Using Nikon’s Creative Lighting System – Setting the Mood

As I mentioned in a previous post, I want to talk a little about Nikon’s proprietary Creative Lighting System or “CLS” as it is known amongst us Nikonians (view Nikon’s tutorial here: Nikon’s Wireless CLS Tutorial.) I sometimes use this flash system to enhance my subjects who may already be in good ambient light. What it allows me to do is to create my own vision of how light falls on a subject through the use of a master and an off-camera slave flash system using CLS equipped Nikon speedlights.

The Nikon D3 and D300 (and I assume the new D700) have excellent image quality (IQ) at high-ISOs; although, that doesn’t mean you should only shoot with available light. Flash can dramatically change the way a subject appears in your image even during the day. Yes, I know we Nikon users are finally happy to go “ambient-only” now that we finally can with the new sensors, but there are times when the use of a carefully applied flash unit can create a unique look.

CLS allows a master flash speedlight (in my case the SB-800) to control a no-limits number of speedlight slaves (I usually use another SB-800, and sometimes an SB-600 when needed) that includes the Nikon SB-800 and SB-600 (and also the new SB-900.) What this system allows is complete exposure control of all your speedlights, all from the back of the master flash control panel. This extra level of immediate flash control is great, especially when the lighting is changing quickly (in this case I was in a wooded area and the sunlight changed and moved through the trees and with the clouds) or if your flashes are dispersed away from you; however, the bad part is that all of this control is communicated via signal-flashes. A signal-flash is a very difficult to see by eye flash that the master sends out to the slaves. If you have your flashes located relatively nearby and positioned correctly, that is no problem. When they are out of sight, well… that can be another issue entirely that I will address in an upcoming post.

The following photos illustrate this off-camera, master/slave technique. Last week when I was working with the two bridal couples, the use of flash immediately came to mind. Although I could have shot the assignment with ambient light only and had perfectly satisfactory results, the addition of off-camera flash allowed me to get a more high-fashion effect. Also with the addition of a strobe, you can more easily create “catch-lights” in the eyes of the subject which creates a more vibrant response when viewing the face.

My goal was to match and to somewhat overpower the natural sunlight. This is done by properly setting the ratio of the master and off-camera slave flash. To do this you have a flash located off camera in a location that makes sense. In this case I placed the flash to my right and slightly above the bride’s face and upper torso. This created a highlight area that overpowered the regular ambient light (the sun.)

Using just the available light would have produced a nice image, but the possibility of additional shadows might have been more noticeable, and it would have changed the look and overall contrast of the subject versus the background. In this case, the bride is well lit with an almost “spotlight” type effect and since the flash has a quick fadeout, the background is rendered as being slightly darker giving a more dramatic effect. To me, the additional light creates a more interesting image.

For this assignment, I set the ratio of the master between -2.0 to -3.0EV and the slave at +0.3 to +1EV. The master flash reduced some frontal shadows, and the slave flash produced angled light to the camera to create the visual highlight effect. The best part is that if these settings don’t work, I can reset the EV range from the back of the master flash, and try again.

For those of you who already own a D70/D80/D200/D300 and a SB-800/SB-600 Nikon speedlight, you already have a master and slave. The on-camera flash can be set as a master flash and you can use your SB-800/600 as the remote. The on-camera flash and remotes can be adjusted on the camera LCD just like the SB-800 control panel. The only caveat is that you have to use Channel 3 / Group A as the master settings. Give it a try and see if you can come up with some interesting images that have more impact than an ambient only image.