The Hot Shoe Diaries

[MarkBarbieri]

I've been reading Joe McNally's latest book, The Hot Shoe Diaries. It would be easy to criticize the book as one big Nikon (and Lastolite) commercial with all the gratuitous gear references he makes. Still, I'm really enjoying the book and learning a lot from it. It's very inspiring.

The book is a series of examples of scenes lit with one or more speedlites with a lot of discussion on the lighting effects. If you want to move beyond available light photography, this is a great book for inspiration and education.

While being very conversational in tone, it is not a beginner's book. The author assumes that you have a pretty good understanding of the basics of exposure. If you ware still unsure what will happen if you open your aperture wider, drop your exposure compensation, or increase your shutter speed, this is not the book for you. If you are an intermediate to advanced shooter that wants to see how one of the best in the business creates amazing lighting effects using nothing but speedlites, it's a great book.

One caution - this book may inspire FAS (Flash Acquisition Syndrome). While he just works with speedlites in the book, he sometimes uses several, along with stands, gels, clamps, diffusers, gobos, snoots, etc.

The book is similar to The Moment It Clicks, but with more emphasis on the process. Instead of being a glossy picture book with short descriptions, it is more instructional. It is the explanations that drive the book with the pictures there for illustration. Despite it being a big Nikon Speedlite commercial, this Canon shooter found it to be a very good book.

The Canon Speedlight system can do almost everything he discusses in the book. The systems seem very similar once you get passed the terminology differences (i-TTL vs E-TTL II). The only two differences that jumped out at me are Nikon's ability to use a built-in flash as a commander (about the only use non-emergency use for a built-in flash) and the SB-900's ability to zoom to a much tighter (200mm equiv) coverage area.

 

[JoeDif]

Thanks for the book synopsis. It's definately on my list of photo books to get. The review pushes it up tp the top of my list

 

[MICKEY88]

great info as always...

I recently read that there is a growing trend to use speedlites rather than studio strobes, due to the improvement in speedlites, such as the ability to use them off camera, the ability to sync multiples, set ratios and the portability

 

[WVDisGeek]

Thanks for review Mark. There was an article in last week's USAToday (can't remember which day!) and they reviewed it fairly well. However, many of the poster's panned the book as not giving too much useful information. My boss ordered a copy and he is going to share with me when he is done. I am now looking forward to learning something useful...

Hopefully, the applicability you found to Canon carries over to the Pentax flashes as well!

 

[MarkBarbieri]

great info as always...

I recently read that there is a growing trend to use speedlites rather than studio strobes, due to the improvement in speedlites, such as the ability to use them off camera, the ability to sync multiples, set ratios and the portability

McNally is a big driver of that trend. That's his shooting style and he's inspired a lot of people to follow. I'd say that the two biggest advantages are portability and TTL metering. Lugging studio strobes around is a pain. Everything has to be bigger and heavier - the strobes, the stands, the clamps, etc. It is also a lot more work to set up the light and it doesn't change with conditions as well.

On the other hand, with studio lights, you don't have to fiddle with batteries, you get much quicker recycle times, and remote triggering is easier and more reliable. They are also (thanks to Alien Bees) cheaper per lumen. In the book, it is clear that getting all the strobes to "see" the master can be a big challenge. It makes you wonder why they don't use RF to signal them.

I've got 4 studio strobes and three speedlights. I use the studio lights almost exclusively at the house. Having been inspired by McNally, I'll probably start playing with the speedlights more and seeing where they are more appropriate. Who knows, maybe I'll migrate away from the studio lights entirely. Then again, AB's Cyber Commander may make me change my mind.

Thanks for review Mark. There was an article in last week's USAToday (can't remember which day!) and they reviewed it fairly well. However, many of the poster's panned the book as not giving too much useful information. My boss ordered a copy and he is going to share with me when he is done. I am now looking forward to learning something useful...

Hopefully, the applicability you found to Canon carries over to the Pentax flashes as well!

I assume that it will work with any major flash line, but I only know who the Canon and Nikon lines work. The main things I think that the flash system need to be able to do are:

1) Support multiple flashes in a master/slave relationship
2) Support TTL metering
3) Support flash exposure compensation distinct from normal exposure compenstation
4) Manual power adjustments
6) Zooming

It is also nice to be able to adjust the flashes from the camera itself rather than on the master controller. It's not a big deal most of the time, but when you need to stick the master controller off camera so that it can see all the other flashes, it is nice to be able to control everything on the camera. Once again, this problem would go away if they used RF instead of visible light to control the remotes.

 

[mabas9395]

I'm currently on page 99 of this book and I also have The Moment It Clicks. His first (TMIC) was very general. This one (THSD) provides more specifics. As much as I enjoy this book (and I really do), at my level I could still use a bit more detailed instruction (maybe his third book will be be even more detailed yet).

I was pretty sure that some Alien Bee's were next on my list, but after this book and poking my nose around the Strobist site, I'm starting to think that maybe a 2nd Speedlight is the way to go.

 

[Chikabowa]

I have a whole set of Alien Bees that are now a year old and have never been taken out of the packing plastic. I even have the remote batteries for them and I've never had a need.

My SB-800 speedlights (triggered by pocket wizards) are about as easy as it gets. I love setting them up into different configuations and setting them on different channels to always get some different look. It's so much fun to play with!