Special Effects Lighting with Speedlights

When you think of special effects lighting, more often than not, you probably think of Photoshopped images. It does seem to be a lot easier sometimes to do the photo shoot and then add the lighting and colors in post production. Well, I should say easier if you are proficient at Photoshop. However, if you are not that savvy at working in post with photos, you can do a lot of special effect lighting using your camera, Speedlights (flash units),  light modifiers, and some colored gels.

What is Special Effects Lighting?

Special Effects lighting is a departure from ambient light. In other words, it’s lighting that helps set a mood or tell a story by adding, subtracting, or modifying light. It can be as subtle as recreating a sunlight effect in a closed studio set or as elaborate as using multiple lights with colored gels to create fire or other elaborate mood lighting.

We can walk into a room and see the ambient light of a table lamp with our naked eye. With a camera, you can try an capture the same type of lighting, but depending on your sensor and white balance settings, you will not be able to recreate the same scene on camera as you would as though you where in the room live. Using flash units and a colored gel, an amber or CTO (Color Temperature Orange) gel, you could recreate the ambient light of the table lamp and not have the photo turn out as orange as it would have if you would have just photographed it without any flash units or gels.

Using Wireless Speedlights for Special Effect Lighting

Since the advent of Nikon’s CLS (Creative Lighting System) in 2003, flash photography became more popular, with photographer’s using the Speedlights instead of studio strobes. Because the flash units where small and compact in size, photographers where able to place the mighty little lights in places where a studio strobe could not fit, allowing the photographer to be more creative in producing special effect lighting. Not to mention the affordability of the smaller flash units to the larger, more bulky studio strobes.

Both Nikon and Canon offer wireless capabilities with their Speedlights, however, Nikon still has an advantage with their units over Canon with most of their dSLR cameras having the ability to act as a commander unit, tripping the remote, wireless flash units. In addition, a photographer can attach an unlimited number of flash units in three different groups using Nikon’s SU-800 Commander. You can imagine the possibilities on light set-ups by using as many flash units as you need to in order to light your scene.

However, there is a limitation to using the Speedlights with either Nikon’s or Canon’s proprietary flash system system and that is the commander unit, be it the camera or the Nikon SU-800, must be positioned toward the flash units sensor and the range from the commander and remote flash unit is somewhere around 33 feet, meaning you may still be able to trip the flash beyond 33 feet, but it may not be as effective. I have personally worked in environments where I had greater range than 33 feet, and other sets where I was severely limited. One option I like to exercise is to use a PocketWizard controller. This can get quite expensive at about $200 a piece for the units, but, you can get a way with using two units, one mounted to the camera and another to a separate, remote, flash unit. Depending on your flash unit, you could set the other remote units to SU4 mode (Nikon Flash Units only; select models) and have the flash that has a PocketWizard tethered to it as the master flash. However, this can get quite complex and may not always work.

My advice is to try and set up your lighting to where you do not need a PocketWizard or any other type of radio transmitter. For most situations, you can get away with just using the proprietary system with each manufacturer. However, it’s always good to have a few radio transmitters handy, just in case you want to “wrap” the light around a corner.

Using Speedlights to Create A Special Effect Tech Photo

For this particular project, I was working on a corporate photo shoot and was asked to create a somewhat ominous image that had a high tech feel to the overall portrait. You can see the final image below, Image 1.

 

When I showed people the final photo, the most common response was, “nice Photoshopped image”. However, everything you see in the final photo was created on the camera, using Nikon Speedlights, colored gels, and a little white balance adjustment on the camera.

First, let’s take a look at the overall scene and the placement of the flash units, or Speedlights, and light modifiers. Image 2, below, shows the entire scene with me knelt down to the side of the subject.

 

For the shot, I used 4 Nikon Speedlights, one SB-900, two SB-800′s, and one SB-600. Using the Nikon D300s as my commander, I was able to trip all four flash units. Note, earlier I said that you need to be in the line of sight with the commander and flash units. However, for this particular shot, I set the SB-600 flash unit behind the computer to receive the signal from the camera and the rest of the flash units where set to SU4 mode, a kind of makeshift “slave” mode found on several Nikon flash units, not the SB-600 though, that’s why it was set as the “master” flash unit.

Image 3 shows the placement of the flash units:

1. An SB-600 flash unit sits on a stand directly behind the computer monitor. The unit is gelled with a blue filter and pointed toward the partition wall. The flash head is twisted so that the sensor faces me, or the camera’s pop-up flash which is acting as the commander to trip this SB-600 unit. This unit will act as the commander to trip the other units that are set to SU4 mode, or “slave” mode.

2. Another SB-800 is mounted on a Justin Clamp (Justin Clamps by Manfrotto are very sturdy. If you decide to buy one or a few, don’t buy the cheap version of the clamp because you just may end up buying a new flash unit as well, if you know what I mean). Take note that I have some Cinefoil wrapped around the flash head acting as a snoot, to help control light spill. I use Cinefoil since it’s versatile and cheap, plus I can reuse the piece I cut off from the larger roll. The flash unit was gelled with a half cut CTO filter to warm the subjects face slightly and emulate a desk lamp.

3. Behind the routers, I have another SB-800 facing the partition wall and gelled with a deep red gel. This unit is to add color and a glowing mood to the overall photo.

4. The only flash unit not shown in Image 3 is the SB-900 that is set-up behind a 3′x3′ light panel (Image 2) and set about 5 to 6 feet from the subject left side and to my rear. I moved the SB-900 in as a close as possible to the panel in order to spread the light and throw a little light on my subject, but not too much.

 

To complete the final photo, I changed my camera’s white balance to tungsten lighting which has a color temperature of around 3200 to 3800 Kelvin. By setting it to tungsten, it esentially “cooled” down the scene and gave me that blue, cool tone feel that I was striving for. Adding the CTO filter to the key light, the SB-800 directly in front of the subject, corrected for the blue color cast and gave my subject a slight warm tone.

As you recall from earlier, I mentioned that I gelled the SB-600 behind the computer monitor with a blue gel. I did this to add some extra blue cast to the overall photo. If I had just left the flash head without a gel, I would have less of a visual impact and if I had added a CTO filter to the flash head, the color would have rendered as though it where daylight balanced, or it would have had no effect.

In the end, using the Nikon wireless system, I was able to acheive special lighting effect that would otherwise have been reserved for post production work or for more, expensive, studio strobes. The advantage to using the portable flash units is that they can be placed in spots where, otherwise, the strobes would bot easily fit.

2 Responses to “Special Effects Lighting with Speedlights”

1. cheryl says:

   January 11, 2012 at 11:42 am

   Alyn,
   Enjoyed your post. I have a couple of questions. I also am a Nikon shooter and I shoot with a D700 and use SB-900 strobes. I know I can use my camera’s pop up flash as well as one of the SB-900′s as the commander. If I use the camera’s pop up flash as the commander do I set my remote SB-900′s in “remote mode” and also enable SU-4? And, I also have a few Pocket Wizard’s Plus II’s. I know you have a greater coverage area using them but not sure what I set the remote SB-900′s to? My idea, place (1) Pocket Wizard in the camera’s hot shoe, connect another pocket wizard to a remote SB-900, not sure if I just have the flash set to “on”? And then what would I set the second remote SB-900 to?

   Reply
   • Alyn says:

     January 11, 2012 at 1:45 pm

     Cheryl, that’s perhaps the most common question when it comes to wireless flashes, “how do I trip the wireless flash unit?”

     Both method for using wireless capabilities on your Nikon are correct, let me explain here:

     Method 1 – Using the D700 as Commander
     What you’re going to do here Cheryl is set your D700 as the commander, as you have already played with, and then set your SB900 to remote, that would be the right before the master setting. Once in remote mode, you will see your LCD panel show the channels and groups. Make sure that your you set the same channel and group on your SB900 as you have set on the D700. You will be able to control your mode and light output via the D700′s panel. One thing to note though, make sure that you turn your pop flash off. Well, it will not be turned off entirely, but cycle through the modes for the pop up flash until you see two dashed lines, –. By doing this, your pop-up flash will only send out the pre-flash signal to your SB900 so that it trips it to fire.

     Note: You do not need to set your Flash to SU4 mode when using your D700 as the commander and your SB900 as the remote.
     

     
     Method 2 – Using a PocketWizard to Trip Your SB900

     Mount your PocketWizard (PW) to your cameras hotshoe as you have done. And connect the other PW to your SB900 (just in case someone else reads this and doesn’t know, you will need a PC5N Cablein order to connect the PW to the SB900).

     Once you have your remote SB900 and PW attached, set that SB900 to Manual Mode. Make certain that both your PW’s are on and on the same channel, a mistake I am more often than not, guilty of not doing.

     Now, you are ready to start shooting.
     
     A few additional side notes Cheryl:

     The PW’s will give you about 1600 feet of range while using Nikon’s built-in CLS is roughly 33 feet. That’s a big incentive for using PW’s, in my opinion of course.

     Also, If you have multiple flash units, you really only need one set of PW’s, one for the camera and the other for the master flash. The rest, (SB900 and SB800) you can set to SU4 mode and they will be tripped by the master flash, the SB900 in your case. However, there is a downside to SU4 mode. If you are photographing a wedding, for example, and are using multiple flash units and all but the master is in SU4 mode, then any other flash will trip the units in SU4 mode. That can be a real battery drain. You would either need more PW’s or just switch to Nikon’s CLS and use your D700 (or any other commander capable Nikon) as the commander.

     Hope this helps you. Let me know if you have any additional questions.

     Reply