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Seeking best-practices: S2 and FLASH – Studio and Nikon

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urs_th

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Hi Fujionians!

I am still waiting for my "new" S2 to arrive. But for shortly after that date, I have planned a little shooting, and I will use studio flashes (Elinchrom) for the posing-situation and my Nikon Flashs (SB-80dx and SB-26) for more spontaneous situations.

Now I have read various comments about the difficulties of the S2 when using flashlights. I wonder which are the best workarounds to get the expected, nice results.

Whoever has useful experience with the S2 and the use of Nikon-flashes and studio-flashes, please allow me to know about your best-practices...

The shooting will be with a group of show-dancers that need the pictures for their new flyers, posters and for the website. Up to now I used a Nikon D100 (see some studio results at http://art.uth.ch/ ), but I am really looking forward to shoot with the S2.

Any a piece of advice is greatly appreciated!

Best regards, Urs

--

Welcome to my homepage for studio portraits and fine art nudes http://art.uth.ch/
 
1) Turn your LCD screen down to the lowest brightness, otherwise you'll be misled as to the exposure results (unless you use the histogram).

2) For studio shooting, I shoot in manual, adjusting the camera using readings from a flash meter. You may need to adjust by 1/2 stop to your taste (sometimes, I want hotter skin for example). I use a fixed daylight white balance.

3) Original color (ORG), ORG tone. Sharpening will depend upon your needs--off for lots of post processing, hard for out of camera prints.

4) My flash experience--I prefer to use true TTL. I activate it by switching to spot metering (it's activated by either spot metering or turning on rear curtain sync).

5) You can't go above ISO 400 with flash.

6) Check your histogram.

7) Fine jpeg works pretty well, but you can shoot RAW if you have the software to decode and post-process.

8) And obviously, practice before your critical day so you are comfortable with how the camera works.

Anthony
urs_th said:
Hi Fujionians!

I am still waiting for my "new" S2 to arrive. But for shortly after
that date, I have planned a little shooting, and I will use studio
flashes (Elinchrom) for the posing-situation and my Nikon Flashs
(SB-80dx and SB-26) for more spontaneous situations.

Now I have read various comments about the difficulties of the S2
when using flashlights. I wonder which are the best workarounds to
get the expected, nice results.

Whoever has useful experience with the S2 and the use of
Nikon-flashes and studio-flashes, please allow me to know about
your best-practices...

The shooting will be with a group of show-dancers that need the
pictures for their new flyers, posters and for the website. Up to
now I used a Nikon D100 (see some studio results at
http://art.uth.ch/ ), but I am really looking forward to shoot with
the S2.

Any a piece of advice is greatly appreciated!

Best regards, Urs

--
Welcome to my homepage for studio portraits and fine art nudes
http://art.uth.ch/
Click to expand...
--
check out my blog at http://anthonyonphotography.blogspot.com
 
Hi Anthony ,

thanks a million, this is very useful.

Just as a greenhors question: What do you mean by "true" TTL??? or what would be "not true" TTL?

Thanks! Urs.

--

Welcome to my homepage for studio portraits and fine art nudes http://art.uth.ch/
 
Consult the user manual and create a custom WB for flash. Great colors if you do that. ISO 100 for studio flash is perfect. Synch is 1/125, in case you didn't know. Use histogram and shoot RAW for best results.

Robert
 
The S2pro has a couple of flash metering modes. One is 3D multi-sensor balanced fill flash; another is true TTL. Both meter "through the lens" but true TTL meters during the exposure itself.

3-D multi-sensor balanced fill flash works this way, as I understand it:

Once the mirror flips up, the flash fires a pre-flash which bounces off the subject, back through the lens, and reflects off the shutter curtain to the sensors, which determines the flash exposure using the pre-flash plus distance information from the lens. When the shutter opens, the flash fires at the pre-determined strength.

With true TTL, the flash is actually measured right off the CCD itself during exposure.

In my experience, true TTL has been more reliable for my kind of shooting. 3D multi-sensor balanced fill flash doesn't work as well for event shooting in my experience, as the backgrounds are pretty dark or too far away--resulting in some unreliable flash results. It probably would work better for fill flash metering in brighter settings (like daylight fill flash), but I switched to spot metering and really haven't played with 3DMSBFF too much since then. Being a trial and error kind of guy, what I have done is taken a photo, looked at the LCD and if necessary, switched metering modes to see if that makes a difference for consistency's sake. But generally, I just leave the camera in spot metering mode. Been a lot happier with my results.

Anthony
urs_th said:
Hi Anthony ,

thanks a million, this is very useful.

Just as a greenhors question: What do you mean by "true" TTL??? or
what would be "not true" TTL?

Thanks! Urs.

--
Welcome to my homepage for studio portraits and fine art nudes
http://art.uth.ch/
Click to expand...
--
check out my blog at http://anthonyonphotography.blogspot.com
 
Well, I thought I knew where everything was on my camera- little things.....!!
Thanks Anthony!
--
pauldodo
'What does this button do....?'
 
Thanks Robert and Anthony

If you don't mind writing again: About that custom white balance, or that modified daylight wb, do you have some more concrete hints about how to create that wb?

Thanks again! Urs.

--

Welcome to my homepage for studio portraits and fine art nudes http://art.uth.ch/
 
You need a white card or grey card. Use it to fill the frame where your subject will be. make sure your flash is active. Push menu, select custom WB. Release shutter. Exit menu after confirmation message. Then make sure to select the custom WB on the back buttons (the 4-row of buttons).

Anthony
urs_th said:
Thanks Robert and Anthony

If you don't mind writing again: About that custom white balance,
or that modified daylight wb, do you have some more concrete hints
about how to create that wb?

Thanks again! Urs.

--
Welcome to my homepage for studio portraits and fine art nudes
http://art.uth.ch/
Click to expand...
--
check out my blog at http://anthonyonphotography.blogspot.com
 
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