What Chuck Does

Callaway Warbird (I broke an SB-800)

While I was taking pictures of my hummers the other day, I knocked over my SB-800 on the Manfrotto strobe tripod. The head came crashing down onto the hardwood floor and although everything else about it still works, it won’t fire.

Today, I came home from playing 9 holes inspired to take pictures of a golf ball that I had found the other day. To my surprise I didn’t lose it today, although I lost 2 other balls. In any event, I now only have 1 SB-800 and 1 SB-26. The SB-26 is completely useless. In slave-mode, it doesn’t fire until AFTER it sees the SB-800 fire. So in all my shots, the SB-26 doesn’t “show up”

So how did I light the ball AND the back wall? I set the SB-800 with a purple film shooting manual power 1/128 and used a LED flashlight to light the ball. I put the D3 on a tripod and put it on timer or I would use my right hand to control the shutter. In any event, I would shine the LED flashlight on the ball in different angles to achieve the effect that I wanted with the lettering and the dimples of the ball. The reflection from the piano helped achieve the “studio effect”.

This is my setup and these are the results: