Radio Poppers Are The Ultimate!

What more can I say other than AWESOME. I've had a few weeks to play with the new Radio Poppers PX system and I just love them. The PX system allow me the ability to use my Nikon CLS system at distances previously unheard of. I'm able to control my strobes remotely in both iTTL, manual, and high speed sync.

I took a walk with my hand held GPS across the field behind my house to a distance of 750 feet to the end of the field. You can see a flash at the bottom center of the image, I had complete control over all the functions of my strobe at this distance. At the Radio Poppers website they state that Radio Poppers are the most advanced wireless control system in the world, I'd have to agree.

I use a SU-800 command unit to fire my strobes, the PX Transmitter fits on the face of the SU-800 command unit, it relays the signal from the command unit to a PX receiver mounted to my SB-800 strobe. The Radio Popper took only a few moments to set up and it is absolutely seamless to use.

You don't need to use an SU-800 command unit, you can use another SB-800 as a master unit if you wish. You simply use all the menu commands on your master strobe or SU-800 command unit as you normally do. The PX system simply relays those signal, and your good to go.

Before using this system, I had an invisible leash of about 35 or 40 feet using Nikon's CLS system, even less on bright out door settings or when your strobes are place in such a position that your strobes do not see the pre monitor flash from your master.

I had an opportunity to use my Radio Poppers while giving a lighting demo at Slickrock, near Moab during my recent "Mentor Series Trek" for Popular Photography Magazine. I used a FourSquare™ to light the biker in the above photo. During the workshop, I passed around the SU-800 with the PX Transmitter attached to it and I simply hand held the strobes for the students. Everyone was just blown away by the size of the Radio Poppers and the simplicity of the system.

If you are looking for a wireless system to extend your range from the normal distance that your flash manufacturer allows, I'd say go Radio Popper. The PX system works with all sorts of other flash systems as well, just check out their website you'll be just as blown away as I am.

Buffalo Small Strobes, Big Results

What a fun time we had at the recent Small Strobes, Big Results Workshop in Buffalo, NY. I would like to extend a special thanks to our hosts, Alyssa & Rich of Nickel City Studios as well to Derek Punaro for allowing us to photograph at the historic Central Terminal Train Station.

We had two fantastic models to photograph throughout the day, thanks to Ann & Andrew for all your help and effort. The above photo of Anne was lit using the new FourSquare™ softbox with one SB-800 inside, as well as 2 SB-800 with full cuts of CTO's as kickers.

Here is photo of the set up for the above photo.

This photo (below) was shot demonstrating a bounce technique, creating a soft directional light.

The photo below, was one of the first photos we did when we arrived on location at the train station. I used a 5 foot Octa with one SB-800 and another SB-800 with a full cut CTO as a kicker from camera right. There was also another SB-800 used to put some light up at the American Flag.


In the photo below, I used 4 SB-800's to light the photo. One used with a grid for the key light on Ann's face and the other 3 where snooted to contain the light and directed to her hands and feet.

I sure had a lot of fun on this workshop, thanks to all that attended and I wish all of you great success with your future lighting.

If you would like to host a Small Strobes, Big Results Lighting workshop in your city, please let me know. I am looking for fun and interesting locations to conduct my workshops. If you think you have an interesting location and want to learn more about hosting a workshop, just email me and we'll see if we can make it work.

Octa Quad Ring

After playing around with the new FourSquare™ a few days now, I decided to mount 4 cold shoes to the inside of an Octa Speed Ring I have. Mounting these 4 cold shoes on this speed ring will allow me the ability to use a larger modifier as well as the ability to preform high speed sync shots with greater efficiency.

The photo above shows the placement of the cold shoes and the photo below gives you a view from the rear. These four strobes should produce a good bit of light, whether using normal or high speed sync.

Bring On The Lights... a lot of them

A few weeks back, I shot a project for a design firm that I've worked with for years. It's the same firm I shot the lab technician wearing the National Jewish Health coat.

I was asked to create a cover shot for the design firms new capabilities brochure. The cover shot was a series of words placed on 3 different pieces of orange Plexiglass. The first sheet of plexiglass had the word BRANDS, the second sheet ACTIVATING and the third BUILDING AND. The first sheet with the word BRANDS was sharp and the rest of the word progressively became more out of focus by use of controlling my depth of field. I controlled the depth of field (DOF) by moving the sheets backselecting an f-stop that produced the effect we where looking for. This was a difficult shot to produce and it required most of the lights I own. Here is a look at the set up.

Like the previous project, I was provide a Photoshop file which served as a frame for which the image I was shooting was to fit in.


Let's walk through the set up and how this all fits together. I used 2 background poles and one boom to suspend each sheet of plexi sheet from. This allowed me the added control of height and distance of each sheet. The background was a sheet of translucent material which I was able to project light through and allowed me to create a pattern or texture to the light.

I ended up using a total of 9 glass bricks in order to create enough pattern onto the background of the final image. This is what the pattern looked like from the front and in far more focus than in the final image. Kinda looks like fire to me.

We started out using a black cloth behind the camera position to block out unwanted reflection on the sheets of plexiglass. After looking at several test images, we realized we need some life put back into the image. We found that the reflections of lights behind the camera added just what we needed, almost. The reflection of lights in the upper right corner of the image are from the ceiling lights and the ones on the left just below and to the left of the word BRANDS were created with 2 SB-800's.

The lights on the ceiling where quite bright, I used neutral density gels to knock them down a bit. I had to do the same with the two SB-800's even though they were dialed down to 1/128 power. The SB's were not contributing to the exposure, their sole purpose was just to provide a reflection.


In order to get the SB-800's to fire, I used my SC-29 cord connected to my SU-800 command unit. I needed to do so because the strobes where positioned behind the camera.

The lighting on the final shot required 5 Dynalite heads (modeling lights only), one Dedo light, one Tota-light and 2 SB-800's. I was running out of lights as well as space in my basement studio. You can see the wall behind me has been stripped clean, most of that gear is being used.

Here are just a few more images of the production as well as the final image.

Light Painting with Dave Black

Last night Dave Black and I conducted a light painting session for 2 groups of the Mentor Series Trek in Arches National Park. Dave has been light painting for years and he's a real pro at it.

The photo above was my first attempt as a test prior to the workshop participants arrival. The exposure was 30 seconds long, f/8 @ ISO 400. We used two, 2 million candle power flash lights to illuminate the rocks.

The photo below was taken just before we wrapped things up. I busted the ISO to 4000, 30 second exposure at f/3.5. The only illumination on the rocks was supplied by 2 cars passing by our location. On the right side of the frame you can see the glow of the city lights of Moab.

I got to bed last night at midnight and was up at it again this morning at 3:30 AM. We had a beautiful sunrise this morning at North Window Arch and we'll have another light painting session this evening. I'm having a wonderful time here, if you have never attended a Mentor Series Trek you should look into it. They have wonderful destinations to choose from and a great staff of people to insure that these treks are really successful.

Time for a 2 hour nap before heading out again. DT