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.

Studio flash outdoors - at night! Okay so maybe it's been done before via an extension lead. However, Keith Robins Photography is adventurous enough to investigate the great outdoors as a backdrop and discovered that full length portraits do not need rolls of expensive background cloth / paper. Nor is there any need to flag any of the flash heads to prevent stray light illuminating those annoying creases which seem to occur in even the smoothest and blackest of background material.

In a few of the recent posts of YeoPhotoGroup, an off-shoot of Keith Robins Photography, you may have noticed us using a generator to power a pair of Elinchrom D-Lite 200's. Handling that heavy beast of a generator took two men to carry it plus two more to carry our camera gear and all the other boxes and bags of lights, stands, reflectors, modifiers, softboxes and assorted cables necessary to operate an outdoor studio.
Eventually, in a rash spur of the moment decision, I splashed out on a caravan inverter plus a new 12 volt 45 amp battery for my works plumbing van meaning there is now a spare battery in fairly good nick going spare. We can now operate two powerful studio lights from a small two wheeled shopping trolley containing this make-shift 230volt power supply.

Elinchroms are renowned for their 0.7 second recycling time which allows you to capture that fleeting expression of relief just moments after the shutter has fired which is when some models appear to briefly relax during the often daunting task of posing for the camera. During this two hour bridal shoot the recycling time for our D-Lite 200's remained very close to manufacturers specs and never went once over two seconds. An additional benefit is that once the really short time the lights take to recycle, the drain on the battery drops to such a minimal amount that it would probably last a whole weekend before the old van battery needs recharging.


In the first image here, Hannah is sat on a plastic sheet to keep her dress clean. A softbox front left and quite close created a soft main light and another Elinchrom with an alloy reflector lit the bushes behind her. Grace joined Hannah for the second and third pictures and revealed the difference our lights made to the texture of their lovely dresses. A silvered sun shield from a car windscreen mounted on a framework of plumbers 15mm copper pipe helped illuminate the shadows on the right. (More details on this DIY gadget in a later post)
Using 1/200th of a second shutter speed caused the background of Sydney Gardens in Yeovil to go black, while f11 at ISO 200 controlled the lights. All this was between 8pm and 9pm on 9th September, hence the lack of available light.
Our next challenge is to get a little more ambient light into the background, probably a seaside sunset along with a striking silhouette.
Then it'll be a portrait session with a firework display going on behind, okay so we could handle either of these tasks in Photoshop but where's the lighting challenge in that? We'll probably revert to our hotshoe flashguns for this one although I am very tempted by the much stronger Elinchroms which can handle a softbox or a large brolly without losing too much light.

Hand held fairground night-time shots are nothing new for Keith Robins Photography, but now we're trying the same technique with the addition of a flash.
Camera settings for these shots are half a second exposure at f5.6, 100 ISO and my motorcycle battery powered Vivitar 285 HV on 1/16th power. I asked Grace to stand about six feet in front of me with the brightly lit fairground ride another twenty feet beyond and hand-held my Canon 400D.
I've visited the Great Dorset Steam Fair on many occasions over the last thirty years but only ever used flash successfully back in the seventies on slide film.
Now, with digital you'll be thinking that things are a lot easier - not so! When you love pushing the boundaries of flash photography nothing is easy, or is it? I practised with a flash plus a small twisting curl of the camera body in the first image, then used the same settings for the remaining images which gave me time for a flash plus zoom (the second image).

For the third image there was plenty of time to wave the camera in a small semi-circle without a flash.
Although I did have a Manfrotto tripod with me I just had to try this little experiment without it. Besides my tripod was being used by another member of my little group who had accidentally left his at home.
On the third image I managed to carry out all three manoeuvres while the shutter was still on half a second.

This final image shows Grace lit by 1/16th powered flash quickly followed by zooming the lens towards the telephoto end and tilting the camera slightly downward. Okay, so it took a few attempts to get the fourth shot but the final result works for me and to hear Grace's gasp of astonishment when she saw it, that was reward enough.
Next challenge for YeoPhotoGroup members is a gritty urban portrait using both my Elichrom D-Lite 200 studio lights on a single 12 volt battery. Yes, of course I've tried this rather extreme approach - it works fine - he said with fingers crossed. Look up a new post in a week or two to see how we get on with what are basically indoor lights in an outdoor environment.
http://www.keithrobinsphotography.co.uk

Flash and blur in the same shot! I said it was possible, but we did take over an hour to perfect it. Second curtain flash was already agreed long before we arrived on site, although why my Canon remains fixed in the first curtain mode regardless of menu settings does baffle me.
With a gale blowing like a demon we were on top of Hamhill frantically holding onto my Elinchrome D-Lite 200's. The softboxes nearly blew away, the rainclouds threatened but the wet stuff held back just for us.
We got beeped at by grinning motorists and Nicki received a quiet yet complimentary wolfwhistle. Meanwhile the shots mounted up as we struggled with shutter speed and panning techniques until Kelv's preview screen produced this super picture with the elusive blur.
1/20th of a second at f11 on 200 ISO - Fantastic! I've even framed it in my excitement, plus I have added a little escapism for the front wheel.

Now I wanted just that little bit extra umph. Lifting the D-Lite head off the lighting stand, which was tied to a 'No Waiting' sign to prevent the wind whisking it away, I then mounted it on the end of a decorators extending pole . I managed to hold the light with its dished reflector about six feet above Nicki's head and another six feet in front.

At some twelve feet long the unwieldy pole proved quite a handful, even though the flashhead weighs next to nothing it was over ten feet away from my hand and being whipped about by a gusting wind.
After twenty attempts we managed to finally get a natural looking background blur and becoming frustrated with trying the judge speeds and distances with one second shutter speed in second curtain flash mode
We ended this challenging shoot in damp darkness at around 9pm and were glad of our yellow safety vests which kept the traffic at bay.
I am definitely more than happy with these great results and am now busy planning the next challenge which is a flash lit subject, plus movement of some sort of ambient light or available lights in the background. Maybe the Great Dorset Steam Fair will help shed some suitable lighting. Keith (Strobist) Robins

Elite Junior Triathlete Nicola Morgan looks fantastic here, almost as good as in real life. So much confidence in one so young!
As leading light of YeophotoGroup I was originally thinking of using hotshoe flashguns for this shoot, but I'm glad now that we went for the Elinchrom studio flashheads instead.

Although it's extremely heavy the 2.8 Kwatt generator was also a good move. With hardly a break in the rythm it kept up with the Elinchrom's power demanding 0.7 of a second recycling times for nearly two hours of solid shooting.
With the wind picking up part way through the shoot there were a few time when I was glad of the milk carton counter weights keeping the lighting stands stable. Trevor suggested sand as ballast as water could leak away in transit and leave us without the safeguard of stability for our delicate lights.
Even after years of using high shutter speeds along with fairly high apertures to make the sky dark I never cease to be amazed at just how creative photography can be when using several flashes at an angle to the camera.
The choices of whether to use hotshoe or studio flash depended on the light in an early evening sky, would it be too strong and overbearing in its intensity.

You can't argue with f 16 as a means of keeping that bright sky under control. The pictures below demonstrate the point perfectly, although some would say that we've gone way over the top and I've made it too dark. My response is - show me how you can improve on these shots and I'll listen, maybe I'll even learn something new. I do like to push the boundaries though as the limits are.... what exactly???


Meanwhile, I love the high contrast between Nicola and clouds and know for sure that next time I'm on a serious shoot I want studio flash, I want great backgrounds, texture, vibrance, correct skin colour and above I want eye-popping pictures.
Many thanks to Crusader Corperate Workwear of Lufton Trading Estate, Yeovil for printing these Hi-Vis vests which make us look so professional and dedicated. Also many thanks to Nicola and her dad for their time and effort to help all of us achieve a most exciting evening. Hope you like the pictures Nicki and best of luck on your next Triathlete event.

Can't wait until the next shoot as I want to use floodlights on the background so that with a careful chosen shutter speed we'll get blur. Half the fun of photography is visualisation and then planning. The second half is adapting your plans as the situation changes and new challenges arise. Try to be prepared with an alternative method of lighting up your sleeve, just in case the genny won't start, the lights fail, a fuse blows.
Keith (Strobist) Robins.

My flashgun suddenly starts bellowing smoke!! I connected a 6 volt motorcycle battery via a 4 foot length of wire and it didn't whine when I turned it on. Now that's funny, it's supposed to make a whining sound - hang on a minute, what's this, smoke? Oh Nooooo!!!
I had shaped two blocks of wood to act as dummy batteries in one of my old flashguns plus one of Trevor's guns - trust me to pick up the wrong one!
I had just soldered the ends on and then connected it up without double checking the polarity - silly!!! Always check, double check and then triple check that the polarity is exactly as it should be before turning on the power.
I took ten screws out of the casing and yanked the electronic innards out thinking this was the end of my Starblitz flash, but could see no signs of burnt circuitry. The smoke? Thankfully it was merely the insulated card at the bottom of the battery compartment getting rather warm due to a dead short. Also there are now two battery springs with hardly any springiness left in them. Luckily it's the two that I don't need.
Oh, and yes I pressed on and connected up, correctly this time and Bob's yer Uncle there's that good old familiar whining sound from the flashgun, a little orange light comes on. Yippee!!
Now to see what this baby can really do. Full power recharges in about three seconds. In the mid auto position this drops to about one second and in the low auto (weakest) I can just keep on hitting the firing button and the flash keeps up, the orange light stays on continuously.
Will I ever go back to normal AA batteries again? I doubt it. It's not a cost thing it's all about speed of recycling. I want a flash that recharges quickly, before the client starts to think that you've finished taking photos and wanders off. There is nothing worse than waiting, waiting, waiting for a flashgun to recharge.
High energy AA's are okay for around the twenty flash mark but then they begin increasing the length of down time, then after forty flashes we're up around the half a minute depending on temperature, battery age, flash power setting, etc.
Total number of flashes per six volt battery charge is up around 500 at full power and over 1,000 at low auto setting on the Starblitz. The Vivitar produces over 400 full power flashes but closer to 2,000 on reduced power setting! Now that's what I call Rocking, Man!
The photos accompanying this article are of my Vivitar 285 HV which I successfully converted last year.
Things to watch out for? Short circuits if you carry one of these six volt batteries in your camera bag, picking up the wrong block of wood, dropping the battery on your foot - Ouch! Hop, hop.
Some of you have asked how I clip this battery onto my belt. Two pieces of old car inner tube, they're like heavy duty elastic bands. One goes twice around the battery top to bottom while the other splips inside near the top, down through my belt and out around the lower half of the battery. So quick, it never jumps off and whacks your foot, plus it will hook over one of the adjusting knobs on a lighting stand. I used to work in a tyre company over forty years ago and I still had an ancient inner tube in the shed, 155X13 from a Ford Cortina I believe. Never throw anything away lads!

Nicola is an Olympic triathlon hopeful for 2012. On Sunday the 2nd August she won a bronze medal in the London Junior Elite Triathlon - Wednesday evening I spot her picture in the Western Gazette sports pages and intend asking her ref photos. An hour later and she is in our studio ready for a few portraits. Are we fast movers or what!!!
This is my favourite image from about forty studio flash shots taken last night. Okay so it's not in colour - you should know by now that black and white and I go back a long, long way.
It's now five-thirty Thursday morning and I can't sleep, so I fire up the computer, make a drink and open Photoshop.
I produced this black and white soft focus image of young Nicola via the amazing Black And White filter in Photoshop CS3 by lightening the Red and the Yellow channels. Two stages of softening were added along with a couple of masks and finally, drag in our YPG copyright slogan. I'm sorry we have to do this but there are people out there who think our work is so good that they'd rather pinch than take their own photos for their websites. Bit of a compliment in a way I suppose, although I'd prefer they accredited the images to YeoPhotoGroup, in which case I'd probably give it to them for free.
Levels and curves produced an improvement in the overall lighting, which was a little below our normal high standard due to there being six people in our cramped little studio.
We also tried some daylight shots, (left), plus the shadows are filled using a silver surfaced sun visor for a car windscreen costing just £2-99 at Aldi supermarket - it's held rigid by a large 'H' shape of 15mm copper tubing (what else?).
The gorgeous catch-light in the lower half of Nicki's eyes is a reflection of this 2 foot by 4 foot reflector which I held horizontal just above waist level while Kelv took this image. Kelv definitely knows his Nikon camera and his grasp of lighting is growing week by week.
We're both impressed at how incredibly successful this reflector is in producing soft fill-in lighting and I shall certainly be using this gadget during all my outdoor portrait sessions. Will post up the details of how to build my 'Super Silver Bouncer' as soon as.

Meanwhile, Nicki wants some sponsorship photos of herself in action which is going to produce its own set of challenges as far as lighting is concerned. Flash and daylight balanced, the shutter speed right down around 1/10th of a second for blur and my Vivitar 285HV on full power for main lighting at a three o'clock position. A Starblitz at seven o'clock position for fill lighting - Nicki would be running left to right in this particular setup.
I want to go for late evening, brow of a hill, running and cycling past at various speeds, use second curtain flash to capture a sharp shape with a faint blur trailing behind Nicki due to the slow shutter speed. I want sharp detail on tracksuit, logos, and Nicola's lovely features.
Must also leave enough room around Nicola so that the background, lit by really weak daylight, is attractively blurred but not over-lit. Over this blurring will appear the sponsors logos etc.
This is going to be some shoot! Anyone willing to help carry the kit and hold up the lights and reflectors on this shoot? You'll certainly learn a lot about lighting on the hoof!
I might even try my Elinchrome D-Lite 200's outdoors by running them on a borrowed 2.3Kw generator.
Once I know the generator is capable of handling the power requirements then I might get around to making up a lighter, more portable 12 volt power inverter. I mean, how difficult can it be to knock one of those up in the shed!!? Now come on, don't jest, I'm serious! Watch this space.