never underestimate the SU-800.......

17 April 2011
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.....

testing the DIY backdrop stand......

18 November 2010
Mohammadpur, Dhaka, Bangladesh

after Eid day, it was turn for a continuation...... Lamisa provided me with the impetus in the morning.... she pulled me into my makeshift studio...... it was real delight actually.... it is always so difficult to keep her in front of the lens... and now it came from her!!..... she posed in front of the lens in a voluntary act and the whole shoot was done within minutes!!







and then the night shoot was inspired by my wife..... Lamisa played a small part, but the most important thing was that she stayed out of the frame in most occasions, which was too important!!





the set-up.....



Eid day shoots were done using an improvised backdrop, which wasn't really suitable for portraits of a full-grown human..... Lamisa was probably the biggest subject in front of it..... I wanted to extend the shoots beyond these limited prospects..... I had a much bigger backdrop stand made of aluminium pipes that I had used previously, but not with a lotta success..... the stand was not stable enough.... but since acquiring the boom stands, I had the idea floating around in my head.... the booms came from the mike stands that I had acquired a while back.... the base of the mike stands provided an excellent set of studio equipment.... two of these base stands provided the base for the backdrop stands.... the backdrop stands had bases for themselves, but they needed weights to stand upright..... now the base stands gave the badly needed balance.... no weights required.... on the other hand, the cross-bar was another problem before..... attaching the cross-bar to the stands was something of a challenge previously..... now the system works much better with the use of "T"..... a couple of "T" attached the cross-bar perfectly on top of the stands.... the system was now more stable than any time....

another problem was to cut the spill of light.... that was absolute necessity to work with a black background.... I don't have a big softbox and space is something of a premium..... using panels provide the big lights, but they do produce a lot of light-spill.... I had been using some black fabric as sort of a GoBo between the backdrop and the main diffuser...... that more-or-less did the job.... but today, I found another spill on the top-end of the backdrop.... this spill wasn't there previously as the backdrop wasn't that high.... I thus put another black fabric on the SB-900-diffuser combination and the the spill was gone.....

another change was the power of the SB-600 hair-light.... I had overestimated the SB-600 and kept its power at one-stop higher than the other SB-900 hair-light.... it seems that the SB-600 needed much more power to feature in the shot.... so, whereas I used 1/128 power on the SB-900, I used 1/8 power on the SB-600.... both served the purpose of hair-light..... the above shots hardly had the effect of the SB-600.... for some later shots the SB-600 had the power increased and was featuring much more clearly in the shots.....

Eid-ul Azha........

17 November 2010
Mohamadpur, Dhaka, Bangladesh

Eid Mubarak...... its Eid-ul Azha.... its usually an Eid of busy times.... had been busy most of the morning hours and resting during the afternoon.... had lunch pretty late and wasn't really in a mood to do some shooting..... but it all changed in a moment as Tabassum and company hopped in..... Lamisa was very busy during the day, making our lives twice as busy as it could've been..... this was her second Eid-ul Azha..... and she got rejuvenated after finding her mate, Tabassum.....

we cut cakes and did some photo-session...... Riad, my brother-in-law showed up and it was a bit of a party for a short while.....









for the later photo-shoot, I followed a similar set-up that I used in a shoot-out last month..... the set-up worked pretty well after putting on the grid/snoot on the hair lights..... there was a bit of light-spill on the black backdrop, which went away totally after using the grid/snoot..... used the venerable 28-80mm lens.... had been using this lens for a while as something of an experiment.... also used this for an outdoor shoot for the first time on the 16th, the day before Eid...... more on that in the next blog, hopefully.....

strobist double-header!!

30 October 2010
Mohammadpur, Dhaka, Bangladesh

simply didn't wanna bring down the whole setup as long as it had the capacity to serve further.... so, the utilisation of Friday wasn't enough, it seems.... got this inspiration from my family and decided not to bring it down.... this is the first time I've kept studio setting intact for so long....

Lamisa got her new cooking set from one of her grandmas a few days back.... and already those were in the line of fire..... I decided to get some snaps of Lamisa with those stuff before they changed beyond all recognition.... that triggered the first session......














decided to utilise the black backdrop, rather than anything else.... so, the typical challenges of background darkening and creating separation remained.... the set-up worked fairly well in terms of making the background dark.... the hair-light wasn't really yielding perfect results, but it was working..... I decided to add a third light in the same setting with one SB-600 as a second hair light..... to restrict the light from falling on the lens, I put a DIY snoot on the flash.... the other hair light, an SB-900, had a DIY grid spot on it.... for this particular experiment, the hair light coming from the gridded SB-900 seemed a bit too restricted.... it wasn't covering enough area that I wanted it to..... but I only had one option, making me somewhat crippled.... both the hair lights were on improvised boom stands, getting some overhead position that my other stands were unable to provide.... the SB-600 was on my new improvised boom stand that I made out of my old damaged tripod.... did some repair to it during the day and it worked fine....

we went out for some shopping and came back with something that could potentially help the makeshift studio..... a stool..... Lamisa pounced on it and I got at least one shot....


(p.s. she's holding on to the KitKat packs that Rumi Bhai smuggled in for her!!)


then some happy accident happened..... Rumi Bhai came in to see the intact setting.... and some way, I brought the grid-spot down from the flash..... so, when I was shooting afterward, the flash was bare..... and the hair-illumination was actually better than it was with the grid-spot on..... quite surprisingly, there was no flare because of this.... I was pretty sure that the flash wasn't supposed to miss the lens, yet there was no flare!!..... for the rest of the shoot, I kept the flash bare and forgot about flare....




this was the last setting used.... changed the aperture a little in some cases though.... but overall, the settings remained the same....

day-long strobist........

29 October 2010
Mohammadpur, Dhaka, Bangladesh

In recent times my work has almost got into my nerves.... putting enough pressure on me to make a real difference in my day-to-day mood.... but its the survival instinct that keeps me going, actually... the weekend seems so precious, yet so short and even lesser in terms of its effect on the coming week of busy of schedules..... I had planned on a photoshoot on Friday no matter what.... had received all the help from family members and we were rolling by around midday.... we didn’t plan for an all-day session, but as it turned out, that was probably the most feasible if we really wanted to make it count.... and when I say making it count, I mean utilising the whole setup for the shoot.... almost one hour’s effort should not be used to shoot just a couple of frames, I guess.....













we started in the morning hours; late morning hours to be honest..... Lamisa was as usual in her moody self, providing me with all the unique stuff.... but as always, she also charges premium for it.... hard work for the photographer, that is...... someone who shoots babies frequently, would know what I mean by hard work..... sometimes, one single successful shot is all that you have..... I at least got several!!




the idea was to use the same white-out once again that I’ve tried out more-or-less successfully couple of days back (see my last blog).... not a lotta changes to the settings, used the same lens too.... Lamisa was in her black dress, which made it imperative to used a white backdrop, rather than dark.... anyway, I had actually planned to utilise the black some time during the day....







The next shoot came up in the afternoon, after some modifications to the setup..... I used a black fabric to put on the white diffuser that I used as backdrop..... I’ve used this same black fabric quite a few times before, mainly as backdrop..... and it works.... I won’t say perfectly, but it works..... but I usually have to be very careful about light falling on the backdrop.... so, control of light is more important than anything else while would be using a black backdrop..... except for one occasion, I never had the opportunity to setup the black backdrop way behind my subject, which would’ve made my life so much easier to control light spill.... space had always been the concern.... anyway, the panel now seems to be working somewhat with close collaboration of the black fabric, not just as a backdrop, but also as a Gobo.... also one of the newer things I tried out was a hair light on a boom stand, with grid spot.... this worked pretty well, considering my other experiments with hair light.... still, there is room for improvement.... lets see where I can take this....




there was a long enough pause before we could try out the next thing..... we went out and among other stuff, visited Drik Gallery, where we watched a couple of photography exhibitions..... one was involving some deprived children (age 12-15) who are getting training on photography.... I was really amazed at the quality of work on display there.... some of the shots were outright brilliant!!.... the other exhibition was called Wedding Diary, where wedding photographer Prito Reza tried to show his portfolio..... this was the first time I've seen an exhibition involving wedding photography.... his shots were really good; some of them being unique.... this was a good lesson in terms of how marketing should be done by a professional photographer..... the exhibition was a good lesson in photography, and a great lesson in marketing.....




anyway, we came back and got prepared for the last shoot..... we knew that it would be late..... there was no Lamisa planned in the frame this time, but she was not possible to keep away..... it was another difficult shoot was Lamisa wanted to be a part of it....... this last setup of the day didn’t change the earlier lighting that much, but it surely changed everything else.... I switched to a wider lens, as this was a whole body portrait with some props..... couldn’t afford to use a shorter focal length to flatten perspective, as I was really short of space..... 50mm was too cramped for my liking and the 35mm was not doing justice at all with wrong exposure.... didn’t want the 24mm either because it would not just be too wide, it would also add some perspective distortion as well.... so, I decided to turn to the old 28-80mm lens... the lens has accumulated some fungus and was not in the best shape..... but this kinda practice, it was probably enough..... and it worked fair enough, though I would’ve liked some sharper images at f6.3.....

anyway, it was a good exercise..... learnt some lessons regarding control of light and also learnt some lessons on the type of lenses suitable for my work..... I used tethered shooting for more ease of review and thankfully there was no software glitch this time..... I kept the setup intact as it was well beyond midnight.... perhaps the setup has some more life in it.... lets see....

a day of goodbye........

17 October 2010
Rajshahi, Bangladesh

my busy days at Rajshahi were about to end.... a sad time actually, since we had such a wonderful time with the family and the life here in this city is so different from the busy and dirty Dhaka.... would've stayed back if I could.... the hospitality and friendliness of the in-laws were truly amazing.... this tour would surely remain in memory.....

we didn't have any program for the day, as we were to start our journey by train in the afternoon by around 4:00PM..... I planned some shoots at home with my "available" models.... there were quite a few and they were very much willing to give their time.....

I made some serious error regarding ISO settings.... the night before, I was shooting at Puja Mandap with available light, using auto ISO.... forgot to change the setting next day for Elinchrom Skyport.... I now know that once the Elinchrom is on top of the camera, the camera doesn't know that flash is being used, thats why the camera starts to set ISO level considering available light only...... a big lesson for me..... of course, with the SU-800 on the camera, the camera shoots at the lowest ISO unless told specifically to change ISO....


model: bornona
Camera info:
Nikon D700 + Nikkor AF 20mm f2.8D + Elincrom Skyport radio trigger
f18, 1/200sec,ISO6400 (didn't notice it was at that level!! :O)
Strobist info:
1 SB-900 with warm gel filter, on improvised boom stand, around 8-9ft high, around 15-20ft away, triggered with Elinchrom Skyport radio trigger


model: niloy
Camera info:
Nikon D700 + Nikkor AF 70-210mm f4-5.6D + Elinchrom Skyport radio trigger
105mm, f8, 1/200sec. ISO 6400 (didn't notice it was at that level!! :O)
Strobist info:
1 SB-900 shooting through a 2'x2' diffusion panel, held overhead with the help of three improvised booms, triggered by Elinchrom Skyport
1 SB-900 with warm gel, on tripod behind subject, triggered in SU-4 mode (optical trigger from the other strobe)
1 white reflector held below the subject's face clipped to the boom stand


the last shot was a group shot..... I had planned so much for this.... the rooftop was a superb place for this.... but the weather simple wasn't helping us..... it rained quite a bit and made me set-up everything indoors..... was quite a bit cramped up within the room, trying to cover so many faces at the same time and getting to light everyone's face properly..... I wish I could be in the group shot, along with my child.... but it wasn't to be..... a better weather might've give this better opportunity....


Camera info:
Nikon D700 + Nikkor AF 20mm f2.8D + SU-800 TTL trigger
f8, 1/125sec, ISO200 (auto ISO chose the lowest setting)
Strobist info:
1 SB-900 overhead, shooting through a 4'x4' diffusion panel, all held by three improvised boom stands
1 SB-900 from right in front, on table, shooting through a 4'x4' diffusion panel, parked on the floor almost vertical
Editing:
used the lens correction feature in Photoshop CS3 to correct distortion created by 20mmm wide angle lens


same setting as above, but no need for perspective correction

anyway, it was the end of a lovely time...... and it also reminded me of what is to expect within a day..... office, that is!!! :(

Durga Nobomi.....

16 October 2010
Rajshahi, Bangladesh

was having a very busy day at Rajshahi..... went to the Silk Village during the day and then made it to the Durga Puja celebrations in the evening..... me and my uncle had planned this depending on the info received from priests the day earlier.... we were planning to catch the Arti, which was supposed to happen sometime around 8:00PM.... we also had a dilemma of some sort with the time we could spend there.... we had a family dinner almost coinciding with this event.... so, we had to cut short our venture by some margin...... still managed to get enough time to visit two separate Puja Mandaps....

had a glimpse of Arti at both the places.... used a flash in one of the Mandaps to accentuate the lighting at the scene a little..... my uncle was to the rescue once again..... a very friendly guy indeed..... and we forgot our age differences for a while.... he also enjoyed the experience, as I guessed.... used the SU-800 as trigger, as I didn't have the choice of changing power in the remote flash..... at the other Mandap, I was relying completely on the ISO performance of my D700....... took as many shots as I could and filled the card..... it was a rather short venture, but an enjoyable one.....

calm, but not quiet......

15 October 2010
Rajshahi, Bangladesh

not a stranger to Rajshahi anymore.... just came here and started to rediscover..... always loved the calm nature of the city...... but as usual, this is a city of festivals during Durga Puja.... the Puja is usually celebrated in grand style here, traditionally..... there are celebrations literally on the streets.... I just had a short stroll during the evening with my uncle and was able to visit quite a few Puja Mandap within about one-and-a-half hours..... actually arrived a bit late for the day's (Ashtami) celebrations..... but took the idea of the celebrations on the coming day (Nobomi)..... took a few snaps as a souvenir....

this was again a strobist effort.... I got great help from my uncle, who's really a great guy and very friendly....




some of us never try to find the meaning of devotion in their lives..... on the other hand, some of us spend their whole lives trying to find the meaning of it..... and to the rest, these two groups become the words in the definition of devotion......

Strobist info: 1 Nikon SB-900 shooting TTL, on camera right, shooting through a white shoot-through umbrella on voice-activated lightstand (my uncle); triggered by SU-800 on camera.

no time for formalities.....

11 October 2010
Mohammadpur, Dhaka, Bangladesh

you know, there's some times when you tend to forget all those formalities and get down to business..... there was food and they were staring at me..... I was frozen for a moment, not sure what to do.... considering the fact that everyone was so hungry and the food would surely lose its taste if left on the table for too long..... I got the kick when my wife pushed me to pick up the camera while she put some other things in the oven.....

that was that...... brought a couple of tripods and a couple of flashes along with a shoot-through umbrella.... the photo-session was short, but yummy, and so was the session of transferring those yummies to where they belonged, stomach.... :)









Camera info:
Nikon D700 + Nikkor AF 50mm f1.4D + SU-800 TTL trigger
f2.2-2.5, 1/125sec, ISO 100
Strobist info:
1 Nikon SB-900 @1/128 power; on tripod; shooting from camera left in front of subject; through a white shoot-through umbrella;
1 Nikon SB-900 @1/64 power; on tripod; shooting from behind the table

Lamisa's playhouse......

30 September 2010
Mohammadpur, Dhaka, Bangladesh

it was an idea waiting to be implemented for quite some time..... my wife had been pushing me to take the initiative..... but my work pressure in recent times was not leaving me with a lot of energy at the end of the day.... so, I needed that big push to move my lazy butt....

my wife gave the main impetus.... she brought out all the toys of Lamisa despite knowing the fact that she is the one who would have to pack those up once again..... we had been looking for the day when Lamisa would start to understand the significance of toys.... up till now she was too young to understand this.... but this time, when she got all the toys in front of her, she got really excited and didn't really know what to do with all of that...... quite ironically, her interests took a nosedive quite quickly..... she became more interested in watching the outputs of my photography on the camera LCD...... and then, she became too interested in her newly-found passion, her toothbrush..... she wrestled it from her mum and started to chew on to it..... we put her amongst the toys once again, but this time, with her toothbrush......











the session was quite short, but we more-or-less got the results...... but still, waited for the time when Lamisa would go to sleep...... and there came another opportunity.... we created her own playhouse around her..... and she was too much in her dreamworld to be able to wake up to the bursts from my flashes....



now the geeky stuff..... I took a leaf from Joe McNally's book "The Moment it Clicks" and started with one light...... I didn't want harsh shadows on the background, which was really close to the subject..... so, I decided to set up light in an overhead position...... I used my recently made 4'x4' aluminium panel with white diffusion materials and put that on top of two improvised booms.... the panel was illuminated with one SB-900 running at 1/8th power.... this gave an overhead illumination...... I made the stage with white cloth on the bed..... it lessened distraction and also, added to the exposure and helped remove shadows.... I expected quite a bit o shadows because of this one light..... I used a small reflector on camera right to fill the shadows.... it didn't prove to be enough because of the distance and size of reflector.... I then switched to another SB-900 on camera right, shooting through a white shoot-through umbrella.... 1/32nd power was enough to fill in all the shadows and create sort of a high-key light..... the white walls on the background and on the right also added to the exposure.... I used a relatively larger aperture (f5) which helped to shoot with much lower power on the flashes..... the lower power on the flashes helped to recycle quicker and I was able to capture more moments and more frames....

for the last shot of Lamisa sleeping, I used one SB-900 on camera in TTL mode, bounced from the white ceiling.... used f2.8 to create a shallow DoF for a more dreamy feel.....

this was the set-up.......