Small products

Photographing small products requires a lot
less room than photographing people. You
can move the lights much closer, and you
can use a close-up or macro lens. Even
when using a lens with a long focal length,
you are able to be closer to the subject,
thereby reducing the amount of space you
need.
Using an 80-200mm lens with a D200, you
need at least six feet from the camera to the
subject and two to three feet behind the
camera for you. That’s almost half the
amount of space you need to do portraits!
The best place to start out lighting a product
is to place the main light above and a little
behind the product. This placing simulates a
natural light, similar to sunlight, by which all
lighting is judged. The next step is to note
where the deep shadows are and to fill
them in a bit. You do this so you can achieve
detail in the shadows and not have them go
completely black. You can either use a fill
light or you can bounce or reflect light from
the main light into the shadow areas.
Remember, a little experimentation never
hurts. Move the lights around and try new
and different methods.
Setting up outdoors
The best aspect about having a portable stu-
dio is that you can take it anywhere. With
the Nikon CLS system, you can bring your
lighting setup outside and not worry about
having somewhere to plug in. When shoot-
ing outdoors, gone are the space restrictions
you have indoors, but outdoor shooting has
pitfalls all its own.
When you use your SB-800 or SB-600 on
camera, you can use the sun as your main
light, set the flash to TTL BL and shoot. If
you use them off camera with stands, you
need to be sure to set them on firm level
ground. Also, when using a softbox or
umbrella, be very conscious of the wind.
The wind can take the umbrella and bring
your Speedlight crashing to the ground.
When shooting outdoors you can use the
same lighting situations as noted in the sec-
tion on portraits, but you need to pay par-
ticular attention to the sun. Different types
of sunlight have different pitfalls:
✦Bright sunlight. Bright sunlight
can cause serious problems with
exposure when using flash. When
in bright sunlight your camera may
call for an exposure that’s higher
than your camera’s rated flash sync
speed. The D70 and D50 have a
sync speed of up to 1/500 second
but the lowest ISO is 200. You may
need a shutter speed higher than
that to achieve a proper fill flash
exposure even at your smallest
aperture. The only way around this
problem is to move your subject
into a more shaded area. Cameras
such as the D200, D2X, and D2H
have a slower sync speed (1/250)
but also have a lower ISO rating.
These cameras also offer some-
thing called FP High Speed Sync,
which enables you to shoot at
speeds higher than the actual sync
speed when using an SB-800 or
SB-600 Nikon Speedlight featuring
CLS. This is useful if you’re photo-
graphing a portrait and need to
use a wider aperture for less depth
of field and a very high shutter
102 Part II ✦Creating Great Photos with the Creative Lighting System
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