Sunset as viewed from inside Vinoy Park sculpture during our DSLR Photography LessonHenry is the proud new owner of a Sony A230, my first time to teach a student with a Sony DSLR. We met at the usual downtown St. Petersburg location, but at the unusual time of 5:45pm, which allowed us to have a bit of a sunset background (above photo) to practice with. Henry is a former Canon film SLR shooter, but was looking to refresh his memory and get familiar with the larger number of settings a DSLR body offers than a SLR film body. For sure there is no ISO button on a film camera!
Demonstrating my "quick & dirty" technique for off camera flash - Nikon D300 Tamron 17-50mm f/2.8 lens @ f/8 ISO 200 1/320th SB-600 Speedlight held off camera to the leftHenry had just bought a Sony brand strobe to go with his A230, which pleasantly surprised me as I love to practice flash photography with students. I was impressed by the Sony A230's remote triggering abilities, being able to sync off camera at 1/500th of a second. My Nikon D300 can only do 1/320th of a second using the built in commander mode.
I am starting to show more and more students how to do my "quick & dirty" off camera flash technique. Basically, you just set your camera to remotely trigger the flash, hold it up and to the left as you see above, then make the best composition you can with just your right hand on your camera!
If you are wondering why I broke my own rule and have a building coming out of Henry's head, I had to at least partially block the sun in order to be able to get a good exposure. Plus I just thought it looked kind of cool with the sun over his shoulder.
I look forward to our next lesson once Henry gets a Tamron 70-300mm lens.