Thursday, 1 January 2009

Voice-activated light stands


This clever bit of technology allows you to position your lighting with pin-point accuracy. You don't even need to take them along in your kit bag - there are always plenty lying around at any wedding.

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4 comments:

  1. Anonymous8 March 2009 at 00:46

    David,

    Any any idea why it is only possible to dial down a Speedlite 580EX in manual to 1/128. Yet in ETTL mode it can clearly go lower power than this....

    thanks

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  2. Anonymous8 March 2009 at 06:56

    Hi Brian,

    I regularly use the Speedlite in both manual and E-TTL mode and have never noticed a difference - it's not clear to me that it can go lower than 1/128 power when using E-TTL.

    What may account for the difference you observe is the focal length that the unit is set to work with. If you're going to make the comparison I would manually set this, which is possible in both E-TTL and manual metering modes.

    I could, of course, be entirely wrong!

    Yours,

    David

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  3. Boaz6 September 2009 at 17:28

    Hi David,

    Great blog, I love your tips page! And your voice-activated light stands got me cracking up. But they are really a key piece of kit, and can be a lot of fun to use ;-))

    I often photograph dance party events. I use a radio triggered off camera flash set-up, and have an 580EX2 flash on camera that I sometimes switch on for some slight fill. Normally I set everything manually. However, the on-camera 580EX2 at 1/128 sometimes still outputs far too much power. When I set it to ETTL, I end up having much finer control using the flash exposure compensation instead of setting it manually.

    You can test it easily: just set your camera to any situation in which the manual 1/128 setting causes an overexposure, then switch the flash to ETTL mode - the overexposure is gone!

    So I come to the conclusion that ETTL indeed allows far lower power flashes than a manual setting of 1/128.

    PS: the Nikon SB900 behaves in exactly the same way too.

    Greetings, Boaz.

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  4. David6 September 2009 at 20:04

    Hi Boaz,

    Many thanks for your kind words and very interesting comments.

    I always imagined that 1/128 was the smallest possible output of the unit. Perhaps in E-TTL mode the unit is able to apply further FEC?

    All the best,

    David

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