Project365 - Off Camera Flash

Introduction
In a couple of recent posts, I have mentioned that I was getting frustrated by the built-in "wireless" flash option in my camera body & flash. They use an infra-red beam to communicate, which imposes limitations on shutter speed, due to a sync issue. In those posts, I remarked that I really need to pick up a couple of PocketWizards.
Yesterday, I trotted down to Saneal Camera to scope them out. Talk about stickershock ! They are sold individually, and the basic ones are about $150 apiece. Yes, I know they are the gold-standard, Mac-daddy of the wireless flash trigger world, but that seemed a little steep, when I wasn't so sure how often I would use them.
After picking me up off the floor, the sales guy showed me the "budget" alternative - sold by the pair, the Cactus V5. Relatively feature-packed, and less that half the cost of the PocketWizards.
The Setup
Camera - Canon 60D, Flash - Canon Speedlite 430 EX II, Wireless - Cactus V5s
So this morning, I had a quick boo at the manual (yes, I still RTFM !), and set them up. One goes on the camera, and the other attaches to the flash. Like so:

In the red box, the Cactus V5 attaches to the "hot shoe" of the camera body. It has settings for both Transmit and Receive, as well as 16 different channels, to help should you encounter radio interference.

In the red box, the flash attaches to the Cactus V5s "hot shoe". Most of the time, I would set this up on a tripod, but it was easier to just use the little plastic stand which came with the Speedlite.
















The Photos
In this sequence, I was emulating some instruction I read on Strobist . In the section called Lighting 101, there are a number of articles which describe how to manually control your off-camera flash, for portraiture and the like.

In this photo, I'm taking a picture of the flash itself. I think that's kinda cool. The flash is set to Manual mode, following the objective of my Project365, and is set to a narrow beam - 105 mm. Since it's in manual mode, the camera can't instruct the flash to compensate for the exposure - no ETTL mode available here !

Here is the first of the series. I'm at f/11, about 1/5 of a second shutter speed, and ISO 200. The flash is set as above. The photo is very bright because the flash can't communicate with the camera. So it can't receive compensation instructions.

The next in series, and all I am changing is the shutter speed. Flash (or strobe) photography needs to be looked at as two distinct photos - one with ambient light, and then another one with the flash added in. I chose my settings to have decent contrast, and the flash should create some soft shadow behind my sleepy assistant.

Obviously, the flash isn't TOO bright, or my finicky model would have wandered off. By manually changing the shutter-speed, I am purposely under-exposing this image by one full stop to compensate for the flash.

This is taken at two full stops under-exposed. It's starting to get a little darker, but the shadow & contrast are still nice.

Finally, at three full stops under-exposed, we are starting to lose the detail. There is some harder shadow behind, and the photo is still lighter than if I took it perfectly exposed with just the ambient light.






Lessons Learned
I still have a lot to learn about flash or strobe photography. I really like the effect of having the light from the flash off the camera body, as it allows me to get creative with shadows and creating depth. Definitely lots more to experiment with and learn !