Welcome to the world of Stroborati.
We start in the pink city of Jaipur. A young Rajasthani lady lends her grace.
Ambient light was almost non-existent so I added the undulating tonality artificially.
My lighting setup was simple–just a Ray Ring Flash encircling my lens and three radio-controlled bare-head Speedlites off in the distance to accent her beauty with side lighting. But after a hundred flashes into magic I almost burned up a new Canon 580EX II Speedlite that was rigged snuggly into the ring flash with no breathable airspace. It was only being used for a hint of shadowless fill light from camera position but trigger happy fingers can fly with motor drive speed. I moved erratically trying to keep pace with my Rajasthani sweetheart, who twirled in five-meter circles around me into the night.
My main light was another 580EX II shooting through a Westcott 43-inch collapsible umbrella perched at a balcony railing high above and behind me on camera left so my fill light at camera position had to fly along with her wild moves. ETTL freed my brain from the math, which left me only to my imagination. Tight constraints in the flash head mounting, however, meant “hot” flash and this Rajasthani beauty gave me a few. Her exotic dance positions kept my eyes fixed on hers. My auto follow-focus tried to keep up with the bliss but my heart had already taken control. I was unaware of the scorching buildup so near my fingertips. Meanwhile, the Rosco 1/4 CTO tungsten conversion filter on the flash head almost burned up in my hands.
The lady was hot.
The fresnel lens inside the flash unit got a bit scorched, too. This will most likely reduce f/stop on future shoots but, hey, ETTL always compensates. The inside surface of the flash head is now a nice shade of neutral gray. There were no dramatic flames to excite the fifty onlookers. This young lady held us all spellbound with a different kind of heat. India is like that. Add a crazy photographer acting a little bit strange with weird-looking lighting equipment coming from every direction and, voila, you’ve got a zillion curious onlookers sharing the moment.
India excites me. She can be chaotic. She can be bizarre. But she always thrills me.
Let us continue with the lighting trivia for those who might have tuned in for the geeky minutia. I was working by myself with no crew manning the remote flash units. Assistants could have easily followed the flow of her dance moves with the light. So I made wild guesses beforehand as to where she might be spinning most of the time and pre-pointed the lights accordingly, all zoomed to the 105mm telephoto position since the distances were great. Here’s a sketch of the lighting layout.
In the photo above, notice the rim light on each side of the balanced pot and on the stack of bracelets encircling the dancer’s raised arm and the edge light on her fingers. This light emanated from two Canon 430EX II Speedlite units clamped with Manfrotto 175F-1 spring clamps to chairs about ten meters off to each side and slightly behind her. Each was fitted with a LumiQuest Snoot, which narrowed the beam of light and kept it from flaring into my lens. The main light on her face was from the 580EX strobe on the balcony up above and behind me to the left about 15 meters away from the action. The ring flash at camera added a bit of fill under her chin and into her eyes. All strobes were gelled with CTO filters to match the meagre ambient tungsten light and I set white balance on the camera to tungsten rather than auto. I used Pocket Wizard Flex TT5 radios to trigger the flash units.
I was shooting with a Canon EF 70-200mm f/4 L IS lens set at f/4 and chose ISO 400 for more battery performance from the strobes. Since the ambient light was low, if I had used Aperture Priority I would have gotten shutter speeds lasting several seconds when she twirled into the shadows. So I put the camera on Manual Mode at a 1/10 of a second at f/4. From the strobe lights she looks a bit frozen in time as though she had struck a pose just to excite me. But notice the flare of her skirt from the spin and the outstretched piece of fabric under her raised arm. And look at the slight blur to the left of her hand where you will see the effects of the second curtain flash sync. The blurred streaks are a bit faint but that’s because the ambient light was so low and thus it registered marginally at a tenth of a second but the length of the blur is fine.
She was spinning so fast that using second curtain sync with shutter speeds longer than a tenth of a second would have meant she would have twirled her back to me by the time the flash fired.
Amazing how that pot didn’t fall off.
Here’s the Ray ring flash rigged to my Canon 5D Mark II.
You’ll notice I rigged it upside down. Typically one would place the 580EX II in the camera’s hot shoe on top with the front of the flash tucked into the receiving end of the ring flash unit, which would then hang down and encircle the 70-200mm lens. But the contraption won’t fit if you insert a Pocket Wizard Flex TT5 radio transmitter into the camera’s hot shoe first, which is needed to trigger the remote flash units. So I mounted everything upside down kind of like the way the Orbis ring flash works. The TT5 is still in the hot shoe on top and into that I placed the Canon OC-E3 off-camera hot shoe cord unit and inserted the 580 into its shoe at the other end of the curly cord. This little shoe has a 1/4×20 tripod thread on the bottom. To attach it to the camera, I first sawed off the head of a 1/4×20 bolt that’s about a half-inch long. One end screws into the camera and the other into the little hot shoe. Notice the two shiny screw collars at the bottom of the camera. These were taken off some other tilt head units in my bag. I use one of these collars to tighten against the camera in one direction of spin and the other tightens against the little hot shoe in the other direction. This keeps the whole assembly rigid so it doesn’t rotate in my hands while shooting. I must also carry a needle nose pliers to reach in and screw each collar in different directions.
Note that it’s a bit hard to shoot incognito with this monster hanging on your neck.
The ring flash unit will serve two functions. When it’s the sole light source for portraits, I’ll get smooth shadowless light if I want that kind of look. In multiple light setups I can power it down and use it for on-camera fill that will always move around with me as I follow the subject. While I might not always want the fill light coming from camera position, at least it’s one less light in the field that could get stolen.
Here’s an array of my other strobe paraphernalia fanned out on my bed at the hotel room later that night. We roving photographers often keep the strangest of bedside companions. Surely there are other kinds of toys that could perpetuate the thrill.
And here’s all the stuff neatly packed up for a trek. I’m using a ThinkTank StreetWalkerPro backpack for the lighting gear and a Lowepro Compu Trekker AW backpack for the camera gear. Notice the charred flash head in the camera backpack on the right.
Oh well, tomorrow is another day.
There are now only ten short years left to my vagabond photo marathon to which I have recently added Stroborati light. Once I get fully warmed up, I’ll head to more remote locales where I’ll find extremely interesting cultures and very few electrical outlets for recharging.
This is only the beginning of my light-filled odyssey.
Come ride with me.
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Click the photos below for info about some of the gear I used for images in this blog post.
And if you want to see an awesome array of all the photo equipment I travel with, click here.
Glen Allison
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9 Comments
Solid post, nice work. It Couldn’t be written any improved. Reading this post reminds me of my previous boss! He usually kept babbling about this. I will forward this article to him. Pretty sure he will have a superb read. Thanks for sharing!
Thanks for the well-written detailed explanation, Glen. I notice you have several Jobo tripods. I just bought one for that exact same purpose and/or for videos if I’m photographing as well. Your dancer’s a beauty, I agree, and you captured her well.
Incidentally, I’m going to DC on the 30th for the ‘Rally to Restore Sanity’ and am very much looking forward to it. I’ll be mostly focused on photographing but will also get a number of statements from participants about why they’re there for the ‘Blunt’ (video statements) page of The Political Carnival.
Hey Lucian, good luck on the shoot and send me a link to the pix when you get done.
Just started following you on Twitter, thanks for the link to this site! Looks like it is in the beginning stages and I can’t wait for the next installment! this was a fantastic post for someone like me that is really just starting to explore OCF thanks again!
Hey Scott, thanks so much. Hope you enjoy.
Hi Glen,
Great effort, and a lot of gear to carry.
Thanks for your new blog, can learn a bit.
ingo
Hey Ingo, glad you like it. This is going to be a fun ride.
Cool… hot… Strobist with an exotic twist. I would hold your flash
Hey, Djuna, you can hold my flash any time you want.
Are you back in Bali now?