Miniscule portrait studio at 1.5 m by 1 metre!
A narrow shop doorway, model four feet away and a single off-camera flashgun bounced off a four inch wide doorframe is all Keith Robins Photography needs to create a superb portrait.
Okay so there is a bit of help from the sun which illuminates Lola's left cheek via the white wall outside. For some of these photos I use my Canon 580 EX with the head reversed and bouncing it off a white tee shirt to my left. The flash is set on ETTL while the camera stays on manual, enabling me to control the daylight to a precise exposure.
Getting Lola to look towards the somewhat darker shop interior helps to open up her eyes and as we all know, it's the eyes that can make or break a good portrait.

I came across Lola a week ago via 'Model Mayhem', a sort of online modeling agency where you sign up, wait for approval and eventually if they think you're good enough you can send out friend requests followed by email contacts with the models where MM act as intermediaries, a sort of buffer zone.
Lola is a newbie to the site as a model but I've had nearly forty years behind my camera as a portrait photographer and i've decided that her portfolio needs a boost, come to think of it so does mine! Besides, not only do I need the practice but, I can't remember ever having photographed a girl with such beautiful red hair or such incredible blue eyes. Mostly, though, I could see the possibilities of some amazing photos with Lola and on this count I think I am definitely about to be proved correct.



We arrange to meet at a carpark in Glastonbury on May 1st and blow me most of the roads are closed due to a series of bank holiday fun runs, the carpark is full but I somehow manage to squeeze in. Lola's mum has come along to help hold one of the flashguns as I can only carry one lighting stand along with all the other stuff us photographers consider important - so why do we never use it all?
I often carry two large bags and pull a kitchen waste bin on a shopping trolley full of lighting stands, brollies, reflectors and tripod, but this time it is just a bagful of four flashes, stand adaptors and triggers.


'Proper Job' supermarket carpark provides a small area of shade under a tree set in the pavement which I use to keep the brilliant sun off Lola's gorgeous red hair - I wanted to create my own strobist lighting arrangements, my own sunlight if you like.
One stand, a Vivitar 285 into a small brolly, a second 285 is held by mum replicated the sun to great effect. Both guns are firing via cheapo radio triggers from China at £60 for a set of three recievers and one transmitter. The benefits are that Lola's blue eyes opened up as she looked into the shade. What appears to be sunlight shining on Lola's cheek is really a Vivitar at 1/2 power, but without a modifier it resembles direct sunlight. The second 285 is bouncing into the small brolly also set to 1/2 power, but due to it bouncing into a brolly this is reduced to around 1/4 power and the biggest benefit is that it's really soft due to the close proximity - about three feet.
You wouldn't think that a carpark would make any sort of decent backdrop but it does. Not having access to a studio should not put you off taking beautiful portraits like these, it is possible almost anywhere to create a work of art using flag lights. Strobism rules!
Then we move on to a narrow shop doorway where Lola faces into the fairly dark interior with a weedy backyard and a whole mess of rainwater pipes in the background lit by sunlight.
Okay, so I didn't stay true strobist with the Vivtars for this part of the photoshoot as I want to push my understanding of the capabilities of Canon ETTL and whether I can still influence this modern automatic lighting technology, or, does it take over and mess up everything creative. To which the answer is - without my strobist knowledge of how to juggle exposure controls these photos of Lola will suffer big time.
Canon's interactive ETTL with more than one flash is now moving further down the list of things to absorb my precious time!
During the two hour shoot I take 115 photos, (eighty-five after editing), which Lola will get on a CD to go on her Facebook page, also on to her MM portfolio. I'm only too pleased to help this delightful young lady on her way as a model who is a joy to work with.
Will I use Model Mayhem again? Yes, without a doubt! Although it's a rather long winded method of contacting suitable models but it's for their protection and I can see why it has to be this way.
Will I be photographing Lola again? Yes, most definitely, can't wait!!!!

One radio transmitter and three triggers for £40. What a bargain for Keith Robins Photography!
Amazon is the place to visit for a fast efficient service. I ordered the triggers on Wednesday and, even though there was a Post Office strike in action, the packet was delivered on Friday. the Vivitar 285HV flashgun which I ordered the same day came a couple days later, well packed and in good nick. Thank you to the postmen for what I term a pretty good service in your hour of strife.
How do the triggers handle in use? Brilliantly!
The normal place for a radio transmitter is in the hotshoe along with a trigger mounted beneath a remote flashgun - this arrangement fired one of my Vivitar 285HV's at up to 50 metres, a lot further than the advertised 30 mtrs. I was more than pleased with this result.

For the next test I added an optical slave into the chain, just to explore the limitations. One Vivitar on the camera, then at 30 metres distance the radio transmitter was slotted into an £8 optical slave, a second 285HV was then slotted into one of the three triggers and placed an additional 30 metres from camera. The equipment all works together just fine, which is fantastic!

Next, I wanted to know whether a flash in ETTL mode would operate the remote flash. I placed a Canon 550EX in ETTL mode on top of a Canon 5D, which in turn was set to manual. The optical slave was connected directly to the Vivitar 285H. This system failed miserably!
A flashgun in ETTL mode, or a pop-up flash, sends out a small pre-flash before the shutter opens to calculate the strength of flash exposure needed to light the main subject. Of course this pre-flash will also set off the remote flashgun operated via an optical slave unit before the shutter is open. When the main light fires a few milliseconds later it's too late for your remote flash as it has already gone off and is still in the process of recharging.

Maybe this is why some photographers, new to the world of flashguns can easily be lead into thinking that multiple flash is beyond them, especially as their images consistently portray dead flat lighting from the on-camera flash.

Fear not, there is a way around this most irksome problem!
You may have noticed that when taking a photo a half press on the shutter button causes focusing / exposure info to pop up on screen for about 15 seconds.
The trick with using an ETTL flash as a master to fire remote flashes on radio triggers is to half press the shutter button to bring up this information, then press the star button which fires the tiny pre-flash along with the remote slave flash. Meanwhile the shutter is still closed.
Now wait about 10 seconds, but no longer than 14 seconds, before fully pressing the shutter button to take the photo proper. If you're using newish batteries this should be long enough for the remote flash to recharge and both guns will now fire while the shutter is open and give whatever power you have set on them.

However, when the on-camera flash is set to manual there is no pre-flash and both guns will fire as one light without any trouble.
I also tried using aperture priority and it worked great.
Carrying out the same test using shutter priority I found that the Canon 5D limited the speed to 1/200th with the end result coming out spot on.
All this exploration took several hours and I'll need to repeat this type of testing a few more times before it sinks in - remember I'm new to ETTL and the Canon 5D as maual flash has been my staple diet since the early seventies.
Hope this is some help in your flahs photography - Keith Robins.