Triptych of Donal

Having done a quick edit after my photoshoot with baby Donal last Sunday week, I finally got some time to clean up the images and ended up with a total of 54 usable photographs, and over 100 files when I also converted them all to monochrome.  A big benefit of the studio-style lighting was that I could apply some of the post-processing steps as a batch across all images rather than having to work on each one individually.  The uniform look and clean background also means there’s a possibility to combine some of the shots into a single image like this triptych.

The sequence of shots illustrates the benefit of fast recycle times for whatever lighting is being used in a studio setup, especially when photographing young children.

You might recall that these images are lit by three Nikon speedlights (an SB-800, and SB-600 and an SB-20) and one older Vivitar 283H.  One major advantage of using these is that they are portable and can be triggered wirelessly.  They are also battery powered so there is no need for cables to be running around the floor – again important when photographing young children.

One disadvantage is that the recycle times can be that bit longer with this setup.  Each time a flash fires, it needs to recycle (by charging internal capacitors) so that it can be fired again.  The more power you are using for each fire, the longer it takes to fire the next time.  I have these flashes setup to beep when they have recycled so that once I hear the beeps I know that if I take another shot it will be properly lit.  If I take a shot before the beeps one or more of the flashes may not fire, or may fire at reduced power, and so affect the exposure.

This is a problem I encountered a few times during this shoot because I was using two older flashes which had slower recycle times. To exacerbate the issue, I was using them with regular Alkaline batteries which are rated at 1.5V. The newer flashes I use run off rechargeable Ni-mH batteries, rated at 1.2V.  Without going into the physics of it, the lower battery voltages means recycle times are that bit faster, all else being equal.

In fact all else was not equal anyway because more modern electronics means the newer flashes out-perform the older ones.  And finally I was firing the older speedlights (used as my background lights) at full power, while the newer ones (my main and fill lights) were dialled down.

What all this meant is that if I tried to take three shots in quick succession the background flashes sometimes didn’t fire for the middle of the three shots.  Which is why, to complete this triptych of images of Donal clapping his hands I had to take one of the shots from a different burst.

I’ve since ordered rechargeable batteries for the older flashes to help speed up their recycling times, and will look at reconfiguring my setup so that the more powerful flashes are used for the background lights in the hope that I can get the same exposure with no flash at full power.  This will speed up recycle times, hopefully to the point where the flashes can always keep up with the camera.