skateboard photography

<p>Hi Everybody,<br>

I would really appreciate any advice that you could offer.<br>

I'm slowly getting back into skateboarding photography. I've been out of it for a few years due to having to "grow up" and concentrate on commercial photography & paying bills.<br>

I've recently picked up an injury, so my days of rolling on a board are pretty much over. Hence the reason for getting back into photographing skating and not participating.</p>

<p>My current equipment is Nikon D700<br>

SB 800<br>

SB 600<br>

SU 800 Remote trigger<br>

Nikon 24mm - 125mm VR lens<br>

Nikon 16mm fisheye</p>

<p>I'm having exposure issues. <br>

I use the SB 800 as the main flash & the SB 600 as a fill in flash. Both remote flashes are set to full power on manual. I control the output using the SU 800.<br>

The camera is set on manual, ISO 400, f/11 @ 1/250 (which is the highest the SB 800 syncs at.)<br>

The images I've shot thus far come out about 2 stops under exposed. I'm shooting in the late afternoon. Could it be that the flashes are not strong enough?<br>

I have taken light meter readings to expose the subject and stopping down to darken the background with no better results.<br>

I'm used to shooting in studios and haven't encountered this problem.<br>

The other issue is the flashes don't seem to sync correctly. Only one goes off or neither do. Could this be because the ambient light is interfering with the triggering or their placement?<br>

Any tips and advice you have would be greatly appreciated.<br>

Thank you.</p>

<p>You must obey the angle of coverage that SU800 provides, as well as the distance between SU800 and the remote flashes must be below the max distance specified.<br /> Make sure the Macro switch inside the SU800 battery compartment is not set for macro.</p>

<p>Place flashes closer to the action, and move back camera, possibly with longer lens. <br /> At F=11 you certainly may have not enough power from flashes even if they are close to the subject.</p>

<p>Open up the lens to f=5.6 or to f=4.<br /> Boost ISO to 800 or 1600.</p>

<p>... and of cource SB800 can sync faster than 1/250, but perhaps you do not need to use FP yet, since your current problem is with insufficient light from flashes at f=11, and FP will make this problem more critical. See if ambient static lighting requires you to use faster shutter speed and the flash fast sync (FP). Perhaps you may need to use camera in Manual exposure mode, to be fully in control of the exposure.</p>

<p>You may need to pre-focus, or see if yur camera auto-focus tracking is good for shallower depth of field and wider apertures.</p>

<p>Analyze your pictures and see where the light from each flash is reflected in the picture.</p>

<p>1. How far are your subjects from your flash? Can you reduce your subject-to-flash distance?</p>

<p>2. Attempt to shoot at apertures wider than f/11.</p>

<p>At more moderate apertures, your Speedlights should have enough output at short-to-moderate distances, especially when used in late-afternoon sun. If you're trying to suppress the ambient exposure, you may have to use ND filters (to accommodate your increased aperture), and/or larger flashes + high-speed sync techniques (e.g., HSS/FP sync, which allow the use of faster shutter speeds, but at the expense of some loss of recorded flash output).</p>

<p>3. Don't use an SU-800 outdoors--they're unreliable.</p>

<p>My own tests showed that the SU-800 IR (infra-red) system becomes useless in high-ambient light, or when used in any environment with even the slightest amount of humidity present. I live near the beach, and the late-afternoon marine layer was enough to completely defeat my SU-800 in some early tests. I then switched to PocketWizard TT1/TT5 RF (radio-frequency) triggers. You could also opt for the more affordable Cactus v5 RF triggers, which reportedly work just fine. IR systems are simply too unreliable outdoors--you need a decent RF trigger instead.</p>