1 light or 2

Setting: the family is on the rug reading and working on homework
Lighting: evening, so just some mild fluorescent bulbs above subjects
Thoughts: they are low to the ground and I don't want to pull out the umbrellas and the light stands. So I grab the reflector (silver/gold side out for neutral warmth) and grab an SB600 flash with the little plate it comes with for setting down on the ground. I place the SB600 in front of the reflector, pointing directly away from my subjects. Then I grab my SB800 with the diffuser on it and put it on my camera. I am actually about 12 feet away from my subjects, but the SB600 is about 5 feet from them.



Settings: the SB600 is set at TTL (through the lens- basically, this is auto setting, and the camera decides what power to put through it). I've got a long lens on to get close in (shooting from 160mm to 200mm) I am also shooting at f2.8 and 1/80. I chose 2.8 because I am trying some focal depth experiments with my long lens and it lets my flashes work at a lower power. I chose 1/80 because anything slower seems make my subjects movement show up (out of focus).
The SB800 is on 1/124 power (so virtually nothing... just used to fire the SB600) and because I am so far from my subjects, I am essentially just using one flash here.
Fire a couple of shots...


I like the focus on my subjects, but the background is really dark... too dark.
So I increase the power of the SB800 to about 1/2 power (really get some ambient light around them). No other settings changed. (I could have just changed my exposure to 1/20 or 1/15 instead of 1/80, but then I risk out of focus subjects, esp the spontaneous pics I was shooting). Or I could have increased my ISO to 1600, but that's really going to make it grainy with my camera.
So a couple of shots...


So I like the fill light that brought my images.
Parting shot... I really like this one because I like broken light, when it finds its way to your subject

use of the snoot

What's that??? A snoot. It essentially tunnels the light like spot light.
I may have mentioned the use of one before, but I was introduced to it by reading Dave Black's page

So generally don't use it as the only flash. Here I used a flash pointed at the ceiling to get reflected light and then increased the power on the flash with the snoot on it to get a focused, directional light.

This next shot, I increase the light that was pointed at the ceiling to minimize the contrast in the lights. I am shooting these at about F4 and between 1/30 and 1/80 of a second with ISO between 100 and 200 in full Manual mode. I find that I generally get better results with 2 or 3 flashes when I go manual on cameras and manual power on the flashes.

For these next shots, I kept playing with the settings of the two flashes to even them out a bit. I find that even at the same power, the snooted flash gives a higher intensity, simply because it is not diffused or reflected, it is direct, and focused by the snoot.

I like not having a shadow behind the subject... to avoid this, increase the intensity of the reflected light (or ambient light with the shutter time being longer) and don't place an object close behind the subject (in the plane of the snoot and subject -hope that made sense

So, then it was time to try 3 flashes - I picked up a lightly used SB-800 a few months ago and am thrilled with it. Unfortunately they don't make them anymore. But they allow you to have an on-camera flash (I usually point it to the ceiling or wall to have reflected light) and still command the other flashes with the SB-800 (in other words, the SB-800 has commander (remote) mode and the two SB-600s I use are the slaves).
This final shot I was really happy with the balance of lighting. I have an SB-600 on a light stand behind the subject (so camera left) shot through a white umbrella at 1/16th power. I also have the on-camera SB-800 at 1/16 or 1/32 power, pointed toward the ceiling with a diffuser on it (just to bounce the light a little before it hits the ceiling)*** And finally the snooted flash is pointed directly at the faces and is also set at 1/16 power. I moved the flashed to be about 4-5 feet from the subject. Without photoshop on my work computer, I won't try a lighting diagram, but maybe I will add it later.

*** the diffuser looks like this