Off Camera Flash with a cord and adventure races

[frisby]

Hullo,

I have several questions regarding off camera flash with a cord. I've religiously been applying off-camera flash to photographing adventure races. Some of the questions might sound daft until you try running with adventure racers trying to get good fill flash in bright sunlight where you can't say to them 'Would you mind stopping for a minute while I do that again?'. So:

1) At what distance should I forget off-camera and just stick it in the hot-shoe?

2) When I've been holding the flash off camera attached with a cord I seem to lose all ability to coordinate pointing the flash and the camera i.e. I end up lighting people knees rather than their faces. Does anyone have any pointers as to how to get better? I'm guessing just practice but it's a bit frustrating at the moment.

3) I'm having difficulty holding the camera steady with one hand whilst holding the flash in the other, so shots end up blurry. Should I use a monopod or is there a way to hold both flash and camera steady whilst having a finger on the exposure lock?

Before you mock my seemingly simplistic questions remember that I'm running with the runners and cannot set up a location where I stand and wait for them. I only have a few seconds to catch my breath, compose the shot, set the right exposure, point the camera and flash, and somehow get a good shot.

Here's some of my better efforts so far:

Tararua Mountain Race - a set on Flickr

I've just spent this av deleting about a hundred of 600 these included well lit knees and vegetation combined with shadowy faces and blurry faces.

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Cheers,

Frisby

[Doug Sundseth]

If you're close enough for the flash to work well, you're probably close enough for off-camera to be better.

I'd zoom the flash out to its widest setting (only works if you're not doing full TTL with a camera-brand flash) to increase the area covered. If that's not enough, add a small softbox, or a sphere diffuser, or the biggest bounce card you can manage to reduce the directionality of the flash even further.

Thinking about stabilization when your heart is beating hard and you're breathing hard is a difficult task. (It's one of the key skills in biathlon, for instance.) The only thing that I know of that you can do is practice under conditions as similar to race conditions as you can manage. You can certainly try a monopod, but I suspect it might be more awkward than useful. I don't know what lenses you use, but I'd try for the lightest lenses I could find to ease holding a bit.

The times I've used sync-corded and hand-held flash have been much less energetic. When you're shooting cave formations, the challenge is rather less.

[frisby]

Hi Doug,

Thanks for yer reply. I've got a lumiquest softbox that might be worth a shot - good suggestion :-)

I'm carrying a very beefy 24-70mm, an ultra wide 10-24 and a 70-300 so it's no wonder I'm having stabilisation issues.

Underground?! Dark and scary ;-)

Thanks again,

Frisby