An ode to Nikon's CLS

Having satisfied myself on undertanding a couple more things about Active D-Lighting, I popped inside and grabbed an SB-600 and an SB-800. I put an amber warming gel on one, a blue cooling gel on the other, and the simple hot-shoe table stands on both of them. The blue strobe went on top of the charcoal grill, pointed at the fence in the background. The
warm-gelled strobe went up on top of the fence, with a diffuser cup on it. The dog is almost looking into that strobe, which is high and right. The cooler strobe is well behind the subject, camera left, shooting at the fence on the right rear of the scene.

I went to a lower ISO, dragged the shutter at 1/20th of a second to preserve the green folliage outside the gate, and let Nikon's CLS system trigger the two strobes from my D300 (I used it's pop-up flash for a trigger, but had it dialed down to provide no light to the scene by itself).

So, the sunset-ish looking light on the dog's head is coming from one strobe. The blue-ish tint in the upper left is intended to help reinforce that "evening" feel and to contrast with the warm light on the dog. The diffusing cup on the warmer strobe was hanging out over the fence just enough to throw some light on the fence elements facing the camera, and to reinforce the sunlight that was still hitting them a bit.

Why is this an ode to Nikon's CLS system? Because it took me less than five minutes to set up those strobes. No monolights, no AC power, no radio triggers, no stands. Once you've mentally internalized the menu systems on the camera and the strobes, it just becomes
painless to take better control of the light in situations like this. This actual shot doesn't have to be your cup of tea, but I'm hoping it will remind people to get a little more theatrical with the strobes once in a while - it's good exercise.

A quick diagram, below. And, if anyone cares, this was shot with a 30mm lens. Yeah, it's a bit heavy-handed with the saturation. Just goofing around, and hoping that more people remind themselves to color those light sources once in a while when they're bringing the strobes out in daylight. The real point here is that Nikon's CLS makes this so quick and easy to play with that there's no excuse for not experimenting once in a while.

thanks, matt. great post!

at first i was confused. you said ode to CLS and then talked about the d-lighting. but that is a phenomenal pic. i really like it. well done. i have one sb900 and i've been really wanting an sb600 to complement it. i really need it now.

Thanks, guys. Just for fun, I put a couple hundred more pixels worth of that resulting image right here.

pretty slick, thanks for sharing! i would love to try give this a try but my husky won't stay still. last time i tried to take photos of him, he grabbed my 85mm 1.8 while i was changing lenses and run around with it thinking it was his kong. thank goodness nothing happened to it when i finally got a hold of him.

Pretty cool. Something I am looking forward to playing around with - I currently have a SB-600 and a friend is selling me a lightly used SB-800 and accessories for $200 US - should have it by late next week.
I wonder how I can bribe my 2 year old daughter to sit still - LOL.

Thanks Matt. Very educational and informative. Got to get color gel for my SB-600 to try out.

You have great dog photos. Next time I go bird hunting, I'm bringing my camera too.

Matt, for a caveman/orangutan, you write very well and do that photography thing even better. Thank the maker for opposing digits!

Heh, Scott - I only made 15+ typos in this thread so far! This laptop doesn't have a orangutan-sized keyboard, or auto-caveman-grammar-correction. Definitely handy, though, those opposable thumbs. Glad you stopped by - I'll try to make the next one about primates, not canines.

Matt, thanks for posting this! Lighting is a tremendous weak point in my photography and you are always so informative and methodical. Even though you are laptop challenged:-)
Thanks for the inspiration!
Dick

Matt, that's a great picture and a great lesson. I'm gonna try this one tomorrow! I've tried a single gelled SB 800 to mimic candle light--though all my attempts have been at the tailend of a big meal, with mellow (slightly inebriated) guests and an even more inebriated shooter!
Thanks for the ode!

Come on mate.... if you're going to title a thread "An ode to CLS" then you actually need to include the ode part and get poetic on us... eg....

There was a young man called Matt Laur
Showed us that flash work ain't a chore
With two speedlights around
He lit up his hound
And got an image we adore

Seriously, really cool thread and you've also inspired me to start playing around much more with my lighting options in the coming few weeks. The effect of your simply but thoughtfully placed and gelled lights is marvellous!

I know who to send questions to, if I ever get into flash situations ! Ther diagram was worth a thousand words. I was pretty sure I knew where things were, but that drawing cemented it.
1/20th of a sec and the dog didn't move ? I'd need plenty of dog treats and an assistant. Of course, she might be all fidgety and start to go Pavlov on me, if I took too long.

Bernard: you've shamed me into some ode-smithing. Let's see, here...

Shall I compare thee to a Pocket Wizard?
Thou art more frugal and more TTL:
Radio interference never shakes the signaling waves,
But CLS's gleam hath a bit too short a range:
Sometime too hot the eye of heaven shines,
And oft' is his gold complexion too much IR for CLS;
And every fair from fair sometime declines,
By chance or nature's changing course fails to trigger:
But thy eternal Summer shall not fade
Nor lose possession of that fair thou lightest;
Nor shall battery Death end the brightness in the shade,
When in eternal recharging thou havest some extra AAs:

So long as men can meter, and eyes can see,
So long lives this, and this gives light to thee.

Dammit! That's a sonnet, not an ode! Oh well, apologies to Shakespeare, anyway.

John: The dog was watching a squirrel (and he's a pointer, so his entire reason for existing is to stand still when he's looking at something you can eat, and which is also breathing). But even so, the 1/20th is to collect some ambient light... the dog appears nice and crisp because the pulse from the flash, which is defining the edges of the animal and sparkling up the eyes, etc., only last for a tiny fraction of a second. That's what's so cool about dragging the shutter when your subject will get most of its light from the strobes.

The background isn't going anywhere, so as long as you keep the camera fairly steady, it till look fine in that 1/20th, while the strobe takes care of wiggly people or dogs and whatnot. Try it! That's the whole point... it's only electrons, and worth doing it yourself so you can understand what works and what doesn't for when you actually need it to work.

Matt -

re 1.03am post... I think I can hear the Globe Theatre in London shuddering from here

re 1.09am post... yep this is something that I didn't get for a while (like all new DSLR people I got infatuated with high ISOs and fast lenses early on and paid no attention to strobe issues) so I used to get twitchy at the thought of a 1/20 or 1/30 shutter speed when the flash went on. But especially when you don't need the background in sharp focus - as is the case most of the time with flash photography - then you really get the best of both worlds. Background exposed brightly enough by natural light and a relatively slow shutter, while the strobe(s) gives you a burst on your near-ish subject that gives it 1/750 type crispness.

Matt,

I'm just curious. Have you used an SU-800 instead of the pop-up? What do you think about it? Worth the money?

Keith: I have never used an SU-800, and don't feel the need. I have used the SB-800 in the hot shoe, and used it as a controller for remote CLS slaves, and it certainly can shout a lot farther than the pop-up on the camera can - nice for bigger spaces when you also happen to want a strobe at the camera position.

The reason I don't feel the need for the SU-800 is because the moment I need to get much fancier than the rig I used above, I'm usually trotting out the radio triggers, shooting with everything in manual, and maybe even using the monolights or a pack-and-head system.

What I most like about CLS - especially when you have a camera with a pop-up that can talk to it (this rules out the D3 and similar bodies) - is that I only need to have the speedlight in the bag, along with the camera. Fewer objects, fewer batteries, less fuss. I suppose that if I spent the money on an SU-800, I'd certainly use it sometimes. It reduces the blink-causing pre-exposure command pulses (though you can do that pretty well with a $12.00 Nikon SG-3IR, too). The SU-800 definitely helps out in macro work with skittish critter subjects and baby human eyeballs, or when you just want to cut down on the visible sparkly effect while you're shooting in a social setting. It's just that since I use D300 and D200 bodies, and have the radio widgets for when I'm doing something more painstaking and deliberate, the IR commander just hasn't been calling to me. For what it costs, I suppose I'd rather take a bite out of the cost of an SB-900, and have more portable light instead.

If you're pushing the limits of how useful the pop-up is, the SU-800 might buy you a little more optical controlling range or some more subject-friendly/polite triggering. I'm sure someone here who uses one will chime in, though. When I get a D3-ish body, I'll probably buy the SU-800 anyway, since there's no pop-up to pop up. On the other hand, folks like Pocket Wizard and the Radio Popper people are starting to come up with iTTL-aware radio devices, which I like even more for that sort of thing, conceptually.

Even if I weren't a dog-loving, Yellow Lab owner, I'd have to give (though unsolicited) you 5:5 paw prints on your final CLS image! What a capture & canine! It's a real WOW (bow-, that is:-) shot!

As for the ode and sonnet, ruff ruff:-)

Thanks for the shot, info and the diagram; all very much appreciated.

Richard

The SU-800 has greater range and using it you can minimize visible light coming in from the direction of the camera (which is always emitted to greater or lesser quantities from the SB-800). It's also smaller and lighter than the SB-800 which is a good thing when using a heavy body like the D3. The SU-800 helps avoid eye blinks which were a big problem for me when using CLS to photograph people before I got the SU-800. The SB-800 on camera triggers eye blinks before the exposure and often they don't open before the shot is taken. As a result, a lot of the time subjects just learned to deliberately look away from the camera and I lost eye contact. Not good. FV lock can be used to get around the problem but I still prefer the SU-800. But different people have different preferences ;-)

I especially like your second shot from the top. Beautiful expression, light and looks quite realistic.

Perhaps it should have been "owed to CLS"?

Matt,
I am afraid that my golden retriever wouldn't have stayed still even for 1/500 sec with a squirrel around:) A beautiful dog, a beautiful photograph.

Nice Job Matt!!!

Just awesome, Matt.

Is that how you get that "Hero" icon next to your name? Seriously, you should have two of those. Or more.

Please, more of these How-To posts (GREAT diagram btw) or Odes, if that's what you call it back in your day.

Yep, CLS is amazing. I just bought 4 (this was a find!) pristine sb-800's at a local shop, boxed, for 200 bucks each. With a few gels and portable softboxes, the possibilities are endless.
The preflash trigger from my D300 does sometimes cause some blinking...I would love to try the SU-800.

Damn, great find there, Jay. Don't forget to spend the $13 on an SG-3IR, which can make all the difference, without involving the SU-800. The SU-800 is still the best option, but since it's something like 20 times the price, it's worth giving that filter/blocker a try. Certainly cuts down on the blinking.