Off-Camera Lighting Techniques

[Paul Colley]

I would like to try some off-camera lighting techniques and wondered if anybody could offer advice on the remote sensors that people use to trigger their strobes, such as the web sites of manufacturers & retailers, but also any top tips for using them.

[tswinner]

Ikelite has some remote trigers that work good with ike strobes.

Todd

[bvanant]

I would like to try some off-camera lighting techniques and wondered if anybody could offer advice on the remote sensors that people use to trigger their strobes, such as the web sites of manufacturers & retailers, but also any top tips for using them.

Paul: Which strobes do you have? Matthias (weikamp) sells some triggers and there is the Ike version as well. Many strobes have built in slave functions (Sea and Sea, Inon etc) so you might not need much.

Bill

[scottg]

hey Paul - it's nice to see you on the forums. I'm looking into doing the same thing so let us know what works for you.

I think Bill might have done a little bit of off-camera lighting on his trip this past week also, so maybe he'll share with us how it went.

scott

[Paul Colley]

Thanks, guys. For info, I use both Inon Z240 and Sea & Sea strobes. Although the Inon strobes can be activated directly, you need to be line-of-sight between the triggering strobe on the camera and the sensor fitted to the strobe, but it seems to me that this limits your options. For example, you cannot hide the off-board strobe behind a rock to make sure that light is thrown only at your subject and not back at the camera. My intention is to use a remote sensor and lead. The sensor will be line-of-sight to pick up the low power triggering flash from the on-board strobe, while the off-board strobe is activated via this remote sensor. That way, I hope to have maximum flexibility positioning the off-board strobe. I'll take a look at the recommended manufacturer, see about getting some sensors and let you know how I get on. I have done this once, but with borrowed equipment on a workshop and I'm now trying to work it out from first principles.

[Vizart]

Best of the field for that aplication is the Ikelite DS-160/DS-161 with its remote sensor that can be attached to a 3ft/1 meter extension (or even a 15ft one), it is used a combo frequently used in cave diving for strapping a strobe in the back of a diver while retaining the slave trigger in the line of sight, it is used also in macro lighting, put a gorilla pod with a one inch ball on it get a a clamp and attach the strobe to it, position the sensor away from the field of view or in a discreet position and bingo!

The heinrich slave cell will do the same, albeit I don't know of any extension available for Sea & Sea type cords.

I am looking forward to hitting Bonaire with an identical kit (DS-160, slave cell, extension(plus home made snoot) for macro work in the next Digital shootout, but... I still have plenty of (too much ) time to experiment before getting there again.