The location of choice is the entrance of one large room, connected to the building by a bridge. We just needed to get in the way of everybody, even in the way of my own lights…

Super clam attached to hand rail

There’s a big Ezybox 80 with a 580EXII outside the door, at about 45o behind the model. It provides the main light and the specular white reflection on the black door. Wanting to get a reflection of the model, I explored several angles to get to this rendering.
There’s some fill light from a second Ezybox 60 to the side, almost parallel to the door and there’s a reflector in front, opposite to the big softbox behind, to throw some of the backlight back towards the model.

Pocket Wizard’s TT1/TT5 where instrumental in this shot as the backlight was behind a wall, from the point of view of the camera. It would have been impossible (or very hard) to trigger with the E-TTL IR triggering.

Click through to read how it was done…

Siegrid is a young model with incredible potential and hypnotizing eyes.
We had the opportunity to use a cultural center as location for this (group) photo shoot. That meant working in rooms with artwork hanging on the walls, which as inspiring as it might be, you don’t want to include in your own frame at the end.

I found this ‘clean’ corner as background and installed my setup around it. Being close to the wall helped to use the spill as background light, so I could concentrate on lighting my model.

My main goal was to make her eyes stand out. I opted to create a “surround” light scheme that ensured even illumination on her face. As it can be seen in the setup image, the main light was above her head level, a reflector on her lap would throw some of that light back towards the underside of her factions, and I wouldn’t have to worry about balancing that as I should if I had used a 3rd light instead. The second light is a side fill that I tried to place as far to the back as I could. It would add some background separation and definition to her hair.

Setup:

• 1 580EXII with battery pack in an Ezybox 80 on top.
• A Lastolite Tri-grip silver reflector below.
• 1 580EX in an Ezybox 60 to camera right.
• Although not visible in the frame, I used a small led video light to illuminate the working area and help her pupils from getting too wide.

Post processing was minor cleanup, curves and some hairdressing.

I found this baby snail on the sole of my shoe after a walk on the colorful carpet placed by the autumn in the nature. While I was taking my shoes out I noticed the small passenger that probably hitchhiked many ours of crawling by sticking up. Of course, not without risking being smashed in the process.

How to light a small thing? Well, given that the size of light source is relative to the subject, a small flash is like a huge beam for this small critter. The light was provided by a single 480EX taken wireless with a PocketWizard TT5(on flash)/TT1(on camera). The flash was handheld behind the subject to achieve the backlight effect. No modifiers were used on the flash to get the well-defined directional light (although I could have used a honeycomb to avoid the flare I got in several other trials in this series)

We were shopping for winter clothes and we found this red rain jacket. It was immediate inspiration. The next day was rainy, misserable and perfect for the effect I was after, but the rain was too soft, so we complemented it with the garden hose.
It was just great how Juliana kept smiling while we were pouring water on her.

The light was simple (but effective): A 580EXII in a Ezybox 80 in the front and a LED video continuous light source (video light) as backlight. The flash was triggered by PocketWizard TT5. making use of the 2nd curtain sync feature.

Studio shoot with Tine.
MU by Britt Oliviers

Lights: Studio equipment (for once)

Then I compared it with the performance of the Pocket Wizard TT5 and its second curtain sync feature. The results with the PW TT5 are just great.
The timing of the PW’s is very precise, rendering results almost at the very end of the exposure. Here, Canon and PW 2nd curtain sync are compared side by side:

Note that above 1/25s the Canon reverts to 1st curtain sync. Clearly noticeable here by the drop going against gravity. On the frame taken at 1/25, the Canon sync captures the drop mid-flight, meaning that the flash was fired not at the end, but in the middle of the exposure. In the PW frame, the flash fired at the end of the exposure, as one would expect in 2nd curtain sync (with a small error margin, noticeable by the little trail under the drop).

Here’s the full set of the PW going up to the configured cutting point of 1/100 (configuration is done through the PW desktop app)

I must say that I’m impressed.

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