"Be Prepared!"

Unfortunately, I don't know the Latin translation for "be prepared" as I might make it my motto. It's a belts & braces approach to work and I rather be safe than sorry.

This week I had to do a studio shoot but call me psychic (or cynic), I kind of didn't quite think it was going to be an "inside" job. And I was right. Unfortunately, because I had to spend one long day in a bitterly cold winter garden taking make-up shots featuring casualty wounds. Luckily I had brought my Speedlite and my brolly kit and was able to use it in connection with my ST-E2 to trigger it. I hadn't used it this way before yet. This is what I did. I set my Speedlite to "manual" and used the F-stop my light meter gave me. Then I adjusted the shutter speed accordingly. Yes, everything in manual mode. Here are three sample pictures - no worries, it's just make-up and not real wounds. I have desaturated the pictures a little so they're not too gory.When my ST-E2 battery failed I had to put the Speedlite back on the camera. I tried to keep it in manual mode but because I kept changing the distance to the models a lot, I found it worked better in ETTL-mode (plus 1 stop) but I kept the camera on the same manual settings as before. It also worked but created some shadows behind the models.

So, next time, I better take a spare battery for the ST-E2.