Friday, November 13, 2009

Canon Speedlight testing - Nov Photog Gathering

As many of the local Indianapolis Photographers may know, Scott Allen puts together Monthly Gatherings for photographers, makeup artist, models and anyone else interested in coming to hang out. So I dropped a few emails and posted on the Gathering page on facebook for anyone with a Canon Speedlight to bring it. After I got to Old Pointe Tavern on Mass Ave, everyone started handing over their speedlights for the testing. We ended up with 5 speedlights. Don brought his 430ex, Scott his 580ex, David brought his 580exII and I had Jay and mines 2 580exII's. Shooting the 50/1.4 on my 5D, my speedlight 580exII mounted on top. I sat down switched all the lights to slave/channel1. I grabbed a few human light stands and some volunteers to be shot. We headed out and down Virgina Ave to find a couple places to shoot and this is what we came up with.

Marc positioned himself on the side of the building holding the 580ex. Jen's husband Ryan with the 430 to the right side, Jay's 580exII to the left on a stand to fill, David and his 580exII to the right to fill, and me center with the 580exII on camera.


Here is Ryan and wife Jennifer, posing for a shot. 580exII on camera, Marc to the right with the 580ex, David at the top left of the stairs with his 580exII and the other 580exII on a stand to the right of Jennifer.

Here was the first shot of the night. Peter striking a pose in front of an office building. Marc camera left with the 580ex, David camera right with his 580exII, 580exII on a stand camera right as fill and the on camera 580exII. Several shots where taken moving lights around and positioning a flash in the doorway behind Peter, only downfall was getting the speedlight in the doorway to fire via Canon IR. After this testing I'm looking at trying out some radio poppers with a few 580exII's and seeing how those work out. In the coming Month I'm going to be shooting a series of several portrait/head shots with the CanonIR setup.

Thanks to all those involved Monday night, I had a great time, I'm looking forward to the next gathering. If you are interested in coming to one of the gathering befriend me on Myspace or Facebook and I will be re-posting future events. As alway, you can see my new work on Flickr. Links to all of my community networking sites can be found at; http://www.jjlaughner.com