Urgent help. PLEASE

[Ben Cochran]

I know that there are some great Pro’s here with very helpfull information so I rushed here for some help:

I am currently in the middle of a long photoshoot in Lithuania, which means that my ability to get Nikon service is extremely limited. During one of todays sessions, I noticed some shadowing begining to appear in the shots, I checked the lights again and made sure that I had all of my flags in proper placements. All of the lenses are clean and the hoods are proper to lense. I reviewed my photogrphs and noticed that when the shadowing began to appear, it was in the same place in both landscape and profile. This makes me believe that the problem is in the sensor or hopefully in the firmware. I have been using this D200 for some time and it functioned perfectly in Brussels and Paris with recent use so, I am very lost on what is causing this and hoping that I may , or someone may know of, a download patch that can solve this problem. I attached a couple of between sessions shots to illustrate what I am talking about.. I know that I can widen the shots but I prefer not to and I am afraid that the problem may get worse and interfer with completing this assignment so, deperation is at my front door. The publisher has a solid deadline so, any help will be greatly appreciated!! Thanks!!

[Ben Cochran]

Another shot that was taken profile…

[David Anderson]

Hi Ben,
I think I have some bad news for you concerning shutters.. 🙁

* I know Canon – not Nikon so I may be speaking from my Butt on this.

If the shadow is always on the same side it’s the shutter or it could be flash sync speed set to high on the camera for the light’s you’re using.

1st try a slower sync speed – without knowing your lights 125 should be the slowest you need to go to loose the shadow if that’s the problem.

2nd if that’s not it – you will have to shoot wide and crop it out – if you don’t tell the client their’s no need for them to know IMO.

Do you carry a spare body ?

If not I would make it a habit as all cameras are fragile to some extent and can let you down when you need it least.

I bet it would be quicker for you to buy another D200 than get the one you have repaired if that get’s you through the job.

The shutter will fail 100% at any time once it starts bouncing like that.

Hope it works out for you.

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.

[Ben Cochran]

Thanks David! I really admire your work, by the way :)..

It was the shutter sync speed. The client provided all for this shoot. They reneted the studio, lights, models, makeup persons and also had their graphic designers on set so, I could not cheat the photographs as we go over the contact sheets at the end of each day. Between changing lenses, climbing overheads and dealing with far to many people on the set; seems that I changed the shutter speed during a lense change, by bad habit. I slowed the shutter speed back down and managed the sessions at 250, lots of fast action shots required and with the occasional mandatory long lenses I can not afford any bad motion blur.

I am on location in Lithuania and I really have to deal with what I can get over here, everything is far more expensive and another D200 would cost about 1,000.00 more than what I would get it for in the states. I do have other cameras though but I wanted to stay with the D200 for these shots.

I read your reply early this morning and checked my meta data before leaving for the set, sure enough I discovered that the effected shots had a much faster shutter speed. I reset everything before the shoot and it did go without and flash sync flaws. I wanted to thank you earlier but I had to rush out and made sure that this reply, to you, would be my first order of business after the last session.. Thanks again and it was a good wake up call for me to pay better attention…:)

[David Anderson]

Well at least it’s not the shutter… 🙂

Hope the rest of the shoot works out ok for you..

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.

[Eric DeWitt]

I had the same thing with my canon last year.

[David Anderson]

I tend to shoot no faster than 180th in the studio now because with some of my lights I get a very very faint shadow in about 1% of the frame with my cameras..

Something to do with the flash duration with studio lights.

Problem with it is that the duration changes depending on how much power you’re running through them.

I bet there’s photographers out there that really understand why that is, but I’m not one of them.. 😉 ;D

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.

[Ben Cochran]

You might love like this one David lol. My client requested no shading to very limited shadows. I talked with the graphic designer, from the publishers house, and told her that it was impossible but I will do my best to limit the shadings as the client also wanted me to shoot the models in white against a white background lol.. I knew that we could adjust everything in PS after the shoot but again I  had to go over the contact sheets every night with the client and one of the models as she is a well known celebrity in Lithuania and was very concerned about her image. I did most of the shoot from the opened second floor and spent a lot of my time running up and down the ladders as I would purposely mold the flow of the dresses so that I could pick up a slight blended shadow of the dress with slight contrast to the background.. They requested no shadows or shading on the backgrounds as well, which were all shinny silk… 🙂

This is the part that made it a real blast for me, only one person on the set spoke a descent amount of English, I had to use her to translate everything, including to the makeup artist and assistants. I found it was best to just keep climbing the ladders and setting the compositions myself.. Try giving the motivation and direction through a translator once though lmao!!!!!!!

Thanks again for your advice, I kind of lost myself with everything going on and gave the camera setting better attention in each shot after my posted problems.. We are in post edit now and the rest of the shoot went very well.. Thanks again !!!

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