New SB-900 Has All the Angles

UPDATE: SB-900 full review now posted.Nikon has just announced a new flash: The Nikon SB-900 speedlight. From what I can see, it is quite a departure from the Nikon SB-800, and the feature list is as long as the price tag is big. Much more, after the jump.Highlights:• Rotates 180 degrees right or left. Sweet.• Flash tube overheat protection, great...

Read More

On Assignment: Night Chopper, Pt. 1

In this two-part On Assignment, we'll be walking through a night shoot of a Bell 407 helicopter, photographed for the Howard County Police Department earlier this month.Just like the CFL On Assignments, we'll break this one up into two parts: Planning and problem solving first, then the shoot itself. Keep reading to learn more about the prep, to be...

Read More

WIRED Interviews the Flash Gun Guy

UPDATE: WIRED blogger (and Strobist reader) Charlie Sorrel tracked down and interviewed Julius von Bismarck, the guy who uses a slaved flash projector to superimpose words into other people's photos.-...

Read More

One More CTO Assignment Pic

For some reason this photo did not show up in my CTO assignment results search. But thankfully, a reader pointed it out in the comments. Big hat tip to The Light Whisperer for this neat cross-gelling, light-bouncing image.Says TLW:"F8 - ½ second. Camera white balance set to tungsten. Two flashes, one outside window (left) without any gel for a (daylight...

Read More

Lighting 102: CTO Assignment | Discussion

Report from June 3rd, in which you were asked to use a CTO filter to do something other than correct for incandescent light. The CTO is maybe the most useful CC filter in the whole pack, as several readers demonstrate in their photos, after the jump.___________Greg Cee shot on tungsten white balance and gelled his flash with a CTO -- but went with...

Read More

And Now, a Few Words From the Tourist Standing Next to You

Off-camera flash as High Art: Julius von Bismark, an artist in Berlin, is playing with snap-happy tourists by injecting words into their photos.He cut a hole in the back of an old film camera and stuck a slaved flash into it. By writing words onto transparent plastic and sliding the sheet into a slot near the film plane, the whole rig now works backwards...

Read More

Remotely On Topic: How to PW a Second Camera

Sports photographer Max Simbron has posted a nice little video tutorial on how to use Pocket Wizards to remote a second camera at, say, a basketball game. Being able to shoot with remote cameras is a nice perk of owning PWs.(Heck, if you are gonna spring for them, you may as well put them to work for you as much as possible.)If you want to learn more about getting double duty out of your wireless remotes, check out his original post for other cool tips and tidbits.-...

Read More

DINFOS Pt. 3 - Thinking Inside the Box

For the final DINFOS post we have flexibility artist Shelly Guy, who was brave enough to venture down into the bowels of the DINFOS photo studio for a series of photos shot by Joe McNally, the 2008 Advanced Lighting Team and myself.As you probably know by now, I generally don't care much for shooting in a studio. Which is why we decided to do a quick...

Read More

SOLD OUT: July 19 NYC Lighting Seminar

UPDATE: The July 19th NYC lighting seminar is sold out. If you are attending, hit the jump for more details, and a link to the discussion thread. __________________________Seminar Info and Registration DetailsLOCATION:The class is to be held at the ShootDigital Studios. The address is 23 East 4th Street, in New York City. You can find a Google map here if the one just below is not working in your browser. View Larger MapWHAT WE'RE ABOUT:With the lighting seminars, my goal is threefold: To present an organic approach to creating light, to fill you...

Read More

High-Speed + High Power = External Battery

UPDATE: Someone dropped a pretty good test of various relative battery recycle performance times into the comments of this post._________ I prefer using Ni-MH batteries in my speedlights. Especially the "pre-charged" ones, because they hold their charge for much longer between uses.They do a full-power recharge in less than four seconds in most flashes, which means that at, say, 1/4 power, you can shoot away with almost no regard for recycle time. As long as you are averaging about one shot a second, you are fine for moderate bursts.But what if...

Read More

DINFOS Pt. 2: Flash in the Pan

Peer pressure can a dangerous thing.Normally, I am a manual flash kind of guy. But you hang out long enough with McNally and a bunch of CLS'ing DINFOS shooters, you start to feel the itch to experiment a little...So, here we were earlier this month in the woods learning all this lighting stuff from McNally. All of the DINFOS folks are firing away like...

Read More

Announcing: Shoot! The Day, New York Lighting Seminar and Strobist Stone Soup

Lotta stuff in this one, but it is all tied together. You'll especially wanna make the jump if you live near NYC. But there is also lots for the other folks, as well.________Shoot! The Day and School of StockThe PhotoShelter guys have been whipping up something really cool, and I am very happy to be involved with it. Basically, they have spent the last several months researching what, exactly, photo buyers are looking for right now. Then they have distilled this info (and much more) down into an online resource called School of Stock. If you are...

Read More

Coming Soon: New AlienBees Wireless Triggers

This snuck up on me from left field: Paul C. Buff is about to cut the cord. He is redesigning his wireless remotes with some added features, including a receiver that is battery powered. The current version has a batt-powered xmitter and an AC receiver. He's calling it the CyberSync.Lotsa cool features, for notta lotta dough. Specs, links and another...

Read More

A Father's Day Reminder: Shoot Your Kids

Long-time viewers of this site will likely be familiar with San Francisco-based reader Jason Lee's long-term project photographing his two daughters, Kristin and Kayla. If you're not, you are in for a treat. Hit the jump for some of his work, links to more and some thoughts on his project. ________One of the best things about running this site is seeing...

Read More

Golf Digest: Behind the Scenes Shoot

Thanks to a tip in the Flickr threads I was able to catch this behind-the-scenes video done by Golf Digest during a recent shoot of Annika Sorenstam. I love these kinds of things, as there are always tidbits to be learned from watching other photographers work.A little Googling (with a helpful assist from Golf Digest DoP Christian Iooss) hooked me...

Read More

More Bounce to the Ounce

Pop Quiz: Where is lighting control gear manufacturer California Sunbounce located?Germany, of course.Geographic inconsistencies aside, please join me in welcoming them as a new sponsor. (NOTE: Some of the videos on their site might not be work safe for many.)-...

Read More

Speedlinks, June 11, 2008

It's been forever since we did one of these, and I had a bunch of cool stuff pop up this week. So here goes:• What? You haven't pimped your McNally yet? Me, neither. But I think I'm gonna. (Note to Annie: Please actually read the post before jumping to any naughty conclusions...)• Live near Denver? Now you can get your small-flash learn on in person with Dave Tejada.• Scott Kelby takes you on a tour of photo permit purgatory. • Lighten up, Frances: Check out Zack "OneLight" Arias' excellent series of white background tutorials. Dude gets the Apple...

Read More

DINFOS: Pt. 1

Last week I was helping out at DINFOS, (Defense Information School) where they were holding the Worldwide Military Photography Workshop. Joe McNally has been involved in it for quite a while. (I am a fnugy, with this being only my second year.)I'll defer to his description of the event and it various characters. He also posted several shots from the...

Read More

Podcasting on Benadryl

Bill and Ed have just posted an interview we did last week for LightSource. Bear in mind that this is allergy season for me. So no, that is not what I normally sound like. Also bear in mind that I had a pretty good shot of Benadryl in my system. So I'll be surprised if any of it is coherent. Props to both of them for putting up with me.If you can get...

Read More