First time with off-camera Flash C&C

[farmerj]

Buddy came over and we pulled out his SB-600 Flash. I am anxious as I have a Sigma 530 Super coming and in the shipping system.

Neighbor has some lilies in full bloom right now. Full size pictures are here.

He was holding the SB-600 flash at different locations. ISO 200, f/5, 1/60

 

[musicaleCA]

The first is a great use of flash. You really got a lot of texture out of the petals. Looks like the red and magentas are clipping little though. Could bring the saturation on those down a bit and add a bit of noise reduction too (at least I think that's noise I'm looking at...might just be a byproduct of the over-saturation). The second...where was the flash? It doesn't really look flashy to me; just overexposed around the edges of the petals and underexposed in the centre.

 

[DScience]

were these shot at night?

I very recently began exploring the use of an off camera strobe, and have played with the SB-600 a little.

 

[Samanax]

It looks like you guys were pointing the flash directly at the subjects instead of bouncing or using some kind of diffuser. The lighting in the first image seems very stark and is a little softer in the second image.

How were you triggering the flash?

 

[farmerj]

Flash was triggered with the Commander control on the D90 On-camera flash.

I guess we should have used the diffuser cover for the flash. On #2, the flash was Camera Right, below. It's actually a LOT more blown out in the NEF version. I used the Lighten/Darken tool to back off the brightness of it to this.

Yes, these were shot at night. About 9:30-9:45 PM.

One-step Noise removal does make for a better image. I replaced the image above with it.