Paul C. Buff, Inc. Technical Forum

Ok, so got my cyber commander today. Kinda a lot to take in at first...not quite as straightforward as I imagined.

Is this list about right for four lights?

1. Spec all the lights that I'm going to use for the particular shoot.
2. Make sure all four receivers are on same frequency.
3. Put lights in groups (this makes more sense to me than remembering which light is on which channel). I'm going to have a front fill, two side/rim lights, and one background light.
4. Meter the lights individually by switching from group to group to get the ratios correct.
5. Meter all the lights at once to get the final exposure.
6. Make pictures.

Only thing is that my camera syncs at 1/200, not 1/250. I'm doing a martial arts photo shoot and want to sync at 1/200 but the meter won't switch to 1/200 (either 1/125 or 1/250) so how do I compensate for that?

This all sound right?

Your list seems reasonable to me.

Since you're lighting your subject with three flash units, the contribution from ambient lighting isn't likely to be much and so your shutter speed won't have much impact on your exposure.

To illustrate the point, I just metered an E640 with 51" PLM at 1/8 power from about 10-12 feet away. With a shutter speed of 1/250 I got f/10. (f/10 would read f8.0'6 on the Cyber Commander. It's 2/3 of a stop above f/8.) Ambient light was provided by a couple of table lamps.

At 1/200 I still got f/10, and in fact I got f/10 all the way down to a 1/10 shutter speed.

Unless the brightness of your ambient light approaches the brightness of your flash units, the main factors in your exposure will be ISO and aperture. So you can set the CC to 1/250 or 1/125 and your camera to 1/200 and you shouldn't be off by any noticeable amount. Or you can set both the CC and the camera to 1/125 (I assume your camera will do 1/125) and you won't have lost anything in terms of freezing the action. That will be a function of your flash duration, not your shutter speed. (1/200 would be too slow to freeze martial artists anyway.)

No need to put the lights in groups, particularly for remembering which light is which. You have to put each light on a separate Channel, and the Channel has to be set physically at the CSRB or on the Einsteins. Putting more than one light on the same Channel will cause problems.

With each light on a unique Channel, you can then use the Name Lights function to actually name the function of each light, IE Main Left, Right Fill, etc. Now, when you scroll to, say, Channel 1, it will tell you everything about that light, IE AB800, Left Fill, the power and model lamp settings, flash duration, color temperature and so forth. Then you can scroll a Channel at a time and meter each light individually. You will end up with all four lights displayed in bargraph form to compare relative power and modeling, plus detailed information about the selected Channel. To meter the aggregate of all four lights (the camera exposure) scroll to ALL and take a meter reading. If it's not the f-stop you want to shoot at, just scroll power up or down until you get the f-stop your camera is set to . . . all four lights will go up or down in unison. When finished with this, just scroll back to any one of the channels to see all the bargraphs at once.

Using a group for each light won't give you all this.

The only reason to use groups in a setup like this would be if you wanted to meter, adjust or bracket, say, the two side lights simultaneously and temporarily turn off all the other lights.

In short, you're doing it the hard way and not using the full power of the CC.

As for the ISO setting, unless you are outdoors and mixing a lot of ambient with the flash, it won't make a bit of difference if you meter at 1/250 or 1/125 and set your camera to 1/200 . . . the flash exposure will be the same either way.

You mean shutter speed, right? I'd expect the ISO to have a big impact under any conditions.

(And please don't activate the secret self-destruct feature in my Einsteins for asking!) :o

Yes, he does mean shutter speed. You can obviously prove this point to yourself by shooting a few pics without flash at say f/8 1/125 and f8 1/250. If you're indoors, both should come out pretty dark. What this tells you, then, is that the strobe(s) will be the only light source that that really matters.

Correct. Unless there is an awful lot of ambient light they will be nearly black. So then shoot with the flash at 1/30, 1/60/ 1/125 and 1/200 and the shots will all look the same. This is studio flash 101.

I'm going to have two side/rim lights in the setup. Those will both be at the same power. Do I still not group them? Do I still put them on separate channels from one another?

You definitely need to put each light on a separate channel. That's the way the Cyber Commander is designed to work.

Obviously, you can group the two rim lights or create whatever groups you wish. But in doing so, you're probably making it more complicated than it needs to be. The only thing you will gain by grouping the rim lights is that when you select that group, all the other flash units and their modeling lamps will be extinguished. You would also be able to adjust that group's collective power and not have to adjust those two lights individually, but because of the way the CC menus are arranged, grouping them that way would probably cost you time rather than saving any.

Consider this:

Put your front fill on channel 1, left rim channel 2, right rim channel 3, backdrop channel 4.

As Luap said, you can even name all the channels this way in the CC if you want to - and even save the setup to the SD card if you expect to use it again.

Next you would set CH 1-4 to some preliminary power - start with all at 1/4 power or whatever you like. Meter each channel individually and make adjustments if you need to to get your desired ratios. Then meter ALL to get a working aperture and adjust that up or down to taste. Then take a test shot and see if anything needs fine tuning.

If the rim lights need to be pulled back a little, for example, just go to CH 2 and reduce by half a stop, then reduce CH 3 by half a stop, re-meter these two channels, re-meter ALL, and take another test shot.

In actual practice, it would almost certainly take less time to do it that way than to group those two and scroll all the way over to the group section... The process of readjusting and re-metering CH 2-3 might take you 15-20 seconds.

ltwimberly

Absolutely right.

And, yes. I did mean to say shutter speed. not ISO!!! My bad.

kevingeary . . . . You really should spend a little time with the manual. Your first step should be to set each light to the same frequency but unique channel. Then you should do the "Open All From Studio" function. This will bring each light into the CC and verify the communications between CC and lights. (Open from Studio is the only way to bring Einstein into the CC). If you want to add a light to an existing setup without disturbing the setup info for the other lights, assign a new unique channel at the new light, then do "Open #XX from studio" instead of open All.

Might not be a bad idea to call Tech Help and let them run you through the setup

To each thier own, however, remember the channel, group, and all selections are rotating. I.E. ..GRP8, ALL, CH1...CH16, GRP1...GRP8, ALL, CH1...etc. When I use groups (and I often do), I start with group 8. This way, I am one click away from ALL, I just have to scroll backwards.

Incidentally, I use this same idea when saving a set up. I start with SD50. This way when I open a setting, I do not have to scroll through STUDIO, INTERNAL 1&2, and CH1-16 to get to my SD locations. You can also scroll left to get to the SETUP screen in one click.