lorenzo_luc

<p>Hey Brian,<br>

I'm a little late to jump into this question, but maybe I can help. I was in your position once upon a time, and I can appreciate your interested in doing right by the client and doing right by the photo industry.<br>

Although the novelty of learning the skills of photography may make the business feel like uncharted terrain for you, photography for families is a well worn path where certain conventions are expected. You can bring creativity to these conventions, certainly, but your potential customers have been informed by the pictures on the walls of their friends' houses. Everybody wants something different, they say. Some do. But many families want to appear to belong to their peer group more than having your abstract notions of their portraiture. At this point, they want the service, not your style. You haven't been around long enough to create a demand for a signature look. When families ask a precocious photographer for services, it's often not because of your brilliance, but because they think you might be cheaper than a lot of established photographers. You're in the ballpark for their needs, so they're hoping for a discount. Of course, they also like the idea of a personal relationship with a photographer. That's very important too.<br>

I would recommend studying the stylistic trends in portraiture in your area. Portfolios are often left around banquet halls for perusal, and websites of course are a resource. I would recommend imitating styles rather than innovating to start. You'll make a natural progression from imitation to your own look. Don't worry about it too much. The important thing though is that personal portrait photography is product-driven. Most people don't want just any picture; they want a specific kind of picture. Most people, not all. Learning the conventions of the product is very important. Standard product portraiture is a huge industry segment, and you're more likely to get requests for it than not. The styles are somewhat regional, so keep that in mind. If you're looking at a photographer's website in Santa Cruz, that may be too far out for Fairfield.<br>

Finally, about the gear. Gear doesn't really matter as long as the idea in front of the camera is working. Once you can consistently execute good ideas in front of the camera, then the gear can become an added value feature. Larger formats tend to be a little more forgiving of portraiture. Most Nikon 35mm digitals can be extremely rough on a subjects skin faults. Nikons emphasize strong blacks which deepen wrinkles in skin and dark circles under eyes. Of course, that can be changed in photoshop, but it's hard to show a client a picture straight off the back of the camera. If you light the scene to death, you can get away with this, but most small jobs won't have the time frame for this kind of lighting. Canon's tend to shoot with a little bit lighter black point, and skin tones come out a little paler. Although the red/yellow tone of a Nikon can add a very healthy look, sometimes the more pastel-y Canon palette is easier to show a client straight off the back of the camera. The Nikon in-camera controls help very little with this problem.<br>

One of the best things you can do is go to a PPA seminar about posing. They'll have some old codger up on stage showing how to pose a bride or something, and it will look very stiff and uninteresting. But what these guys are teaching are conventional poses that show the thinnest cross section of the human form in order to make the subjects look more attractive. These poses have been around since the Renaissance for a reason, and it's important to know that they are effective in many cases.<br>

Also, if you want to make more money rather than less, try to identify the families which tend to have huge portraits of themselves in their homes. If a family comes to you wanting some 8x10's, good for them. But the photographers with viable family portraiture businesses are selling portraits at fine furniture prices. They're selling home decor, not scrapbook memories. Keep that in mind. So the prices in this case, with framed and exotic print preservation treatments, sell for Ethan Allen prices. Know what the stuff in your target market's house costs, and you'll know basically how much you should be charging.<br>

Final point, beware of using those superwide lenses you have. They're great for highly stylized pictures, but those lenses will start bending hands and feet in unflattering directions. You'll be working so fast, that you won't notice. Finally, with groups, use more depth of field than you think is necessary. Groups often arrange themselves in an arc, though the camera's zone of focus is flat. Some of those folks will end up soft if you're not careful.<br>

There's tons more, but that's enough for now.<br>

Best regards.</p>

<p>I would recommend trying Bibble too. Every raw converter has its own look, and some converters naturally create polished files more easily. I've tried some open source products, and struggled with making things look as nice with them as I could with a purchased product. I also own a D100, and it's a fine camera. </p>

Good news. A friend of mine had spare bulbs and flash tubes. I put in a new tube, and that fixed the tube. However, the 4 of the modelling lights were still off. The north, south, east, west lights were on, the others off. I replaced the bulb at the NW position. After that ALL the malfunctioning modelling lights went on. That was pretty strange. As a test I put the old one back in, and replaced the bulb at the NE position. None of the malfunctioning lights went on.

 

I'm not sure what this means, but it felt similar to when a bulb on the old style christmas lights went out. All of them would go out.

 

I'm happy it's working again, but I'm still worried about how this problem started. It's extremely unlikely that a flash tube and a modelling light would burn out at the same time in a new unit. But I don't know what caused it.

 

The mystery continues.

Thanks for your replies. This is my first Buff product, and tomorrow is the first job I hoped to use it on. Tech service isn't open on the weekends. People are so crazy about Buff lights; WL should have a community forum where these problems could be raised after hours. Photo.net is pretty good too of course.

One tube and half the modelling lights on my relatively new Paul Buff Alien Bee

Ring Flash aren't working. If you point the flash away from you, the tube on the

right doesn't fire. Every other modelling light doesn't turn on.

 

Has anyone solved this problem before? I've checked the seating of the bulbs,

but they seem firmly installed. Perhaps a mystery fuse has blown somewhere?

 

Speculations appreciated. I was hoping to use this flash on a job in few days.

 

Lorenzo

I've used CLS in a variety of different situations with two groups of two sb800's. The TTL works pretty well, though I usually have to crank the compensation up about 2 stops to get any kind of "lit" look. Don't be afraid to dial up compensation a lot.

 

Also, it's great to talk in theory about ganging up a bunch of SB800's. However, it drives me crazy to figure out a way to point them in a useful direction yet still have the flash eye pointing toward the camera flash. (Not necessary always, but in any big space or outdoors you have to do it.) The SB800 on NIMH's is a nice light, little unit, but it defeats the purpose of portability if you have to carry a stand for each 800. In an ideal world, there'd be a solution where you could put four 800's on a stand without blocking the eye on any of them. That'd be great.

 

The light from such a small source is pretty contrasty of course. There's really no effective way to modify it unless you bounce off a convenient ceiling or wall. I know there's brackets out there which will bounce a single flash into an umbrella which mount on a stand. But once you start using diffusion, your available power drops drastically. A four flash bracket (that doesn't block the eyes) would really be helpful. Currently there's a real lack of ways to modify the light.

 

Another issue is that the preflash communication introduces a "shutter-lag" factor into tripping the shutter. Not a big deal with static subjects, but anything moving is tricky. One time I was working outdoors trying to flash-fill on a galloping horse under bright sunlight. With each pass of the horse, I got one frame because all four flashes would have to fire at full power to compete with the sunlight. That in combination with the preflash delay made predicting the outcomes more stressful. I would liken it to the shutter lag problems of consumer digital cameras.

 

The controls of the SB800 are kind of cludgy too. Switching in an out of remote mode on the master unit is tough to do quickly. I've found some flash keypads are a bit more responsive than others, so I am care to use the quicker units as masters.

 

Also, I use high capacity NIMH batteries (2500 mAh) in my 800's. One unit can't handle it, and starts popping incessantly. If I switch to lower capacity batteries, it doesn't do this. I might send it back to Nikon to see if there's anything they can do.

 

Finally, high speed sync might appear to be another advantage of this system. On the other hand, available flash power drops so dramatically with this approach that I have yet to find a practical application. Oh how I miss a 1/500 sec synch. I use a D2h and D2x now. (The D70 shoots too slow unfortunately.)

 

On the plus side, I was very surprised with the distances possible under direct sun. Granted it was a direct line of sight back to the master flash, but I was very surprised. Under blazing tropical sun, the remote units communicated with the master unit very well at a distance of about 25 yards.

 

Also, being able to set ratios from camera position is the principal benefit of this system. It makes it hard to consider any other wireless solution.

 

The color is pretty great too, if you can get enough light on target.

 

I decided to share these experiences so others can set their expectations for this system. If I can figure out how to collectively mount SB800's together with some diffusion, I might invest in more of this little guys.