Street Photography Magazine

SB-26 accessory flash with a guide number

of 36 (at 35mm) as our main light. This flash

has manual power settings that range all

the way from 1/1 to 1/64 and enabled us to

significantly brighten the shadows and work

with the minimal available light inside the

wagons and the engine shed. We attached a

50 x70 cm softbox to the flash using a

Flash2Softbox adapter, which gave us soft

light that was perfect for producing fill effects

without generating hard shadows.

We also jury-rigged a grip to the flash to

enable us to steer it precisely by hand. We

didn’t really need a light stand; our assistant

simply pointed the flash in the right direction

when required while we adjusted its output

either by varying the distance to the subject

or by adjusting power output on the flash

itself. We used a radio transmitter to fire the

flash, as the partially bright ambient light

made it impossible to use an infrared

controller.

The Shoot

Most of the images we captured were

shot using shutter-priority exposure mode

and -2 EV exposure compensation to

accommodate the additional brightness

provided by the flash. In order to undercut the

camera’s native flash sync speed and give

us the necessary flexibility to shoot handheld,

we used an exposure time of 1/125 s. This

produced mostly balanced exposures,

although some shots required the use of

manual exposure mode to get things just

right. In these cases, we altered the exposure

time to adjust the balance between daylight

and flash and took some test shots to check

our settings. If we ended up using an

exposure times of less than our ‘standard’

Location Workshop | Guitar Shoot

There was no room for our flash and softbox

in the cramped driver’s cab, so we had to

set it up outside

ISO 400 |1/125 s |f8|28 mm