Specifications

Here is a List of all the equpiment i used for all images and the specifications for each item.

1 x Manfrotto Tabletop Studio:
Table size: 200x125cm
Table height: 83cm
Total height with back vertical: 193cm


3 x Bowens Flash Heads:
Maximum Watt/Seconds 3000
User Replaceable Flashtube Yes
Changeable Reflector Yes
Circuit Protection 4Amp Fuse, with spare in handle
Cable Length Not Specified by Manufacturer
Modeling Light Wattage 250W
Modeling Light On/Off Switch Yes
Protective Glass Dome UV Pyrex
Fan Cooled Yes



1 x Sync Cable:
A cable that connects the camera to the lighting set-up, on end of the cable is plugged into the camera and the other end plugs into the powerpack.



1 x Sekonic L-308S Flashmate Light Meter:
Pocket-sized Digital Meter for Incident and Reflected Flash and Ambient Light Readings
Smallest digital flash-meter for reflective and incident light readings in ambient or electronic flash lighting conditions
Exposures accurate down to a tenth-of-a-stop for both ambient and electronic flash light readings in full-stop mode. Meter can also display shutter-speeds and apertures in half or third-stop increments to mirror the exposure settings on your camera with a repeat accuracy of +/- 0.1 EV
At ISO 100, the ambient EV range is 0 to 19.9, flash f/stops range from f/1.4 to f/90.9 with a shutter-speed span of 60-seconds to 1/8000th-of-a-second (1 sec to 1/500th for flash). For cinema applications frame rates can be set from 8 to 128 frames-per-second. ISO sensitivity can be set from 3 to 8000 in third-stop increments
Pocket-sized, and easy to stow away. The L-308S measures 2.5"W x 4.3"H x 0.9"D (63mmW x 110mmH x 22mmD), and weighs in at 3.4 ounces (95g).
Includes Lumidisc with pouch, soft case, strap, synchro terminal cap, AA battery.
1-Year Warranty, extendable at no charge to 3 years total (USA only) after registration, backed by our outstanding customer support team


1 x Bowens QuadX 3000 Power Pack:
The Heart of the QUADX System.
The QUADX is a powerful, four-channel pack with precise power adjustments and dependable repeatability. With a maximum power of 3000Ws and a minimum of just 31Ws with one head - a power range of 7.6 f/stops! The QUADX offers a wide range of lighting control options with precision adjustments and a user-friendly control panel that lets you know exactly how much power is coming out of each head, the flash duration and a host of other vital statistics, all at the press of a button.

Precision Power Controls and Repeatable Performance.
Digital capturing devices require a much greater degree of exposure accuracy than film materials. The QUADX lets you control the flash output of each head in 1/10-stop increments and offers repeatable output flash after flash, which is ideal for multi-shot camera backs.

Consistent Colour and Short Flash Durations.
The unique power-management system of the QUADX constantly monitors and adjusts capacitor performance to ensure complete output accuracy and consistency, retaining a colour temperature of 5800 K, ±2%. The units capacitor switching delivers greater colour consistency over the entire power range in addition to providing flash durations as short as 1/1430 sec. with a single head at full power (1/7100 sec. with two heads at 250Ws).

Most Efficient Charging System.
The QUADX features an advanced charging system that is extremely efficient and extends the life of the pack’s capacitors. The automatic mode provides a slow initial charge when the unit is switched on and then, by monitoring the temperature of the capacitors, offers the fastest possible recharging times.

The QUADX Control Panel.
The control panel of the QUADX is simple and intuitive to use. Power is divided into two independent channels, A and B, one having a maximum power of 2000Ws (A), the other (B) 1000Ws. Each channel controls two flash-head outlets in 1/10-stop increments. When more than one head is used in the same channel, the power of that channel will be divided equally between those two heads. When a head is connected to Channel B, the pack automatically becomes asymmetric. Once lighting ratio or contrast levels are set, power level adjustments can be made to acheive perfect exposures.

Advanced QUADX Features
With its sophisticated circuitry, the QUADX gives the photographer access to many advanced features including trigger delay, flash counter, joules/percentage display, multi-flash mode, memory function and more. Other features offered by the QUADX include:

Auto Bracketing
Bracketing flash exposures is easy with the QUADX. You can set up to three bracketing intervals from 1/10 to 9/10-stop and monitor the bracketing sequence and see what each power level will be on the LCD display.
Infrared Remote
The QUADX features an IR remote control system that allows the photographer full control of the pack from up to 10m (30').
Head Failure Indication
The QUADX will indicate that a head has failed to fire and the pack will not fire again until that head is switched off.
Special Effect Modes
Choose from trigger delay, trigger skip and multi-trigger setup to fire up to nine packs at different intervals or sequentially.

Apple Mac Computers:

Big LED-backlit displays.
iMac features a bright 21.5-inch or 27-inch LED-backlit display with a widescreen 16:9 aspect ratio — perfect for HD video.
Wireless keyboard and Magic Mouse standard.
iMac declutters your desktop with a wireless keyboard and new Magic Mouse: the world’s first Multi-Touch mouse.
The fastest iMac yet.
Now with dual-core Intel processors starting at 3.06GHz and available quad-core Intel processors that boost performance up to 2x.
Environmentally friendly.
The new iMac meets ENERGY STAR 5.0 and EPEAT Gold requirements, is free of many harmful toxins, and is made from highly recyclable materials.



Canon 30D with 50mm f2.8 lens:
• 8.2 Megapixel APS-C size CMOS sensor
• 5 fps and 30 large JPEG frame burst
• 2.5”, 230K pixel, 170º wide viewing angle LCD screen
• Picture Style image processing parameters
• Spot metering and High Precision 9-point AF system
• DIGIC II image processor with 0.15 sec start-up time
• Digital Photo Professional RAW processing software
• 100,000 cycle shutter durability and rugged magnesium alloy body
• Simultaneous RAW and JPEG recording
• Wide 100-3200 ISO range
• E-TTL II Flash
• PictBridge compatibility
• Complete compatibility with all Canon EF and EF-S lenses and EX-series Speedlites
• +USB 2.0 Hi-Speed and Video Out connectivity

The Canon EF 50mm f/1.8 II Lens delivers very sharp images as inexpensively as Canon lenses get.

Build quality of the 50 f/1.8 is very cheap (as you might expect). This lens feels more like a toy than a piece of optics. It utilizes plastic contruction right down to the lens mount (the lenses are glass of course). This light material combined with the small size (2.7" x 1.6"/68.2mm x 41.0mm - WxL) puts this lens in the featherweight class - 4.6 oz (130g). The 50 f/1.8 is currently Canon's lightest and shortest lens. Considering how light the Canon EF 50mm f/1.8 II Lens is, I think the plastic lens mount is adequate for strength. You might get more wear than you wish if you are changing the lens frequently.

There is not much to this lens. There is no distance window or markings. There is barely even a focus ring - and the tiny ring that is there is barely usable.

Autofocus is driven by a micro motor. Focus speed is not stellar, but fine in good light with subjects that are not moving too quickly. The Canon EF 50mm f/1.8 II Lens is one of Canon's louder/buzzier lenses - you know when it is focusing. But this is not a wildlife lens - and the noise probably won't bother most people. I suppose a positive aspect of the sound is that you know when it is working - and when focus is locked. FTM (Full Time Manual) focusing is not included. The 50 f/1.8 extends up to 5/16" during focusing - the very small 52mm filter does not rotate.

The Canon EF 50mm f/1.8 II Lens' strongest quality is its sharpness. Sharpness performance wide open (f/1.8) is decent, but the Canon 50 f/1.8 is very sharp at f/2.8 and beyond. It is slightly sharper than even then Canon EF 24-70mm f/2.8 L USM Lens.


1 x Sandisc Extreme 3 Memory Card:
SanDisk Extreme III CompactFlash is designed for serious professional photographers who demand one of the fastest, more rugged and more durable memory cards on the market. Professional photographers who work under less than ideal conditions expect more from a flash memory card. More speed. More performance. More reliability. SanDisk’s new Extreme III card delivers everything you want plus a whole lot more!
That’s because only SanDisk Extreme III memory cards feature innovative ESP Technology for one of the fastest speeds and higher performance. ESP stands for “Enhanced Super-Parallel Processing”. Simply put, it means you are getting one of the fastest read/write speeds available – an amazing minimum 30MB per second** sequential read and write speed – speed you’ll definitely appreciate whenever you find yourself shooting and storing pictures in harsh environments, extreme temperatures or at high altitudes.
Every SanDisk Extreme III CompactFlash card comes with RescuePRO® so you can recover images, documents, mail, video, music – just about any digital file, with ease. Built with leading-edge media recovery algorithms, RescuePro lets you preview recoverable data before you try to retrieve it. With RescuePRO’s unique recovery algorithm for MPEG audio and MPEG video recovery (MPEG-1/2/3) what you see, and what you hear, is what you can recover.
Rely on SanDisk Extreme III cards when speed is critical to getting the right shot.

• Exclusively designed for the demanding speed/performance requirements of serious professional photographers
• Works in the most severe weather imaginable — deserts, hurricanes, Mt. Everest no problem!
• Fast minimum speeds of 30MB/second
• Temperature, shock & vibration tested under the most extreme conditions
• Dedicated priority technical support
• Limited lifetime warranty


1 x Nikon D200 with 18-70mm f3.5 Lens:

10.2 Megapixels: 3,872 x 2,592 pixel images. Also 2,896 x 1,944 (M) and 1,936 x 1,296 (S) pixels.
File Formats: JPG, also compressed and uncompressed 12-bit raw (NEF). Raw + JPG has the ability to store a raw and a JPG of your choosing. The D70 only stored a basic JPG in the raw + JPG setting. Large Normal JPGs are about 2.5 MB. The raw compression seems lossless however Nikon warns that there is "little drop in quality" (page 31 in manual) which suggests there is a loss in quality. I suspect this is response to the weiners who whined when the D70 only had compressed raw. I suspect the D200 uses the same raw compression they've always used, which is lossless save for a 10 to 8 bit log curve shaping which is invisible to me anyway. I'd rather save about 10 MB per file! Of course the weiners who shoot raw worry about this stuff.
Color Spaces: sRGB and Adobe RGB. Now both of these spaces have the option of a vivid mode III. There's also adds a black-and-white setting.
ISO: 100 to 1,600, also pushes to 2,000, 2,500 and 3,200 and has an AUTO setting. ISOs are settable in full, 1/2 and 1/3 stops.
Frame Rate: 5 FPS. Power-up rated at 150 ms, shutter release lag 50 ms and viewfinder mirror blackout 105 ms. A millisecond (ms) is a thousandth of a second. See my page on D200 High Speed Performance.
Burst Depth: 37 JPEG (Fine Large) or 22 NEF (RAW). Nikon specs this using a SanDisk SDCFH (Ultra II) or SDCFX (Extreme III) 1GB CF card.
Shutter: 1/8,000 to 30 seconds. Nikon says the shutter is "tested to" 100,000 cycles. This isn't a guarantee from Nikon, just their observation.
10-pin Remote connecter. No IR release like the D70 and no conventional cable release socket. Requires $55 MC-30 or MC-36 cords, the $165 wireless ML-3 or $50 MC-22 mad-scientist cord. Also can be controlled through the optional Nikon Capture 4 software and the WiFi WT-3 at even greater expense.
Mirror Lock-Up: Selected on the top left shooting mode dial. Can't be used at same time as self timer.
Built-In Flash: Works with SB-600 and SB-800 for free remote flash control as I explain here. ISO 100 Guide Number: 40 (feet), 12 (meters).
Flash Control: i-TTL flash control, the same excellent system as the rest of the current Nikon DSLRs and F6. It's excellent because it gets the correct exposure; people and pet photographers hate it because the preflashes almost guarantee some subjects will have closed eyes in every shot. I'll let you know if this is improved over the D70s. For people photos I use manual or "A" flash mode. PC Sync terminal. FV Lock to lock-in the value of flash exposure from one shot to the next. Auto FP High-Speed Sync is a trick mode to get sync above 1/250. Flash exposure compensation from -3 to +1 stops.
AF Zones: 11. Similar to D2X. Multi-CAM 1000 AF Sensor Module. It has a complex switch on the rear to allow you to select any of one area or multiple sensors to enable Dynamic AF, Closest Subject Priority Dynamic AF and Group Dynamic AF. The Group Dynamic AF uses a subset of the sensors in one area.
AF Mode Selector: the button on the front of the camera lets you select Manual, Single or Continuous directly. The D70 required a menu to get between Single and Continuous.
7-Wide vs. 11-Normal AF areas: You can select to run all the sensors by themselves, in which case you have 11 sensors. You also can set them to look around the image a little more, in which case some of the closer-together sensors' areas overlap, effectively creating the "7-wide" areas to which the Nikon literature refers.
AF Assist Light. The SB-600 and SB-800 also already have illuminators optimized to the 11 AF sensors of the D200.
Viewfinder: Huge 0.94x magnification with a 50 mm lens, bigger than just about anything out there. 95% coverage. Glass pentaprism. -2 to +1 diopter adjustment. No built-in blind as the pro cameras have.
Gridlines: These are great for keeping horizons horizontal. I always use them, and you can turn them off if they're in your way.
White Balance: Auto, Tungsten, Fluorescent, Daylight, Flash, Cloudy, Shade, White-Card (gray-card) manual and new 2,500º to 10,000º Kelvin preset manual. It may have four memories for four gray-card settings, which would be very helpful. White balance bracketing of 2 to 9 frames in increments of 1, 2 or 3 of arbitrary Nikon WB tweak units. One NWBTU equals about 10 mireds.
Storage: Compact Flash Type I and II and Microdrives
LCD monitor: 2.5," 230,00 pixels. 170 degree viewing angle in all directions, meaning it won't get darker or lighter as you look from below or above like most other LCDs. Magnification only up to 4x, which seems a bit weak considering my Casio EX-Z750 credit-card camera has the same sized LCD and offers up to 8x magnification.
Playback includes 4 or 9 image displays and blinking highlights. I never use these, although the new RGB blinking highlights may be useful.
Useful Histogram: A true RGB histogram allows us to make real exposure judgments. THe single-channel histograms of the D70, D1X, D100 and D50 are useless, since their one channel completely ignores when you clip the red channel, which is what usually overexposes first.
Big Top-LCD for reading operating parameters. It seems as huge as the pro cameras. Illumination is easy: just like the pro cameras, flip the power switch to the side against a detent.
Metering: 1,005-pixel 3-D RGB Matrix Metering II. Also variable size center-weighted metering and spot metering at each AF sensor. Personally I always use Matrix.
Exposure Modes: Program, Shutter priority, Aperture priority and Manual.
USB 2.0. Mini-B connector.
Battery: EN-EL3e, rated 1,800 shots. The MH-18a charger is a little bit smaller than the slightly older MH-18 charger of the D70.
Mechanical: Magnesium body and weather seals.
Size: 5.9 x 4.4 x 2.9 inches (147 x 113 x 74 mm)
Weight: 29 oz. (830g) stripped: without battery, memory card, body cap, or monitor cover
LENS SPECS:
Optics: 15 elements, 13 groups, one of which is an aspheric. This is not a cheapie "kit" lens (the 18-55mm is).
Diaphragm: Seven-bladed rounded diaphragm, f/22 - 36 minimum aperture.
Size: 2.9" (73 mm) long by 3" (74 mm) long.
Weight: 14 oz (390 g).
Close focus: 15" or 0.38m, very good.
Filter Thread: 67 mm. I suggest permanently attaching a 67 -> 77 mm step-up ring and treating this lens as if it's got a 77 mm thread just like the rest of Nikon's pro lenses. This way you only need one size of caps and filters and other accessories. Trust me, you'll go insane if you buy different filters for every lens! No, you can't use the lens hood this way; I never use lens hoods so no problem. I just use my hand to block the light of the sun if it's shining directly into the lens, which works a lot better than the hood when you need it.

Nikon SB600 Speedlight:
Works with every Nikon SLR: i-TTL for F6, D70s, D200, D2X and D2H, D-TTL for D100, D1, D1X and D1H and regular TTL for all the film cameras from the FA and FE-2 through today. Use it in Manual mode on your F or F2; sorry, no auto mode unless it's TTL.
Rated GN 98, feet at ISO 100 at the 35mm setting. (SB-800 is GN 125 at the same settings.)
Fresnel zoom 24 - 85 mm, also a built-in 14 mm panel. (SB-800 zooms to 105mm, irrelevant)
Manual 1 - 1/64 power in third stops. (SB-800 turns down to 1/128 power but has 2/3 stops more power at full)
No non-TTL "A" mode. This is the mode you'd use with a film camera made before 1979, but since the mode isn't here just use manual for historical cameras.
No idiotic repeating strobe mode. No one ever uses that mode. Its good that it lacks it because it makes cycling through the modes with the MODE button much faster, since there are none of the trick "sales" modes to bog things down. Sales modes are useless features added to flashes to make the innocent spend more money on them.
You can dial in up to +3 to -3 stops flash exposure compensation on the flash. That's more than you usually can dial in on the camera.
2.7" W x 4.9" tall x 3.5" deep (SB-800 is 2.8" wide x 5" tall and 3.5" deep)
10.6 oz (300 g) without batteries (SB-800 is 12.3 oz, 350 g)
Of course it takes four AA cells of any kind, thank goodness.