Kate Adie - to Strobist or not to Strobist

30/11/2008 by jim.

Whenever you get a famous personality come to town it invites the typical media crush to get a photo while trying not to offend fans and annoy the subject themselves. It becomes very tempting just to shoot with on-camera flash and get the same shot as everyone else.
On this occasion Kate Adie arrived later than she wanted and three photographers ended up with 90 seconds to get our photographs. Fortunately all of the fans - a sell out event, were seated by then so I ushered her into a small area where I had set up a speedlite in a Lastolight ezybox at approximately 45 degrees to a chair and set Canon’s iTTL flash metering system on to ratio. I used a 580ex on-camera to fire the off-camera flash, giving the off-camera flash 3 stops more exposure than the fill in flash.
Using Canon’s iTTL is a way of shooting that the Strobist fraternity are only just starting to embrace but I have found it an excellent method of using of-camera flash when set up and shooting times are pushed to the limit and manually adjusting flash power outputs is not possible.
At least you end up getting a shot that is not the same as everyone else.

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