What would be a good 2 light system to use with Nikon F5 for weddings?

[russell_dean]

What would be a good 2 flash strobe set up to use with a Nikon F5 for

weddings? Anyone who has this set up, please respond with details on

equipment and how it has worked for you. Thanks.

[jim_thompson1]

Russell,

Am not quite sure what your asking, but will tell you what works for me with a couple of different set-ups. For the formal returns, I use a couple of 400W Lumedynes, and it works wonderfully. No flash on the camera, just those two set for about a 1 stop difference, so I get a bit of modeling on faces. I do shoot those with medium format however, not with the F5. For candid things, I use a sb28 on the F5 set for TTL, and also have a Vivitar 285 on a lightstand that is controlled by a radio slave. Normally I will try to set the 285 to be a side, backlight, or sometimes just to light a background. The "auto" control works quite well in these situations, as most of the time it does not have to be that precise. Normally I will have that light output 1 stop less than I am shooting. However you always have the option of making it stronger or weaker to do some dramatic things. The F5 ttl works great in this situation, and have very few failures with exposure, really it is almost impossible for you to get a bad exposure with the technology in that body.

[hugh stevens]

Russell

 

I have my assistant about 10 - 20 ft behind me pointing the flash head either at the ceiling, or in the case of an outdoor exposure with no ceiling, the head is turned down for direct light. I have not as yet used a Stofen Omni-bounce on the flash held by my assistant. I would rather set the SB 26 at 1/2 power with no stofen, and let the flash recycle faster, as versus set on full power with a stofen. In all of the scenarios I have mentioned above I have a SB 28 on my stroboframe. So we are using two flashes, the SB 28 triggered by the flash extender cable, the SB 26 triggered by Pocket Wizards, the less expensive 4 channels ones.

 

I also have used two flashes at a wedding (formal returns) in which I had my Photogenice 1250 with eclipse umbrella to one side, and set my flash fill, an SB 28 on camera (stroboframe) at 1 stop below the main flash, i.e. set the on camera fill flash 1 stop below the photogenic flash. I came really close to a 3-1 lighting ratio according to my hand held light meter.

 

I would also like to reinforce the other poster which said the plain TTL when using a two flash system works excellent with an F5. The second flash is mostly used to brighten up dark reception halls, or churches with either direct or bounced light where additional light is needed to prevent black back drops in large rooms. The F5 works superbly in these situations and to date I have not had one poorly exposed photo as a result of using this set-up at weddings. You can do similar things using the vivitar 28X series so long as you can trigger flash sync.