James Balog: Icebergs with Speedlights
Nikon has posted another one of those pieces that show off the capabilities of their CLS system. This time it is natural history photographer James Balog, using multiple SB-800's to shoot icebergs at twilight.More pics and links after the jump.
Balog is one of those cerebral photographers who always seems to be working on something significant, and I have always enjoyed his approach to lighting. Obviously, the icebergs certainly lend themselves to being shot in such a way as to where you do not have to wade out into the frigid water to adjust the flashes any more than you have to.
The takeaway from this piece (for me) is that more and more of the heavy hitters seem to be using small flashes for their location stuff. Gregory Heisler, long a fan of the large format camera and big strobes, is doing much of his work with a digital EOS and EZ flashes now. Rather than being viewed as a limitation, speedlights are more frequently being seen as a way to accomplish something you simply might not be able to do with big, AC flashes.______________________
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:: James Balog's Website ::
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by David, at 12:00 AM.
16 Comments:
These photos are great, love the color of the ice. Must be nice to have 12 SB-800s at your disposal.
Well, with TWELVE of Nikon's strongest speedlights, you're not losing a whole lot of power compared to, say, three studio lights.
These photos are incredible. I'd be curious to see exactly how many flashes they used---saw about 8 in one photo. It's a interesting pitch Nikon is selling with the ads. Yes, you can control 12 at once, but since you're using portable flashes instead of studio lights, you'll need 12 flashes---a bit of a mixed message.
I'm curious about the batteries he uses in these temperatures. Even with multiple strobes I expect he's shooting near full power at these distances.
great pictures.
Lisbeth, Lisbeth, I'm comin to join ya honey! Heisler is using miniature format and speed lights for Most of his work? Can't wait to see it. Got any samples?
The lack of much that indicates scale makes me wonder if someone could do this in their pool with a big block of ice they shave down.
I had a good laugh with Luke's recommendation to shave down a block of ice. Having shot icebergs, I can empathize with hard they are to light or to create any sense of scale. The clear ice in that one shot is probably 10k years old to be that clear. No doubt, Balog was drawn both to the inspiration of shooting something that is older than modern man AND the saddness of it all disappearing in front of his eyes. Knowing that Balog shoots in really remote locations, reliability and weight become big issues. Imagine the consequences of dropping 1 of 12 SB800s into the drink versus 1 Elinchrom. Would probably cause as many tears as when one of his intervalometers fails out on an icesheet.
Interestingly, there is no mention of why Mr. Balog was photographing icebergs in Alaska. While I appreciate the behind the scenes look at how James works and his gear and technique, are we missing something? Is he trying to show the effect of global warming? Seems to me some mention should have been made, if that indeed was the case, or did Nikon miss the forest for the trees in this slick, highly produced marketing piece?
...Picture looks great.But I always have problems with nikon remote flash system. Distance and angle...
I'm curious to see what happens if and when he slips and one of those SB-800s winds up in the drink right next to him. Well, hopefully that would NEVER happen! Is that a real concern in such a large body of water? I'm no 'lectrical genius.
Goes nearly without saying that the images are, of course, spectacular.
I was wondering if Canon had a system as effective as the sb-800's? Any info out there?
illogical--
From those pictures and the project description on his website I would gather that he was taking the pictures in the summer in south east or south central Alaska, so cold temperatures would not be much of a consideration. From the looks of it, moisture looks to be a bigger problem for him. I use Li-ion batteries to shoot at -40 F, and you just have to be careful to keep them warm when you're not using them and not to let them fully discharge in the cold or they'll never hold a charge again. I like to keep copious spare batteries in my interior coat pockets as they do discharge more quickly in the cold.
is it me, or is that a Brewer Bracket, in the main page shot...?
I noticed the gear tent is the very cool BD beta light. Lite and compact, perfect for lite and fast travel.
hey all-
I'm James's assistant and just found out about strobist, and can provide all sorts of detail for all these shots. I'm the guy in the red hat in the first photo, helped design all the lighting and was basically in charge of all the strobes.
First off, we never used more than 8 strobes in any one photo, usually in pairs of two strobes on a stand. We used a couple of Justin clamps to keep the lights on the stand. Most of the shots, however, were taken with just four strobes, and sometimes even two. The camera was obviously on a tripod for all of them, and everything was triggered through the Nikon commander unit.
The the first shot and the sixth shot on http://www.stunningnikon.com/challenge were lit with just four of the strobes, two on each side. All batteries were lithium-ions, and the recharges were actually very fast. We were using the extra external battery pack, so it totaled 10 AAs. We didn't use the extra add-on battery adapter to the actual flash unit because we figured we had enough power already and we didn't want that extra battery to obstruct the sensor. The lights were not always putting out full power, so we probably could have gotten by with fewer lights even. Ben (another assistant) and I were standing out in the freezing cold water up to the top of our waders, holding onto the light stands. There was one time when an iceberg almost took out a stand, but I luckily caught it in time. Yes, I was quite worried that one would fall in the water, but fortunately that never happened.
Getting the strobes to fire was a bit trickier than indoors--just so much more space to cover, and needing to maintain line of sight with all the lights. On the fifth shot on the Nikon website, I had to do some interesting trickery to get the lights to sync. It was lit with just five speedlights, and covered that entire space. Three lights on the left side out of frame, one on the close foreground iceberg, one on the middle ground iceberg, and one on the far back. The tricky part were the two lights on the right hand side, hidden behind the big iceberg, that had to light the right side of the middle ground and far away iceberg. While all three lights on the left side were triggered by the normal commander mode, the others weren't in line of sight with the camera, so I had to set them to function as a slave. As we were shooting though, we realized that those two slave strobes were firing, but weren't getting picked up by the exposures. I realized the pre-flash was tripping the slaves, so we had to do a FV lock on the camera. The FV lock calculated the exposure for all the lights, then we would take the actual shot. That shot combined the commander mode, the slave mode, and the FV lock. (Oh, and for the light that was really far in the back, maybe around 70 feet or so, I shaped some aluminum foil around the sensor to help pick up the light from the other strobes).
So I think that's it. I'm glad you guys appreciated the images so much. James definitely appreciates all the comments.
And please check out our current project, www.extremeicesurvey.org. We're undergoing a major renovation to the website right now that should be up in a couple months, that will show a lot of the footage we've been gathering this year.
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