Flash for fun

25 second exposure, no flash, only illumination is from the house lights.

I quite like the effect the lights in the planter and above the front door give at nighttime, but have often thought I could do something to get a better image.  The first shot in this post was taken with camera on tripod with ISO at 200, a 25 second exposure and aperture at f11.  In no way does this give the effect I see when I come home as the trees to the right are more illuminated ... in this first image they're just a black blob!

A friend from work had mentioned using flash, so, with an energetic son we tried firing the flash at the trees to get a different effect.  We didn't want it to look like daylight, bit we did want more detail in the trees and other parts of the front yard.  Hmm.  Well, perhaps not quite so much as you can pick out in the second shot.  Here you can see I need to tidy up the leaves and other junk that's accumulated after mulching etc.

25 second exposure again, but this time with additional speedlight flashes aimed at the trees and the house.

So which do you prefer?  Haha ... perhaps neither!  What it did do was expend much of that spare energy my son had as a result of him running up and down the driveway firing the flash at the trees.

Interesting for me is that my son doesn't appear in a ny of the shots, yet he was all over the driveway firing the flash at the trees.  You may recall Louis Daguerre's photograph taken in 1838 of a very busy street.  You'd never know it was busy from the photograph as the exposure was so long that moving people didn't have time to register on the image.  Well, all apart from the shoe cleaner and his customer.  So, with a 25 second exposure and an active son it's hardly surprising he doesn't appear on the image.

Click on the images to see them a little larger and perhaps let me know what you think ... and which you prefer.

Flash :-)

A long time ago ... perhaps before a number of you were born ... in a land far away from where I now live, I bought a flash gun.  Yup, 1980, Coventry in the UK, I bought myself a SunPak Autozoom 3600 Thyristor.  In those days, to get a flash with enough power to let you bounce light around the room required what was referred to as a hammer head flash.  It didn't attach to the hotshoe, but via a bracket under the camera and wire to the x-sync socket on the camera.  I loved it.  It served me well whilst shooting film with my Pentax MX.

The shot you see in this post was taken back in 1982.  Kafka the cat.  Sigma 80-200mm lens on the Pentax MX and shot on Ilford FP4 monochrome film.  What you see here is a scan from a 10x8 print I made in the University darkroom the best part of 30 years ago!

I'd mount the flash on a tripod and use extension cables to allow me to move away from the flash.  It was great.  I didn't get the horrible shadows behind the subject and there was a lovely even light to the shots.

Move on to the present and the Autozoom 3600 is still in working order.  Problem is the Nikon D300 isn't warranted to connect to this flash due to the high voltages returned from the flash.  The solution?  A Phottix Aster Wireless Flash Trigger Set.  I got mine from Progear in Newmarket.  I needed an adapter from the old x-sync connector to the 3.5mm jack used on the Phottix receiver, but now I can shoot with flash ... without wires!  Pleased?  I'm stoked :-)  After the frustrations at the Mangere Arts Centre the other night it's great to have a combination with which I'm familiar and works!  Watch this space for a few more flash shots over the coming weeks.  Oh, and let me know what you think of Kafka :-)