Centering up the flash

I like shooting with an umbrella, bounce or shoot through. They are light weight, easy to setup and take down. What I don’t like is that the flash set so high above center of the umbrella. So, I dug through my junk drawer for a cold shoe, a one-half inch 1/4-20 bolt, flat washer, lock washer, spigot and this little Nikon L-bracket. I don’t know where the Nikon L-bracket came from because I shoot a Canon camera. All put together it puts the center of the flash much closer to the center of the umbrella.

School Bus

Did you every try to light the inside of a school bus?

Senior Portrait

I took this photo on top of a little hill above the tree lined banks of the Mississippi River. This is a photo of a young lady I photographed two or three years back. I use my 70/200mm lens and a Godox AD360 strobe in a 42-inch bounce umbrella. Settings were ISO 200, shutter speed 1/100, aperture f/8. So, I move my light in and set it for f/8. I wanted to blur the background so I applied and 8X neutral density filter to the lens and opened the lens to f/2.8. The background became just snares of color no definition at all.

Product Photography

It has been a slow week so I worked on a product photography project that I have been wanting to do. I made a small shooting table and copied a lighting setup that I saw on YouTube. I was not able to get the totally white background that I wanted and some of the photo are not as sharp as I would like, but, it’s a start. I have to set up in my family room and this setup takes all the room I have to work with. I set my shooting table on a TV tray; way too low. I’m working on a way to mount the shooting table to a light stand so I can adjust the height. I will try a different lighting setup on my next shooting session.

Behind the scenes photo.

Lighting layout

Shooting table

Exploded view of shooting table parts

Prom Photos

Took some pictures of my granddaughter for her prom. Some of the indoor pictures were available light only. Ones by the piano and the outdoor ones were with an off-camera flash.

The indoor pictures settings were SS=1/80, aperture=f/4, ISO=400. Camera was Canon 5D-III with a Canon 24/105 lens. Final adjustments were done in Photoshop.

For the indoor piano shots and the outdoor shots I used a Godox AD200 with the extension head in a 28” SMDV softbox. I used the sane camera and lens for all photos.

The settings for the piano shots was f/5.6, 1/100, ISO 400.  Flash was set to ETTL.

The settings for the outdoor settings was f/5.6, 1/200, ISO 100. Flash was set to ETTL. I placed the subject with their backs to the sun and let the flash light the front.

Shoot through umbrella softbox

I recently purchased a small shoot through umbrella softbox. I love the light it produces, but you can’t tip it to shoot down on the subject from above. It set’s too close to the light stand (photo-01). If you try to tip it down it’s hits the light stand. I user two Phottix umbrella mounts to form two adjustable “L” brackets (photo-02). The brackets are connected with a short piece of half inch hard copper tubing (photo-03). By adjusting the “L” attached to the light stand you can make the umbrella softbox point up. By adjusting the “L” attached to the speed light you can make the umbrella softbox point down.