8th
Photo shoot - Record Player
Call me crazy, we jumped on the old technology train (or maybe are we early adopters of “vinyl revival wave”?). Besides the (quite different) sound quality, playing LP records has its own special magic mood, so you can tell one of the first things besides the apparent (playing few records), I had to make photo of this new/old thing we’ve got into.
As I shot this at home, I opted for the easiest - using Nikon CLS system for remote triggering. You may say why not use radio at home as well, but it’s actually the other way around - why not use CLS, when it just works indoors.
And more - it’ll do everything radios do, plus the benefit of TTL metering. No need to sort out exposure values, just tweak it if the “proper” output is not what you meant to do. You don’t even have to run around and do the tweaks on strobes, just head to the CLS menu on your camera body. It doesn’t get any simpler than that.
As the player material is dark grey metallic, I knew I need to introduce some color with gels, or it would look almost monochromatic. Orange/blue combination being one of the strongest color pairs out there, i reached for the blue and orange gels into my rosco sampler swatchbook (they are free at several places).
To light the scene, I placed Nikon SB-600 on the table left from the player (about same height level as the arm), added light blue rosco gel and attached cardboard grid to prevent the spill of the color all over (I wanted color contrast, not a mix).
Should this be accent light, I still needed main color light - placed SB-900 on a small stand right-top from the player, with orange gel attached, and as I wanted this main light to go everywhere (just opposite from the accent light), I placed white shoot-through umbrella in front of it.
After i took first few test frames (shot with D300 & 105/2.8VR lens at 1/125,f8), tweaking the light positions and actual angle from which the arm looked best, I found the blue light is actually bit too bright for the look I wanted. Having two options (replacing it with darker gel or turning the light power down) I did the easier - dialed in -1 EV compensation on the SB-600, and there i had my moody shot of the ancient technology.
