Workshop at the Ranch – June 2010 – West Coast Flash
Before I get started on this month’s tutorial I wanted to mention that I have just released my book; The Way I See It … 50 One Page Workshops as an ebook download. Although the hard cover edition of The Way I See It … was very well received, many of you requested a more convenient ebook download. This ebook version is the hard cover coffee table book edition with all the same chapters, large images, technical lessons and stories, and complete camera data with equipment lists. It is less expensive at $29.95. An in-depth book review can be found here
Before I get started on this month’s tutorial I wanted to mention that I have just released my book; The Way I See It … 50 One Page Workshops as an ebook download. Although the hard cover edition of The Way I See It … was very well received, many of you requested a more convenient ebook download. This ebook version is the hard cover coffee table book edition with all the same chapters, large images, technical lessons and stories, and complete camera data with equipment lists. It is less expensive at $29.95. An in-depth book review can be found here
Hope you enjoy The Way I See It … ebook download version. Dave.
West Coast Flash
Hi and welcome to this edition of Workshop at the Ranch. My quest to photograph Sports Action with Speedlights has turned into quite an adventure. April’s Workshop at the Ranch taught how to light a college ice hockey arena using 8 Speedlights. Then in May I lit the USOTC Aquatic Center and some Olympic athletes using just 4 Speedlights. This month I decided to get outdoors and illuminate the biggest sports venue I’ve ever attempted, surfing. That’s right, I wanted to find out if I could illuminate surfers using 8 Nikon SB-900 Speedlights. So grab your boogie board and bongos and let’s see if lighting surfers with Speedlights is possible.
I was not on assignment during the 3 evenings of Speedlight Surfing north of San Diego. Sometimes I just want to find out if an idea in my head is possible to accomplish. I am not a surfing photographer, far from it. I have great respect for those who make their living from this sport and especially those who “light up the action” with flash while riding the ocean waves. That’s right, some photographers illuminate surfers with off camera strobe lighting while floating in the water. Well, such oceanic expertise with Speedlights is not my cup of mango juice, but I have been curious about using my SB-900 Speedlights to light surfers using a more “arena” style lighting arrangement. I also wanted to continue making use of the Nikon camera’s Auto-FP custom setting and combine the ambient outdoor daylight with Speedlight and use a fast shutter sync speed just as I have been doing with indoor arena sports. To achieve enough illumination to do this I used 8 Nikon SB-900 Speedlights mounted on 2 FourSquare Blocks connected together via the FourSquare Hand Grip. This “EightSquare” as I call it, would provide a very substantial single source of off camera flash. The big question was, how far will the light reach? That depends on how bright the available daylight is. I estimated that from the “EightSquare” Speedlight location on the pier to a surfer might be 200-250 feet. By using the wireless Radio Popper PX transmitter and receiver system I could easily be 275 feet or more away from the Speedlights. This triangular arrangement (camera – to subject – to Speedlights) is commonly used for portraiture. My plan was to manually underexpose the ambient light of the general scene, the Pacific Ocean, and add some illumination to the surfer with the single light source of my 8 Speedlights located on the pier that is adjacent to where the surfers are catching waves. A sort of arena surfing set-up. What I didn’t expect was how difficult it would be to photograph surfing without the luxury of shooting 9 frames per second. As with any strobe system a photographer can only make one shot and then wait for the strobe to recycle up to full power again before making another shot. With the SANYO Eneloop rechargeable AA batteries in my SB-900 Speedlights I can make a picture every 2.3 seconds at full power. Even so this still only allows me a single shot to capture the peek action moment after which my surfer would usually finish out the ride. No other sport I have ever experienced required such a precise combination of photographic timing, lighting technology, and perfect environmental conditions (a good surfing wave) in order to achieve a strobed image. A great challenge and a real kick!
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I hope you have enjoyed and learned from this article. This Speedlight Surfing project was a challenging experiment for me with many lessons learned that will aid me in accomplishing future jobs and projects. I encourage you all to test your equipment’s capabilities and push yourself in an effort to learn.
See you next time as my summer quest for Sports Action Speedlight images continues here on Workshop at the Ranch. Adios. Dave
Here is a lot of equipment that I am using to make these Sports Action Speedlight images. I thought it might be helpful to mention where to acquire these items.
The FourSquare and all FourSquare accessories: www.lightwaredirect.com
The Lightwalker II roll-aboard case (soon to be available): www.lightwareinc.com or any camera store that carries the Lightware brand.
Radio Popper PX Transmitters and PX Receivers: www.radiopopper.com
Michael Bass Designs Fiber Optic Bundle (explained in April and May articles): www.michaelbassdesigns.com
Manfroto (formally Bogen): #155 Double Ball Joint Head and the 5/8-3/8 Rapid Adapters: available at Robert’s Imaging in Indianapolis 800-726-5544 www.robertsimaging.com
Thank you for hanging in there to the end. Hope you enjoyed the article and learned something new.