Flash Series - Part 3: Rogue Grid Review

My first grid was a rectangular snoot that I made from a black piece of cardboard and some pieces of white straws painted black (I followed this tutorial), but it never worked as I wished, and storing it inside a camera bag means that it would be crushed and destroyed.

In this post I will quickly give you my impressions about the 3-in-1 Rogue grid, hit the jump for more.

This is the 3rd part of my flash series of posts, you will find links to the previous two parts at the bottom of the post.

I wasn't able to find any commercial grids for speedlites in Egypt except for one shop that had a big kit full of various speedlite accessories (barn doors, grids, lots of diffusers and shapers, etc...) and it was very expensive so I skipped it. It was not until I traveled to Malaysia that I found the HONL grid, I was tempted to buy it but the buyer told me that I will need to purchase the speed strap separately and that they didn't have it at the time, and they only had one grid size, I skipped it as well.


I didn't know there were grids for speedlites other than the HONL ones, and when I asked Mic what grids  he was using, he told me that if he had to buy it all over again he would go with the Rogue grids, I never heard of it before, so I searched and was immediately attracted to it's looks (admit it, it looks cool on the flash), so I ordered one from Amazon.

Box contents

These are the package contents, two stackable grids, a grid holder, a snoot to hold the whole system and a nice carrying pouch, which I appreciate a lot, it's these small touches that makes you feel that you bought a quality product, which brings us to the build quality, one word, excellent!

Grid holder with grids inside

Grid holders with grids outside

You get two grids, a 45 degrees (wider beam) and a 25 degrees (tighter beam), and when you stack both grids it becomes a 16 degrees grid which is probably as tight as you will ever want it to be. The next set of pictures will show you how the grids are inserted inside the grid holder.

Both grids

See those guides? It is very easy to insert and remove them

Then there's a snoot that holds the grids to the flash, it is a well built piece of fabric that has two ends, the flash end uses a stretchable strap with velcro to tighten itself around the flash head. It also can be adjusted to fit either small or big flash heads.

The other end holds the grids in place, this is where I find a fault, it just isn't secure enough, and it has a very teeny tiny strip of velcro to hold both sides together, I was using the flash upside down yesterday and the grid fell from the holder. The holder can be used as a snoot (will show you in a while) and you can open it and use it's white internal as a large catch light, which I don't care about.

Holder with the grids attached, the open side closes around the flash head

To show you how the grid affects the light I put my flash one meter away from a white foam board and zoomed the flash head to 105mm, have a look at the different lighting patterns.

Flash only zoomed to 105mm, no grid

Holder used as a snoot, no grids

45 degrees grid

25 degrees grid

16 degrees grid (45 + 25 stacked together)

You can see how the grid controls the light beam, grids are very useful in product photogrpahy when you want to light some specific part of the product without spilling light everywhere, it can also be used in portraits to control the hair light for example, it can be used to create dramatic portraits, etc... It's uses are virtually limitless.

To show you an example using the grid I took a shot of my new 85mm f/1.8 lens (just received it yesterday), I had a dramatic shot in mind and only wanted to stress on the 85mm part, so I used one flash as a kicker light at the right side of the lens, and the main light was zoomed to 105mm in the first picture, then gridded with 16 degrees in the final picture, have a look at the difference for yourself.

Say hello to my newest lens, main light zoomed to 105mm, no grid

Same as above, but the 16 degrees grid is placed on the main light

CONCLUSION

I like this kit very much, it is compact, sturdy, flexible and it works very well. The build quality is excellent, the carrying pouch is a nice touch. My only complaint would be the not-so-secure holder.

My next post will be about the camera built-in wireless flash limitations and my experience with cheap ebay triggers.

RELATED POSTS

Flash Series - Part 1: Canon Speedlites Chat (580EX II vs 580EX vs 430EX)
Flash Series - Part 2: Home Made (DIY) Gels & Gel Holder

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Old School

From left to right: the SB-80DX, the SB-800, and the SB-26

Is there any reason to buy an old flash in this age of wireless TTL?  If you are looking for a multiple flash setup, some of these old dinosaurs may actually offer better value than even the YongNuo YN-560.


In this post, I'd like to discuss older Nikon flashes*, and which ones may be of particular interest to us amateur photogs (especially strobists).  This information is useful not just to Nikonians but to Canonistas and in fact to users of other cameras as well.
*By "old" flash, I mean those that preceded the SB-800 and SB-600.

Usage on DSLRs
Let's get something straight: unless your camera is a Nikon D100, or from the Nikon D1 family or D2 family, these flashes will probably not be very useful on-camera.  Although they have TTL capability, they were designed with an older kind of TTL technology that doesn't work with most Nikon DSLRs beginning with the D70.  Some of them do feature an Auto mode, which will adjust flash exposure automatically based on the amount of flash reflected but you have to manually input the ISO and aperture you're using.  It's also possible to use manual flash exposure mode, but that would require even more frequent adjustments.  Because of these limitations, I wouldn't recommend them as your sole flash, or even your second flash (I would instead recommend a wireless-capable flash).

Strobist use

These older flashes are much more useful for off-camera flash work.  Some of them (generally the ones that aren't so old) have most of the features that are useful for strobists such as ample power, a decent range of manual power adjustment, manual zoom adjustment, bounce and swivel capability and sync ports.  The best feature?  Price :D

When used as off-camera flash, many of the Nikon-specific features become irrelevant.  When viewed this way, these flashes become useful even to users of non-Nikon cameras.

To help you shop for these flashes, here is a list that groups them according to power.  I also noted significant strengths and weaknesses in bold.

Note: all Guide Numbers are stated in feet, for 35mm at ISO 100.

Low-powered:  

SB-23: GN: 66 ft. No zoom, no bounce, no swivel. No manual power adjustment (always at full power).

SB-30. GN: 52 ft.  No zoom, no swivel.  Manual power adjustment only at 1/1, 1/8, 1/32.

SB-50 (has optical slave). GN: 70 ft.  Zooms from 14-50mm. No swivel.  No manual power adjustment (always at full power).

Medium-powered (about as powerful as an SB-600):

SB-22: GN of 82 feet. 28mm only - no zoom. No swivel.  No manual power adjustment (always at full power).

SB-22s: GN of 92 feet. 28mm only - no zoom. No swivel.  No manual power adjustment (always at full power).

SB-27: GN of 98 feet.  Zooms from 20-70mm.  No bounce, no swivel.  Manual power down to 1/16 only.

SB-600: GN of 98 feet. Zooms from 14-85mm.  Fully compatible with modern Nikon DSLRs.

High-powered (about as powerful as an SB-800):

SB-24: GN of 118 feet.  Zooms from 24-85mm.  Manual power down to 1/16 only.

SB-25: GN of 118 feet.  Zooms from 20-105mm.  Manual power down to 1/64.
SB-28: GN of 118 feet.  Zooms from 20-105mm.  Manual power down to 1/64. More compact than SB-24, SB-25, SB-26; similar in size to the SB-800.

High-powered with optical slaves:
SB-26: GN of 118 feet.  Has Auto mode.  Zooms from 20-85mm.  Manual power down to 1/64. Separate buttons for changing bounce angle and swivel angle -- this is mildly annoying.
SB-80: GN of 125 feet. Zooms from 14-105mm.  Manual power down to 1/128.  Has Auto and Auto Aperture mode.  More compact than SB-26; similar in size to the SB-800.

SB-800:  GN of 125 feet. Zooms from 14-105mm.  Manual power down to 1/128.  Has Auto and Auto Aperture mode. Fully compatible with modern Nikon DSLRs.

COMPATIBILITY WITH ADVANCED WIRELESS LIGHTING
The SB-26 and SB-80 are of particular interest not only because they have optical slaves but because those optical slave modes can work with Nikon CLS Advanced Wireless Lighting.  No you can't adjust these flashes remotely, but you can trigger them all the way to your camera's natural sync speed and even a little bit beyond that.  (One of these days I'll try to test them with Canon's commander flash as well.)

The shot at the top of this post demonstrates their wireless compatibility.  I used a Nikon D300's popup flash as a CLS AWL commander to trigger and remotely adjust the SB-800 in the middle.  The SB-80DX at camera left was in its optical slave mode (SU-4 mode).  The SB-26 at camera right was in its "standard" optical slave mode.  The shot was taken at a shutter speed of 1/320, a third of a stop higher than the natural 1/250 sync speed of the D300.

[BTW, caveat: I tested only at 1/64 power.  At full power, the flashes may not be able to recycle fast enough to sync.  I will pin this down in the future.]

Another caveat: the Nikon D70 (and I'm supposing the D70S) has a slower AWL signal.  Because the commander signal pulses seem to take longer, the SB-80DX can't seem to sync with the D70's commander flash at any speed.  The SB-26 on the other hand, has a second optical slave mode (the "D" mode -- presumably delay mode for syncing with TTL).  In the D mode, the SB-26 can sync with the D70 commander even at 1/500.  But there's a catch: when the SB-26 is firing, the CLS slave (the SB-800 in this example) gets confused and sometimes doesn't sync.

COMPARISON WITH YN-560
Previously, I thought that the YN-560 provided the best value as a strobist flash.  The price is very competitive especially for its power and features (such as optical slave and zoom).  However, I was somewhat ambivalent about using the YN-560 in connection with a CLS AWL setup.  Yes, it is possible to trigger the YN-560 in sync with CLS flashes, but there are numerous restrictions.

If you search patiently on eBay, you will find SB-26s and SB-80s for around $125 (at the time of this writing).  It's a $50-60 premium over the YN-560, but you get quite a bit for the extra cash:

• More power.  According to speedlights.net, the real guide number of the YN-560 is 34 meters, while the SB-26 is 39 meters.  The SB-80DX isn't listed in the speedlights.net power index but it has the same power as that of an SB-800, with a guide number of 41 meters in that index.
• Better CLS AWL compatibility.  While the YN-560 has many restrictions to allow it to sync with CLS AWL, the SB-26 and SB80DX can sync with few issues.
• Better user interface.  The YN-560 has been criticized for having a power meter that is difficult to read.  The SB-26 and SB-80DX both have LCD screens and a reasonably user-friendly interface.
• TTL quench pin.  You may not care about TTL if you are a hardcore strobist.  However, the TTL quench pin enables the SB-26 and SB-80DX to be adjusted remotely via a Radiopopper JrX Studio.  Actually, the same is true for many other old Nikon TTL flashes. 
• TTL sync port.  The YN-560 has a PC sync port, as do the SB-26 and SB-80DX.  However, the SB-26 and SB-80DX also have the Nikon 3-pin TTL sync port.  That allows them to be used in some wired TTL setups, and incidentally allows the use of a Radiopopper JrX Studio without an RP Cube (if you have a miniplug to 3-pin cable like this).
• Auto mode.  If you need TTL-like capabilities, the SB-26 and SB-80DX both have an Auto mode.  The YN-560 does not.
• Nikon quality versus Yongnuo quality.  No contest.

That's why if you can get an SB-26 or SB-80DX at around $125, they are better values than even a YN-560.

eBAY TIPS
To help you look around eBay, here are a couple of tips:
1. Boolean searches.
Instead of searching for SB-26 then SB26 then "SB 26" you can instead search for (SB-26,SB26,"SB 26") --> note that there are no spaces.  That will search for any of those terms within the parentheses.

2. Saved searches.
You can save your searches so that you don't have to keep typing them each time you want to check.

3. Profiteering.
If you buy a flash with the intent to resell it, think twice.  Both eBay and Amazon charge hefty fees to sellers.  You need to add about twenty percent (!) to your buying price just to break even.

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RAW vs JPEG, Myth or Fact? The Definitive Guide

Too much orange color? Hit the jump to know what's going on

Today I am going to wet my feet and discuss a much debated topic, RAW vs JPEG. This topic causes almost as much debate as the Canon vs Nikon does amongst fanboys, but this post is not about concluding which one is the best, but rather the strengths and weaknesses of each format and when to use either of them.

This post is intended for beginners and experienced photographers equally, I will compare both formats in 5 categories: white balance, highlight recovery, shadow recovery, noise and sharpness.

Hit the jump for the real showdown.

WHAT IS A RAW FILE?

I first learned about RAW when I was researching my first semi-pro camera, the Canon G11, I saw people very enthusiastic about the camera shooting RAW, and I was thinking what's the big deal? Why would RAW be any better than JPEG? Aren't both files an output from the same camera, thus should be the same?

Definition: RAW is basically the information the camera sensor collects when you take a picture, it is recorded into a file and that is your RAW file.

The RAW file as is doesn't represent a picture as we know it, and can't be viewed until it is processed, you might think that what you see on your camera's screen is the RAW file, but it is not, what you see is a processed (or converted if you like) RAW file. So what does this processing actually do to your RAW file? 

RAW PROCESSING

What any camera does after grabbing the RAW data from sensor is process it in a picture that we can see, even if your camera doesn't give you the option to record RAW files to the memory card, it still uses it internally and applies it's own processing to that file to give you your JPEG files.

This processing includes many parameters, the RAW file doesn't contain the white balance information, so the camera takes that file and corrects the white balance first based on the white balance setting you made (even if it's auto), then it will apply some image parameters like: sharpening, noise reduction, contrast, saturation, highlight recovery, lens distortion & vignetting correction, etc...

Then after all of this image processing, it will bake the resulting image in a JPEG file, compress it and throw away all the extra data recorded from the RAW, and this is the file you get at the end of the day. If you are shooting RAW only on your camera, the same process happens to give you the image that you see on the back screen but without recording a JPEG file to your card.

Most of the image parameters and JPEG compression settings are available for you to set in your camera, in Canon the picture parameters are called "Picture Styles", and you also have different compression settings as for the JPEGs. Each camera manufacturer has different settings available for the user to set and they usually have their own secret algorithm for processing the image; like the lens distortion correction and the noise reduction algorithms.

WHY WOULD I SHOOT JPEG?

For several reasons, the triggering idea to this article was when I went to an autocross event (as a spectator with a camera) and I was asked by a friend to cover some parts of the event since no photographers were hired for the event, I started by shooting in RAW as I usually do but when I discovered that I will be taking a huge amount of pictures and that I will have to post-process all of them I decided to switch to JPEG since the job wasn't really critical and JPEG in itself would produce good enough results without needing any post work.

So here we see the first advantage of JPEG, no post processing required, you can of course post process your JPEGs and add a touch of enhancements, but for me, this is against the point of shooting JPEG in the first place.

What's more, switching from RAW to JPEG gave me a longer burst rate, my 60D can capture up to 16 continuous RAW files in a burst before the buffer fills up and the camera slows down. In JPEG mode, even if I'm shooting with the least compression (i.e. biggest file sizes), I can keep firing pictures until the memory card fills up, if I was shooting RAW I wouldn't have been able to get this 26 frames burst of one of the cars crashing.

Click to see a much larger picture (the last frame is mis-placed, my mistake)

Another advantage of shooting JPEGs is the file size, on my 60D (also the 550D, 600D & 7D) the average RAW file size is 26 megabytes, while the highest quality JPEG average size is less than 6 megabytes, you can do the math quickly and see that one RAW file is as large as 4 or 5 JPEG files. In the same autocross shoot I took around 1400 pictures in 3 hours, and I only filled up half of my 16GB card.

So to summarize the benefits of the JPEG:

• Smaller file size
• Longer burst rate
• Usually no extra post processing needed
• You can immediately give the JPEGs to your friends (they hate waiting for me to return home and process the images)

RAW FILE ADVANTAGES

Now it's time to see what advantages does a RAW file have over a JPEG file, if you have read all of the above, you should know by now that when the camera creates the JPEG file and compresses it, it throws away a lot of data, in the coming part I will show you how important this data might be.

For testing purposes, I used my Canon 60D along with my sharpest lens, the 60mm f/2.8 Macro. I set the camera to shoot RAW + JPEG (L), this way when I take each picture I get both the RAW and JPEG files. My picture style was the standard one but with the saturation and sharpness both increased one notch and the contrast decreased by two notches.

Test 1: White Balance

The main advantage (from my point of view) of the RAW file is that the white balance isn't baked into the image, you can freely adjust it in post just as if you changed the WB on the camera and re-took the picture. I shot the original picture under tungsten light but my camera WB was set to Flash, this resulted in this orange-y picture.

My daughter's color book, shot under tungsten light, WB set to flash (~ 5600 K)

Then I put both the RAW and JPEG files in lightroom and used the WB dropper and clicked the white page in the book to get the correct white balance.

RAW - WB corrected in lightroom

JPEG - WB corrected in lightroom

You can clearly see that correcting white balance on a JPEG file will not give you accurate colors, but what about human skin?

Original - taken with a wrong WB setting

RAW - Corrected WB, this is how his skin looks like in real life

JPEG - Corrected WB, maybe I could get rid of the pink tint?

JPEG - Corrected WB, I attempted to remove the ugly pink tint, but the colors are still wrong

This is a clear win for the RAW file, you might argue that good photographers will never make the mistake of choosing the wrong white balance, and you might be correct, but keep in mind a few things:

• Pro photographers can forget to adjust the white balance in changing light, sure they will discover it the first time they see the screen, but they might have missed the moment, we are all humans and prone to error.
• Sometimes you'd be shooting in changing light temperatures like a sunny sky that keeps changing to overcast several times while during a shoot, or an indoors party with changing lights, in these situations I use Auto WB and make the necessary adjustments in post.
• Even though the 60D is known to have a very good Auto WB, under tungsten light it picked the above book picture at 3200 K temperature while the correct WB was 2400 K, even the tungsten preset on my camera will set the WB to 3200K.
• Finally, sometimes you would want to give a bit of warmth to a picture or to someone's skin color, this can be done easily by changing the WB.

Test 2: Sharpness & Details

I noticed this one after I returned from the autocross shoot, I looked at some of the portraits that I took at 100% magnification, and I found them not as sharp as I am used to from my lens, at first I thought it was because of a focusing error, then I discovered that the JPEGs were the culprit, mind that I am using the standard Canon style with the sharpness increased by one tick, so it should be pretty sharp without any extra artifacts or noise appearing.

And to make that test harder for the RAW file, I was shooting at ISO 400 with ZERO sharpness applied in lightroom, and the noise reduction luminance slider was only at 10. Look at three areas, the middle of the eyebrow, the bottom eyelashes, and the skin pores to the left of the eyebrows.

RAW, ZERO sharpness applied

JPEG, Canon's standard picture style with sharpness increased by one notch

No contest really, too much data is thrown away, of course you can sharpen the JPEG in post, but you can do the same to the RAW file, don't forget that no sharpness is applied to this RAW file.

Below is another quick example of the difference in details between both file types, the below picture was taken at ISO 3200, I suspect that the noise reduction at this high ISO is the culprit behind the detail loss, more so than the JPEG compression algorithm.

Original Picture, ISO 3200, room lighting, hand held

RAW - 100% Crop

JPEG - 100% Crop

Test 3: Highlight Recovery

When I was editing the picture for this test, I noticed that the RAW file for the image below was 34 megabytes in size, a frickin' 8 more megabytes than normal RAW file, if anything, this indicates how much data the RAW files keep inside, eve if you won't see it.

I took this picture through a glass window with the exposure compensation set to over-expose this image by 3 stops, that's 8 times more light than it should have, this situation happens to many of us where something goes wrong like hitting the exposure compensation dial by mistake (or forgetting that it was previously set at something else). Maybe you overexposed the image by using too much flash power as a mistake, etc...

Original Picture, over exposed by 3 stops

You can see here that we have a very bad situation, in attempting to fix the image, I pulled the recovery slider all the way to the right, decreased the overall exposure by two stops and added some contrast using the blacks slider. I tried doing the same for the JPEG but it didn't work, so I tried other different things like the saturation and the curves but failed to fix it.

RAW fixed

JPEG fixed, but still looking messy

Test 4: Shadows Recovery

This test will show us the effect of attempting to recover the shadows if you have shot an underexposed image or want to add fill light to a dark area of an image, of course this test is taken to the extreme, but I wanted to see how much latitude did the JPEG file have versus the RAW file.

Original Image, severely underexposed

The image you see above is underexposed by lots of stops (can't remember how many), it's almost one and a half stops away of being completely black. I will attempt two methods of recovering the shadows, in this first one I will try to recover the whole image by pulling the exposure slider all the way to the right (+4 stops).

RAW, exposure +4

JPEG, exposure +4

I have to say that the JPEG file didn't do bad here, but the RAW file reveals more details and colors, which you can see in the 100% crops below:

RAW, 100% Crop

JPEG, 100% Crop

For this second example I shot a lens in a dark room against a bright background and exposed for the background, this resulted in the lens being completely dark, I attempted the fix by pulling the fill slider all the way to the right, both results weren't pretty but the JPEG sucked more. I didn't use any noise reduction in the RAW image.

Original Picture, exposed for background

RAW, fill slider all the way to the right, there is noticeable noise but good detail

JPEG, really ugly blotches and severe loss of detail

Test 5: Noise

Noise in my opinion is one of the things where Canon's JPEG engine fails to deliver, in high ISOs you can notice too much color noise and strange color blotches. If you don't already know, Canon ships it's own "Digital Photo Professional (DPP)" with any camera that supports RAW, this is their own RAW converter, and it uses the same algorithm the camera uses to convert to JPEG, so if my picture style in the 60D was Vivid for example, I can choose the same picture style in Canon's DPP and I will get the same picture as if it came out from the camera, I really hate how it handles noise and sharpness settings.

On the other side, Adobe's latest ACR (found in Photoshop CS5 or Lightroom 3) handles both the noise and sharpness aspects really really well, I once tried taking an ISO 12,800 image through different famous noise reduction programs and was able to get the best result with the least amount of settings and time from LR3. What ticks me off is how Adobe can process Canon's color noise better than Canon themselves?

Anyway for this test I used the same card reader I used in the details test, the image is shot at ISO 3200 (which is my mental limit by the way, check this post), I will show you first the RAW image without any noise reduction, then the JPEG, then the RAW again with noise reduction applied.

RAW, 100% Crop, zero NR

JPEG, 100% crop, standard NR in camera

RAW, 100% crop, NR applied in lightroom

CONCLUSION:

As you can see from the results, the RAW files are superior in almost every aspect to the JPEG files, except for the size and the need for post processing. They also take a huge space on your hard drive when you have thousands of images. By now you're probably wondering which format to use, but before you do, please read these conclusions:

• If you're satisfied with the images from your camera as is, you probably shouldn't switch to RAW, I usually advise my friends with new DSLRs to shoot in JPEG, that's what they are used to, they mainly bought the DSLR for the shallow DoF and the responsiveness, not to be able to count someone's eyelashes.
• If you don't have time for post processing hundreds of images after each shoot, then stick to JPEG and try to find the correct picture style settings that will give you the best images you like.
• If you only post your images on the web or print them on small sizes, it makes no sense to shoot in RAW, some of my friends set their cameras to 5 megapixels since this is all they need.
• Learning to process RAW files might seem daunting at first (it was to me, I was never able to make my RAW images even as good as the JPEGs, let alone better), but after watching this one hour long video by Zack Arias describing in extreme detail his digital workflow, I felt like everything finally fell into place and started making sense, then I downloaded the LR3 trial and was the happiest man on earth, I really recommend this video to anyone getting into RAW post processing.

I shoot RAW myself because I love getting the most details, the least noise and the sharpest pictures I can, and this is why I buy better lenses, the only problems I face are the storage space on my computer (not the memory cards, they are cheap and I have LOTS of them) and the post processing time.

Here's how I solved the space issue, after a shoot I copy and review all of the RAW files on my desktop PC, I immediately delete any picture I don't like or think that I will never use, it makes no sense to have several images for the same situation, only the best images remain, I choose the best one from each situation, process it then save it as a resized JPEG (usually 2000 ~ 2500 pixels on the wide side), these JPEGs are the ones that I keep and show to people, the RAW files remain on my desktop and 95% of the time I never come back to them. So each while I just backup the old ones to an external HDD or a DVD or whatever, and I probably wouldn't need them again (remember that I am no commercial photographer, just an advanced hobbyist).

As for the post processing issue, I have reached a stage where my lightroom preset is configured to give me  good images from the get go when I import the pictures, I only have to edit some individual ones and maybe tweak the exposure and the white balance in some. One more thing I learned from Zack Arias' video is to be consistent when I am shooting so that I can easily copy the changes I made to one picture to the others quickly.

The final reason that I shoot RAW for is that when I'm combining ambient light with bounce flash and gelling the flash, things might get a little bit out of control (especially when bouncing to colored walls), so I love being able to easily adjust the WB without affecting the picture quality. See my DIY Gels post here for examples on combining different light sources.

I hope that this article has helped you with any doubts you had about RAW vs JPEG. If you have any questions or ideas that you want me to test please fire it in the comments.

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Is the YongNuo YN-560 a Headturner?

WARNING: I have ZERO evidence whether this works.  You may kill your YN560 in the process.  I am sure this will violate whatever warranty YongNuo or the seller may have.  Do this at your own risk!!!



The Nikon SB-800 normally has a swivel range of -180 degrees to +90 degrees.  In other words it can only swivel 90 degrees to the right.  There is a mod out there for brave SB-800 owners that will let you swivel the head up to 135 degrees to the right:
http://strobist.blogspot.com/2008/08/how-to-break-your-sb-800s-little-neck.html
Being somewhat of a risk-taker, I did it to my SB-800.  It was extremely hard to twist the head -- like a very stubborn jar.  A couple of times, I nearly gave up (because of the mental stress of potentially breaking an expensive flash).  But eventually the head turned.  I did this mod a couple of years ago and have never experienced a problem.  (Do so at your own risk!!! And of course be aware that the SB-700 and SB-900 can turn 180 degrees both directions without any mods.)

CAUTION!  WARNING!  DANGER!  Do not try this at home!


Out of curiosity, I tried the swivel mod on my dead YN-560 (1st generation - with plastic foot).  Let me emphasize it again: I was doing this to an already dead YN-560 (my YN-560 died when it fell in the water) so I had nothing to lose.  If you want to try this on a working YN-560, do so at your own risk.  Please note further that Nikon's reliability is way ahead of YongNuo.  I'm pretty sure an SB-800 will handle more abuse than will a YN-560.

That said, I twisted my dead YN-560's head and found that it was pretty easy to twist it to the right.  Easier than opening a bottle.  I don't know what that means, and I have no way to tell if it damaged my YN-560 further.  I also don't know if the 2nd generation YN-560 with metal foot is any different in this regard.

Anyway, now my dead YN-560's head twists 135 degrees to the right:

Too bad I have no way to know whether it could work...

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Upcoming Posts

Here are some of the posts we'll be seeing this week:

• Shooting in candlelight;
• Comparison of old Nikon flashes and tips for getting good deals on eBay;
• .. and a flash that may be a better value for you than even a Yongnuo YN-560.

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Flash Series - Part 2: Home Made (DIY) Gels & Gel Holder

In this second part of the flash series (here's the first one) I will discuss home made gels and how do they perform in the real world, I might get a little philosophical (i.e. non-scientific) during the article, so please excuse me. Hit the jump for details and a bonus gel holder idea.

P.S. I wrote an introduction to white balance and color temperatures, but I found it to be too long, thus I have moved it to the bottom of the post, if you don't know what is a color temperature, read the bottom part first.

When I started my strobist path, I was hit in the face with the complete lack of gels in the photography shops in Egypt, and since I don't have a way to order and ship things from US (I do now, but it is expensive, so I leave it for urgent stuff) I had to look for DIY gel solutions, and after some looking around I found this amazing page where I downloaded my gel PDFs and was able to print them and use them. If you're living in the US you can get the ready made Rosco Strobist Gel Set for $9 instead.

The idea is that you have a PDF file with the main gel colors on it (you can make your own if you want), then you buy a laser transparency sheet and print these PDFs using a color laser printer, now you have a sheet with your gels ready, just cut them and find a way to put them in front of your flash head and you're ready to go. You can see my own set at the top of the post.

As far as endurance and heat resistance goes, I never had a problem in that regard. The laser transparencies I used are designed to handle the continuous heat from projector bulbs for extended periods of time, and although I have printed more than one sheet, I am still using the first one I printed.

DIY GELS SYNTHETIC TEST RESULTS

I have never used a real commercial gel on my flash, so I have no idea how they should perform. First, let me talk about tungsten white balance, there is no exact color temperature for tungsten, it depends heavily on the type of the bulb used and the furniture/walls the light reflects from. For example in my room the tungsten WB is around ~ 2200K, while in a different room in the house it is ~ 2650K, and my Canon camera considers tungsten WB to be 3200K, and lightroom has a different temperature!!!

So in order to determine what's what, I used my digital grey kard and tested the color temperatures in different lighting scenarios, my method involved shooting the grey card in RAW then importing the photos to lightroom and using the dropper to select the grey card and determine the correct white balance, here's what I found out:

• Available light only (tungsten): 2650K
• Direct flash with full CTO (zero ambient): 4500K
• Bounce flash with full CTO (zero ambient): 4000K

As you can see, the full CTO doesn't bring the flash color temperature anywhere near the tungsten WB, so does this mean that they don't work? Let's see. Will the Rosco full CTO bring the flash WB to 2800K? I don't know, and if anyone can test this, please do and tell me.

DIY GELS REAL WORLD TEST RESULTS

In this part I will show you how these gels work for me in real life, then I will try to explain the results. When I finished shooting the pictures for this test I discovered that my camera was set on JPEG only and it was impossible for me to re-shoot the pictures or adjust the WB in post, fortunately enough I had the mind to set the WB to tungsten.

Available Light Only

Available Light + Bounce Flash (no gel), do you see the blue color cast?

Available Light + Bounce Flash (1/2 CTO), blue color cast still visible

Available Light + Bounce Flash (full CTO), a much better result

MY PHILOSOPHY:

I think the results speak about themselves, here's my own explanation (philosophy), first of all there is no certain defined white balance for each type of bulb or lighting, the light your camera picks comes from different sources, there is the direct light coming from the source hitting your subject, and there are a lot of other indirect reflections coming from lots of objects around your subject (ex. walls and furniture), these two reasons cause the color temperature to change from one place to another, even from a different position in the same room to another.

When you add bounce flash to the equation, you add a new non-controlled dimension, your flash will bounce from different surfaces and carry different color casts from these surfaces and will probably give you unexpected results. What's more is that when using bounce flash, one usually underexposes the ambient light by one or more stops, thus rendering the original ambient colors muted that it won't really have an apparent effect in the final picture.

Add to all of this the bless of using RAW files and the ability to change the white balance in post at will, and you have a pretty good way to get the results you desire. I almost always tweak the white balance in post processing and adjust it for the correct skin tones (you can use a digital card for a quick and easy adjustment), this adjustment won't have much effect on the rest of the picture (ambient lit) and even if it does, the ambient is already underexposed (muted) that it won't look bad.

In some rare situations when using bounce flash I get some strange color casts that I can't get rid of, my solution is to pull the saturation slider all the way to the left and have an artsy black and white picture.


DIY GEL HOLDER:

To continue with the DIY theme, I have made my own gel envelope (to carry the gels in) and a gel holder to mount the gels to the flash, I saw lots of different ones on the internet and I didn't like most of them, especially the velcro ones since it required me to stick velcro to my flash (which I didn't want to do back then) and will make me stick velcro to each and every gel, then in one of those brain-light moments I had the following idea.

I created a gel holder from the exact same transparency sheets that I used for printing gels, I cut it to size then bent it and pressed that bend with a ruler edge. To mount the gel holder to the flash I pull the diffuser slightly then insert the gel holder and push it with the diffuser, I think the pictures will explain it better.

This is an envelope created from cardboard to carry my gels in

DIY Gel Holder

DIY Gel Holder

Inserting the Gel Holder

Ready and Firing

This article took me a long time to write, so I hope it has been beneficial to you and I am ready to answer any questions you have. My next post will be a break from the flash series where I will discuss RAW vs JPEG, you wouldn't want to miss it. :-) 

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INTRODUCTION TO WHITE BALANCE AND COLOR TEMPERATURES
 As you probably already know, each light source has a different color temperature, tungsten bulbs for example have a warm (more orange) color cast while the day light has a more cooler (more bluish) color temperature. Color temperatures are expressed in Kelvin, so for tungsten lights, the color temperature revolves around 2800K, while for day light it is more like 5200K.

What does this have to do with white balance? Imagine you have a white piece of paper and you're sitting in a room with tungsten lighting, when you take a picture with your camera the paper should look white, now if you take the same picture in a fluorescent lit room, the paper should still look white, are you getting my drift?

The white balance is the way you tell the camera that you are shooting in a certain light temperature, so it can correct the colors in the picture accordingly, otherwise the picture will have all the wrong colors, maybe with an orange tint, maybe with a blue color cast, so setting the correct white balance on the camera is very important to get correct looking skin tones.

SO WHAT DOES THIS HAVE TO DO WITH GELS?

Now you understand that when you're shooting in tungsten light you have to set your white balance to tungsten and so on, now imagine that you are using the flash in this same tungsten lit room, your picture would have a mix of warm color (tungsten ~ 2800K) and a cool color (flash ~ 5600K), it will look ugly with two color tones like many of the party pictures you see on facebook.

The solution to this is to change the color temperature of your flash to match the main light source (tungsten in our example), it is easier this way since you probably can't change the color temperature of your light source, the other reason is because the flash's color temperature is sort of neutral (white) where you can make it more warm or more cool by adding gels.

One of the very famous gels is the CTO gel, which is short for "Change To Orange", i.e. you will make the flash's color temperature warmer and closer to tungsten light, this way you can set your white balance to tungsten and use both the room light and the flash together without any strange color casts. Another less famous gel color is the CTS (Change To Straw) which is used by Neil VN, this one also changes the flash color temperature close to tungsten. There are a whole lot of gels like 1/2 CTO (less warm than full CTO) and CTG (changes flash temperature to match fluorescent light), and even other colors that can be used to have red or purple backgrounds or whatever, you are only limited by your imagination.

One final thing I want to mention before we dig into the gels is that a warm skin tone is usually preferred to a blue skin tone, that's why many photographers have a 1/4 or a 1/2 CTO gel on their main flash to get a slightly warmer skin tone even though they are only using flashes as their light source and don't have to color match something else.
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