Flash photography in the land of digital has come a LONG ways with the D3 being the epitome of current iTTL technology. While not technically working the same way as the benchmark F5 TTL flash system, in practice it delivers the same if not better light and that’s what we’re looking for in our images. The principle is real simple sounding: light leaves the flash, then bounces off the subject and, traveling back through the lens which is then seen by the camera’s sensor and just like a light switch, when the correct amount of light has reached the sensor, the camera’s computer turns the flash off. Viola-magic! To this day, this “at the speed of light” technology and performance just blows me away. Then again, I remember running up and down the dock flash filling the Queen Mary during a firework show with a Norman 200B.
How do YOU get the power and magic of the D3 flash working for you? (And when I say working for you, I mean more than a technically perfect photograph.) You shoot a heck of a lot, and I mean a lot! To master flash, you’ve simply got to get out there and use it, there are no short cuts. What I have here for you is just the starting point for all that shooting you’re going to do to master flash. Pushing the buttons and selecting the right combination of trivia is what I’m going to provide you here. Actually applying the light and going beyond technically correct to the more important, aesthetically pleasing light I’ll leave to folks like David Hobby and Joe McNally. You see flash with wildlife while using the same SB-800 is totally different in application than what these folks do. You learn what they do and then you can apply it to wildlife. Let’s get down to the nuts and bolts.
When DO you turn the flash on?
That’s a helluva a question and why I think most folks are scared of flash in the first place. To use flash, you need to know light, ambient’s bright and dark side. Light is what photography is all about and flash brings to ambient light both quantity and quality. That is when the ambient light, the light falling, bouncing, reflecting, streaming, blaring, defused, shadowed, is too much or not enough for what we want to communicate visually. Flash can be a big part of the light equation that makes or breaks a photograph! So, you gotta know light in all its forms and sources.
When it comes to wildlife photography and if we need to apply flash, I look at the ambient light and ask these two questions of it: is there enough to provide shadow information for what I want to communicate AND is there enough light to accurately record the COLOR of the subject. These questions directly look at the quantity and quality of the ambient light falling on the subject and if it’s not properly answering these questions, than the flash goes on. And we’re just talking about flash fill. There’s more.
What if you’re working in the dark? What if you want to be working in the dark and there’s lots of ambient light? In either of these cases, if you’re using flash then the flash will be the main light and the ambient light plays the roll of fill or, plays no roll at all in the light equation. You, the photographer are in control of all of this and you decide how you’re going to make the light dance, ambient, flash or a combination of both. So when do you turn the flash on? Well, that all depends on what you want to communicate, don’t it?
Basic theory and boring rules to forget
Here’s the crap that typically drives the last nail into the “should I use flash” coffin. I bring this up only as a reference point that if all else fails, you can fall back on it. But as the subtitle indicates, you can forget it all too and be successful. There are certain photographic camera workings that even with a computer taking control, you still need to be aware of to make the most of the computer. Even in the world of iTTL, certain laws of light physics play dramatic roles in our application of flash. This is all stuff you want to read about once, tuck way in the back of your mind and then continue on shooting.
To appreciate iTTL and the control it brings to our photography with flash, we step back to look at how flash works when it comes to exposure. The portrait our fathers loved to take at family gatherings use to be quite the affair. The first self timers was this silver box you screwed into the shutter release with a big lever with a red flag so you could see when the camera was about to fire. Then came the air bulb release and the cable we had to hide. Then there was the flash, first the flash bulb and then the Vivitar flash line. Dad would be there standing behind the camera and focusing, then looking at the distance scale on the lens, then looking at this scale on the flash, all in an attempt to determine what f/stop to use. It was a big deal when that scale became a dial that lit up with the touch of a button. Knowing the ASA (that’s ISO to you youngins) of the film, the GN of the flash and the distance, an f/stop was determined so finally, that portrait could be taken. Believe it of not, even with iTTL we’re still working with those same principles! (Note: The SB-800 can work iTTL with an ISO range of 25-1000 only )
It’s called the Inverse Square Law which simply translates to, light from the flash falls off really, really fast once it leaves the flash. You can actually see the inverse square law in action on the back of your SB-800. Just turn it on, set your aperture to wide open and while looking at the distance scale (default is meters, you can turn it to feet by depressing the SEL and following the menu) close down your lens. Each f/stop you close the lens down you’ll see the distance getting less and less. That’s the inverse square law in action. But with iTTL, for the correct exposure you don’t have to jump through the hoops our fathers did to arrive at the aperture. We have a computer doing all the work for us so we get to select the aperture we want to use.
As you close that aperture down, the distance the light can travel and still affect our exposure gets less and less (this is the physics of light expressed in the inverse square law). Now, change your shutter speed and note your aperture, do you see any change in the distance scale? You don’t and that’s because shutter speed does not affect flash exposure. ………pause, let that sink in a moment.
Here are the first two camera workings that you need to understand about flash. When a flash is being used, aperture effects flash exposure, shutter speed effects ambient light exposure. Aperture affects our DOF and shutter speed affects how we communicate movement. And, we need to combine the correct aperture and shutter speed if, IF, we want the proper ambient light exposure when that flash is turned on. Conversely, you can change the combination of aperture and shutter speed to manipulate the ambient light exposure as well (using the shutter speed to do so).
Prior to TTL / iTTL, the aperture used when working with a flash was carved in stone by the inverse square law. But with TTL / iTTL, we have a computer acting like a light switch, turning flash on and off as we dictate by the f/stop we’ve selected based on the DOF we desire. Other than the furthest limit the light can reach from the flash, the computer circumnavigates the inverse square law. Except for the outer limits of the SB-800s power range, the inverse square law can be ignored. This is not true for shutter speed though, nothing has changed there with TTL / iTTL. The shutter speeds effect on our flash photography is exactly the same as it was in 1890 when George Shiras III first started to use it with wildlife. And in all honesty, you can ignore this entire section and get along with flash just fine. It’s just if you want to take it to the next level, the McNally / Hobby level that you’ve got to think things through. This darn light stuff!
And the little red light comes on
You need light so you grab that little black box that contains light brighter than the sun. What next? You turn the SB-800 on and technically you can just push the shutter release and there is a better than 50/50 chance you’ll get a good to great flash exposure by no more than spending the money to own a D3 and SB-800. But then that little red light comes on and you ask yourself, “Can I do better?”
You have LOTS of options with the Nikon Creative Light System with the SB-800 being the current center piece. We’re going to focus on just the SB-800 operation since it is the most powerful of the flashes. When you turn the SB-800 on, you’ll want to toggle through the various options by depressing the MODE button. As you do this, the icons in the top left corner of the rear LCD will change. As you cycle through them, you’ll see a display of two lightning bolts, TTL & BL (illus #1). This is your fall back position if you get yourself in a flash exposure hole you can’t otherwise dig yourself out of. The BL in the instruction book is called Balanced Fill-Flash but in my mind it stands for Balanced Lighting. When you see BL in the flashes LCD the computer for the camera and the computer for the flash (two different computers) will do their darndest to balance the ambient light exposure and that of the flash.
BL with the D3 is really darn good (as in, you don’t need to dial in exp comp). BL does a great job of handling ambient light exposure along with the flash. But many times, having the light “balanced” doesn’t really bring drama to the light which is what we’re looking for when we use flash. I recommend that you go further. When the light from the flash is perfectly balanced with the ambient light (and the D3 does this with deadly accuracy) you have what some refer to as 1:1 light or, no shadows, which equals light with no character (what also typically happens with the flash is on camera). There’s a ton of visual interest in no information, another way of saying shadows are a good thing. You look at the images of Joe McNally, when he uses flash he sculpts it around the subject and lets the light falling tell the subject’s story. There are highlights and shadows interweaving that he has created by his use of flash. This is accomplished by being in control of the light from the flash. BL isn’t where you want to be if you want that kind of light.
To be in control of the light from the flash, you don’t want the BL showing in the LCD. What you want is just the lightning bolts and the TTL appearing in the LCD. You accomplish this with just one push of the MODE button. If you take a photo in BL and than with just TTL, you might instantly see a difference in the two photos. In fact, you might just like the exposure in the BL image better. Why is that? The most likely reason is because you have Custom Setting e2 set to default shutter speed of 1/60, you might be set to front curtain sync, the camera might be friendly and saying HI to you, you might have compensation dialed into the body, flash or both or a combination of any of these things. BL takes over and cleans up our little mistakes to balance things out. But all of these possible reasons have one common variable, shutter speed. We want to be in control so it means understanding a little more what the flash’s and camera’s computer are doing.
Push that darn chip!
What does cs#e2 do, or, Rear – Slow shutter sync and how does that affect our exposure? They all affect the shutter speed...…..pause….now you’re seeing a difference in exposure but I said the shutter speed doesn’t effect flash exposure, what gives? It doesn’t, it affects ambient light exposure and that’s what cs#e2, rear, slow shutter speed sync are doing. They are messing with the ambient light exposure by altering the aperture to shutter speed relationship by limiting or expanding the shutter speed.
Now that we control the flash with iTTL we can select any f/stop we want for DOF (limited to the power of the flash). We do so but quite often photographers forget that while we’ve limited the flash exposure via iTTL/aperture, the ambient light exposure is still bouncing around out there. If we want to record the ambient light and we’re shooting in the shadows, using an f/stop of f11 or slower and we’re at ISO 200, then we’re going to need a slow shutter speed. CS#e2 and front curtain sync keep us at or above the shutter speed of 1/60 by default. They won’t let the camera’s computer change the shutter speed to go below 1/60 if you need for proper ambient light exposure. If you need 1/15 because of the f/stop you selected, then your ambient light will be underexposed by two stops making it darker. At this point some of you might be madly pressing that mode button in a panic to get BL back up on the LCD. Wait, there’s hope.
So first we removed the BL no longer on your SB-800 LCD, next, let’s take over the shutter speed. Depress and hold down the lighting bolt on the top left of the D3 and rotate the Main Command dial (the one on the back). Rotate until either the Slow or Rear appears in the D3 LCD on top. What’s the difference between the two settings? In Slow, the flash is synced off the first shutter curtain so it fires when the shutter first opens. In Rear, the flash is synced off the last shutter curtain so fires as the last shutter curtain closes. Slow is at the beginning of the ambient light exposure, Rear is after the ambient light exposure. Both Slow and Rear though gives YOU control over the slow end of the shutter speed which is what we’re wanting to achieve (FWIW, I personally use Rear Curtain Sync). Both Slow and Rear provide you a shutter speed range of 1/250 to 30secs.
Now we head to the Custom Setting Menu to the Bracketing/flash options. Right off the bat you’ll see e1 and e2 and wonder what the heck the difference is between the two. Darn good question, glad you asked. The e1 Flash Sync Speed permits you to limit the upper end shutter speeds. This is where you find the very cool 1/250 (Auto FP). The D3’s top flash sync speed is 1/250 which, in bright enough light is not fast enough if you’re shooting wide open to properly expose the ambient light (head to Strobist to see other cool things you can do with this feature). When you select 1/250 (Auto FP), the D3 will use faster shutter speeds and in order to do that, it “paints” the subject with bursts of flash. There is a trade off for this very cool feature, you loose flash power. Every stop of you gain in shutter speed is a stop of power you loose on the SB-800. Remember that inverse square law thingie? Well, you get the idea, the flash won’t go too far very fast.
You peck down the menu one to cs#e2 and you get to the heart of the matter for Front Curtain Sync. Here’s where you set the lower end shutter speed you want the D3 to select when you’re in Front Curtain Sync. We all have our own basement. On the D3 I use on the 600VR, the basement is 1/30 because after that point, there’s too much ghosting when working with wildlife. On the D3 that’s around my shoulder, the cs#e2 is set to 1/4sec. Why, because normally I’ll be using this to photograph folks who can hold still for the most part that long. Dragging the shutter when photographing folks gives me complete control over the exposure from the flash and the ambient light and that’s the goal. When I have the luxury of time, I change the sync to Rear than I don’ have to even think about this.
You’re probably saying to yourself, “How low should I go and, what the heck is ghosting?” I can probably answer both questions for you by explaining the term ghosting. The SB-800 has a burst speed of 1/1050 to 1/41600, you read that right, the SB-800 has a speed vastly greater than any shutter speed can use and that’s what freezes the subject. The rule of thumb for a subject to begin to register in an exposure is it must be present 25% of the exposure time. For example in a 4sec exposure, the subject has to be in the frame for at least 1sec of time (easy way to fake a “ghost”). In this same example, if we hit that subject with a burst of flash, the slowest burst being 1/1050, we’ll freeze that subject in the frame with the flash. But if the subject is moving, while the flash froze it, it will ghost during the ambient light exposure of 4secs. Ghost being the blurred movement of the subject caught during the ambient light exposure.
Put this in practice to further help you answer the question. You’re photographing a woodpecker pecking. The head is moving back and forth at a pretty darn good clip. No problem for the flash to freeze the action. At 1/250, the backwards and forward motion of the head will be frozen as well. Go down to 1/60 and there is a 50/50 chance you will have blurred motion (ghosting) in the head moving. Go down to 1/15 and if you’re not using peak of action, there is a 100% possibility that the blur will be such that you can barely see what the flash froze.
We want control of the flash exposure, ambient light exposure, DOF and subject movement. We can accomplish all of that by making those computers in our D3 / SB-800 earn their keep by making them keep up with the best computer, the one between our ears. Put the SB-800 into what Nikon calls Standard TTL, put the D3 to Rear or Slow sync and than make the light bend to your visual needs!
Jumping in feet first
This is where you earn your photographer’s wings, taking control of the flash exposure, ambient exposure, flash placement and make them yours so you communicate with light in your images. Nikon is pretty darn smart and they provide you a number of ways to do this (which is why I’ve always been a Nikon guy). For example, cs#e2, I have mine set to 1/15 the majority of the time, flash sync is set to Rear and the flash is set to Standard TTL, has no comp dialed in and the diffusion dome attached. These are just STARTING points! And just to mix things up, the flash is connected to the D3 via the SC-28 if hand holding or a shortened SC-29 if shooting with the 600VR so the flash is off camera THROWING the shadow where it is ADDING to the photograph.
All of this is when you’re using just one SB-800. Once you add one or more flashes than things get even more interesting. That’s something we’ll save for another page. The flash set up itself that we’ve talked about is just a single light in general application. You want to so something special with the flash or apply it specifically to something like wildlife, well, that’s another story as well. What we’ve presented here is no more than a starting point. It gets you through basic flash theory and Nikon CLS operation. I hope it lights up your photographic life!