Muki.Dorifuto.com Photography talk with random tangents into the unknown

Glebe tram sheds & off-camera flash

I dropped by the Glebe Tram Sheds last weekend. It's an old, rusting warehouse that has a few derelict trams, one broken down bus and absolutely everything there is covered in spray paint - it's a graffiti artist's heaven. The building used to be an old forklift factory, back in the day.

I was talking to another lone photographer who was there before us who was a local and dropped by from time to time. It would've been a treat to see a timelapse of the place over the years. I also ran into a group of people from UNSW Photo Club. If any of you are here reading, Hi!

My better half volunteered to model for me and after a bit of fiddling about with brollys and lightstands, I got a few alright pics.

I had a 580EX II and a 430EX off camera and another borrowed 580EX II to trigger them optically. I ended up allowing the flash's ETTL to expose for the subject since I had that opportunity.

There are a couple of problems with using Canon's inbuilt IR/optical triggering system. Unlike indoor settings, there isn't much for the flash to bounce off to trigger your slaves. This can be improved by using a stofen to increase what surfaces "see" the light and bounce it, but not by much.

I ended up having a designated left and right brolly, mounting the flashes 90 degrees to the brolly and twisting the flash head. This ensures the slaves' IR/optical sensor is pointed towards you for most shots where they are positioned in the classical 45 degree left-right setup and still affords you some movement.

Note that you can't do this with fixed cold shoes as they don't allow you to adjust to the wider side of the flash shoe, and that the 580EX II has a weather seal that must be removed in order to mount it at 90 degrees (you can slip it back on safely afterwards).

Given that I spent a fair while messing around with positioning brollys, I'm a little glad I didn't have to set the flashes manually. Pocket Wizard and Radio Popper make some pretty nifty triggers that allow you to do all of this over radiowaves while keeping ETTL, but I'm a little too poor for those yet.

So here's the gallery. There's a couple more thrown in the end there without flash.

I just noticed that my shots from the day are all verticals! Interesting...