New photo gear

I bought some new photo gear this last week to expand my lighting techniques.  I have been using two 580EX's off camera with a Canon ST-E2 for a number of years, but I've always been stuck mainly indoors because of the infrared range.

So I've taken the plunge and bought some Pocketwizards (3 x FlexTT5), as well as some more stands and a background stand, some white seamless, etc.

I hesitated a bit when a read the problems with Canon flashes and the FlexTT5's, but took the risk.  Although there has been a few initial issues with misfires or no fires, I am happy with having the ability to shoot TTL.

I am using white shoot through umbrellas for now.  Softboxes are the next on the list.  I would like to have a three light system eventually, but for now, I'm learning to get different looks with two lights.

For this photo, I put Suzanne about 2 feet from the background and I am lighting her with a main light 45 degrees to my left.  The second fill light is to my right and feathered to hit her and the background.  I was trying to get a light grey or soft white background, so I had to have enough light from the two lights to spill on the background,




You can see the two catch lights in her eyes.

For this photo, I wanted a put white background, so I had to use one flash for just the background.  That meant I would lose some of the fill light on her face, so to compensate, I used a Photoflex reflector about 2' from her left shoulder (camera right).




The background is still not pure white at the top of the frame.  I might try a different way to hit the background (the flash was on the floor behind her, pointing up).  But all in all, I'm pretty happy for my first attempt.  There is still good separation from her hair and the background.

My next goal is to try and photograph our dogs.  It will be great fun to try and get them to sit still on the seamless!