How I Shot It - Cortney, Kristofer

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Nikon Z8 @ ISO 64, 1/250 ; Nikon 14 30 F4 @ 14mm, F9

Nikon Z8 @ ISO 64, 1/5000 ; Nikon 50 1.2 @ F1.2

Before I go into the details of the night time car shot - Let’s start at the beginning on the shoot which was around 7:00 PM. I started with Cortney at the front of Union Station and these 2 shots were a super simple 1 light set up. The flash was mounted on a Manfrotto nano stand off to the left and was being held in the air by someone. Note the angled floor and stairs, so it was safter to have someone just lift it up. It’s about 8 feet up in the air aimed down at her.

• 1 Godox AD200

• 1 Magmod Sphere

• 1 Manfrotto Nano Stand

After dark shoots are one of my favorite things to do at Shutterfest. The main reason is because I get to experiment and play with colors and lighting! Another bonus on this trip was I gave in to the Pixel Connection shop on site and got a new toy! More on that in a bit.

We met up with Cortney later in the day for our only Wednesday evening shoot. Along the way, Kristofer joined in the fun. I had scoped this location earlier in the week for Shane to set up his new Lexus LC500, and we would shoot it there. Having the ferris wheel in the background was neat.

Nikon Z8 @ ISO 64, 1/200sec and Nikon Z 50 1.2 @ 1.2

Shot Details

This was a more elaborate set up than in the previous day’s shoot in this location. I used a faster shutterspeed on this to make sure everything was frozen and to take out more of the ambient light because I wanted the flashes to really pop. We had someone running around with a smoke machine making the smoke effect.

For this I used a 4 flash set up. This included:

• 2 Godox AD200’s with one on a Manfrotto Nano Stand to light the couple and one on the ground behind the car for a color effect.

• 2 Godox TT600s on the ground to the left and right with mag mod gels for more color.

• All used a Magmod Sphere to help with diffusion.

PMI Smoke NINJA Portable Fog Machine

That is real smoke in the photo! It was not added in post production. I picked up this Smoke Ninja Pro gadget at the show after seeing a demo and was sold immediately. I had previously been using canned smoke but found that sometimes those cans can leak and it did in the back of my car. Fortunately, it was in one of those car caddy things so it didn’t go everywhere.

The PMI Smoke Ninja unit can output a lot of smoke for sure. It hangs in the air as good as aerosol. You can use it with or without the fan attachment at the top. It also includes quite a few other accessories including a remote control so you can set it up and blow smoke whenever you need to.

The liquid used to make smoke is poured into a small see-through chamber and we used it A LOT this night and at another shoot back home and it’s still about 30% full. I have no doubts the fluid that came with it will last a long time.

Click this affiliate link to see the actual device. I highly recommend it based on my experiences with it so far!

One more shot of Cortney with the set up. In the previous car shot, the rear flash didn’t actually fire because it was on Full Power and hadn’t recycled on my shot. We had multiple people shooting at the same time with different triggers. But you can see the purple effect here on the rear of the car.

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