[Don Hoey]

Well I learned a bit today.
Of my 35mm cameras I have only ever used the F2 or F3 with the studio unit so surprise No.1 was realising that the D100 has no old style flash connection ( I've only had 3 years ). No.2 was when I used the built in unit to trigger the big one. I had taken a flashmeter reading of f22 and the only decent exposure I got was at f5.6 on camera on manual ?????. The SB80-DX worked OK but I was now one light down on what I thought and I could not be bothered to read the manual in case I was doing something wrong. What I wanted was in my head so the fewer distractions the better but I will have to gen up or I may end up looking like a technophobe.

Setting up the model involved rummaging through my vacuum cleaner for a bit of fine background swarf. Normally this vac is only used for metal but there was a lot of sawdust in there from another job. I found a bit of brass swarf ( adds a hint of colour ) that was placed with tweezers. Flash would pick them out quite brightly so it was important not to overdo this.

I tried a few pics using the 28-105 but viewing them on the computer sharpness was an issue ( and I know I would get some stick from wolfie ). I tried moving the flash units back to see if a wider aperture may be sharper, without much luck. Dug out my 80-200 as I know this is a sharp lens. Set myself up only to find the Metz battery had now run flat, so now I was down to 2 flash units. The Metz does not have stand-by and I forgot to switch it off in between test shots.

The setup in the attatched photo's shows the general scheme of things.

The studio flash was used as I needed a big light as there was no ambient daylight and the softbox is 30" x 30". The studio flash head is inside without any relectors fitted and faces away from the subject. The other big advantage is it is mains powered and recyles amazingly quickly.
The SB80-DX was the trigger flash for the big one and is connected to the camera by a lead. This unit was set to manual so balancing the output of the two was a case of moving them nearer or further from the subject. The effect each would have was calculated by assessing each flash unit effect individually before combining them for the final result.

The camera was set to manual and the final exposure was 1/125 @ f14.

The only other important bits of kit were the black card for the background and the polystyrene reflector to bounce light back - primarily from the SB80-DX as without that the big ' Bull gear ' at the back of the model would not have been picked out.

Other considerations were - The positioning of the micrometer. Even though it is dressing and was going to be out of focus, set at a lesser angle to the lathe the ' hard light ' from the SB80-DX which was set to graze the scene would have ' blasted ' any detail. Positioning of parts of the lathe ( handles ) to ensure they would not be lost against the mill bed.

I have attatched a compressed image of the shots because these open in a seperate window you can put up all images at once if you wish.

Don

PS Before clearing up and following wolfies post, I thought I should post pics showing the effect each flash has on the final picture.