Pregled posta

Marketing

Fell into a sort of exhausted trance on the drive back home from Stuttgart today and snapped out of it in a foul mood. My football team having lost while one man up for 80% of the game did nothing to improve things. The clincher was some awful food I had for dinner; not even beer helped. So I resolved to be unsociable and try to put an image to the feeling.

Not a good idea.

The lighting on this was a bitch to set up and almost did drive me to murder:

* One strobe firing into a pringles can with a slit in the bottom (to make a more concentrated, smaller lightsource), then through some blinds I'd hung up between two tripods for the window-like pattern on the door.

* Taping the knife to the doorhandle at just the right angle for the light from a strobe to bounce into the camera. Then placing said strobe out of sight behind the door, snooting it to restrict the light beam to just the blade (not the door, the wall or the ceiling, which would all have bounced unwanted light back on the scene).

* I finally had to go with ambient light seeping in through the half-opened door rather than the big old diy softbox I'd set up, because I only had two wireless receivers and the optical slave mode on my Yongnuo strobes apparently only works when a sufficiently powerful flash hits the actual head of the flash dead on (no sticking it inside softboxes, snooting it or taking it into broad daylight.)

Grrr.

Strobist Details:
* YN460 @1/32 power with diy straw snoot just behind door pointing up to knife for reflection on blade
* ambient light from next room (shutter to about 1/15 s)
* 430EX II @1/16 into chips can with 1cm wide slit at end to concentrate light, then through blinds to create pattern on door
* triggered by 2 Phottix Tetra wireless units

Would love some feedback on the picture!

LEFT: the more modern 'Receiver, Inset No: 2P' has a flush aluminium (sometimes bakelite) cup insert with the magnet poles protruding from a paxolin panel. A small cloth-covered vent is visible to the top (RHS as shown) and is used for audio coupling. This receiver gives a smoother frequency response and doesn't peak at 1100Hz. It offers a gain of some 10-15db sensitivity above the older type on the right. All this is achieved by using resonant cavities, including that of the outer ear, when sandwiched between receiver and head!

RIGHT: older 'Receiver, Inset No:1L'. This type was superseded by 'Receiver, Inset No:2P' around 1947.

Both units are completely interchangeable. Missing from both receivers (for the photo) are the Stalloy diaphragms.