How do you convert a painter’s pole into a professional lighting tool that can carry your Speedlite to various heights above your subjects and then collapse it down so that you can maneuver through a crowd? I want you to meet the LongArm and the MetalHead. When used together, this $50 dynamic duo has quickly become a favorite tool in my gear bag for location lighting.

The LongArm – Extendable Painter Pole

My 11-year old son Tony discovered the LongArm on a recent expedition to Home Depot. I was checking out the sandpaper and he walks over with this painter’s pole zipping in and out several feet. “Put that thing away” I barked. Then “Hey, wait a minute, bring it here.” Tony was playing with a Shur-Line Easy Reach extendable paint pole. The cool thing about the Easy Reach (aka: the LongArm) is that it’s a 3-section pole that collapses into itself with the push of a button. It has detents every six inches so that you can extend it out to the length you need in a second and then lock it in place. You (and your assistant) will absolutely love how quickly the LongArm stretches out to just the length you need and how quickly it retracts. Zip. Snap. Zip.

Shur-Line Extendable Paint Pole (aka: the LongArm) - Push the black button, slide to the length you want, release the button, and it's locked.

Unlike other painter’s poles that look like a broomstick or something used by the pool guy, you won’t be embarrassed to carry the LongArm right into the country club for the big wedding. It’s a sleek-looking combination of black foam, red plastic and aluminum.

The Shur-Line Easy Reach comes in two lengths. Model 06570, the short version, extends from 30″ to 60″.  Model 06572, the real LongArm, extends from 45″ to 108″ – think “just under four-feet to nine-feet”. I have both models and have found the long version to be indispensable. The short version is an easy carry but… just a bit too short most times. You can find them at Home Depot, Lowe’s and the like. You can also buy them through Amazon. [At Amazon: long version and short version.]

The MetalHead – Kacey Pole Adapter™

The MetalHead is the magic wand that converts the LongArm into a professional tool. If you’ve ever tried to bolt a piece of lighting gear onto a painter’s pole, you know that the threads are too fat and too short to fit into an industry standard fixture. Thanks to a tip from Gregg Zivney, who makes the great Wizard Brackets and a cool Dual Flash Bracket, I found the Kacey Pole Adapter. After showing it to David Hobby during his Strobist workshop in Paso Robles, it was dubbed “The MetalHead”.

The MetalHead (aka: Kacey Pole Adapter) converts a painter pole into a useful lighting tool.

The MetalHead provides a standard-sized pin onto which you can securely bolt a variety of lighting fixtures. It is robustly machined from solid aluminum and provides a solid base for your gear. Order the MetalHead for $19 from MPEX – MidWest Photo Exchange or $22 from the manufacturer.

The LongArm and MetalHead In Action

The LongArm-MetalHead combo can carry your Speedlite to the top of a party tent for a nice bit of bounce light. It can also carry your Speedlite over the top of table for a bit of fill light. If you need to move through a crowd, just zip it down and slide through. It used to be that we’d carry a mini-lightstand for this job. Our new rig is much better looking, easier to use, and a good bit longer.

The LongArm extends from just under 4' to 9' – enough to carry a Speedlite up to the top of this party tent.

The LongArm-MetalHead combo carries a Speedlite over the top of a table.

The MetalHead is where you start building your lighting rig. You’ll need an Umbrella Swivel Adapter so that you can control the angle of your light. (Don’t skimp here – buy a strong one.) A Speedlite with a Stofen Diffuser or Honl Grid is an easy carry. An umbrella – either shoot-through or silver – is also an easy carry (unless it’s windy). The Lastolight EzyBox (one of my favorite Speedlite modifiers) definitely pushes the boundary – of my assistant’s willingness to hoist the rig overhead for minutes on end. The good news is that the LongArm, as shown in the pic at the opening of this article, is long enough so that you can extend it to full length and set the end on the ground. Then, the EzyBox is relatively easy to loft up to six feet or so.

Thanks again to my son Tony for being the curious rascal that he is, to Gregg Zivey for pointing me to the Kacey Pole Adapter, to David Hobby for giving it a cool name and to my son Tom (in the pix above) for fully endorsing the LongArm-MetalHead as the assistant on a number of recent shoots.

[About the photo at the top: You're looking at a Canon 580EX in a cabled hotshoe attached to the hotshoe bracket on the Lastolite EzyBox (the 24" model) that's bolted into an umbrella swivel adapter clamped onto the MetalHead at the end of the LongArm. Wow, that's a mouthful. The little box hanging  from the EzyBox bracket is an Elincrom Skyport receiver. The cable runs from the Skyport into the hotshoe that holds the flash. I'm a big fan of the Skyports as they are smaller and more affordable than Pocket Wizards. Click on the photo below to see a larger photo of the rig.]

PixSylated is very proud to announce that Joe McNally will teach the ‘Hot Shoe Diaries’ workshop in Paso Robles April 20–24, 2009. The week-long workshop will cover many of the small-flash techniques presented in Joe’s newest book of the same name.

The ‘Hot Shoe Diaries’ workshop will be the inaugural workshop hosted by Paso Robles Workshops. PRW was announced last September by PixSylated’s host, Syl Arena. “It’s fitting that Joe will teach our first workshop” said Syl. “In addition to being a great friend and mentor, it was Joe’s encouragement that helped me carry the PRW dream across the chasm that started with the October financial melt-down. Without Joe’s unyielding support, PRW would likely have fallen into the abyss.”

For complete details on the workshop, click here.

The challenge of shooting any event is to organize, process and distribute the photos with the least amount of effort possible. Lightroom makes easy work of organizing event photos through its keywording and file renaming options. Lightroom also handles RAW processing and image distribution through web and print media with ease.

I had the good fortune to be the event photographer recently for the 2009 Wheels of Wellness in Phoenix. The event is an important fundraiser for the Arizona chapter of the Wellness Community – which is part of the national non-profit organization that provides support, education and hope to people with cancer and their loved ones. [If you have cancer or know of someone who does, be sure to click through on the Wellness Community link.]

My assignment was to create a library of images to serve multiple masters: magazine and newspaper coverage of the event, prints for the car owners, online publicity, etc. Given that the Wheels of Wellness featured 24 vintage race cars, a dozen or so racing celebrities and loads of interested supporters, preparing the files and prints for hand-off to my client could have put me in the pits for some time. Fortunately, as a long-time fan of Lightroom, I implemented new keyword strategies that got me to the finish line much sooner than I anticipated. If you shoot events, I’m sure that you can adapt the following ideas to fit your needs.

Event Photography Workflow In Lightroom Starts With Keywords, Keywords, Keywords

The first challenge, after importing the files into a new Lightroom catalog, was to sort the photos. I  made nearly a thousand pix and wanted to sort them as quickly as possible. The nature of event photography is that you shoot when there’s an interesting meet-up between people or a moment of great light. The cars and people were not photographed in any specific sequence. Some cars were photographed six or seven times throughout the day. Owners and celebrities were in one frame, but not the next. So, I had come up with a way to gather photos spread throughout the shoot and organize them in a way to facilitate searches in the future.

My post-import Lightroom workflow for events starts with the following steps:

1. Keyword each photo with a single keyword
2. Filter the photos by keyword to pull up a specific group
3. Give a descriptive file name to each image in the keyword group
4. Regroup all the photos in the catalog by sorting on their file names
5. Add detailed keywords to facilitate other searches
6. Use color labels to mark individual frames that have a specific person
7. Add keywords to these special selections

Step 1: Managing event photos in Lightroom starts with a simple keyword. Fortunately, the vast majority of the Wheels of Wellness photos had at least one car with a number. So the first thing I did was open the Library module in grid view and keyword the cars by their number. For the handful of cars without a number, I keyworded the photos by their color or another unique attribute (one per car). For people shots without cars, I keyworded by the most famous (or infamous) person in the shot. The whole point was to get each photo tied to a single keyword.

Step 2 - filter by keyword

Step 2: In the Library module, I then filtered by each keyword. [Shown above - Library Module / Library Filter bar: Text > Keywords > Contains Words > keyword]. This enabled me to pull up the photos of each car / person as a group. I filtered by the keyword “42″ and came up with the 18 photos of the 1969 Eagle Indy car exhibited by the Riverside International Auto Museum. I filtered on “24″ and came up with all the photos of the 1962 Ferrari 250 GTO. [I did find that #28 is a popular car number as I had three #28s. As I detail below, an extra quick step was needed to sort these shots out.]

Step 3: I then renamed all of the photos pulled up by each keyword. [Library  > Rename Photo] or [hit F2] then [Custom Settings > Edit]. My file naming sequence was MyName_Event_Car-Description-Year_####. As a standard practice, I now rename all my files with MyName at the beginning. This helps me track web usage of my images. (Yes, pirates will change the file name, but my clients generally don’t.) I included the Car-Description-Year to help others find my images when they are searching for images on the web by car name. I always leave the original #### in so that I can search for images by their “Original number suffix” created at the time of capture. Every once in a blue moon this has helped me locate a file that I otherwise misnamed. (I think there were four or five blue moons during the past year.)

Step 4 - sort by filename

Step 4: Sort the photos by their new file names. [View > Sort > File Name] This is the easiest step as you’ve already done the hard part. Gathering the photos by file name will help facilitate detailed keywording as you now can select any number of photos at the same time and give them all the same keyword with just a couple of clicks.

Step 5 & 7 - add detailed keywords

Step 5: Add detailed keywords based on the file name. Down the road, I’m likely to be asked for photos that have a specific person or car in it. Or maybe I’ll be asked for photos of cars entered into the show by a specific owner. So, I first add keywords that apply to all the images in a file name group. I add detailed keywords for the car and year (in case the file name is changed), the event name, the car’s owner, etc. Again, these are keywords that apply to all the images within that file name group.

Step 6: Use color labels to mark individual frames that have a specific person or group. I then reviewed the catalog again and used color labels in the Library module to mark individual images with a certain person or group in them. For instance, after applying the keywords based on file name, I labeled all the images that had car owners in them with red labels by hitting 6 after each image was selected. This allowed me to instantly gather all the images with red labels by filtering via the Attribute option on the Library Filter bar.

Step 7: Add keywords to these special selections. A quick select all move and I added the keyword “Owners-Friends” to the whole group. I hit the 6 again (while the whole group was still selected) and the red labels were removed and ready to be used for another group – such as all the frames that have a certain celebrity in them. So, when the editor of Vintage Motorsport calls to say “we need that photo of the ‘32 Maserati,” I’ll be able to quickly pull the images up and say “the ones with or without Clive Cussler?”

Talk with your client about how they (and others) are likely to use the images. This will give you ideas about the types of keywords that you will want to include. The word “Trend” in the keywords above is for Trends – a society magazine that wanted celebrity photos right after the event. If I had not queried my client about possible usage, I would have had to burn time by going through the images again to find the celebrity pix.

BONUS TIP: Sorting Cars With The Same Number – As I mentioned above, 28 must be a popular car number as I had three cars (out of 24) that I keyworded initially as 28. I could have created three separate keywords, such as 28a, 28b and 28c. But then I would have had to remember which was 28a…. Rather I chose to keep moving very quickly and keyword just by the number on the car. After Step 2: Sort by Keyword, I then selected individual shots of a specific car while holding down the Command (aka: Apple or 4-leaf clover on Mac, Ctrl on PC) and went on to Library > Rename Photo (following Steps 3 – 5 above). I repeated this selection process for the other two #28s. Easy.

Lightroom Makes Quick Work Of Other Event Photography Tasks

Once the files were renamed and given detailed keywords, I used many other Lightroom modules and features.

• rated the photos in the Library module (1-star meant it was a keeper, 2-stars meant candidate for publication)
• optimized the RAW captures in the Develop module (color balance, black, fill light, brightness, contrast, clarity – are my most common adjustments)
• created a contact sheet with 4 photos per page and the file name underneath each in the Print module (this was then saved as a PDF, which you find in the lower left corner under the File > Print Settings > PDF > Save As PDF). I include the PDF on my client delivery disk so that they can have a quick index to the individual files.
• printed portraits of the car owners in the Print module – each 8.5×11 print included my logo in the corner (I want them to remember who I am!).
• uploaded an event web gallery in the Web module — which you can see by clicking here.
• exported the client selects as publication-ready JPEGs (quality = 100%, Adobe RGB) in the Library module. Then burned to DVD (along with the index PDF) for delivery.

Lightroom Resources

Great Lightroom Tutorials by Julieanne Kost

Adobe Lightroom 2 Learning Center at NAPP

Adobe Lightroom 2 Learning Center at Photoshop Cafe

Lightroom Journal – tips straight from the Lightroom Development team

Lightroom Killer Tips by Matt Kloskowski

Lightroom-News by the gang at Pixel Genius

Inside Lightroom by O’Rielly Media

Lightroom Help & Support at Adobe

Buy Lightroom 2 – Full Version about $266

Buy Lightroom 2 – Upgrade Version about $90

When You Want To Take Your Keywording To The Next Level…

The strategies for keywording are about as diverse as the stars in the sky. My guru for all topics uber-keyword is David Riecks. If fact, David takes the dialogue about keywords to such a height that occasionally I get dizzy. But I try to keep up. Actually, he talks and writes about the world of ‘Controlled Vocabularies’ – sets of keywords organized into systematic hierarchies. Advanced keywording is essential to those who license their images as stock photography. Keywords are typically how photo editors search for images. David runs the site ControlledVocabulary.com where you’ll find great resources on learning about the topic as well as a Controlled Vocabulary catalog that you can use in Lightroom and many other digital asset managment programs. David also moderates the Controlled Vocabulary forum on Yahoo.

The line drive at 1/400 = blurry seeds flying everywhere.

GANG LIGHT – Part 2: Just how fast a shutter speed do you need to freeze the seeds flying from a pumpkin that your teenage son is trying to drive over the left field fence? Also, how do you create beautiful light on a dreary, flat light afternoon in a way that let’s you shoot at a really fast shutter speed?

Fortunately, I had a dozen Canon 580EX II Speedlites and an arsenal of RadioPoppers (all on loan from their manufacturers) so that I could try to answer these important questions. As you’ll see below, the answer to the shutter speed question is “really, really fast.” The lighting question takes a bit longer to answer.

The base hit at 1/3200 = still a bit of blur if you look really close.

Freezing Supersonic Seeds

Back in the days when I got my first SLR (hint: Nixon had just resigned), the top shutter speed on most cameras was 1/500″.  In comparison, some 30+ years later, the shutter speeds on prosumer DSLRs seem supersonic. You’d think that anything north of 1/2000″ would be fast enough to freeze pumpkin shrapnel. Turns out that pumpkin seeds are supersonic too.

I shot at a variety of speeds — all in full-stop increments from 1/400″ [1/800", 1/1600"...] When I hit 1/3200″, based on a super-chimp of the camera’s LCD, I was sure we had stopped space and time. Back in the studio, with the benefit of Lightroom and a large monitor, I discovered otherwise. Turns out that the magic didn’t happen until 1/6400″.

The home run at 1/6400" = seeds frozen in space.

Left: 1/3200" Right 1/6400" - an important difference in sharpness

My hero shot for the afternoon. Details shown above.

Lighting The Bash With High-Speed Sync

High-speed sync, as I’ve explained elsewhere, changes the way that a Speedlite fires. Rather than one big burst, the camera tells the strobe(s) to fire a continuous series of pulses. The idea behind this technology is that the strobe turns into a continuous light source for the brief duration of the exposure. To get this instantaneous recycle, the power of the flash is greatly reduced.  With high-speed sync, you can use virtually any shutter speed on your camera. [Confused? Then click on the link above and read that article before continuing.]

The downfall of high-speed sync is that it significantly reduces the power coming from the strobe. This means a couple of things: 1. you have to move the lights really close to the subject and 2. you need multiple lights.

As I wrote in the piece on Ben Willmore (here), my friends at Canon USA and RadioPopper loaned me an arsenal of Speedlites and Poppers (radio triggers). The lessons I learned with this shoot continue to erode my thoughts about the lunacy of having so many small strobes at hand. In fact, given that the second-generation of Poppers has been launched (details here) and the pesky fiber optic is a thing of the past, setting up so many lights will not be a big deal in the near future.

The Gang Light Rail - 12 Canon 580 EX IIs triggered by RadioPopper P1s

For the pumpkin smash-a-thon, I bolted a dozen Canon Speedlites onto a 7′ piece of red oak. The Gang Light Rail was held aloft by a couple of C-stands. I stood under the rail with the master Speedlite atop my camera. Given that I was close enough to get splattered with pumpkin guts every time, I don’t believe that the strobes could have been fired by traditional eTTL using the infrared receivers on the remote units. They’d have to be able to see my master unit. The geometry just wasn’t there so that all twelve units could see my master.

The pumpkin smash only deepened my affection for RadioPoppers. I was able to move in and out, left and right, without any concern for the position of my master unit in relation to the remote lights. Given that in some shots I was literally a couple of inches from my son’s swing radius, it was very nice not to have to worry about maintaining the line-of-sight between the remotes and the master.

I also have to say that I love the quality of light coming off my Gang Light Rail. The soft quality is created because the width of the lights along the rail wraps the light around my subject. Each strobe unit is a key and fill light at the same time.

You can also change the weather with high-speed sync. Did you notice the difference between the rail shot and my pumpkin shots? The rail shot was made with my camera choosing the shutter speed based on the ambient light. For the pumpkin shots, my manually-set shutter speed was 5-stops below ambient. The light grey sky turned into a storm-filled sky.

I Can’t Think Of Another Way To Light This Shot

Given the camera gear that I have on hand (Canon 5D) I have to live within the limitations of the focal plane shutter. [Again, read my earlier article on high-speed sync to understand why the type of shutter makes a difference with sync speed.]

Many comments on the Willmore piece, both here and on Strobist, suggested that I was a fool to use a dozen Speedlites instead of a big (expensive) studio pack to turn noon to night. I’m called a fool all the time. If I’m going to earn the title, I’d at least like to get it for the right reasons.

So, I’d like to preempt those same comments here and say again “I’m a Canon shooter. I have a focal-plane shutter.” Sure, I could bring in a big (expensive), bi-tube studio pack and fire it off at a low-power setting – which would give me an ultra-fast burst of light. But… there’s that focal-plane sync speed barrier. With my 5D, my sync speed is 1/160″ (the manual may say different, but I’ve fired this camera over 100K times, and my sync speed is 1/160″). So anytime I shoot with a studio pack, the fastest I can shoot is 1/160″ – if I want to illuminate the whole frame with flash. [David Ziser has a very interesting piece about shooting at faster speeds - but the pumpkin shots don't have the composition that David's technique requires.]

Let’s do the photo-math. The hero shot above was made at 1/6400″ at f/5.6. There are five and a third stops of shutter speed between 1/6400″ and my sync speed of 1/160″. So, to light with a big (expensive) bi-tube, studio strobe, I’d have to shoot at 1/160″ because that’s the sync speed for my 5D. To keep the ambient light (the sunlit background) exposure the same, I’d have to stop down five and a third stops from f/5.6 to f/40-something. Funny. I don’t have a lens that goes past f/32. Further, the edges of the frame and the background are better in soft-focus. So, how to shoot at a relatively wide aperture if my fastest shutter speed is 1/160″?

I guess I could throw on my Singh-Ray Vari-ND filter and dial in a ton of neutral density to make the studio pack work at a wide aperture at 1/160″. Maybe. Have you ever looked through a Vari-ND dialed down 6 or so stops? It’s almost impossible to see through. It’s not something that I’d want on the end of my lens when I’m dancing a couple of inches outside the arc of a pumpkin-spattering bat.

Like I said above, the lunacy of having so many Speedlites on a shoot is melting away.

More Gang Light Adventures

Part 1: I Shot Ben Willmore, 12 Speedlite Ring Light

More to come…

GANG LIGHT – Part 1: Shooter with crazy red hair, plays with 12 Canon 580 EX II Speedlites and 8-feet of red oak to build a high-powered “ring” light, then fires it with a dozen RadioPoppers in high-speed sync mode at a best-selling Photoshop author.

I shot Ben Willmore on the street in broad daylight today. There were several innocent bystanders watching. The sun was high in the sky and coming in straight over Ben’s shoulders. I centered my favorite lens right on his eye and BANG! I had him in 1/8000 of a second.

Shortly before the “incident”, Ben and I met up in San Luis Obispo on day 3 of Joe McNally’s location lighting workshop at The Lepp Institute. Joe was kind (or crazy) enough to ask me to come down for a quick talk to the 16 students in his workshop about my experiences with RadioPoppers.

Ben is also a frequent instructor a Lepp — as well as a perennial favorite at Photoshop World. You may know Ben from his many books on Photoshop. [If you're looking for a crash course in stepping up from CS3 to CS4, check out his Photoshop CS4: Up To Speed. It always gets me through the upgrade.] You may know Ben for his Digital Mastery DVDs. Yes that Ben… the guy who drives around the country and writes about his life on the road in WhereIsBen.com. If you don’t already, you should also get to know Ben through his innovative photography – which dissolves the boundary between camera and computer.

Ganging Up A Dozen Canon Speedlites

Thanks to generous equipment loans from Canon USA and RadioPopper, I’ve been playing with 15 Speedlites this week. Why? To see what I can do with more pocket strobes than even a guy like McNally should be allowed to carry.

Turns out you can stop a motocross rider flying through the air at 40 m.p.h. with enough sharpness so that you can see the individual links on the motorcycle’s chain — look for that Gang Light post soon.

You can also attract crazy looks from guys who should know better when you pull out a 2′-square wood frame that has a dozen Speedlites bolted to it. Ben’s certainly a curious and intelligent fellow. The first thing he did was ask me to put my head in the center of the lights so that he could take my photo. Actually, I think he was checking to see if my head would explode from so many strobes going off at once before he stepped in front of the rig. [Update: See the evidence here on Ben's blog.]

Turning Noon Into Night With High-Speed Sync

Ambient exposure at 1/160

High-speed sync at 1/8000

PixSylarians know that I’m a huge fan of RadioPoppers (proof here and here). It’s also well-known that I’m very fond of shooting in high-speed sync (proof here). If you’re not yet a full-blooded PixSylarian, RadioPoppers give me eTTL control of my Canon Speedlites without the hassle of a line-of-sight connection. High-Speed sync is the flash mode where my Speedlights fire in incredibly rapid bursts rather than as one big flash so that I can shoot at speeds way beyond my camera’s sync speed (1/160 on my 5D).

To make the opening shot, I did four things:

• activated the high-speed sync setting on the master Speedlite parked atop my camera – the RadioPoppers then worked it out so that all 12 remote units were also in high-speed sync mode.
• set my shutter speed to 1/8000 – to  totally kill the sunlight and turn noon to night. Even at the widest aperture on my lens (f/2.8), at 1/8000 there was no daylight to speak of as far as the camera’s sensor was concerned.
• set the Speedlites to maximum power – I used Manual for this rather than ETTL. Again, the Poppers did the talking for me. I went to Manual because in eTTL the range of Flash Exposure Compensation is capped at +2EV and I wanted more.
• adjusted my aperture until I liked the amount of flash exposure coming through.

More Gang Light stories:

Part 2: Smashing Pumpkins – 12 Speedlites on a Straight Rail

I had the great fortune to catch up with Kevin King – the inventor of the RadioPopper – over the Thanksgiving holiday. If you’re a PixSylarian, you know that I’m a huge fan of the Poppers. Kevin is an amazing guy who was naive enough not to believe the negativity of a legion of engineers. The story of the development of the original Popper is proof that sometimes it’s more important to be creative than to have a head full of knowledge. More on that later…

Kevin gave me a sneak peak at the new generation of RadioPoppers. They are, in a word, amazing. This is not a one-generation step. It’s at least a double-jump. The fiber-optic is gone! The design is compact and elegant. The new system will fire TTL-flash and non-TTL (like studio strobes) simultaneously. Every Popper complaint, workaround and mod will become obsolete with the new generation.

Click here, right now, to read the details of what’s been going on in Popperland. Then, mark your calendars for Friday, December 12, 3:00pm Pacific. That’s when the new models will be unveiled on RadioPopper.com.

The new RadioPoppers will ship in early January. Fear not if you need Poppers for holiday shoots. You can order the original P1 now and get 100% of your purchase price applied towards the new models. Yes, for a month or so, you’ll still have to jury-rig the fiber-optic with black Gaffer tape. Do so with a smile knowing that the future of wireless-TTL is close at hand and very bright indeed.

^ RadioPoppers enable full TTL flash control for Canon and Nikon strobes. Unlike traditional wireless TTL, which relies upon a finicky line-of-sight connection between the Master and the Remote - RadioPoppers can transmit this TTL control through walls, in bright sunlight and over extended distances.

Off-Camera + TTL = Better Flash Photography

The number one opportunity to improve your flash photography is to unbolt your Speedlite from the top of your camera and move it… anywhere. If you rely on your camera to calculate the proper flash exposure or if you want to dial the flash exposure up/down independently of the ambient exposure from your camera, you have to shoot TTL (“Through-The-Lens”) flash. So, how to you combine getting your Speedlite off your camera and still maintain a communication link for TTL-flash? That’s the journey that led me to discover the incredible RadioPoppers.

The Basics of Wireless TTL Flash

Corded, Off-Camera TTL Flash
There are a couple of ways to get your flash off your camera and maintain TTL communications. The simplest is to use a special cord. Both Canon and Nikon make them. The cords are rather expensive ($65 to $75) and a bit short (2′ to 3′ coiled). They come in very handy when I’m moving quickly and want just an arm’s length of space between my camera and flash. I carry two with my Speedlites. (You can get amazing mods to off-camera cords here — but warm up your wallet beforehand).

Wireless, Off-Camera TTL Flash
The wireless approach to TTL-flash is based on having a direct (aka: “line-of-sight”) path between your camera and flash(es). You need a Master flash or flash-less Commander unit on your camera or you’ll need one of the Nikon bodies with a pop-up flash that can operate as a Commander. The sensor on the Remote unit (which everyone else calls a “Slave”) has to be able to see the signal sent out from the camera-mounted Master/Commander. When you venture off into the land of Wireless-TTL flash, you’ll quickly discover what I mean by “Speedlite Yoga” as you twist the head of your flash into obscure positions so that it’s pointing at your subject while the sensor is pointing at your camera. As you’ll read below, the line-of-sight issue is the Achilles Heal for Wireless-TTL Flash and the reason that so many pros loath it. It’s also the reason that RadioPoppers were invented.

Three other quick points about Wireless TTL Flash:  1 – Most of the time, I set my Master flash to that it communicates to the Remotes but does not actually fire during the exposure.  2 – There are 3rd-party flashes that claim to work with Canon or Nikon systems. I advocate that you should have the same brand of camera and flash.  3 – When Canonites say “e-TTL” and Nikonians say “i-TTL” – both are talking about their brand of wireless communication between camera and flash.

Off-Camera, Non-TTL Flash
There are a number of other techniques that enable you to fire your flash when it’s not parked on top of your camera. All of these break the TTL communication link and require you to set the power level on your flash manually (not bad, just different). Radio triggers, like PocketWizards and Skyports, are fantastic and expensive. Optical triggers and really long PC-cords are low-tech and less expensive options. As today’s focus is RadioPoppers and the future of wireless TTL-flash, I promise that I’ll write about off-camera, non-TTL flash soon. In the meantime, head over to Strobist to fill your head with great ideas on this topic.

Wireless TTL Flash Is Finicky
I admit it. Wireless-TTL Flash can be problematic to absolutely infuriating. It’s not that the concepts are faulty. It’s the gear. Wireless TTL is relatively easy IF the Master and Remote units can see each other and IF there’s not too little or too much distance between them and IF the sun is not too bright or at the wrong angle. That’s a lot of IFs.

Here are situations where traditional Wireless TTL Flash falls apart:

• I’m moving around the subject and not giving any thought to the need for the Master to be pointing directly at the Remote.
• The Remote is being moved around by an assistant who is not paying attention to the Master-Remote connection.
• I’m switching the camera from vertical to horizontal to vertical – which means that my Master is, then isn’t, then is pointing at the Remote.
• I want the Remote to be parked around a corner or directly behind the subject.
• I stuff the Remote unit into a softbox or hide it behind a shoot-through umbrella.
• I wander more than 30′ or so from the Remote.
• As seen by the Remote, sun is coming right over my shoulder – effectively blinding the poor guy.

RadioPoppers To The Rescue

RadioPoppers are the brilliant idea overlooked by industry giants and invented by a regular guy in Arizona. Rather than rely upon a visual connection between the Master and Remote, the RadioPopper system captures the electronic pulses being emitted by the Master and converts them to radio waves. The receiving unit then decodes the radio signal and delivers the TTL-flash message to the sensor on the Remote via a fiber optic cable.

With RadioPoppers, I don’t worry about much — other than staying creative with my camera and lights. I maintain full TTL control – including high-speed sync and flash exposure compensation – without getting shutdown because there’s not an absolutely perfect, line-of-sight path between the Master and Remotes. With RadioPoppers, I’m free to stick my Remotes into awkward locations. I’m free to wander a good distance from the Remotes. I’m free to strap a wide range of light modifiers to my Remotes and not worry about blocking the sensors. I get all these options without giving up the ability to dial my flash up and down from my camera.

RadioPoppers Are Not Perfect… Yet.
As of mid-November, 2008, RadioPoppers are still a first-generation product. Is this new technology rather expensive – yes. Is this new technology a bit buggy – sometimes yes. Is this new technology able to do something that no other gadget can do – YES! That’s why I remain a huge (and patient) fan of the Poppers.

^ Early in my career as a Poppaholic: rubber bands and black gaffer tape. Look really close... you'll see that I didn't get the white ball on the fiber optic taped down properly on the Remote's sensor. So, this flash would not fire.

If you’ve tried Poppers and not been satisfied, implement the following and give them another go:

• You have to have a roll of Black Gaffer Tape (“BGT”) to make Poppers work reliably.
• The clear plastic sleeve that holds the ball to the end of the fiber optic needs to be permanently attached to the fiber optic with thin strip of BGT.
• The placement of the fiber optic probe onto the Remote sensor is critical – especially with smaller units like the Canon 430EX. If your flash is not firing, it’s probably because the little white ball is not exactly on the sweet spot. Study the Popper manual for the details. Move the ball around until you find the sweet spot.
• Once you find the sweet spot, use the BGT to securely tape the white ball in place. Don’t use a tiny piece of BGT for this. Use a big piece of BGT, because you also need to…
• Black out the entire sensor with BGT. Take no chances with a bit of sneaky sunlight getting in.
• Make sure the other end of fiber optic has not pulled out of the receiver – even just a bit. A small strip of BGT can help with this.
• Make sure you have fresh batteries and make sure the Poppers are turned on… seriously.

There are a number of RadioPopper mods discussed on the web. Many will void your RadioPopper warranty. My suggestion is that you break out the BGT in the near term and keep an eye on the RadioPopper blog for news about the introduction of second-generation models.

Poppin’ Reno With RadioPoppers

Last summer, shortly after I received my RadioPoppers (a transmitter and three receivers), I did what any normal shooter would do – I headed to Reno. Land of the free and home of the strange (at least just before and after Burning Man). Actually, Reno is a great place to shoot. Brilliant, high desert sun. Forests and peaks nearby. The Truckee River and Lake Tahoe. Weathered and abandoned buildings out in the desert. Colorful people. My good friend, MD Welch, who I met through a Joe McNally workshop, lives in Reno and set up a number of shoots with… colorful people. [That's MD in the white shirt serving as my stunt double for the demo shots.]

Shoot #1 // Truckee River Woman – Shooting Beyond The Range of Traditional Wireless TTL Flash

^ Truckee River Woman - Of course my first Popper test would be to jump in a river.

^ Just off the bank of a river is not exactly the place you'd want to use larger strobes (Quantums, Rangers...). Here's a perfect situation for Speedlites and e-TTL.

When you’re shooting an avid kayaker who likes to wear large sequins, it makes sense for everyone and everything to be in the water at the same time. Right? Here’s where I got my first taste of RadioPopper joy. The two Remotes were winged out on stands as shown above. Without e-TTL, I would have had to change the settings manually as the sunlight continued to fall. Without e-TTL, I also would have had to make more trips across the slimy and treacherous river bed. One wet slip was enough for me. Without the Poppers I would have had to stay within 30′ or so of the remotes. So, thanks to the Poppers, I was able to back up a considerable distance with my 70-200mm to shoot long and create a narrow angle-of-view while still controling my Speedlites remotely.

Shoot #2 // True Love – Forget About Where The Remote Is

^ The position of the Remote created the dramatic falloff in this mid-afternoon portrait on a brightly lit porch.

^ With RadioPoppers, you don't have to change the position of the Master when you suddenly decide to move in close or switch the camera from vertical to horizontal.

It’s not everyday that I meet a young woman who has “Mommy” tattooed beneath a heart on the inside of her arm. Sunlight was blasting in from everywhere during this mid-afternoon shoot. In order to settle the viewer’s focus on the truly interesting part, I had to create some dramatic falloff by moving the flash in real close. As shown above, the Speedlite was “fishpoled” in over the top. Here’s another example where e-TTL shines. I could dial the intensity of the flash up and down without touching the Speedlite or breaking up the flow of the shoot. Thanks to the RadioPoppers, I could also jump from horizontal to vertical and move in and out without having to stop and point my Master back at the Remote with each switch.

Shoot #3 // Battle Born Derby Demons – 2nd-Curtain Sync, Popper-style

^ Catching the essence of the Battle Born Derby Demons. With 2nd-curtain sync, the flash fires just before the end of a slow exposure.

^ The RadioPopper Remote-On-A-Stick trick enabled me to focus on capturing the Derby Demons at just the right spot on the track.

Catching the essence of the Battle Born Derby Demons (Reno’s flat-track roller derby team) proved to be another great test of the RadioPopper system. Imagine mixing a cocktail of Olympic speed skating, mud wrestling and a rock concert in a downtown park. You’ll get close to the feeling of a Derby Demon bout.

Two things quickly became evident as I tried to create photographs that portrayed the experience: 1 – a static (think “sharp”) image would not do and 2 – I had to catch the skaters as they passed through my slice of light light rather than try to chase them with it. As for for #1, it was evident that 2nd-curtain sync and a slow shutter speed were perfect. As for #2, my solution was to hoist a Speedlite and Popper atop a tall stand and zoom the head out to the max of 105mm. Thanks to the Popper, I could dial the intensity of the flash up and down until I found the right combination of slow-shutter and strobe — which continually changed as twilight merged into night. The Popper also allowed me to wander along the track and shoot my lit zone from a variety of angles without any concern about the Remote being able to see the Master.

Other Random Thoughts About RadioPoppers

Canon or Nikon should have invented this technology a long time ago. If you take out the AA battery, the electronic workings of a Popper aren’t that big. I hope that one of the big guys licenses this technology and builds it right into their Speedlites / Speedlights. The enthusiasm about e-TTL / i-TTL would explode.

RadioPoppers do things that Pocket Wizards, Skyports and other “dumb” triggers can’t do and vice versa. As you’ve already read, Poppers can do something that no other device can — namely deliver TTL flash control beyond the boundaries of normal e-TTL or i-TTL. What Poppers cannot do is control a wide range of devices like studio strobes or trigger remote cameras. Even if you get Popper-fever, you’ll still want/need another form of wireless triggers to use with other types of flash. $orry.

I’ve no doubt that RadioPoppers will continue to evolve and that many of the current quirks will go away. As much as I love BGT, I believe that it won’t always be necessary to have a roll handy when shooting with Poppers.

Have You Popped?

If you’ve used the Poppers, for better or for worse, add a comment with your experiences, insights and feature requests. I’ll make sure that the guys at Popperland see them.

High-speed sync enables daylight flash at wide apertures by changing the way the flash fires.

According to the 1931 song, only “Mad dogs and Englishmen go out in the noon day sun.” Thanks to high-speed sync, flash photographers can now be added to the list. High-speed sync enables shutter speeds way beyond the norm for flash photography. It also opens up a new realm of creative opportunity.  Many shooters are intimidated by high-speed sync. In reality, it’s really easy to use if you have the right gear (say a Canon DSLR and a 580EX or a Nikon DLSR and an SB800).

Flash Photography Basics

I think of the amount of the flash as the duration of the flash. A speedlite ["speedlight" in Nikonese] firing at full power emits a longer burst of light than it does when firing at quarter power. When measured in a tiny slice of time, say a microsecond (one millionth of a second), the actual brightness coming out of the flash per microsecond is the same. At full power, the flash is just illuminating for more microseconds than it does at quarter power. [Note to uber-geeks: yes I know that it takes a few microseconds for the flash to reach full intensity and after peak intensity it falls off for a few microseconds, but let's not be too uber.] Looking at this backwards, if you want to freeze motion with flash, then use a high-powered strobe set to a low power setting.

The amount of flash can be controlled by the photographer, by the flash or by the camera. In manual mode, the photographer dials the amount of the flash up and down. [I do this often. To find out when and why, you'll have to wait for a future article. High-speed sync is way cooler than manual.] Some camera-mounted flash units have photo-sensors that will control the duration by measuring the amount of light coming back from the subject. [I think of this as "almost-matic" technology and never use it.] Today’s digital cameras have truly automatic technology in which the camera and the flash talk during the exposure. We refer to this as TTL – Through The Lens – flash. e-TTL in Canonese and i-TTL in Nikonese.

Sync speed is the fastest shutter speed that you can use during flash photography without “screwing up” the shot. If you use a faster shutter speed, a portion of your frame will not be illuminated by the flash. Ever have a flash photo with a dark band along one side? You shot faster than you sync speed. Of course, one shooter’s screw up is another shooter’s creative technique. Check out this video by David Ziser for an alternative look at purposefully  shooting faster than your sync speed.

The type of shutter in your camera (or lens) establishes the sync speed. View cameras (remember them?) and most medium-format cameras use lenses that have built-in leaf shutters with metal blades that open instantaneously from the center of the lens. Leaf shutters can synchronize with a flash at any shutter speed [technically, any shutter speed that is longer than the duration of the flash].

Single-Lens-Reflex cameras (film and digital) have shutters in which two curtains move across the focal plane. The interval between the curtains is the shutter speed. Essentially the exposure is a slit moving across the focal plane. For normal sync, SLRs must fire the flash after the first curtain is fully open and before the second curtain has started to close. Most DSLRs have sync speeds in the range of 1/125 to 1/250. At faster shutter speeds, there is no point when the entire sensor is exposed all at once – so normal sync is not possible.

Slow shutter speed = wide curtain gap, normal sync fine

Fast shutter speed = narrow curtain gap, must use high-speed sync

There are also cameras with electronic shutters that enable faster sync speeds (typically up to 1/500). Theoretically, electronic shutters can sync at any speed – but currently there are limitations caused by sensors over-heating… someday this will be really handy technology.

How High-Speed Sync Works

High-speed sync only works with dedicated TTL systems. The camera has to be able to talk to the flash. Further, you have to enable high-speed sync on the flash (Canon) or in the camera (Nikon).

With standard sync, the shutter has to be completely open when the flash fires. So, the camera fires the flash at the instant that the first curtain is fully open (“1st-curtain sync”) or at the instant just before the second curtain begins to close (2nd-curtain sync”). If you’ve ever seen a flash photograph taken at a really slow shutter speed where headlights of a car trail, that’s 2nd-curtain sync. [My cameras are always set to 2nd-curtain sync.]

With high-speed sync, the camera actually changes the way the flash fires. Rather than a single, strong burst, it tells the flash to send out an ultra-fast series of low-power, strobe pulses. Because the strobe pulses are so close together, the light appears to be continuous. So for the duration that the narrow curtain slit is traveling across the sensor, the flash is “always” on.

Canon’s Japan site has a useful diagram here. Fear not, it’s in English.

The upside of high-speed sync is that I can use virtually any shutter speed. The downside is that the output of the flash is greatly reduced. I often have to use several speedlites to get enough light when shooting at high-speed.

Freedom of Aperture With High-Speed Sync

High-speed sync gives me more creative freedom (aka: wider apertures). This is the main reason that I use it. Let’s say that I’ve been commissioned to shoot a portrait of a rising music star and that the only time she’s available is for 20 minutes at noon. Given that the sun is straight overhead, I’ll have to fill her face somehow. If I use a shiny reflector, she’ll squint and probably complain. So, I want to use a fill flash (or two) pushed through a white umbrella to soften the shadows.

With regular sync, the fastest I can shoot on my Canon 5D is 1/160. [Yes, I know the Canon specs say 1/200. But, in my part of the universe, it's really 1/160.] So, under the blazing sun, at 1/160, my widest aperture for a good exposure is f/13. That’s way too much depth-of-field for my portrait style. One option, would be to slap on my Singh-Ray Vari-ND filter and dial in several stops of neutral density. But, then I can’t see the magical expressions on my subject. The better choice is to turn on the high-speed sync on my 580EX (literally a quick button push). Now I can (almost) pick the aperture that I want to use. The reality was that there was too much sun. At 1/8000, the widest aperture I could get was f/5.6 – still, much better than f/13.

Taming The Sun With High-Speed Sync

Another benefit of high-speed sync is that you can overpower the sun with a small speedlite or two. In the photo above, you’ll note that the sky and background (basically, everything lit by the sun) is underexposed. Why? Two reasons. I wanted to make my subject the dominant element (aka: the brightest part of the picture). I also wanted to reduce the competition between the geometry of her arms and the geometry of the lattice. How? I set my overall exposure at -2 EV and my flash exposure at +2 EV. That’s about all the thought I put into it. I let the digital gnomes in my camera do the calculations.

In the following shot, you’ll see the underexposed daylight at left and the effect of the high-speed sync at right.

At left: Daylight only. At right: Canon flash at high-speed sync.

Setting Up High-Speed Sync

On Canon 580-series or 430-series speedlites, your flash must be set to ETTL mode. Then push the H-button until you see the H-icon on the screen. You are now in high-speed sync mode. Frankly, I keep high-speed sync on all the time. I shoot in aperture-priority (AV) mode 99% of the time – meaning that I’m almost always more concerned about controlling depth-of-field than I am about stopping motion. There’s no harm in leaving high-speed sync on. When I dial to an aperture that enables a shutter speed of 1/200 or slower, the camera automatically operates the flash at normal-sync mode – meaning that the full power of my speedlite is available.

On Canon Speedlites: Mode must be ETTL, then push the H-button. That's it. High-speed sync is activated.

On Nikon systems, it’s called Auto FP High-Speed Sync. As I understand it, you activate it in your camera rather than on the flash. Nikon shooters are encouraged to add comments relating to the specifics for their cameras.

Watch High-Speed Sync In Action

Watch this video of Joe McNally shooting high-speed sync in the sand dunes of Dubai. Thanks to the Strobist, David Hobby, for putting it together and launching it on the web.

Why did Joe use so many speedlights? You’ve already learned that high-speed sync greatly reduces the output. So if you have one speedlite and want to double the output (get another stop of light) you have to add a second speedlite. Then if you want another stop of light beyond that produced by two speedlites, you have to add two more speedlites. If you want third stop of additional light, you have to add four to the (one plus one plus two). So for three stops, you went from one light to eight. [Stay tuned... I've decided to round up as many 580EXs as I can and start firing them off en masse for a future article on this most-confusing concept.]

Wireless, High-Speed Sync with RadioPoppers

The opening image was shot using three 580EXs, a 430EX and a mess of RadioPoppers. One 580 was camera mounted with the Popper transmitter. It acted as the Master, but did not fire during the shot. The other three speedlites were mounted ala McNally on a C-stand at camera right and zoomed out to 105mm so that the light was concentrated along the length of the subject.

The Poppers provided eTTL control without too many hiccups.  The biggest issue was making sure that the fiber optic was placed exactly over the sensor. Not a biggie after we figured it out. Using the Poppers enabled me to forget about maintaining a line-of-sight between my Master and Slave units. I could work with my subject without concern for where the rack of speedlites stood. In short, I think RadioPoppers are great. New technology, yes. Rather expensive, yes. A bit buggie, yes. Able to do something that no other gadget can, YES. More on the Poppers to come soon.

RadioPoppers + Canon 580EXs = Wireless, High-Speed Sync

I carry a bunch of seldom-used gadgets that rumble around the bottom of my gear bags. Some have been around for years. I can’t find the courage to remove them because they might come in handy one day. Last week, it was the Cardellini’s turn to come to the rescue.

I was shooting on location – 30 miles from my studio. My assignment: photograph Frank Cullen – an environmentally conscious contractor who is building a large, straw bale house. My client, a home building magazine, wanted a photo of Frank and the straw bales. Turns out that the perfect corner for the shot – in terms of interesting geometry – was also being blasted by the midday sun.

The first line of attack was to fly a Westcott Scrim Jim with a full-stop silk. Essentially I wanted the sun to act as a fill light on Frank. To get the scrim in the proper position, I had to fly it high – using the two C-stands that I had in my truck.

The next step was to light Frank at a level so that the fully sunlit house would not dominate. I also had to light him so that his deep-set eyes would not fall into shadow. I’d just used both of my C-stands for the scrim. How to support the Chimera softbox and Quantum Q-flash? That’s when the MacGyver nerve started twitching.

“Let’s see. Use the scaffold. No. The step ladder! And the spare arm from the C-stand with the… baling wire?” Rather than look like a total hack, I pulled the Cardellini Clamp from the bottom of my grip bag and used it to turn the ladder into a stable lightstand for the softbox. [Detail shots below.] I added a couple of Canon 580EXs with a shoot-through umbrella on the other side of Frank and voila!

About The Cardellini Clamp

The Cardellini Clamp was invented by Steve Cardellini – a veteran of the film industry. Basically, it’s a 5/8″ threaded bolt, two wide plates and a large star-nut.

Cardellinis are versatile creatures that will grab onto almost anything… pipes, fence posts, large lumber, doors and yes, ladders. The width of the plates provides plenty of grip surface. You can use them to hang heavy lights. At the other end of the spectrum, you can use them to hold a piece of lightweight foamcore as a fill card.

Cardellinis come in a wide range of lengths and with different pin and plate configurations. When made by Matthews Studio Equipment, they are also known as “Matthellini Clamps.”

Need to add one to your gear bag? Click here to see the range offered at B&H Photo. Click here to see them at Adorama.

As flashmasters Joe McNally and David Hobby have proven again and again, the first step to getting an amazing photo with your strobe is to uncouple it from your camera and move it to the side/back/top/bottom of your subject. Combine a unique flash angle with TTL flash control and you have a dynamic duo.

TTL (Through-The-Lens) metering of flash is one of the amazing windfalls of digital photography. Not only can your DSLR figure out where to focus and what shutter/aperture combo to use, it can tell your flash when to fire and for how long. Wireless TTL works by sending a series of pre-flash light pulses from the controlling unit atop the camera to the remote unit(s). Both Nikon’s i-TTL and Canon’s E-TTL provide wireless solutions that enable the camera to maintain control of the strobe(s) if… if there’s nothing between the camera and the strobe, if the strobe is not too far from the camera, if there’s not too much sunlight, if it’s not raining, if… Enter RadioPopper, destroyer of the IFs.

RadioPopper is that (likely-to-be-a) multi-million dollar idea that’s causing a whole legion of TTL shooters to chant “why didn’t I think of that”. (Kudos to inventor Kevin King for having the vision, guts and persistence to make RadioPopper a reality.) The RadioPopper P1 captures the pre-flash communication pulses on the commander/master unit, converts the message to a radio signal, sends it to the receiver(s) which then converts it back to a series of pulses that the remote strobe(s) can see. The fact that there’s a concrete wall between you and your strobe(s) is no longer a TTL-issue. Check out all the details on the RadioPopper site.

What Others Are Saying About RadioPoppers

PixSylated, the brother site to Photo-Resources.org, will soon be putting a team of Poppers to the test. If you can’t wait for that review, check out:

the blog of Thomas Graves, a Baltimore wedding photographer

quick impressions by the Strobist himself, David Hobby

the blog of Nathan Welton, a vagabond wedding photojournalist

the blog of Ed Pingol, a San Francisco shooter

the blog of Nick Carver, a Southern California nature / portrait shooter