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Lighting 102: 7.1 - Flash Zoom and Stone Soup

Remembering back to our last post in Lighting 102, we talked about panning, rotating and selective diffusion as a means of altering your photo after the flash has popped but before the shutter has closed.

The fourth time-based manipulation I frequently use is zooming through the exposure. And last month we pulled that technique out of our as.. bag of tricks during the "stone soup" shoot in NYC.

Having thrown down the gauntlet for a local shooter to come up with a subject and venue, I was at first a little underwhelmed with the response. I mean, this was NYC, fer Pete's sake. There had to be something interesting going on.

Then Tim Herzog popped up, with not one but four separate ideas. His strategy: Throw everything against the wall and see what sticks.

What stuck was an invite up onto the roof of one of those amazing apartment buildings on the Upper West Side overlooking central park. Not a bad location, you know, if you have to slum it... Here's the view, looking northeast, right after sunset. It is a five-shot stitch shot on a D300 and assembled in CS3. (Thanks for the easy pano tip, Ben!)


If you are not the jealous type, click on the pic to see it bigger. Michael (who granted us access to his rooftop) just stood there enjoying the view with us, with the serenity of a man who has chosen a kickass place to live.

Timothy, ever the gracious host, had also brought along puppeteer Patrick Zung as our subject. And Patrick is not one of those "sock puppet" makers, either. He builds these cool puppets used for stop-motion animation. The joints were made out if pool balls -- genius. It was cool and creepy, all at the same time. Like something out of the movie, "A.I.," if you ask me.

The view was amazing. But logistically, I knew the photo was gonna be tough. The park pretty much went to black after the sun went down. And the Midtown buildings, along with the rooftop's layout forced us to shoot in a way that was tough to get the good lights in the frame unless we crammed up against the edge.

Also, we had no way to light him from the far side. Unless you had a 300-foot light stand. Or Spiderman.


So, as our light started waning, I lit Patrick and friend with an umbrella'd SB-800, ( front camera right) secretly wishing I had invited Peter Parker along to assist. We really needed that light out on the far side for separation.

As our ambient started to drop further, I added a couple of accent lights to add some shape to our subjects.


As you can see, one came from back camera right and another from underneath the puppet. These gave a more 3-D look to our guys. Also, I gelled those flashes with a 1/2 CTO and a fluorescent green combo, which gets you a neat, sodium vapor feel without going all of the way there. Sort of the way sodium vapor looks to the eye, rather than to the camera. It is more logical. Straight white light would look weird and contrived in this environment.

Shooting handheld with a 70-200/2.8, our ambient light was dropping fast. Patrick's black top was not going to separate without some light from the left, and things were getting darker by the minute.

As my shutter speed inched toward the Hail Mary range (~1/4 sec) I started pulling the zoom as I shot. This gave me another look to the lights -- and a more abstract look to the photo. Suddenly the environment was not necessarily a New York rooftop. It was a weird, swooshy thing that really started to fit well with the creepy futuristic puppet vibe.


So we decided to let the black top go dark and just hint at the separation with the swooshed city lights. (I could vary the background light by opening up the shutter.) I really liked the effect that zooming gave the background. And the up-light on the puppet (and Patrick) added some nice form. FWIW, the form on the shirt comes from the back/right light.

It is important that the ambient light level on Patrick was lower than that in the background. Otherwise he would ghost badly during the burn-in time. We had scads of sodium vapor up there, so we knocked it down some with a piece of black foam core that is always with me in my bag. We simply "A-clamped" it to the light fixture.

I would have used Tim as a gobo, but he was already working as my voice-activated back-right light stand. There is still some ghosting on Patrick, but I think that little bit works okay within the abstract feel of the photo.

Another thing on the zoom -- start the zooming (wide-to-tele in this case) before you hit the shutter. This makes for a smoother effect without the jerky looks you'll get otherwise.

We finished it out at about the one-second at f/2.8 (ISO 400) light level. When it gets that dark, it is time to call it a night. Plus, there was to be food involved at this point.

In NYC, you are never more than a few minutes walk from some good food -- and Tim delivered there, too.

Nikon D90 Video, from You-Know-Who

UPDATE: This whole D90 video thing broke really fast last night, and a very interesting discussion has started in the comments as to what this video really is. Is is a commercial? Is it a behind-the-scenes thing? Is it underground?

Well, yes, to all of the above. More background, and your comments, after the jump at the bottom of the post.

Now I know why Chase Jarvis has been grinning like an idiot for the last few months. He had, like, five pre-production, gaffer-tape-disguised Nikon D90 cameras to play with. And he couldn't say a peep about it, until now. Looks like a great camera for PJ's who are being asked to shoot web video as an add-on.

On thought: They certainly are not flapping that mirror up and down at 24FPS for the 1080p video.

Which means that it might have some kind of electronic shutter. Which means that it just might be one of those magic, high native sync bodies.

I am trying to run it down now. If you happen to work at Nikon (Silverman? Corrado?) and you can find out, hit me in the comments or call me on the Bat Phone. 'Cause we need to know, like, yesterday.

UPDATE #2: So far, looking more like garden-variety sync -- video is apparently being pulled from the live view. Arghh -- I wanted it so bad....

Lots more over at Chase's site.

More on the process behind this, the full brochure and your comments, after the jump.


So, What is This? An Ad?

Rewind a few months. Chase gets the gig from Nikon to shoot the product brochure for D90. This is standard practice for every new camera model that comes out. It has to be done way in advance, with preproduction models. The secrecy is air-tight, the NDAs fly and it is all timed to be available when the camera is released.

This is something very few photographers ever get to do. But those brochures magically appear, full of photos, before the cameras are even on the shelves.

(Little secret: The photos from some camera brochures are not even shot with the actual cameras. Production timelines, or preproduction bugs preclude it.)

Chase's idea was as new as it was simple. Rather than just shoot a bunch of still photos for a brochure, why not wrap a video around the whole process. After all, it would be pretty cool to be handed a bunch of gaffer-taped, top-secret cameras from the future and told to go nuts with them. His bet was that photogs would think it was cool.

Chase is an A-list shooter, and one of a very few living his photo life in the fishbowl. So this kind of a multimedia was a natural for him -- and it was his idea. If you had to define it, that might be kinda hard. To my knowledge something like this has not really been done before.

It's part commercial, part On Assignment, part made-for-YouTube, part underground-end-user thing (that really was his crew shooting D90 stills and video) and part MTV video.

To me, it is interesting because of the mold breaking that is going on with this project. It is also cool that a company as big as Nikon would allow their new baby to be introduced this way. If you think about it, that's a lot of control to give up to a hipster shooter from Seattle and his peeps.

Could it fail? Absolutely. And the failure would be written on the video's YouTube page every day, for ever and ever, amen, in the form of the view count number.

Will it fail? I think probably not. Released at midnight, it already had been picked by dozens of sites by 3:00 a.m. Not exactly rush hour on the internet. But the whole thing was timed to launch on Japan time, so that's when it lit up.

And the fact that it spread so fast is a validation to several things: One, the power of the medium. I would hate to be a magazine right now, unless I was a magazine that could figure out the whole Web Thing.

Two, the decentralization of eyeball-grabbing power from the publishing conglomerates to the universe of individual bloggers. Any one of you could choose to run the video on your site -- or not. The media consumers define the level of success.

Last, the most important validation is the idea that a photographer, more than an ad agency, knows what is cool and entertaining to other photographers. Yeah, duh, but look how long it has taken to get here.

Chase and his crew got to play, we got to watch and a very cool little camera got to be born in an all-new way. Interestingly, I find the product brochure (available here) to be way more interesting, having seen the MTV version of the behind the scenes. But I am pretty geeky like that.

I basically watched it unfold at the last minute as a close outsider -- no financial interest, but a very keen interest in the gear aspect and the leveraging of the medium. Taken to the Nth degree, it is pretty cool (and/or maybe a little scary) to think just how far this decentralization could go.

So, where are you on this? What did you think of the whole process? And for curiosity's sake, did you watch it more than once? That's always my mark for whether a video resonated with me.

Feel free to join the fray in the comments.
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:: Nikon D90 Final Product Brochure ::

Lighting 102: 7.0 - Time-Based Variables

Way back when, we talked about the idea that you could balance your flash and ambient light levels by leaving the shutter open long enough for the ambient light to burn in.

But during that "burning in" time, there are also lots of things you can do to add layers of interest to your photos. And that is exactly what we will be covering in the last unit of Lighting 102...

The beauty of altering your camera's settings, focus, focal length or position during a flash/ambient exposure is that you can merge two completely different sets of circumstances into one single frame. It's a little like in-camera Photoshop -- with a nice, creative randomness attached to it.

Today, I want to go through a few of the ways in which you can manipulate your photo during burn-in and show some examples of the end results.


Flash and Pan

For this shot of a soldier in the woods near Ft. Meade in Maryland I based my exposure on the ambient light level. The first value chosen was the shutter speed, which was chosen to create the best pan effect.

Having chosen the shutter, that also gave us the aperture for the proper exposure. Then, it is just a matter of adjusting the flash to the correct power to light Robert's face.

So, why even use flash at all?

First of all, because the flash adds a nice margin of error to a pan shot. Since the flash happens instantaneously, it will freeze your subject. This works best if the background is brighter than your subject. If you expose for the background, your subject will be dark -- and ready to be frozen by the flash without any ghosting.

Second, it gives you control over the relative exposure level between the subject and background. I could have raised or lowered the background level, for instance, without changing the tonal values on Robert's face.

(More on how this photo was made here.)


For this shot of an up-and-coming local hip hop artist, I spent a few frames grabbing a flash/pan look even though he was not moving during the exposure. It was an assignment that appeared to be doomed form the start, so I was grasping at straws.

(Perversely, I kinda enjoy the challenge of situations like that. As long as they do not happen all of the time.)


The top frame is a static shot, and this is the panned version. The rapper (who performs as "Bossman") had just been signed by a record label and his ego was in overdrive.

I am sure he thought he deserved to be surrounded, nonstop, by a dozen of those dancing hotties from MTV and BET. And as such, was far too cool to waste his time on a lead photo in the Features section in the local metro daily. So (once I pried him out of his living room) anything I wanted to try for variety had to be done without changing the setup.

But even when pinched for time I am always looking to burn a few seconds trying something different just to see what it looks like. And even if this one did not work out very well (we went with the still version) the point is that a quick change of the shutter speed and moving the camera could give me a second look -- without wasting any more of His Majesty's precious time.

(You can read more about this blood-from-a-turnip shoot here.)


Will it Go 'Round in Circles

Another way to add an abstract layer is to rotate the camera during a flash exposure. When I am shooting with just a point-and-shoot and built-in flash, this is sometimes the only way I have to amp a flash-lit photo.

In this shot of Danny Ngan owning Chase Jarvis on Guitar Hero, rotating the camera during a flash exposure helped to make the background a little more abstract.
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Whether you are panning, or panning or rotating, you want to begin the action before you press the shutter. This will give you a smooth effect, without the jerkiness that happens if you wait until you start the exposure to start the movement.

As before, it also helps if you are working against a brighter background.


Diffuse the Situation

Using time as a variable during a flash exposure does not necessarily mean moving the camera, either. You can shoot one portion straight and the other portion heavily diffused, for instance. Or filtered. Or both.

In the "Winter Book Club" assignment show at left, I started the exposure by firing blue-gelled flash from the back while there were about eight layers of plastic wrap over my lens. Then I removed the diffusion and finished the exposure painting with the modeling light on a second SB-800 with a CTO gel attached.

All of this has to be done in a darkened room, of course, or you will get (unwanted) burn-in from the ambient light. You can see more detailed look at how this photo was made here.


By now, you should be starting to get other ideas on how you can use time to manipulate your images while they are still being formed. You might, for instance, choose to light someone against a sunset and the defocus the camera during the ambient portion of the exposure. If you need for the image to stay in register during the process, a tripod is obviously a big help.

Another technique is to zoom during the exposure, which is what we did on the stone soup shoot in NYC last month. And that is what is coming up in the next L102 installment.

Keaton Andrew's Got Next

UPDATE: After all of the sour grapes hand wringing over the KA's post production work, he was kind enough to upload the naked version of this photo to his Flickr stream. Check out his aluminum foil slave helpers, too. (Thanks, KA.)
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The first three sentences of photographer Keaton Andrew's Flickr profile pretty much sum up his mission statement:

"Hello, I am Keaton. I am 18. I am determined to become one of the best photographers in the industry."

He just might, too. When I came across his senior portrait of a baseball pitcher, it made me think about motivated lighting in a way that I never had before.

One of the things I like most about the crop of teenage shooters in professional photography's on-deck circle is the fact that they are not bound by convention.

Andrew has clearly studied at the school of Dave Hill, and picked up the idea of multi-shot compositing without going for the whole "heavily post-produced" look.

Take the baseball shot above, for instance. Shot with three AlienBees, the rims would have looked incongruent in this (polarized sky) day shot, which in itself was composited via a series over a darker exposure. So Andrew simply added the stadium lights in, in post, to motivate the effect of the rim lights.

Which never, ever would have occurred to a 43-year-old fart like me. Heck, to Andrew, Dave Hill is an Old Fart, too.

(Ha! You reading this, Dave? You are now officially an Old Fart to someone.)



People like to complain about the different-looking, heavily-post-produced stuff by young guys like fellow teenager Joey Lawrence. But seriously -- take a close look at what these guys are accomplishing at such a young age.

Then take a long, hard, honest look at what you were producing at eighteen years old. What do you think they are gonna be doing when they are 43? Hope I am around to see.

To see more of Keaton Andrew's work, check out his Flickr portfolio and/or his website.

A Little Light Fare

They say: Half the world doesn't know how the other half lives.

I say: Half the world doesn't know how. The other half lives.

Dinner with me is as likely as not to be a pizza bagel (pepperoni, if you rate) and a Diet Mountain Dew. But when Chase Jarvis invites you over to dinner, don't be surprised if is it catered by a hotshot chef. With professional musicians. In an 30,000 sqaure-foot airplane hangar. With photo and video coverage.

Hit the jump below for a little background on how in the world you would light such a thing, or just head over to Chez Chase for video and photos...

When Chase first told me about this thing, I just smiled a shook my head. I'll give the guy this: He thinks big. Then I started thinking about how you would light something in an environment that big.

For the record, it's the same cavernous place you see in the Seattle Uber-Meetup videos. Having been there, I can tell you that it is big and dark. His first solution is to crank the ISO. This way, he can kill both the photo and video lighting birds with one stone by using continuous lights.

But you still have the problem of where the light will come from in such a big space, and how much area to light. As you can see here, he went with four tall-boy stands to enable a variety of lighting schemes on the dinner area.

He had an additional spot that he added for the performances. He didn't necessarily use all of the lights all of the time -- just kept them around in case they were needed.

The stands were on wheels, which means that they could easily move them around on the spot, making a variety of different light setups. As the evening went through its visual iterations, the lights could be rearranged in a matter of seconds.

Visually, the whole gig was self-aware enough to occasionally include the lights in the photos. Which certainly makes things easier.

Bear in mind that the outside ambient light would be dropping like a rock through twilight. So when the lights were mixed nicely, he chose to include ambient through the windows in the frame. After dark, he composed for the group and just let the background go dark.

It is important to have light coming from the back in a situation like this, or at the very least from the back/sides as rims. You need that separation from the dark background.

So, next time someone from Pearl Jam is hanging out for dinner at your airplane hangar-sized house, you'll at least have a head start on the lighting.

Chase blogs about it here, and there's lots more good stuff (including recipes) at the Songs for Eating and Drinking site.

Coming in November: Annie's 'On Assignment' Book

Mix equal parts talent, ego, resources and schtick and you'll end up with A-List people shooter Annie Leibovitz. You'll remember her from the annotated Queen Elizabeth shoot video, among many other high-profile sessions.

Her upcoming book, Annie Leibovitz: At Work, looks to be a behind-the-scenes study of some of her more famous shoots, including the royal shoot referenced above.

I have always had a "love-eyeroll" thing for her, having heard too many stories from people she has worked with to avoid the latter. But I very much enjoy her work and absolutely learn something every time I get the opportunity to study her photos more closely.

Amazon has it available for pre-order at $26.40 (list is $40.00) with price protection between now and when it ships.

"On Assignment: Annie Leibovitz" for that kind of coin?

Heck yeah, I'm in.

(Thanks to Charles P. for the heads-up.)


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Art on the Wing: Bradford Fuller's Fly-In Studio

I am probably not the only one who has noticed Bradford Fuller's beautifully lit bird photos in the Strobist pool. His artful mix of flash and ambient against a 2-D background gives the photos a lyrical feel. And the red stamps added in post at the bottom make them seem as if they came from faraway lands.

If you pull back the curtains, and you'll see that Bradford is doing all of this with a Nikon D200, a single SB-800 and a piece of mat board.

That, and a lot of imagination...




The photos look as if they are paintings from another time and place -- a look Bradford achieves via his artful mix of flash and a shutter speed designed to either freeze his subject or to allow its movement to paint through the flash exposure. But his "exotic location" is in Maine in the northeastern US, right next to his house.

Using flash for bird photography is easier than you might think. The key to getting photos like this is to realize that if you can control the light and the backdrop, you can control the overall look of the final photo. Add to this the beauty of a natural subject -- and the unpredictability of the flash/blur combo -- and wonderful things can happen.

Bradford's "studio" is much more spartan than the final photos would suggest. He uses a feeder, of course. So he knows where the birds are going to be. That makes everything else an exercise in geometry.


As for the backdrop, it is simply a piece of mat board, made all the more interesting by the many rains it has endured. He places it on an easel, knowing the birds will pass in front of it on their approach to the feeder. This controls his background, and give the photos the look of a 2-d painting rather than a photo of a 3-D scene.

The light is from an SB-800, placed outside of the frame to one side. From the photo at left, he appears to be using a Cactus PT-04 remote trigger, or some other equivalent "eBay" remote.

The mixture of flash and ambient is of course controlled by how he balances the two sources -- usually choosing to lead with flash and fill with ambient. At close range (and with bare flash) his SB-800 easily puts out enough power. He then works on them in varying degrees in post processing.

Bradford says that his work, like many other things, is about 90% "showing up," as per the popular Woody Allen saying. And for him, showing up means shooting through a hole in the screen of his window.

After all, why suffer for your art if it is not required?


His photos have intrigued me to the point that I will trying some of my own this winter. I am already thinking of what the photos would look like with the birds cross-lit on the 45's from top and bottom.

The possibilities for a fly-in studio like this are endless. Given that you are only going to be shooting an a small area (defined by the location of the background) you could choose to develop as complex a lighting scheme as you wanted.

But the simplicity and beauty of Bradford's bird shots will keep me coming back to his portfolios again and again.

You can see more of his work in his Flickr set, and on his daily blog. If you try this on your own, and get a great shot, please share it with us in the Strobist Flickr pool.

Learn SEO While You Help to Feed People

UPDATE: Someone unloaded a can of whup-ass on me in the comments, to which I responded and uploaded yesterday's inbound search-related metrics. So if you would like some background info, it is there. But let's keep it civil, if at all possible...
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If you are in the Baltimore/Washington area and are interested in learning more about Search Engine Optimization, I will be speaking on SEO as it pertains to photographers at a "Photo Nights for Charity" event on 9/17.

If you are a shooter who is on the web, SEO is key to increasing your online footprint. This is not technical stuff, either. Anyone can do it.

One hundred percent of the money raised will benefit the Maryland Food Bank, which can really use our support right now. And there is a cool photo-related perk for attendees, too. I hope you will join us.

More details here.

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Keep a Lighting File, Version 2.0

Back in Lighting 101 I wrote about the importance of keeping a lighting file. And having made the jump to the iPhone, keeping a lighting file is now way easier -- and more accessible.

Hit the jump for more on this -- and two iPhone apps that are great for location shooters.

Now that the 3G is out and I have (finally) taken the plunge, I will no longer have to put up with every other photographer I know telling me to get one of these things.

Alright, already, you guys were right -- it is made for photographers. I considered the idea of putting my portfolio on the phone, then ditched it in favor of uploading several different versions of my portfolio. That way, I can immediately choose which set of photos are best suited for the person who is about to see them.

In addition, I have merged the lighting file into something I have labeled as an "inspiration folder". It's filled with my favorite shots from guys like Dan Winters, Gregory Heisler and Peter Yang, along with a few dozen of my absolute favorites from the Strobist reader gallery.

I come across ideas that I want to save all of the time. Recently, I have started shooting them right into the iPhone with the built-in camera. This, of course, sticks them right into your camera roll along with all of the blurred photos of the cat snapped by your kids between games of JawBreaker. (Okay, I am addicted to that one, too.)

As smooth as he iPhone interface is, iTunes won't let you treat the camera roll as an accessible image folder as far as I can tell. But if you launch iPhoto (which I normally hate) while the phone is attached, it'll let you import the photos directly.

Then just export them to your designated iPhone-synching photo folder on your computer and they will pop up wherever you wish to put them.

Even more than the idea of a physical lighting file, I love the that, (a) I can snap a cool magazine page whenever I see it, and (b) I always have the photos with me. I have had an inspiration folder on my laptop for a couple of years now. Now I keep the photos with me everywhere I go. Way better.

The photo up top, BTW, is from this month's Fast Company magazine and was shot by Brent Humphreys. You may remember him as having shot the WIRED Magazine cover that was blogged with lighting diagrams.

I just spent fifteen minutes looking through his portfolio, and I think I just found some more inspiration.

Do you have an inspiration folder? Who is in it?


Photo-Friendly Apps

I spend a lot of time on email and Google reader, which lets me easily follow a couple dozen blogs very efficiently. One button and the are all queued up, ready to read.

But two other apps stand out as being particularly useful to location shooters: Weather Bug and Photocalc.

Why Weather Bug? Because, unlike the standard weather app, Weather Bug gives you the ability to see local weather radar. So you know how much time you have left before you are gonna have to bail from an outdoor shoot during transitional weather. And it is free, too.

And Photocalc, which is loaded up with mostly useless navel-gazing photo calculators to justify the $2.99 price tag, has one thing that is very useful: It grabs your location and will display the exact time of sunrise and sunset in your area.

That's a big help when you are doing the sunset backdrop thing and your subject is asking you what time to show up.

It also has a mini-spreadsheet-style guide number calculator, shown above, which will help to train your mind for faster flash power estimation.

If you want to learn more about Photocalc before foregoing 3/4 of a cup of Starbucks to buy it, check out WIRED blogger (and longtime Strobist reader) Charlie Sorrel's review.

Time to Give Away Some PocketWizards

The votes are in, and the July winner for the PocketWizard / Strobist "Going Wireless" contest is...

Ryan Allan.





Congrats to Ryan who took a skateboarder shoot / lighting demo and turned it into art. Not that art is required to win, but it just stood out from the other entries and was the unanimous choice for July's winner. His was chosen from those videos entered before the end of July.

Several other vids stood out, and they (like all of the other videos) remain in the running for future months. Get those videos in and tagged, folks. We had a total of 24 videos entered in time for this month's judging. Them ain't bad odds for a free set of PocketWizard Plus II's.

Little hint, there are over a hundred Strobist-tagged videos in the system which could be in the running for the coming months. All you have to do is add the tag "pocketwizardstrobist". Don't strain yourself with the extra workload.

Already have some fun stuff coming in this month, too. The earlier you get your videos in, the more chances you have to win.

Full details on the PocketWizard / Strobist video contest here.

How to Break your SB-800's Little Neck Like a Chicken

UPDATE: Thanks to Eric, in the comments, for the surgery-based workaround (see comment at 11:58 a.m. on 8/13/08). And yes, I know the vid was way too drawn out. Which is why I told you where you could skip to...



Peter Gregg spends two minutes and 40 seconds admonishing you not to do this. Then shows you exactly how he strong-armed his Nikon SB-800 speedlights so that they will now go 135 degrees to the left. (Clarification: When you are looking at the flash from the front.)

The SB-800s of normal photographers only go 90 degrees to the left.

Many CLS-ers lament the inability to turn the signal receiver window to any angle needed when shooting multi-light, off-camera. This (insane) little mod would seem to rectify that.

FAIR WARNING: I am not going to do this to any of my babies. In fact, I get a little squeamish just watching it. But if you are stupid brave enough, it might give you access to every click-stop through the 360-degree range.

Or it might get you a $320.00 paperweight.


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One-Light Real Estate Photography

While down in Florida last month, I found out that my parents' next-door neighbors (and good friends) were selling their house. I was a little bummed, as they are good folks and you hate to see them leave.

But I was even more bummed when I saw the point-and-shoot specials the real estate agent had thrown up on the "for sale" page.

We only had one working flash. But certainly we could do better than that...
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One House, One Strobe, No Problem

Okay, to be clear I did bring two SB-800's down to Florida. But I only brought two sets of AA batts, too. (Hey, trying to travel light here.) And when one set of batts gets liberated by the kids to power yet another few hours of continuous Wii playing, two SB-800's become one SB-800.

And to be fair, I am no Scott Hargis, either. He is a magician at speedlighting a house to within a hair's breadth of Architectural Digest. But one SB-800s is better than no SB-800s, so we gave it a whirl anyway.

The trick, as always when using a small light to light a big thing, is to wait for the ambient to come to you.

We wanted to do four looks, with one strobe, in one evening. Each would be an exercise in flash/ambient balance. And each would need to be shot at a different time -- but all at twilight.

First stop was the interior, seen above. For this, we needed to balance flash with two ambient sources -- one fixed and one declining.

The outside light would be constantly falling, and the lamps inside would be constant. Because the flash would be lighting a large area, we needed a decent ISO speed and a large aperture.

If memory serves, we went with ISO 400 at f/4. Don't quote me, but it was at least close to there for the reasons listed above.

So, the f/4 becomes the anchor for the exposure. Using f/4, you chimp a little on the shutter speed to see where the lamps will look best. You want them bright, but not nuclear.

Remember -- they do not have to light the room. The flash will do that. They just have to look good.

Once you get the f/stop and shutter speed, it's simply a matter of waiting for the outside ambient light to drop down to where the windows look good. At that point, we pulled everything together by throwing a flash into the ceiling to bring up the rest of the room.

We had to nuke it - either 1/2 of full power, if I remember correctly. Always gonna take a lot of power to pull this off. If full power is not enough, you have to walk the ISO up until it is. (You'd walk the shutter down to keep the ambient in balance.)

Bonus: The ceiling-bounced flash is gonna pick up some warmth to accentuate the wood in the room. With more time, we would have lit a fire in the fireplace. But honestly, those are usually just for show in Florida anyway.


Moving fast now, we went out front. The front view is very cluttered, graphically speaking. Lots of trees and bushes. So I wanted to highlight the house with some focused light. We backed the flash up behind the camera and over on the left and zoomed it to 105mm.

Half power was more than enough light to pop the house -- and just the house -- to make it stand out against a twilight sky.

Easy balance here: Pop the flash on the house at a 250th of a sec, adjust the aperture until the house looks best, open up the shutter until the background looks best. Quick and easy.

Since the house is being lit by a low, warm light source it almost looks as if the house is being lit by the sunset. When the sunset is, in fact, happening at back camera left.


Next, we went to the back of the house. The ambient is getting much darker and now those interior lights are starting to sing. Nice and bright, relatively speaking.

So now the interior lights are the focal point and the twilight afterglow is secondary, as far as the ambient is concerned. But the house exterior needs bringing up. Given enough aperture and ISO (we were at 400) this is another easy, one-speedlight job.

The flash for this photo needed to light both the house and the trees I used to frame it. So we placed it out a ways at camera right and pumped it all of the way up to full power. (That throw to the house was an easy hundred feet or so. Maybe more.)

By feathering the light (aiming it between the trees and the house -- more toward the house) we could light both objects evenly, even though the house was much further way.


Now that we were done with the three-source-balancing stuff, we could finish off down at the dock. No hurries now, as we could fix the one ambient source no matter how dark it got. For those keeping score, this is the same dock as the one on the left in the tiki hut photos, if you want to get any context.

At this point, this one-light real estate stuff should be making sense. In a fairly dark ambient environment, I stuck a voice-activated light stand (AKA my dad) up on the dock. I had him aim the SB-800 (at 1/4 power, and synched with a Pocket Wizard) high, across the top of the dock. Actually aiming it a little up into the air. This helped to feather the light and keep the left side of the dock (from the camera's perspective) from getting too hot.

Meanwhile, I am down in the water:

Start on a high shutter (1/250th) to kill the ambient. Firing the flash, chimp the various aperture settings until the dock looks good. Open up the shutter until the ambient (post-sunset sky and reflection) looks good.

This stuff is not hard. It's about a three-minute job, and two minutes out of three are spent showing my dad how to hold and aim the flash.
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So, there you have it: A quick-and-dirty twilight real estate package, to replace the point-and-shoot nightmare on the "for sale" page.

Not that we couldn't have done a nice job with a point-and-shoot, too...


GEAR USED:

(Same setup, all photos)

Nikon D3
Nikon 17-35/2.8
Nikon SB-800
Pocket Wizard Plus II

Speedlinks, Super-Size Edition

I let the speedlinks bucket fill up a little too long since last time. But the result is that we have a whole weekend's worth of good ones, after the jump.

Hope you enjoy them, and have a fun weekend.
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Speedlinks, August 8, 2008

• Peter Yang (See also: On Assignment: Peter Yang Shoots Admiral William Fallon) has posted photos from his recent cowboy shoot for Texas Monthly. Dude can light. Several of the photos went straight to my "Inspiration" folder on the iPhone. He has posted the photos on his website. Earlier, he gave a ballsy interview about the story to Rob Haggart, at APE.

• The Flash Centre (UK-based lighting stores) has lit up a YouTube channel, where they have been uploading lots of lighting tutorials. Older stuff, and specific gear related, but worth watching if you are considering buying Elinchrom gear.

• Scott Kelby has checked in with a coupla cool gear finds lately: The Kwik Stand and a nifty li'l lighting case.

• Do you shoot with a TTL-off-camera cord? Andrew shows you how to "light from the right" with this left-handed camera grip.

• Traveling to a large, internet-blocking country to cover the Olympics? On Sports Shooter, USA Today's Bert Hanashiro shows what how he whittled down his gear bag to -- and how he packed it.

• Speaking of the Olympics, Hot Shot Shooter and Apple Stud Vincent Laforet has started blogging, and it is already a go-to site for good info. (And see what he is bringing to Beijing, here.)

• David Bergman, whom I met at Shoot! The Day in NYC, spends his time either working for SI or shooting rock stars. Not bad work if you can get it. He is starting to include some lighting how-to info on his blog, including a link to his field test article on the RadioPoppers.


Saving the best for last:

• I first saw Scott Strazzante's "Common Ground" project while serving as a judge in this year's Southern Short Course in Charlotte, where we judged it Best in Show. Now Brian and the other folks at MediaStorm have morphed it into a fantastic multimedia presentation.

Highly recommended.

Chase Jarvis Runs a Three-Minute Mile

Please fasten your seatbelts and place seat backs in the upright position. The On Assignment Bullet Train is leaving the station in 3, 2, 1...



If you like your Chase slower -- and with homemade chill music -- catch his long-form photo career pep talk here. And definitely take a look at his website if you don't already have it set as your home page.


NOTE: If you are watching this via email subscription, you may have to click through on the headline to view the video.

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Behind the Scenes with Martin Schoeller

Are you female?

Can you bench press a Cooper Mini?

Does the volume knob your tanning machine go to eleven?

Are you a lighting geek?

If you answered yes to all of those questions, this is your lucky day.

From a documentary on women bodybuilders, a YouTube video of a shoot of Vicki Nixon by Martin Schoeller. Annotated video, after the jump.
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WONDERFUL NEWS: Martin expresses absolutely no opinion whatsoever on the War in Iraq, which keeps his photographic ideas from being invalidated in the comments. Just saying.


And, as with the Annie Shoots the Queen video, I had to pull out the red pencil on this one.






Follow the Bouncing Ball

0:03 - Tarrytown, NY, home of "The Legend of Sleepy Hollow".

0:04 - 0:11 - How many books have Bill Clinton and Marilyn Manson in them? Not many.

0:43 - Bodybuilder tanning machine now available with rotisserie attachment, sold separately.

1:00 -- Note the paper over the door. Schoeller is building bounce surfaces everywhere. He shoots lights into them for fill and specular highlights.

1:02 - How do I light thee? Let me count the ways... Number one: Overhead beauty dish.

1:03 - Eight-by-ten view camera. (Compared to Greenfield-Sanders, this is a "small-chip" camera.) Also at this mark, you can see the fill/specular heads aiming (well, the one on the left, anyway) which fire off of the paper dropped behind and around the camera.

1:05 - Here's the on-axis paper surfaces. This gets a huge light source from all around the lens axis, effectively making a large soft-box-ring-light sort of thing.

1:12 - There's the key light setup for the face: A strip light on each side and a largish reflector above the eyeline.

1:19 - Put aside the light for a moment and listen. He is helping her get past her pre-planned "smile-for-the-camera" face.

1:23 - 1:35 - Bring her to a neutral expression. Explain why that is better than the big-teeth smile. Then bring some measured warmth back in.

1:38 - "I call it a smirk." I love this. A smirk is happy, confident, revealing -- and everyone knows exactly what you mean when you direct them with that word. It's a partial, no-teeth smile. I am so gonna rip this idea off.

1:42 - Biggie: Schoeller is out of eye contact with the subject, but is still keeping the vibe going with a running, three-way conversation. Don't lose the subject while you are screwing around with your lights and camera.

1:43 - Seriously, look at that light reflecting environment he has created. Ever shoot a photo in a shower stall, or small, white bathroom? You can't go wrong. He just makes that environment out of paper.

1:55 - See that quick glance? He does not look comfy on the front side of the lens. He's got a lot running through his mind right now, yet still keeps the subject interaction going.

1:59 - And there's the other fill-off-the-paper light.

2:01 - On the left side of the vid frame: There is the bottom/fill light for her face. That's a lotta lighting for a torso shot, no?

2:22 - I have people in the audience that tell me when I "flatten out," too...

2:28 - There's the best view of the light wall in the back. He can leave the bottom of the doorway, because he is blocking the light that would have come from there with his body and the camera. No need for paper there. It's a lot of gear and setup, to be sure. But the principle works down at the speedlight end of the scale, too.

2:30 - And there's your background light, gelled.

2:33 - She's not just hot -- she's ready to pass out. The modeling lights on those strips look brutal. Are they quartz lights? I can't imagine he'd do that to her. Still, you have to think she appreciates the free tanning session...

2:42 - Best look yet at the overall frontal light. Can't tell if he is using it, but that head at back-upper-center-right would continue the wrap from the overhead beauty dish. Assuming another on the left, too, if it is being used.

2:44 - Bad: "Stop slouching." Good: "Make yourself really tall, with a long neck."

2:53 to End - Dude is a human motor drive. That's pretty coordinated: Ripping off 8x10 frames without an assistant and keeping a conversation going at the same time.


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You can see the results of this series of photos (though not this particular subject) here. I have to say, I am not particularly into this lighting style for torso. Nor an I into the female bodybuilding thing, either.

But I love his close-up studies (hard to just call them "head shots") that follow if you keep clicking through the series. And this video gives us a behind-the-scenes look at the way Schoeller designs his light -- including at least half a dozen things I found very useful.

If you are into annotated lighting vids, the Annie/Queen one is here. And if you want the strip lights without laying out the cash, we have you covered there, too.

So, did you learn anything from this vid? Sound off in the comments.

Strobe-On-A-Rope, Episode Three

Way back in the day, when old-skool lighting guru Jon Falk (Adventures in Location Lighting) talked about "strobe on a rope" he meant severing the flash tube and using it with an extension cord for extreme flexibility.

When I talked about it, I meant using off-camera TTL cords, which can even be stacked if needed.

When Wizwow talks about strobe on a rope, he means, uh, tying your flash to an actual piece of string. Seriously.

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On Assignment: 50 Years

When I travel with the family, I try to strike a balance between having enough gear with me to make nice photos and not feeling like a pack mule. I frequently guess wrong on the "how much to bring" question, but it usually comes down to a tight SLR bag (with an off-camera light kit) or a Canon G9.

Earlier this summer, I drove down to Florida with Susan and the kids to visit my parents. I brought along a camera, a coupla small flashes and an idea for a photo I wanted to make for the upcoming 50th anniversary of my parents' first date. It was to be a family photo, but I wanted to approach it just as seriously as if I had gotten the job from a national magazine.

Mom and dad have retired to the shores of Lake Billy Boohoo, just north of the sprawling metropolis of Umatilla, Florida. (Population: Not very many.)

No, I am not making that lake name up, either. Some kid, presumably named Billy, drowned there in the 1950's and the name stuck. The sunset above is typical of the beautiful, subtropical displays they get in the evening.

Note to self: If I ever buy lakefront property in Florida, buy on the east side for the view. I only see sunrises when I am up too late from the night before.

Personally, I could probably go twenty years without getting the idea to build a private "tiki hut." But then, I am not my parents, living on this lake, with some serious time to kill. So that's what they did.

When they told me about it last winter, I knew I wanted to photo them in the hut against a sunset. When I learned that they were coming up on the 50th anniversary of their first date (in the 8th grade) I figured this summer's trip would be a perfect time to shoot them.


If you are a long-time reader of this site, I hope the gears are already turning. Pop some nice flash against that sunset (maybe in an umbrella, warming gel, etc.) and Bob's your uncle. Problem is, Westcott double-fold shoot-thru's do not normally live on beaches. And while the light might look nice, it would not really make sense.

Motivated light is one of the keys to getting believability and logic in your lit photos. Where would the light come from? What would the light look like?

Those are questions you should be asking yourself before you design the light in your photos if you want to hold a visual narrative.

So, I decided not to light for soft, flattering and warm but rather to emulate the light that would likely be in the tiki hut had dad run some electricity out there. (Give him enough time and he probably will, along with a computer terminal to check the weather a few hundred times a day...)

So my light was a single SB-800, sporting a CTO gel and a diffusion dome, mounted in the top of the hut with a Super Clamp.

Presto: One bare tungsten light bulb, albeit much more controllable.

The first test, above, shows where the light is mounted. I decided to just flood them from overhead with some "tungsten" light, and balance the flash with the sunset. A quick pop shows that I can get a clean 5.6 at half power, which is pretty good considering the diffuser and the gel both eat a lot of light.

So that gives me my working aperture. But the sky is too bright at my sync speed to look good at this point.

How do you fix that? You wait. Or you cheat.


This shot was taken at a 500th of a second -- a full stop past the normal top sync speed. Sure, I could go with focal plane high speed sync. But that robs power from the flash, and I needed power.

So, how to sync at a 500th? No problem if you do not need the whole frame to be flashed. My SB-800 was just lighting the bottom part of the frame, so no big whup cheating the sync for this shot.

Since the "black stripe" creeps in from the bottom of my photo, I did turn the camera upside down to cheat this one. If the flash would have needed to light the whole frame, you would have seen that it was dark in the upper half, due to incorrect synching.

So now I waited for the ambient level to come to me. But while I waited, I decided to shoot the final photo at 1/320th of a second, to use that small, "no-synch" bar to seal off the flash from the bottom of my photo. (Camera right-side up for that one.)

It feathered the flash nicely, and kept the bright part from leading your eye out of the frame.


Here is the final shot, after the sunset came down to a level where 1/320th looked good against the correct (flashed) aperture. I love this photo, and will be making a nice print of it soon. (Click the pic to see it bigger.)

And given that you can vary the flash by fiddling with the aperture, and the sky by tweaking the shutter speed, I could have placed either tone anywhere I wanted. In this way, you get much more control through the shooting window than if there had been a real, continuous light bulb up in there.

Mom and dad wanted a shot from the side while I was at it, where you could see their faces better. Who am I to argue, except for the fact that I do not have an umbrella with me to diffuse the light. And besides, it is directly over their heads. Yuck.


My solution was to re-aim the light slightly, and take the diffuser off. I moved it to the front rail, aimed it a little forward and (mostly) balanced it off of the sand for a little over/under light.

It was the best I could do on short notice. But I think it looks kinda cool, considering. A little ham-fisted Photoshop session later and I was even able to clone the edges of the clamp out of the shot. (Couldn't really hide it from the side.)

It's amazing what you can do with one little flash if you wait for the ambient to come to you. Even more so the other small-flash job we did down there, which was to shoot a series of real estate photos of the luxury log cabin next door -- with one SB-800.

As McNally says, more tk...

Will Shoot For Food

On Friday, one hundred people left The Baltimore Sun -- 60 from the newsroom alone.

One of them was yours truly, having returned early from my one-year leave to take a buyout. There was a hard staff reduction quota in effect, and given the way the blog has gone I thought it would be best if I counted toward it when they started lopping off heads...

Over the next few months I will be working hard to shape my second career as a photographer. I have shot as a staffer for newspapers for twenty years, which gives me a wonderful breadth of experience. But in many ways, I am dating again after having been married for two decades.

I know that many people who read this site are amateurs who are at least toying with the idea of going pro in one way or another. I also know that there are PJ readers who either are -- or will be -- facing hard cuts in the newsroom. In that sense, we now have much in common.

So I will be going through the growth process fishbowl-style, in the hopes that the shared experience might be helpful to those of you who are toying with the idea of going pro and wondering how to approach it.

Fortunately, the headline is, for me, somewhat tongue-in-cheek. I am not worried about whether or not I'll have a job. The website -- many thanks to all of you -- offers some breathing room on the financial side of things. But I have always been a photographer, and that is what I want to continue to be.

The question is, what now? Who I will be shooting for? What will I be shooting?

Who knows. I'll be curious to see where the combination of shooting and writing about it takes me.

Newspapers are facing hard times these days. Printing news on dead trees is tough row to hoe in 2008. From here, survival wll be determined by how fast -- and how well -- papers can migrate their readership to the web.

And as for the people who left The Sun this week, rest assured that that they did not go quietly into the night:



Best of luck to all of my friends and colleagues who are entering the next phase of their lives. Please write when you find work.

-30-

Light Fare From Martin Prihoda

A little while back I did some surveying on this site. Among other things, the survey told me that the readership of Strobist skewed male. Overwhelmingly, pathetically, ninety-four-percentingly male.

So I am thinking today that roughly six percent of you will react to Hamish's shotgunned beer burp with an "Ewww, gross," while about 94 percent of you will hold up signs with ratings from one to ten.

Vancouver-based shooter Martin Prihoda is back, squeezing a little end-of-day fun out of some lighting gear rental, and walking through the process of shooting a guy in a monkey suit against a sunset.

And when we say "monkey suit" we are not talking about a tuxedo.

(Thanks, Martin!)
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Related, more serious lighting video:

:: Martin Prihoda Shoots Delerium ::

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Mount Your Mods with Speed Straps

Having spent much of my 20 years as a newspaper shooter with sticky-velcro-covered flashes, I have recently become a big fan of velcro speed straps for mounting all of my light mods to small flashes.

Hit the jump for why you want 'em, where to get 'em, and how to make 'em -- plus a whole mess of archive DIY links.
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At one point in the 1980's, I think my go-to SB-24 had so much velcro stuck to it that it looked like a burnt Chia Pet. The problem with the stick-on velcro is if when it wears out, it doesn't hold worth a crap. And it is a pain in the butt to unpeel and swap. To that, add the fact that you have a limited amount of surface area unless you want your flash to look like mine did.

With all of today's lighting mod options, you really want to have some kind of velcro mounting system on your flash. And the speed strap route is the way to go -- you can easily remove them and/or swap out for a new one if the velcro goes. Plus you get a whole lot more mounting real estate, compared to the typical amount of stuck-on velcro.

Truth be told, these little guys are not expensive. They are less than $10, so many of you may well choose to go store-bought in this instance. You can get them from LumiQuest ($6.95 - smaller size) or from HonlPhoto ($9.95 - bigger, w/more surface area and grip).

They are the basis for most light mods mounting systems, including those from LumiQuest and HonlPhoto. Quest Couch from LumiQuest notes that, for larger light mods, you can use two straps (strobe - strap - light mod - second strap on top) for a super strong hold.

If you just use one or two strobes, it probably makes sense to tap the Visa card. But if you are broke have a whole case of strobes and would be buying straps by the half dozen, you might want to consider making them. They are cheap and easy, especially of you wait until the next time your bike inner tube goes flat.


To make them, you'll be using the inner tube as a base. It's cheap, holds well and is nice and wide.

You can make a strap in less than five minutes, using the inner tube and some sticky velcro (available at craft and hardware stores.)


1. Cut your tube into sections long enough to fully wrap around the head of your flash with a full overlap on the wide dimension. Go a little long, then you can cut it for an exact fit when you are done.

2. Cut a length-wise strip from the tube, making a flat piece of rubber about an inch-and-a-half wide. There will probably be injection mold lines along the tube to make for easy, straight cuts. Mountain (and trail) tubes work better than the smaller road bike tubes. If you use the portion of the tube that would come in contact with the ground (if it were a tire) you'll avoid the curve of the rubber that would otherwise make it harder to fit.

3. Very important: Wash the rubber thoroughly with soap and water, and dry it well. It will have grime on it, and a powder residue on the inside -- both of which will cause problems if it is not clean and dry.

4. Totally cover the inside of the rubber section with two long strips of the "loops" part of the velcro. Trim along the edges to fit if necessary.

5. Cover the other side of the tube (formerly the outside) with "hooks" velcro at one end, to a length equal to the width of your flash head.

6. Wrap the strap around your flash, overlapping on the long end, and trim to length if necessary.


That's all there is to it.


Here's a view of the reverse side, which should make everything self explanatory. It's very important to make sure the tube section is totally clean and dry, or your sticky velco won't hold.

Normally, when I run a DIY post I get a few condescending comments from the deep-walleted DIY haters, which serve to offset the comments I get from the starving artists when I mention, say, Profotos. So, as long as they are gonna be pissed off anyway, here are lots more DIY posts dusted off from the archives:
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Selected DIY Posts

:: DIY Cardboard Snoots and Gobos ::
:: DIY Tupperware Diffuser ::
:: DIY Household Sync Cord Extension ::
:: $10 Macro Studio Box ::
:: Two-Cent Micro Studio ::
:: HD RIng Flash Adapter ::
:: $8 Flat-Fold Ring Light ::
:: Coffee Can Point-and-Shoot Ring Flash ::
:: Engineer Lamp Light Stand ::
:: Ball Bungee Softbox/Speedlight Mount ::
:: PVC Speedlight Aqua Housing ::
:: OMG DIY Off-Camera TTL Cord ::
:: DIY Beauty Dish ::
:: DIY Cardboard Grid Spots ::
:: DIY Macro Strip Lights ::

DVDs Back in Stock

If you missed out on the Strobist Lighting Seminar DVD set, the second printing is in. All backorders have now been shipped, and remaining DVDs are available here.

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Nikon SB-900 Foot: Size 16 EEEE

The new Nikon SB-900 Speedlights are dropping into stock pretty much everywhere, albeit on allocation.

But before you buy, you might want to check this thread for a running update on what the flash shoes the newly designed foot will -- and won't -- fit. Please feel free to add to this list if you find out anything first hand.

And remember that they do ship with an AS-21 foot, which can be swapped out if your system is 1/4 x 20-based. But mind that plastic thread if you are swapping out frequently.


RELATED:

:: SB-900 Review ::

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Speedlights, South Africa Style

South African photographer (and Strobist reader) Robert Miller, whom you may also know as "Panascape" on Flickr, has been showing up in PIX African Photo Journal so often he should be paying them rent.

Back in the March edition, Miller wrote and photographed a story entitled, "Welcome to Strobist." He got four pages for his story and another four pages about his photography in the form of a monolith/Q&A piece. Not a bad month.

Then he pops up in my mailbox today with a stitched, HDR panorama with embedded lit portrait on the current, triple fold-out cover -- which is basically a PIX magazine geargasm to the new Nikon D700. (It wraps around to the back cover, too. Craziness.)

We'd never do the ad / cover / fold-out ad thing like that in the States. But seeing that kind of stuff is one of the reasons I love reading foreign photo mags. Even as an old Chinese Wall newspaper guy, I have to admit it is pretty friggin' cool for PIX to announce a long-awaited camera like that.

Links and a diagram, after the jump.


Top Photo: How it Was Lit

Here's the setup for the top photo. Two umbrellas and a ring light. Click the diagram to read more info in Robert's comment stream, where he talks about how he built the flash and ambient ratio for the shot.
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As far as my photo, which pretty much looks like a little turd compared to Robert's stuff, I stuck an SB-800 at camera left and exposed for the flash at about 1 stop above the ambient. Location: My mail box.

For more info (and a diagram) on Robert's tri-fold, high-dynamic-range panorama cover shot, check out his Flickr page for the photo.

Hands-On Review: Nikon SB-900 Speedlight

I got a chance to play with a new Nikon SB-900 speedlight over the last few days and I gotta say, it's a pretty sweet flash. Long story short: Nikon has just extended their lead in the flash department.

The only drawback I can see is the "perfectly good" status of the current SB-800. And that $500 price tag, of course.

Should you get one? Swap out all of your SB-800s? Be on the lookout for cheap, used SB-800s and add more?

Hit the jump for the Full Monty review, and a few things you might want to consider.
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First impression: It is much bigger than the SB-800. Didn't really seem any heavier, but definitely takes up more space. This is a consideration for a couple of reasons. One, cubic inches matter when on the road. Not so much on a single flash basis, but if you are packing half a dozen SB-900s, you could probably cram seven SB-800's in the same space.

Also, the head is a totally new design and size. This means that your current light modifiers may or may not fit the SB-900, depending on their size and/or mounting flexibility.


So here's that big ol' honker of a head. First glance, it looks to be pretty much the biggest speedlight head going, save maybe the Vivitar 285 HV. It looks bigger than an old SB-26, and certainly bigger than an SB-24.

If you can get past the size, they have done some really cool things with the extra space. The 200mm zoom rocks. Not because I am gonna direct flash with my 70-200 racked out. But because it will concentrate the beam, of light into a smaller area when used off-camera.

Why would you care? Because it effectively gives you a more powerful flash when large swaths of light are not needed. Like doing a hard-light, multi-flash portrait outdoors, for example. You usually would not want to light their feet anyway.

Rather than eat up that needless beam angle with a snoot or grid, you can zoom it in, and get some extra f-stop with the more concentrated beam. This translates into more control over the ambient light level (you can get a darker working f-stop at 1/250th, for example) for more choices in your ambient tones.

Of course, you can get a Better Beamer to stick on just about any flash to do this, but it is not built-in.

The Big Head Advantages do not stop there. It's the most sophisticated refractor/reflector system I have ever seen on a flash. They actually modulate the tube with respect to both the front fresnel and the polished, rear reflector. This gives you the ability to shape the internal qualities of the beam, too.

You can choose a normal (slightly concentrated) pattern, an even more concentrated pattern (again, yet more energy to the center for situations described above) or a near-perfectly even light distribution depending on your lighting needs.

That's a real breakthrough in speedlight design, and brings to a (relatively) small package more of the capabilities of an interchangeable-reflector studio strobe. Big props to Nikon for that.