Reception shots and packing light

My father got married again and ended up holding a reception out in West Vancouver.  I had some choices to make as I wanted to pack rather light and mostly carry on if I could get away with it (I don't have those fancy pelican cases yet).

What to do?  I was going to be the only photographer there, so I had have a second camera body.  Tracy was kind enough to lend me her D90 (which has the same sensor as my D300).  I wanted to take some umbrellas, light stands and such but I had no room!

A while back I got an adapter to mount a lighting head on to a broom pole.  I also have one of those tri-flash head mounts.  And, I was reasonably sure that where ever I ended up would have a broom pole I could borrow (worst case, run out to the local hardware store).

So what did I end up taking?
D300
D90
2xSB800
1xSB900
3xPocket Wizards
17-55
70-200VRI

Spare batteries and chargers.

Easy enough to fit into one of the 2 carry on's that you're allowed these days.


For some of the photos, I was able to hand hold a flash, after setting the ambient exposure to where I wanted it.  (See above, iTTL on +1.7 and taken around 6:30pm local time.  The city lights are off and the sun's coming down pretty hard.  Even the Lion's Gate bridge lights are off.)


For some others, I found some willing volunteers to hold a broom pole that had the 3 strobes on it.  (iTTL +2 and the sun as a back light held on a broom pole by a kind volunteer VAL)   The SB800 and SB900 almost (not quite) have the same GN and it seemed to work well.

As a side note, I used CLS a fair bit more on this trip than the PW's as I was pushing the shutter speed to 1/2000 regularly and you can't do that with PW's (at least not without shutter dragging issues.....).