With Thanks to Scott Kelby

Scott Kelby is reputedly the number 1 best selling author of computer books since 2004 as well as editor and publisher of Photoshop User magasine, he's an award winning author of more than 40 books. I've had Digital Photography books 1 and 2 for quite a while and bought book 3 along with the CS4 Book.

Me and the cat like to read a book in bed before we go to sleep and initially I found his chatty style and humour quite irritating. The cat generally prefers historical romances.

I wanted to use my new Nikon SB 600 Speedlight off camera and had trawled both the Nikon D90 and Speedlight instructions manuals but hadn't cracked it. I was hoping Vol 3 would help, which it did by telling me the details were in Vol 2 which I'd skipped before because I didn't have a flash!

So with Scott's help I set up the Speedlight to wireless on Channel 1. Then I set up the camera for the pop up flash to Commander mode so instead of firing the flash it sends a small light pulse to the off camera flash unit which triggers it. You control the brightness of the flash from the same menu.

Having seen Steve's low key pictures and helped in his studio session I wanted to try something similar with my lab Saffy. Getting past the technical difficulties is just the start of photographing a black, shiney moving target in darkness. The flash is mounted on a Konig light stand with a moveable bracket adapter for the flash and diffuser umbrella set to around 60 degrees to the left of the camera at varying distances from the subject.

Using my Nikon D90 and VR Nikkor 18-105 I set a manual exposure of f/8, 1/60sec, ISO 100. I found using auto focus on the eyes worked best, in this low light the camera fires its own focusing beam but this does not contribute towards the final exposure. I took around 12 shots before my subject closed her eyes and lay down.

The best shot makes a great screen saver.



I had to shoot in landscape for best auto focus points, hand held.
This is the version I've put into this week's Burton Photographic Society Competition. It's probably one of the pictures I've learnt most from.

This picture was entered into the internal competition at Burton Photographic Society and was judged 18 out of 20. It went into about the last 6 of 60, critique was that the catch light was too large and an umbrella, he liked to sharp focus eyes and saliva detail on whiskers.