Off Camera Flash With The Canon S95

Santa brought me a Canon S95 just before Christmas. I really wanted to get a small point n’ shoot to take on the annual family trip to Mexico over the holiday. It would save me from lugging both of my bags of ‘real’ photo gear on the plane headed south of the border. I’ve also always wanted a smaller camera to have for everyday shooting, something I can take with me anywhere. I debated between the Canon G12 and the S95. One of the features I was looking for was the ability to trigger off camera flash. And while the G12 did have a hot shoe, I thought it was a little big for slipping into a pants pocket when heading out for the day. So I had a dilemma. The S95 fit all my requirements except for the off camera flash. I scoured the internet for a solution. What I came up with was these small optical triggers from Fotodiox. They slip on to the hot shoe mount of a strobe unit and trigger the flash when they see another flash. Sounds pretty simple. And they were only $15, so I headed over to the Fotodiox eBay page and ordered two. I packed a small amount of photo gear for the trip, which was exactly what I wanted to do. I carried the S95 with me on the plane, and threw a Nikon SB-24, one of the Fotodiox triggers, and a small clamp in my luggage. I also slipped a Lumiquest SBIII into my laptop bag beside a few magazines just in case. I tested them briefly before we left on our trip, but I didn’t get a real chance to see what they could do until we were at the resort. I decided to mess around with the triggers one night before dinner. The maid had my room looking pretty nice, so I broke out the flash and tried some interior photos. Allow me to illustrate:

This is the ‘before’ image, with just the S95′s on-camera flash lighting up the scene. I use the camera on manual mode shooting in RAW format. This also allows you to control the flash manually, and to even have some control over the strength of the flash. This is on its highest setting. Thinking I needed a little more light, and since the sun had set on the beach view just out my window, I needed to create my own. I grabbed the SB-24 and clamp, along with the Fotodiox trigger from my luggage, and set it up like this*:

* Setup shot may be a recreation, as I forgot to take one in Mexico…

What I’ve got here is all I brought in my ‘light kit’ for the trip. The small trigger is on the hot shoe mount of the flash, and I swung open a closet door in the room to clamp the light to. The small Nikon works well for this too, as the flash head swivels so you can get the trigger to face you and still aim the flash head away. I set the flash power to 1/8th, and then slapped the SBIII on to soften things up a bit. And here’s the after:

There you have it. A nice little room interior shot with an absolute minimal amount of gear. This was even shot at ISO 80, which really turns out nice on the lil’ S95. And I did this all with plenty of time to grab a beer from the fridge and head down to dinner. It’s pretty relaxing in Mexico.