The point to my little exercise is to demonstrate and practice
"non-standard" techniques in a controlled environment before having to
lean on them (again) in a situation where things will bite you.
I've got radio triggers and enough receivers for all three monolights.
When I need radio triggering, I know I can use radio triggering. But
there are times when the radio triggers don't always work reliably.
For this, you must fall back on a backup plan. The optical slaves are
my backup plan. I do also have wires, but those are my backup to my
backup and I'd rather take up chuteless skydiving.
What I normally do is just radio trigger one of the strobes and let
the others optically slave. If using softboxes, the optical slaves
don't always fire so I'll but the wireless receiver in the one flash
that is in the softbox. (I have only one softbox, everything else is
umbrella).
This was a situation where I chose the technology first. I chose to
optically trigger from the camera because the camera had a built-in
flash. After determining that the built-in flash wasn't going to work,
I went with a backup plan that still stayed with that technology. I
could have just as easily tossed the radio triggers in the bag, but
stuck with my chosen technology out of stubbornness or something.
In all honesty, I prefer to have just a tiny hint of flash coming from
the camera position when using studio lighting. This brightens up the
eyes more and also tends to take a couple years off of people as it
reduces the shadowing in the neck wrinkles. Not always, but it is
another nice tool in the bag. More than once, my "on camera flash" is
actually hung below the camera. Otherwise, I use a reflector.
So, for this controlled lighting shoot, I'll have the 285HV on 1/16
power, pointed over at one of the studio strobes. My strobe lighting
is set high enough that any bouncing around of the 285HV light is so
far down as to be negligible.
--
Ken Norton
ken@xxxxxxxxxxx
http://www.zone-10.com
--
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