Nikon D300 Wireless Flash Fun!

Well, I have to admit I have just converted to the 'dark side'. No, not really. But I did buy myself a Nikon after close to 20 years of shooting Canon (my first Canon was given to me by my father when I was only 12 years old). I taught a workshop on on-camera flash last weekend, a perfect opportunity to test my new D300 and its wireless TTL system.

For this image, I used 3 SB800's in wireless mode. The first was positioned to the (camera) right of our model Aleksandra, diffused through a small Soft-box. The second was placed inside the piano, firing towards Aleksandra with the aim to act as a rim light. Finally, the third flash was lying on the keys of the piano, pointed up and zoomed to illuminate only Pooya's (our male model) face. This flash was dialed down by 1 stop, and an orange warming filter was used. The flash inside the piano was set to minus 2 stops, the Soft-box illuminating Aleksandra was firing at normal power. ISO was set high on the camera (ISO 800) and I used a slow shutter speed to catch the light of the candle. There was hardly any other light in the room, so pretty much all you see is flash (with the exception of the candle). This was the final setup during our workshop and aimed to demonstrate how quickly and efficiently you can create dramatic lighting effects using battery flashes.

By the way, Canon also offers wireless flash operation, and this very scene could have also been setup with inexpensive Vivitar flashes using optical slave triggers. I just really wanted to test my new toy, and was pleased with the results I got with minimal effort and time spent on setting it all up...