Occasionally, I get frustrated with all the gear I schlep around. I bring at least six lenses, but Inuse my 35mm most of the time. I have a bag full of triggers/recievers and all the wiring.
I’ve started to think that all this gear gets in my way, creatively. One way I have recently minimized the amount of equipment I break out on a shoot is by using Nikon’s CLS system. I’ve used CLS before, and I liked it. But it can be a hair temperamental. This is mostly due to the line-of-sight limitations of the sensor. And bright sun light seems to make it more difficult to use. However, the lack of wires, a transmitter and the ability to adjust the power setting of the off camera strobe from the interface on camera makes it convenient in many situations. But the most handsome quality of using CLS is being able to shoot at shutter speeds over 1/250th.
Enter “The Stupid 2pm Sun.”
My assignment for the cover story of this weeks OC Weekly was to shoot a series of portraits of people involved in the local fishing community in Orange County. You can read the whole story by Michelle Woo here. Ivar Southern, an Orange County fisherman, was my first subject. After a phone call to Ivar, we came up with a time that worked best for him and my deadline. Unfortunately, it was 2 p.m. in the afternoon, and I knew I would have to battle Earth’s Yellow Sun. So, my mind went to CLS. In the end, the shoot was at 5 in the afternoon, but I decided not to abandon my plan and run CLS anyway. Besides, there is still plenty of light to try and kill even then.
This portrait was shot at 1/800th f4.5 ISO 200. That shutter is 1 2/3 of a stop over sync shutter speed for my Nikon D700. Camera right was a SB-800 set to full power behind a small shoot through umbrella and a SB-800 on camera set to around 1/64ish.
I was pretty happy with these results, and I thought I would just keep on shooting with CLS for the rest of the assignment.
Next up was Ray. He is part of an organization that watches and tracks usage of the coast in Orange County. So I had to make guy with a clip board on the beach look interesting.
This one was shot at ISO 200 f2.0 1/8000th! BAM! That is five stops over normal sync speed! At this point, I’m getting a little hooked. Camera left is a SB-800 at full power in a small softbox and a SB-800 on camera at about 1/64ish.
Who’s next!?
Don owns a fishing business down in Newport, and we were shooting first thing in the morning. No real opportunity to get anything super dramatic courtesy of the sky due to the marine layer, but I CLSed forward anyway.
This one is ISO 500 at 1/320 f5.6. I really like this portrait, despite the lack of a dramatic sky. Same strobe setup here. Camera right SB-800 set to full in a small softbox and a SB-800 on camera at around 1/64th.
This was the first of two assignments for The OC Weekly that I shot using CLS. I’m very happy the results. In the past when I’ve used CLS, it’s been because the strobe is out of reach when I need to make some adjustments. Thus, doing so from the camera was really the only option. Now that I’m utilizing the High Speed Sync, I find that its quarks are worth overlooking to achieve these results.
The only other issue I’m having is that one SB-800 doesn’t really have enough cow bell, but you can’t beat the compactness of the kit.
I will post the portraits from the second assignment as soon as it runs.
Best
KMR