The Flash Rig

I want to say that the InStep Quar­tet are love­ly peo­ple, patient, fun and appre­cia­tive. We had a great time shoot­ing these pic­tures to our mutu­al ben­e­fit.

We decid­ed to shoot the pic­tures at the now closed Alame­da Navy Base for some rus­tic (and rusty) atmos­phere. I expect­ed bright sun and fig­ured on shoot­ing in what­ev­er shade we could find at high noon. The flash would help even out the light­ing. I was also hop­ing for some clouds and want­ed to use the flash to con­trol the ambi­ent sky light in an art­sy and dra­mat­ic way. There was not a sin­gle cloud in the sky, just bright, hot sun. The rig did work but was a chal­lenge get every­thing right. More on that lat­er.

I am in the mar­ket for flash equip­ment for stu­dio and loca­tion work. Rent­ing is a great way to get expe­ri­ence and field test expen­sive equip­ment before you buy. For­tu­nate­ly, the San Fran­cis­co bay area hosts the pho­tog­ra­phy rental com­pa­ny “Bor­row Lens­es”. They are not far from my home and I was able to rent the light­ing equip­ment I need­ed for this shoot on Fri­day, prac­tice with it over the week­end, shoot the quar­tet on Mon­day morn­ing and return it before 6pm.

The com­pa­ny is easy to work with and I appre­ci­ate that they were able to adapt to my needs. Nikon equip­ment is cur­rent­ly very pop­u­lar so it is a good idea to reserve your equip­ment ahead of time, eas­i­ly done on their web site. You also have the option of buy­ing dam­age insur­ance.

I rent­ed a Nikon SB900 Speed­light flash (ask for the man­u­al and the col­or fil­ters), 2 Pock­et Wiz­ards, a 13′ light stand (the only size they rent at that time), a 48″ reflec­tive umbrel­la (again, the only size they rent) and a Gary Fong Light­sphere (which I nev­er used). Bat­ter­ies are your respon­si­bil­i­ty. There were none in the Pock­et Wiz­ards and the SB900 ran out after a few uses. There was no indi­ca­tion that an umbrel­la adapter was includ­ed or avail­able. I called to talk about this and they noticed it before I was able to ask. So they ran out and bought a few (com­plete with brass mon­key and cold shoe) and includ­ed one at no cost.

I had the week­end to exper­i­ment, scar­ing the bird and the wife with umbrel­las and flash­ing lights in the house, refer­ring back to Zack Ari­a’s One Light Work­shop video sev­er­al times (men­tioned in Part 1).

If the equip­ment is new to you, prac­tice open­ing and clos­ing every­thing. Take things apart and put them back togeth­er. Ask for the man­u­al for every­thing you rent and read through it. Prac­tice going through the menus on the flash. The idea is that you do not want to take time learn­ing how to set­up the stand or con­fig­ur­ing the flash dur­ing the shoot. I dis­cov­ered ahead of time that the flash does not lock into the cold shoe and the set screw can come loose with the flash falling out. I secured it with a vel­cro strap before the shoot and had no prob­lems.

I total­ly neglect­ed to take a pic­ture of the set­up for pos­ter­i­ty, so dumb.

I did take the oppor­tu­ni­ty to try uti­liz­ing the flash for my Back­yard Bird Pho­tog­ra­phy project. Results? Well, let’s just say you learn more from fail­ure. The goal was to stop the action of birds in flight. I need more research for the prop­er set­up to accom­plish this. I did observe that, for the record, birds are not con­cerned with the flash and this was set­up (with­out the umbrel­la) very close to the bird feed­er. But that project is a sub­ject for anoth­er post.

The InStep Quar­tet is a pro­fes­sion­al, high qual­i­ty and mul­ti-genre San Fran­cis­co bay area string quar­tet. Read more about them on their web site.

Next: Part 3 — What Could Pos­si­b­lie Go Wrong?
Part 1 — Part 3