Nikon D4, 28-300mm, ISO 3200, ƒ/8, 1/160 with off camera flashes

My final image for this photo shoot was to be used as a Black and White in a book. To be sure the quality was as high as I could get I did a few things for this photo.

First, I communicated to the subject that please do not wear white and wear a solid color. While I could do everything technically right, the offset printing can be hit and miss. Not all black and white photos print the same on certain type of papers and one of the first places this will show up is either in the whites or the blacks.

Here you can see the photo as I shot it in color. One of the first things I was aware of in this photo was the hand gun. It is solid black. If I am not careful this would be turn out to be just a solid black object with no details.

I decided to use two hot shoe flashes to help give me 5500º Kelvin temperature light, which would give me the greatest dynamic range.

Photo by: Ken Touchton

My friend Ken Touchton was with me and took a couple shots of me working. Ken knows I do this blog and while I wasn’t using one of my cameras took some photos of me working.

I am using a Nikon SB-900 and a Nikon SB-800 on PocketWizard Flex TT5, which are held on to the Manfrotto 5001B Nano Black Light Stands with a Manfrotto 175F Justin Spring Clamps with a Flash Shoe.  To trigger the flash from the camera I am using the PocketWizard Mini TT1 with the AC3 to control the flash output in the TTL mode.

When I first started shooting the black ground went totally black, because I had the ISO set at 100.  I cranked the ISO up to 3200 so that the background isn’t going black.

While the window light would normally work well, it was an overcast day. So this wasn’t 5000º Kelvin temperature light. More like deep shade light in terms of color temperature.

I am shooting at ƒ/8 to keep the depth-of-field somewhat in focus from the subject to the gun.

In many ways this is similar reason to use a flash as when I shoot indoor sports under Sodium Vapor lights. I just want to clean up the light and take the quality to the next level.