cortes
25th of February 2009 (Wed), 21:19
I was feeling inadequate with my small Westcott collapsible umbrellas so I got a pair of Eclipse white 60" ones. Now I can scare small children:)
I decided to a series of tests to see what settings on my SB800. The tip of the umbrella is against my gray seamless. The shaft doesn't extend beyond the clamp. The black backing is on. The strobe is vertical with the head turned 90 degrees. All shots were done from a tripod with the same camera aperture and shutter speed. The power on the strobe was also unchanged. From left to right the strobe was set to 35mm, 28mm, 24mm, and 17mm. I cranked the exposure for all of them by 2.5 stops in ACR to bring out the over shoot.
There's over shoot in all of them. It's hard to tell, but it seems like it picks up at 24mm. The 17mm certainly seem the most even across the umbrella. Pretty much the same thing I saw in Robert's test.
One thing I noticed about the umbrella is the rod flexes under the weight of the head, which somewhat defeats the angle of the bracket hole to center the flash.
It also pushes my SB800's to the limit. At ISO 200, 1/2 power, and the umbrella about 6' away, the Sekonic calls for an aperture of f/5.6. I'd prefer to use a little less power so I can adjust by 1/3's. There are no 1/3's between 1/2 and 1/1 power. Robert's bracket for two strobes would do the trick. With SB900's at $450 and SB800 even more expensive at the moment, I'm thinking Elinchrom Ranger:shock:
I decided to a series of tests to see what settings on my SB800. The tip of the umbrella is against my gray seamless. The shaft doesn't extend beyond the clamp. The black backing is on. The strobe is vertical with the head turned 90 degrees. All shots were done from a tripod with the same camera aperture and shutter speed. The power on the strobe was also unchanged. From left to right the strobe was set to 35mm, 28mm, 24mm, and 17mm. I cranked the exposure for all of them by 2.5 stops in ACR to bring out the over shoot.
There's over shoot in all of them. It's hard to tell, but it seems like it picks up at 24mm. The 17mm certainly seem the most even across the umbrella. Pretty much the same thing I saw in Robert's test.
One thing I noticed about the umbrella is the rod flexes under the weight of the head, which somewhat defeats the angle of the bracket hole to center the flash.
It also pushes my SB800's to the limit. At ISO 200, 1/2 power, and the umbrella about 6' away, the Sekonic calls for an aperture of f/5.6. I'd prefer to use a little less power so I can adjust by 1/3's. There are no 1/3's between 1/2 and 1/1 power. Robert's bracket for two strobes would do the trick. With SB900's at $450 and SB800 even more expensive at the moment, I'm thinking Elinchrom Ranger:shock: