Genie in a bottle

The strobist page is just sensational. He's got so many useful tutorials on there that I cant understand how he has time to be a newspaper photographer as well?! Anyway, one of the posts got me thinking a bit. It basically explains how you can override your cameras max sync speed (1/250th in my case). Sadly, my D2Hs hasn't got the electronic shutter needed for this, so I am stuck at that max speed (we're not discussing FP sync here, by the way, a different beast altogether). I also sold my old trusty D70 earlier this year. However, I know that before they upgraded to D2Hs here at the newspaper, they used to shoot on Nikon D1H. Not a great camera, I know, but it has the required electronic shutter. I brought one home to try out over the weekend and I have been charging its batteries ever since.


© Magnus Andersson

The above bottle was shot as follows: SB-800 (left) on PC cord, SB-80DX on slave, both on 1/128 power, f/20, 1/16,000 sec, ISO 800 (no post processing at all). Yes, sixteen thousandth of a second - that's 0.0000625 seconds. Insane. I just wish I could use this for work, but it seems unlikely as the batteries for these old cameras are completely knackered. Lasts maybe 30min, maybe less, so I cant risk it on a job just yet.

Rainy day

As you know I am off work this week and enjoying it! Brighton yesterday was a success, I managed to burn a lot of money in exchange for food, clothes, CD's and stuff. Tomorrow we're off to see that Ansel Adams exhibition in Oxford that I've mentioned earlier. I think there's over 70 prints on show so it should be nothing short of amazing. Last day is June 1st for those who can make it.

But my plans for today went out the window. I was going to jump on the bike and get lost in the Lee Valley again, but the weather is quite wet so instead I've been having a one-man-workshop at home with various lighting setup's.

The above self portrait is a very simple one; just one SB-800 at 1/64th power hanging from a door frame via a super clamp pointing straight down, triggered by an SB-80DX on the camera. The bounce card was out on the SB-800 and I was very close to it, almost right underneath it in fact, hence the strong light fall off.

A bit tricky to frame as I was holding the camera myself; the bounce card kept cropping up in the top of the frame...it was shot at 1/250th, f13, ISO 200, so there's no ambient light. Post-processing: turned up contrast (low & high end cut slightly), desaturated & cropped it, touch of USM, that's it.