Dhanmondi, Dhaka, Bangladesh
well, why am I posting old stories one after the other??.... well, its all about time, isn't it?..... but I'm trying heart and soul to continue with blogging.... I hate stopping in mid-stream..... don't want my laziness to creep in.... that can be dangerous.... anyway, cut the crap and lets go down to the main topic....
as I mentioned in a previous post, my D700 was having a weird sync problem just before I started for the Jessore Safari of TTL... and when I returned from Jessore, I was faced with the prospect of taking my camera to office.... there was a Pahela Baishakh program at my office.... so, before I started for office in morning, I decided to try it out and see whether the problem persisted.... the plan was that if the problem did persist, I would not even take the camera with me, totally shelving the idea of shooting during the program.... and to my real surprise, it started working!!..... it worked in all trigger modes!!... so, the shooting was on.... I took the SU-800 with me along with the Elinchrom Skyports...
the program was arranged within a pretty confined space.... and there was no room to move.... thus there was a severe problem with getting the right angle to shoot.... to get the freedom of movement, I decided to depend on one off-camera flash to illuminate the whole place and to shoot with the 85mm almost wide open.... the trigger was the SU-800.... from the start, I knew that the SU-800 was the way to go.... being able to change power of the flash from the camera is a great convenience... especially when movement is not even an option.... during the whole event, I only shot from two positions.... and to achieve the second position, I had to cross some hurdles....
the power of IR was evident.... it was an indoor event; so, the SU-800 never failed even though I was shooting in different directions.... camera's built-in commander is never that powerful and reliable.... I shot more than 400 images during the event without any slip off.... and another point was the battery life or Eneloop/Cameleon (I forgot which set I was using).... shooting at mostly 1/8 power and sometimes 1/4 to full power, I didn't have to worry at all about battery.... it wasn't showing any strain.... for the whole event, it was one SB-900 placed around 10-12 feet left of my position.... sometimes it was behind me and sometimes in front.... I was shooting all manual setting; both camera and flash.... didn't want the TTL metering to change the settings that I wanted....
it was a pretty lively program performed by Baul singers (traditional folk singers).... they were expressive as well, giving me enough opportunity to test out the flash count of the batteries.... after the event, I thought I could utilise the settings a little bit and do some portraiture (for which I received some requests)... the 85mm was producing some lovely bokeh with the nice tungsten lighting in the background..... I used an on-camera SB-900 to bounce light from the ceiling, but then switched to a 34" collapsible reflector (white side) to bounce light from an SB-900 to create a directional and diffused light source.... the SU-800 again playing the trigger role....
model: romeo
I changed the batteries for this portrait session.... not taking any more chances.... another 100 or so frames followed as a result.... but for the whole event, the SU-800 was the key.... I hadn't been using the SU-800 for a while.... didn't take it to any of the recent shootouts.... but it again proved how valuable it can be in specific situations..... and as my experience from the Jessore Safari taught me, you have to have options and backups..... thats the way to go.....
