At 22:06 9/8/02, Mickey Trageser wrote:
I can't comment on the Metz units, but I'll be looking forward to the
responses. I would strongly recommend the use of a small umbrella. The
results are far more pleasing than a bare flash in portraiture. If you're
using a TTL capable flash, you can rely on that, but a flash meter is even
better.
The Metz 45 CL-4 and 45 CT-4 (its nearly identical predecessor) are very
capable units and highly reliable as long as you get a used one that hasn't
been badly thrashed by an abusive prior owner. One thing to look for among
other obvious mechanical problems with head swivel/bounce and the handle
mounting is recycle time from full dump. I've seen a handful advertised
"as-is" with "long recycle" being the reason. BTW, the base plate that
goes under the camera body, and the clamp on the handle that attaches it to
the base plate can be replaced easily.
Beyond that, I agree completely with Mickey that using some diffusion
method, whether it's a shoot-through umbrella, silver reflector umbrella or
soft-box (bigger than a LumiQuest). It is essential to soften the light
for these. As important is getting it *off* the camera for freedom to
provide the exact lighting direction you want. A potato masher "on camera"
*will* cast shadows and composing to get those shadows to fall totally out
of camera view with the tasks you've described would be very
difficult. You can kludge some cords together for TTL control (requires
the OM SCA adapter) but the methods I've used for things like that still
limit max distance from camera to flash location. If you need to slave it,
optical ones are relatively cheap and you can easily trigger one by using a
shoe mounted flash set at lowest power and pointed straight up (or in some
other direction well away from the subject). Slaving one and using light
modifiers with it, or simply triggering it by some other means, requires a
flash meter to set its power level and camera lens aperture with any
reasonable level of accuracy though.
Something I forgot to mention about dogs in the previous
comments: Yellow-Eye! This is the canine version of Red-Eye although
(IIRC) it's caused by light reflecting from a different portion of inside
of the eye (the red in humans and cats is caused by retinal
capillaries). Even the head on a camera mounted pototo masher is close
enough to the lens to easily cause it.
-- John
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