Here's one I was really happy with; I spotted the broken fence walking into the back yard, and thought that if I could get the owner behind there with the pup, with her husband behind me attracting the pup's attention, we could get a great pic with a very shallow depth of field.

This was with a tripod-mounted D200, with a 70-200 lens at about 180mm to compress the features. I had a Speedlight in a small softbox about 45 degrees and above the pup.

Hey Chris,

Very nice! How do you find the softbox works with the nikkor flashes? Does it really work well? Lumiquest has something like this, but I did not think it looked large enough to really diffuse the light.

James

Well, it's a bit bigger than the Lumiquest one - about 14"x18", I think. It diffuses plenty if it's close enough, and if a little further, keeps the texture to the fur, I find. I try to keep them set to almost unnoticeably add light.

Really, it's a matter of keeping your subjects small, and getting the boxes as close as possible - the mantra I normally go by is, "If the lights aren't almost in the way of the shot, they're not close enough." Anything larger than small children, and I go to a shoot-through umbrella with the Sb units. Saving pennies for an Alien Bee 800, likely that will initite my downfall to full-size strobes. Below, one with pal's kids with the softboxes and Speedlights...

How are you setting the flashes when you put the soft boxes on? +1?

James