Divers Hard Hat

This photo is of an old deep sea divers hard hat. I shot it for Hunt Underwater Specialties in Clayton NY, which is located in the Thousand Islands region of the St. Lawrence River which borders NY and Canada. They wanted a shot of the helmet to use on a business card, therefor, the final image need not be very big. They asked me to come to their dive shop and they would have it set up against a dark background.

The Divers Hard Hat was set up on a sales counter in the dive shop. They had a black board behind it & some dark fabric draped over the counter top. The shop ceiling was about the normal eight feet high, thus, the hardhat was probably four feet from the ceiling. Behind me were some shelves on which I placed two 3500xi flash units, one to the right, and one to the left of the divers helmet, at about a 45º angle. Each aimed at the ceiling about four feet above the flash units. After I shot a few frames I had an idea. I wondered what it would look like if I placed a flash inside the helmet so as to illuminate it from within. So, I placed a 5400xi flash inside th helmet. I used the 9xi camera with the Wireless Controller to trigger the three flash units. I set the camera in P program mode just to see how it would do all on its own. After a few frames in P mode I switched to Aperture priority and shot a few frames at f8. My favorite shots were the first ones shot in P mode which is what I am showing here.

What is particularly awesome about this is how well the system performed. There is absolutely NO retouching of any kind with this photo befor I posted it here. The camera and Wireless Controller balanced the light beautifully. Notice the main window port of the helmet. The light is shining throug beautifully without blowing out the details of the protective gridwork. Three flash units, working in unison, all in Wireless Remote mode, exposure determined by the camer and Wireless Controller. With any other system you would have to place an additional slave on all the remote flashes or hardwire them. With hardwires you then have to make sure they are out ob view of the camera. You have to make sure you are not going to trip over the wires and bring the lights down. With other slaves you would have to meter the flash inside the helmet and adjust its output to jive with the external flash units. Then, the flah hidden in the helemet may not fire if the slave were not directly exposed to the other flash units. What would normally be an impractical headache of a lighting setup was a piece of cake with the Minolta system. Below is a lighting diagram that may be of help.

Lighting Diagram for Diver Hard Hat

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