Speaking of light boxes…

[Zach Matthews]

Hey guys –

I am trying to decide between purchasing a new, real light box to replace my cardboard and tissue paper job, OR buying a set of real studio lamps with built-on softboxes.

[John Bennett]

Zach if your thinking commercial have a look at this link.
Can’t take credit for this, another poster on another board found it. He’s getting some really nice results though. I think he said the largest box (28″) was 110.00 or so.
Home page
http://us.boothphoto.com/home.cfm

There are smaller boxes as well as complete kits. No idea what the various kits cost.
http://us.boothphoto.com/prod_detail.cfm?PRODSELECT=9&PAGESELECT=prod_detail_data.cfm#DPBK

Since he posted the link Ive booked marked and will give them alot of consideration when I decide to get one. benefit for me is they’re local 🙂

[david king]

Try these
http://www.obuynow.com/?gclid=COLf1tjloJECFSF4lgodxFgnOA
http://www.lastolite.com/index.php

[John Pavoncello]

Zach,

I don’t understand why the ambient light in the room should effect the color balance in strobed photos. I assume you’re shooting at ISO 200 or lower, and at f8 or better for DOF so ambient shouldn’t effect the image at all (unless you light up your office like a showroom floor). Try bumping your shutter speed up to 250th, you’re using strobe so the shutter/aperture combo shouldn’t be a problem.

As to low cost studio lights, don’t bother. Use your SB’s until you make enough money off the studio shots to buy Alien Bees or other high quality strobe.

[nemoblackdog]

I’m not sure of what the real requirements are here – do you need/want a strobed (cold) lighting setup or can you manage to go with a hot light setup (continuous tungsten or fluorescent) lighting?

I’ve not used these, but I have heard there are some pretty neat fluorescent systems out there that have near daylight (5500K) balance and don’t have the brutal heat of traditional hot setups.

[mike j]

if you are going to shoot stuff that wont melt or complain go for constant lighting, spend your money on reflectors, gels, snoots, doors, and backgrounds / table….. you might also consider a ring flash…

[Zach Matthews]

Nemo –

The problem is elegantly draining the color from the white background with a silver reel.

[Zach Matthews]

This is what I’m doing if you are new enough to have missed the thread:

This is for Nautilus – it’s an ongoing relationship/assignment and I am trying to get better at it.

[David Anderson]

Zach,

You need to keep your shutter speed high enough to work above the ambient light.
180-250 th second ish.

With flash the exposure is set with the apature and (this is a broad assumtion

www.dsaphoto.com

A picture is thousand words that takes less than a second while a thousand words is a picture that takes a month.

[Matt Jones]

So are you trying to get rid of the shadows that are showing under the reel?

www.mattjonesphotography.com

[mike j]

looking at metadata in this image…

ISO 800
f 14
shutter 20s

IMHO….

I think you might have an exposure issue…

I’d slow down the ISO.. WAY down…  make the dof shallower and sync the flash with the camera.. perhaps 1/250…   I think you might be blowing out because of length of exposure…

also how are you achieving white balance?

[mike j]

You should be able to run both SB-600’s in commander mode off flash.. the 600’s should have come with a tripod mountable foot…. used with a G series lens this can work pretty well in auto mode…  but lighting is tricky… I sometimes run a 600 and 800 it’s a pain…  I hate using the pop-up flash to run the lights… another option would be cheap (ebay) flash’s and peanut triggers…

Also, I could swear that the 600 has a modeling light…

edit- sorry my bad.. 800 has the modeling light… 600 doesn’t…. I did manage to strobe myself.. I see lots of purple dots….

[mike j]

One other “trick of the trade”…

[nemoblackdog]

On the advice of a buddy, I did some casual poking around.

[Zach Matthews]

Thanks David.

[John Bennett]

Hope I don’t cross a line here 🙂
This type of photogrpahy really isn’t my thing so my question is more general in nature.

Zack, if your trying to blow the whites for what amounts to a high key shot I’m not sure why you’d be using ISO 800 and F14. Your on a tripod so SS shouldnt be an issue and slap can be controlled with mirror lockup. Without knowing all the techs your DoF only needs to be about 2 to 3 inches. If you can get away with f8 to f11 and you drop your ISO considerably you shouldnt have much trouble clipping the whites. The flash can’t it be controlled by going manual on the flask and using the guide #s, rather than ETTL?

Im not on my home monitor so I cant really judge the shadows to well but the first thing I noticed/thought when you inserted the reel shots was a lack of detail in the darks. They appear (on this not so good monitor) to be clipping the blacks. I think id start with as low an ISO as possible and use +FEC if not manual on the flash.

[Zach Matthews]

The reason for the high ISO was to keep the shutter speed under 30s.

[Ben Cochran]

Zach,

I know that this is no where near what you were asking about but thought that I wold throw in another option for you, nonetheless. Have you considered the Nikon Sb-R200 strobes, better yet; the Nikon R1C1 system? Not only are they great for macro photography, they are perfect for small item production shots. I know that the cost is more than what you wanted to spend but the kit also comes with the SU800 wireless transmitter that does trigger the 2 200’s plus your SB600’s. The Su 800 gives you 3 channels that allows complete control over the intensity of the light from the strobes that are assigned to one of the three channels. They come with stands but there is also an attachment that allows you to place up to 8 R200’s onto the very end of the lens. I am in the process of wrapping up a tying book, with about 500 images and used this system with a lot of joy from the amount of work that was limited in post production, due to this system. As an example: I assigned 2 R200’s to channel A, 2 to channel B and then 2 SB800’s to channel C. All of the lights fire at the same time but I was able to control each of the outputs directly from the SU 800 and not have to change any of the strobes independently. You can also use it on your location shots and be able to get the flash out of the hotshoe.

Yes, it cost more but I have no doubt that you will get a lot more from all of this and knowing you, it will pay for itself in no time at all. Also, the light is all balanced and ambient light is no problem at all as these are strobes. I really do love this system and the versatility of it!

[Zach Matthews]

Good idea, Ben.

My main concern is getting enough light on the objects to properly expose with a low ISO setting, a relatively narrow aperture for sharpness front-to-back, and a short shutter speed.

[Zach Matthews]

Hey Ben –

Will the SB-R200 strobes pop in ‘Commander Mode’ without the SU-800 unit or is it required?

[Author]

Posts