The Hand Held Strobist

I was feeling guilty for going a few days without taking pictures of anything, so I decided to try a little experiment in using off camera flash in a very portable manner (holding the speedlight in my free hand while shooting). I also wanted to try and get some shots with bokeh, so I used my Nikkor 85mm f/1.8, and set the aperture to wide open (small number end of the aperture scale, f/1.8).

Now, this created a little conflict with using flash, since although it allowed me the narrow DOF (depth of field, or depth of focus), it also made for some over exposed images without judicious manual setting of the flash power. Thankfully this old used Nikon SB-26 speedlight has manual adjustments that you can fine tune down to a third of a stop.

So I put a radio trigger receiver directly to the hot shoe of the speedlight, the radio trigger transceiver on the hot shoe of my camera, and went through the house yesterday evening snapping pictures, holding the speedlight in my left hand, bouncing the flash off the nearest wall (or ceiling).

Model airplane built my late father, hanging in our garage (I was standing on a ladder bouncing the flash off the opposite wall)


Our "squinting Corgi", Zoe, in the kitchen, licking her chops.


My son Matthew, giving me the evil eye while playing Starcraft on his laptop in the living room.


Some colorful clutter on the kitchen countertop.