Film still has its place in the Digital Age!
By Dan Spencer
6 August 2007
The real magic in photography is the "Lighting".
A simple on-camera (non-diffused) flash produces flat images.
To make their photos "jump", professionals use multiple light setups that are fired with radio remote triggers or cables. This can be very expensive.
How can a non-pro still produce amazing results with simple accessory flash units (that can fire when other strobes fire) without clumsy cables everywhere or expensive remote triggers?
Heres an alternative, less expensive and very effective way to fire multiple strobes at the same time to achieve professional results.
This system has worked pefectly for me for ove two years in my small home glamor/portrait studio.and it should work perfectly for portraits, products, food or still life photos in either a home studio or pro studio allke.
Simply take a piece of exposed, developed, 35mm film that is black (like the film leader) and fold it over a couple of times, then, using clear tape, tape it in front of your on-camera (or pop up) flash. Make sure you cover the flash completely.
If you can, turn the flash power to its lowest setting and turn OFF the Red Eye Reduction (or PreFlash) feature.
When you take a photo, your on-camera flash will fire through the black film reducing the light output to only an invisible spectrum of light. This will not light up your subject but, amazingly, enough of the invisible spectrum of light gets through to fire your slaved lights!
Now you can shoot studio quality photos with muliple strobes without cables or remote triggers and, it can be accomplished with digital SLR's or even point and shoot cameras!
Most of the studio portraits on my website were done utilizing this very system of remote strobe triggering!
Try this and you'll be amazed at the results.
Happy shooting.
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