Lighting -- What am I doing wrong?

**Jennifer Waak** · 16-Jul-2001, 15:25

I actually am synched, or can be. I have synch cables, which work great for the first pop, but I have to unhook them for subsequent pops (on the same exposure). I have an Arca-Swiss Discovery sitting on some monster of a Gitzo tripod (I can't remember which one right now) and an Arca-Swiss B2 ballhead, so I'd consider it pretty darn sturdy. I'll try these exposures with the 5 and 10 pops using 5 and 10 exposures and report back this evening. Being synched should get rid of my reciprocity failure problem and help my exposures presuming I'm coordinated enough not to kick the tripod while recocking the shutter. :-)

**Scott Walton** · 16-Jul-2001, 17:15

Jen, You might want to make yourself a cable that trips your flash. If your flash has a "household" plug, Home Depot and Radio Shack have the stuff you need... an electrical plug (2 prong), some lightweight electrical cable (the kind you would get to replace the wiring in a lamp) and a push button. Mount the push button in a Kodak film cannister, solder the wire carefully and connect your plug. Make it about 5'. I have a 5' one and a 15' one because I used to shoot big set stuff and had to walk around and meter... the longer one will come in handy. If your flash doesn't have a household plug, you can cannibalize a long synch cord.

**Jennifer Waak** · 17-Jul-2001, 01:20

As promised I did another set of exposures tonight using the bounce flash. This time I did multiple exposures on a single sheet of film rather than leaving the shutter open to avoid reciprocity failure; I set the shutter speed to 1/125. I also took my bellows factor into account this time as well. What I have concluded is that I think my light meter is about one stop too slow under low-light conditions. I metered the ambient light and got f2 at 1 second. I then metered with my flash and got f16. I took a Polaroid, and one pop distinctly underexposed it. 2 pops looked pretty good. I repeated this exercise at f22 (this time with 5 pops -- doubling the 2 to get to 4 and adding one for every 4 pops, per Ellis). f22 also looked pretty good.

This has been a tremendous learning experience for me -- thanks to everyone who has replied.

Now that I have my exposure problem solved I promise to go back tomorrow night and take one good photo of my subject ("good" being a relative term here), scan it in, and post it.

**kthompson** · 17-Jul-2001, 12:17

Jennifer, I'd trust the Sekonic more than Polacolor in this case ....if you really want to nail down what's going on, try shooting some CTs, and do a ringaround test, maybe throw in a gray card, a white, and a black object, and maybe some type of metallic object to get a specular highlight. Have your film run by a Q-Lab, or someplace that's in control. Either that, or do it on b&w, same way, run it through your process, and make contacts at base +fog....to nail down your film speed...

**Daniel Taylor** · 17-Jul-2001, 21:40

> I have synch cables, which work great for the first pop, but I have to unhook them for subsequent pops (on the same exposure).

Jennifer,

I am getting into this discussion late in the game, but I wanted to address your statement. If this is regarding your 550EX locking up after the first exposure, it is most likely due to shorting out the pins on the bottom of the flash shoe. you need to isolate these from the grounding plate of your flash-shoe adapter. I use a piece of mylar, making a mask around the central pin, and can multiple pop my 550EX's all day without problems.