Dolly Flashers [A Strobist approach to doll photography]

After a discussion on speedlights (strobes, flashes, lightguns, etc.) in another thread, it was suggested to have a Strobist specific thread here to discuss off-camera flash techniques for photographing our dolls. This is where we'll do that. So let's get down to business.

PURPOSE
I'm envisioning the purpose of this thread to be both instructional and exemplary regarding how to creatively use flash to produce not only well lit photos, but the specific photos we'd like to create. Natural light is fantastic, and using it is great, when it allows you to. Unfortunately the sun, and very often how it lights things, is the one light source we can never truly control. We can mitigate its effects and work around it, but ultimately we are at the mercy of the time of year, time of day, clarity of sky, and other factors that make shooting natural light less than predictable.

Controlling your light with off camera strobes can be a very effective way around these obstacles and is often best when used WITH natural light to produce a natural look. We'll discuss the how-to and offer examples to illustrate specific techniques to help anyone considering flash to get the look they're trying to achieve.

HOW TO PARTICIPATE

• Creat a how-to for specific techniques
• Post examples of finished photos or experimentation with flash
• Ask questions!!

So let's go flash some dolls!

 

Alright. So here's a primer for those getting started with off camera flash. First things first. You owe it to yourself if you are considering using off camera lighting for your photos, dolly or otherwise, to check out where this madness started. David Hobby, former staff photographer for the Baltimore Sun (My home digs, yo) started a blog some years ago with the intention of sharing simple lighting techniques he'd developed in the field to help other photographers create great, lit photos with minimal gear. Hit up The Strobist Blog for the professional's view on how to begin.

What I'm going to do below is start off with some of my gear, and provide a quick, simple example of how I apply it to doll photography.

The Gear
I've had my DSLR for almost 4 years now, and have been experimenting with strobist techniques as a hobbyist for almost 3 years. In that time I've acquired the following gear, mostly via Holiday and Birthday gifts (B&H gift cards for massive hoorayz!)

FLASHES/SPEEDLIGHTS/FLASHGUNS/LIGHTGUNS/STROBES/ETC.

Above are the flashes I've bought, or have been gifted. I have two SB-600s because when I was first starting out I had no idea about other manufacturers or cheaper alternatives outside of Nikon (brand loyalty for the pocket ouch!) and SB-800s were WAY more pricey than I was looking to get into.

The Vivitars, by far, are my favorite at the moment. They're about $79 or so and have manual power settings, which is very important. TTL works fantastically well if that's what you've got, and I still use it occasionally, but as a personal preference like full control much better.

That Quantaray is super cheap and I got it from a friend for free. It's full-power only (yikes!) and he got a bunch from a camera store that closed and was selling them on Ebay for about $20. If I use it at all I tend to use it for rimlight and typically tape on some neutral density gels (all of which I, or someone else, will get into in the future, I'm sure.)

TRIGGERS
You're going to want a way to fire these babies off, and here are some options in my collection

I have a solitary TTL cable from Nikon, and a set of Cactus V2s radio triggers (from Gadget Infinity), and while Pocket Wizards, RadioPoppers, and CyberSyncs are the rage, Cactus and other cheapo triggers are inexpensive and work just fine. I can count the number of times they've let me down on one hand, and I've been using them for a couple years now. That isn't to say that they don't have their limitations, but I've been lucky thus far.

OTHER FLASH ACCESSORIES
Sometimes the triggers aren't all you need. Here are some more things.

My SB-600s don't have a sync port of any kind, so I've had to buy these HAMA adapters so I can attach my Cactus triggers. The V2s triggers do have a hotshoe, but the construction of the thing has the flash sit up a couple of inches higher than it normally would, which places the flash well above the center of an umbrella and most other light modifiers. The adapters lower the flash a bit and they make me happier.

Also above is an optical trigger (which I'll mess around with in the future)

LIGHT MODIFIERS
For this first example, I'll show what will likely be the first modifier anyone looking to go strobist should look for. Umbrellas.

Above are a shoot through and convertible umbrella (and a pug, which is garbage at diffusing light). The convertible just has a black cover that's removable, thus changing it from a bounce umbrella to a shoot through. You could use the shoot through for a bounce umbrella, but you'll get all that shoot through spill that could interfere with your environment.

UMBRELLA MOUNTS
You'll need a way to attach that umbrella to your flash, dawg.

There are a metric crap ton of various sorts of mounts for your light modifiers, but what I have are super cheap, basic ones that do everything I currently need them to do (hold an umbrella and my flash.)

LIGHT STANDS
You'll need a place secure all this gear. You'll need a light stand (most, but not all of the time.)

I'm not a rich guy, so you'll see me say "CHEAP" and "INEXPENSIVE" a lot. Fact is you don't need fancy or expensive gear to do any of this. You need SOME kind of gear, sure, but it need not break your bank account. These are cheap (see, I did it again) stands I got with a Photo Flood kit that included the stands two shoot through umbrellas (one of which is shown a couple pics above), a handful of 500 watt bulbs. Found the kit on sale, but you can get inexpensive (BAM!) stands at B&H (linked above somewhere) for $20.

PUTTING IT ALL TOGETHER
Pop up your light stand, son! Then, attach your umbrella mount

Attach your umbrella

Attach your flash and triggers

Now open that umbrella up and get ready to getcher strobe on!


All of this above is just a quick example of the setup for the simple shots I'll post below. This is really basic stuff at this point, but we'll get creative soon, don't you worry. I wanted to show folks a very routine start to finish of a plain old regular strobist photo. Those will be directly below this.

 

It was a bleak and cloudy day. This, incidentally, makes it AWESOME for taking flash photos outside. So that's what I did.

The Missus [amubleu] gave me a doll and a couple props and was like, "Here. Take a picture of this stuff." So I did. All photos are directly out of camera, resized for posting here.

NATURAL


Above is Haru. He's a Yo-SD SWD White Rabbit with a section of tree trunk and a miniature deer. It makes absolute sense in this evenly lit, cloudy backyard setting. He's well lit and looks nice.

REFLECTOR


Above is the same shot (though slightly off original angle) with a silver reflector placed camera right to give some depth and shadow. All natural, baby!

FLASH


Above is the same shot with my Vivitar through an umbrella close to 45 degrees camera right. VERY basic setup. The first natural photo was taken at 1/250th of a second. This is NOT POSSIBLE with the Cactus V2s and my camera/flash combo. At best I'm getting 1/160th before I get the shutter in the shot. So I had to crank up my power on my flash and close up the aperture (bigger number) to balance it out. Then, I closed the aperture a full stop more to dim the ambient light, which will account for the shadow levels in the final shot. Flash is balanced for the final aperture setting. This way I'm creating with no small degree of control, how much shadow I get, the direction of that shadow, how soft or hard that shadow is, and contrast between lit areas and dark areas. This is what I love about flash.

While the shot above is very basic, and borderline natural light in feel, the amount of control I have over this environment is only limited by my imagination and the scope of my gear. The versatility is much greater indoors, where your control over natural light is minimal if not nil. The day was cloudy so I figured I'd take this outside for the first example. And again, all shots above are straight out of camera with no processing apart from resizing.

Here's a final image I think is pretty cool that's been given my normal processing (levels, color adjustment, sharpening, cropping.)


It doesn't look too terribly different from the shots above because I'm not big on processing my photos to death and back and then to death again. My goal is to fine tune things to be as close to natural as possible. That's just me though, and I'm no authority.

Below is a shot of the reflector placement, which only served to highlight that I forgot to take a setup shot of the lightstand in relation to the subject.


The reflector is basically propped on the lightstand, so imagine the flash and umbrella hovering just above where that reflector is and that's about right. I'll make a point to be better about setup shots in the future. Can't believe that slipped my mind.

So there's a basic comparison of natural versus strobist, and why I like to gets mah flash on. I'll try to get another setup example sometime before too long, but in the meantime if anyone has any questions on the gear, setup, photos above, ask away. I'll do my best to not sound like a blathering moron. Hehe.

 

Cloudedmind: You could absolutely cut the handle off the dollar store umbrella (but be careful, because you're going to get a very sharp edge), but there's one thing to consider when doing this: White Balance.

Most portable flashes emit a color temperature that's daylight balanced. Because color tempurature and balancing it is important, photographic umbrellas are WHITE white so as to not interfere with color balancing. That's about the main difference between photographic umbrellas and rain umbrellas. The construction is basically the same, but photo umbrellas are white balanced to not interfere with color temperature. Bounce umbrellas can be any color on the outside, but would need to be white or silver on the inside for the proper effect.

That said, if you can find a white dollar store umbrella (this is seemingly very hard to do) then by all means, definitely do that and save yourself some money. If you don't mind a bit of color correcting in post processing it doesn't even NEED to be pure white (though it would have to be pretty close), but it can get time consuming to color correct all of your photos.

And in all honesty, the umbrella's simply the basic light modifier most photographers using flashes own. You technically don't even need any of that stuff if A) you like hard light, or B) you find other ways to diffuse the light coming from your flash to soften up the shadows.

At the end of the day it's all about what effect you want, and the ways to get that effect, often by any means be they cheap, expensive, DIY, or anything else.

 

rainwaltz: You know, you could always use that SB-800 on camera in commander mode to fire the SB-900 AND the two SB-200 flashes in CLS mode. There's also TTL cables and cheap radio triggers like the Cactus ones I have. They're $33 for a set that includes a transmitter and receiver, and additional receivers are about $17. Not free, but pretty inexpensive compared to pocket wizards and the like. That said, I'm all for using what you have that works. I break out the 500-watt floodlights occasionally (but not often because HOLY CRAP THE HEAT.)

cloudedmind: Bedsheets are great modifiers, actually. I've known people who tape them around large windowframes to create a HUGE softbox powered by the sun.

Zagzagael: Yeah, I've been known to grab whatever's near. A folded up piece of paper if I have to. Hehe. Also, thanks! I'm hoping to do a bunch more!

 

cosplayshots: NOOOO! Why the umbrella hate?

It's a very good thing to have as many varying methods for off camera lighting as possible, so definitely keep bringin' the McNally method and I'll rock it Hobby style. Hehe.

There's a financial hurdle to all this lighting gear, a very steep one sometimes, and I think that's why the Strobist blog and the techniques represented there have caught so much traction. It's about DIY and getting results without spending a whole lot (except when you CAN spend a whole lot and there's even MORE you can do then.) I'm from the school of "I have no idea what an extra $30 that isn't spoken for by food and bills looks like" more than anything, so that's the angle I tackle things from. Hehe.

Incidentally, the Lumiquest LTP has me thinking of scale. That softbox (light, collapsible, super handy) is going to be roughly the same proportion for an SD sized doll as, say, a 28" softbox for a human/person/thing. That's a really good size for doll portraits. Scale is definitely something to think about I think, because it is absolutely important to the end result. Bigger isn't necessarily better. Now I'm going to have to see exactly how small they make shoot through umbrellas.

 

cosplayshots: I definitely understand about umbrella spill. In fact I shoot bounce more than shoot through by a large degree. Sometimes all that directional control isn't necessary, though (outside in the open with nothing nearby to catch the spill). I'll do shoot through then to get the light source closer. I have a Westcott Apollo 28", and use it when I need the control a softbox gives, absolutely. Most of the time though the umbrella is just fine for what I need.

Zagzagael: Once more on scale, I think I found the shoot through umbrella that may do the trick. The Strobella is hilariously tiny. Hehe.