Why didn’t anyone tell me…

I don’t consider myself a knowledgeable photographer. I’m experienced in a casual way, yes, I’m stubborn perhaps, I guess I lean to one edge or the other of photography, but I didn’t exactly get how much I do actually know. For instance.

I went to a meeting with someone presenting information on multi-flash shoots, specifically mobile multi-flash shooting (like weddings, etc.). He presented a lot of examples of his work, and in the end he tried to set up a head-shot shoot right in front of us. The pictures turned out terribly. And here’s why in my opinion. He didn’t read the manual. He was eyeballing everything. “Oh, I’ll set the box over here and set it to this, then set the backlight to that, then set this one over here and a reflector over there. Now I’ll pull out my light meter and wave it around, and then ignore it and cast it aside. Now lets shoot! Oh look, it didn’t work.”

In the manual for my Nikon flashes, they give you a set of tables that cover the ratios of ISO to cone to distance, resulting in the settings you input on the flashes if you don’t have TTL available. Being the nerd I am, I went so far as to turn this table into a query app for my Palm, so now when I’m setting up my SB-80 DX, I put in the 4 variables, read the output, and I’m done. I don’t have to guess. I know that this is “Exposure 0″. I should update it with my SB-800s, but I’m moving off my Palm largely in favor of my iPhone. I guess I could whip up some PHP instead. Back to business.

So why is it that this guy that spent easily $2000 on flash equipment and who knows what on classes missed out on such a simple trick? And why is it that I figured that out on my own when the unknown list of teachers and counselors he’s had haven’t pointed him to that? Is it antiquated information? Is it too hard? I seriously think he could have saved the shots in front of us by doing the three lookups he needed and putting his flashes on pure-slave mode, skipping the expensive radio transmitters.

AND, here’s where I get to put my money where my mouth is. Next month’s meeting contest is for flashed photos. I have an idea or two of what I want to shoot and how, but first I have use Yep! to pull up my flash’s manual.