People love photography related hacks and DIY projects. The most popular ones are related to photography lighting such as light modifiers, special lighting equipments, etc. If you want to sample just some of the things you can do, DIYPhotography.net has a pretty good list of things you can try.
Here are the couple of things I have been playing with lately. If you have noticed reduced posting frequency on this blog, that’s part of the reasons. 
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Do you have a Nikon flash that is dead because of a broken flash bulb? One obvious path to resurrect it is to send it in for service. If you are handy and really understand how to follow safety procedures, you can save some expensive repair charges by doing it yourself.
It doesn’t appear very difficult.
One guy ordered a replacement bulb for ~$20 (including shipping) directly from Nikon and fixed his Nikon SB-80DX. Another guy fixed his SB-600 with a $8.52 replacement bulb. If you are motivated enough to try it yourself, be really careful! Some safety tips on camera flash capacitor probably help.
Small flashes such as the Nikon SB-600
I was shooting tonight with my D90, wirelessly triggering my SB-600. At one point, I left my SB-600 flash tube facing down on a vinyl covered card table. When I released the shutter, the SB-600 obediently fired, probably at full power. A whisp of smoke appeared and a scortch mark 0.25″ by 1.25″ was left in the table top. No damage done to the SB-600, but I was quite surprised at the smoke and burn mark.
Can this be true? I don’t have a vinyl surface anywhere in my house so I tried the following: I set the flash to manual mode, 1/1 (full power) output, covered the flash head with my palm then hit the test button… I felt a sharp burning sensation in my hand that almost made me drop the flash.
Before you actually try something like this, read the title of the post again. That’s your last warning. 
In the article titled Understanding Flash Sync Speed, I discussed in details how focal plane shutter works and what maximum sync speed is. What was left out was the two different flash sync modes: front-curtain vs. rear-curtain sync.
In front-curtain sync, the flash fires immediately after the first (front) curtain opens completely; in rear-curtain sync, the flash fires just before the second (rear) curtain starts to close. To understand the differences they make, let’s use a simple two-image model.
The image sensor continuously capture the image formed by the lens on the sensor surface when the shutter is open. There is one image captured by the camera in each exposure but you can imagine the sensor captures two images: one image formed by ambient light and one image formed by the flash. The two images are then superimposed together. In front-curtain sync, the flash image is captured first followed by the image of the ambient light; while in rear-curtain sync, the flash image is captured after the image sensor captures the ambient image. Read More…
One of our readers, Desmond, is a curious person. He found out through his tests that some of the common understandings of the Nikon TTL/BL flash mode may not be accurate and some facts even appear to contradict the voice of an expert. For example, Russ said that “… TTL-BL does not work correctly when the background is darker than the subject.” However the tests from Desmond showed it worked just fine.
You can read the complete tests results and his conclusions at his blog or watch the following Youtube video for his demonstration.
At beginning, I was a little skeptical. However the test results are pretty hard to dispute. Perhaps the conclusions are wrong but there has to be a better explanation of the results.
We should all blame Nikon who never seems to have come out with a clear technical explanation of how the Creative Lighting System (CLS) including TTL-BL mode works. What Nikon tells us is the typical nebulous description such as “…Balanced Fill-Flash is performed. The flash output level is automatically adjusted for a well-balanced exposure of the main subject and background.” (SB-800 Instruction Manual).
What are your thoughts on this? We’d like to hear from you. Please use the comment box below or click on the contact link above.
Last weekend I was at a local park with my son for Easter Egg Hunt. While I was waiting in the crowd, I noticed two guys with DSLR camera and flash mounted on top. Since I have a habit of taking pictures of other photographers at work, I quickly snapped a picture as shown below. It turned out to be quite interesting.
The photo above was taken using the AF-S DX Nikkor 35mm f/1.8. A zoomed-in view of the above photo showed the interesting ways they decided to use their flash outdoors. Read More…
President Obama’s speech last week was excellent but it wouldn’t fix the global economy overnight. So for all the photographers who suffer from gear lust but still wise enough to refrain from spending the limited cash from who-knows-when-it-stops paychecks, DIY photography gear is a good option, especially when 1) it saves money, 2) it is as good as you can buy, 3) the details have all been prepared for you.
Karl Zemlin has created a very detailed instruction for building a mini softbox for your speedlight flash units. PDF templates for both large and small versions of the mini softbox are available for Nikon SB-600
What are needed on your part? Not much:
For American readers: When printing the PDF templates, use appropriate paper sizes. Based on the dimensions, Letter for A4 and Ledger/Tabloid for A3 should be good replacements. Make sure you don’t re-size it when printing.
Want to show off yours or need some help? Here is the flickr discussion thread …
I came across this excellent resource recently. It was written by Russ MacDonald for practical use of the Nikon SB800 Speedlight with the D200 Camera. However the guide contains very informative and general information about Nikon Creative Lighting System (CLS) so users of other Nikon DSLR cameras and Speedlights should also benefit. With his engineering background, Russ explained the Nikon CLS in great details with very in-depth but easy to understand language and well thought out examples. Enjoy! Read More…
