Playing with the Nikon R1C1 wireless macro flash system in the garden

Today I was experimenting with Nikon’s venerable SU800 wireless (infrared) commander and two tiny SB-R200 strobes (Nikon calls them speedlights) that came together inside the R1C1 kit.

Closeup of a beautiful magnolia flower shot with a Nikon R1C1 wireless macro flash system on a Nikon D780. This is a 1:1 crop straight out of the camera, with a little sharpening applied.

I was skeptical about the R1C1 kit that’s been sitting in my drawer ever since I “re-appropriated” it from the lab where I work (nobody was using it anyway). The main reasons were:

  • The strobes and the commander use pretty rare CR123A Li-ion cells. The ones I got from Amazon were 1300 mAh (which is not a lot) and are not rechargeable. I don’t expect the strobes to go on for very long on these cells, and even if they were rechargeable, it’s another piece of equipment, unique to this kit to travel with.
  • The system is wireless, but it’s infrared. Modern strobes (I use the Godox X-pro system) use a high frequency radio system, which is much more robust, allows for a high shutter speed sync, and more range, and less delay.

On the other hand, what’s nice about the system is that it includes a mounting ring, which screws onto the lens (different adapters are provided) and allows a comfortable 360 degree rotation of the strobes that are attached to it. Alternatively, strobe stands with tripod screws are provided. I’m not sure how well this would work with the limited infrared signal from the SU800 commander. I expect it to work well indoors (e.g. for product shots) but poorly outdoors in bright light as soon as the tiny SB-S200 strobes are separated.

Closeup of a beautiful tulip flower shot with a Nikon R1C1 wireless macro flash system on a Nikon D780. This is a 1:1 crop straight out of the camera, with a little sharpening applied.

I mounted the kit onto the fantastic Nikkor AF-D 35 mm f/2 with a +2.0 D macro filter attached to it. What a macro filter does is it makes the lens “myopic” by shifting its entire focusing range closer by +2.0 diopters. This means that the far end, which was at infinity is now at 1/2.0 = 0.5 meters, and the near end which was at 25 cm (which is 1 / 0.25 = 4.0 D) is now at 6 diopters (4.0 + 2.0 = 6), which is (you guessed it) at 16.6 cm. This lens has a magnificent and smooth bokeh and is very sharp even at F/11, which is what you need to expand the depth of field which is razor thin in macro photography.

As soon as I started shooting I realized that the communication between the commander and the strobes was a hit or miss. Without having read the manual I couldn’t figure out whether it was good for them to blink green, red, or both. The strobes would just turn off at whim and refuse to fire at random. Sometimes it was necessary to remove the commander from the camera and attach it again. Yet other times it was enough to fire a test flash for the system to start talking to itself correctly.

Closeup of a beautiful tulip flower shot with a Nikon R1C1 wireless macro flash system on a Nikon D780. This is a 1:1 crop straight out of the camera, with a little sharpening applied.

In spite of all the abovementioned inconveniences and reservations I have to say that when the kit chooses to work, the results are wonderful. I used the additional tiny diffusers on both the strobes which makes the tiny setup (flower, camera, and the two strobes) behave similarly as a studio shot with a model. Everything is just scaled down. Tiny subject, tiny diffuse lights, and the camera working at the very near end of the focus range. I shot at ISO400, using 1/4 flash power at F/11 and 1/160 second exposure time (this thing does not have high speed sync). The tiny diffused strobes can be precisely pointed at the subject, and freely rotated around the ring, casting delightful soft shadows on the petals. They are more than strong enough to overpower the sun and provide crisp and contrasty shots. As long as you’re not in a hurry and willing to look past the very obvious limitations of this quite vintage macro setup, you should absolutely give it a chance and spend a day or two with it in a garden.

Essential Wordpres Tips: Add tags to images and attachments and include them in HTML for SEO purposes

Whether you are a beginning blogger or an Instagram influencer, it is very important for your content to be “up there” in the search results. This not only applies to your posts and articles, but also to your meticulously crafted images. The world’s most famous and popular blogging platform, WordPress, is not prepared “out of the box” to make your images Google-friendly, but can be easily extended to tackle this problem.

Your images are not only pretty pictures for humans to look at and like. Underneath they need to be titled and categorized, so that Google and social networks can snatch them and catalogue and display in a relevant manner. By default, the HTML attributes “title”, and “alt” (alternative text, where to put your own custom tags) are not filled-in by WordPress. This means that although your images appear nicely on your blog or website, they may not easily get to the top of Google’s image searches.

To improve the way WordPress handles your images, just include the four snippets described below in the functions.php of your theme (or better, child theme). You can also download the snippet as text file to paste it easily.

  1. Add tags to your images and attachments in WordPress editor

    This function, first found here, will add a new text box, “Tags” to all of your images and attachments in the WordPress admin panel.
    function add_tags_to_attachments() {
    register_taxonomy_for_object_type( 'post_tag', 'attachment' );
    }
    add_action( 'init' , 'add_tags_to_attachments' );

  2. (Optional) Include the images in the archive/summary pages of your WordPress blog.

    function category_and_tag_archives( $wp_query ) {
    $my_post_array = array('post','page','attachment');
    if( $wp_query->get( 'category_name' ) || $wp_query->get( 'cat' ) )
    $wp_query->set( 'post_type', $my_post_array );
    if( $wp_query->get( 'tag' ) )
    $wp_query->set( 'post_type', $my_post_array );
    }

  3. Include the titles and image tags in the HTML of your posts and pages

    This function, first found here, will make WordPress include your titles and tags in the HTML code used to display your images within posts, pages and articles. It will only work from now on. It will not add the title nor the tags to your existing posts, pages or articles. You would have to modify your database in order to achieve this (or go through all of your past images manually).
    function inserted_image_titles( $html, $id ) {
    $attachment = get_post($id);
    $thetitle = $attachment->post_title;
    //
    $tags_str = '';
    $tags_array = wp_get_post_tags($id);
    foreach ($tags_array as $tag) {
    $tags_str .= $tag->name.' ';
    }
    if($tags_str != '') {
    $tags_str = substr($tags_str, 0, strlen($tags_str)-1);
    }
    $output = str_replace('<img', '
    //
    if(strpos($output, 'alt=""')===false) {
    $output = str_replace('" width', ' '.$tags_str.'" width', $output);
    } else {
    $output = str_replace('alt=""', 'alt="'.$tags_str.'"', $output);
    }
    return $output;
    }
    add_filter( 'media_send_to_editor', 'inserted_image_titles', 15, 2 );

  4. Include the titles and image tags in the HTML of your posts’ featured images

    This function, first found here, will make WordPress include your titles and tags in the HTML code used to display your featured images. It will make them present site-wide, including your past posts, pages and articles.
    function featured_image_titles($attr, $attachment = null){
    $attr['title'] = get_post($attachment->ID)->post_title;
    //
    $tags_str = '';
    $tags_array = wp_get_post_tags($attachment->ID);
    foreach ($tags_array as $tag) {
    $tags_str .= $tag->name.' ';
    }
    if($tags_str != '') {
    $tags_str = substr($tags_str, 0, strlen($tags_str)-1);
    }
    $attr['alt'] = (($attr['alt']=='')?'':$attr['alt'].' ').$tags_str;
    return $attr;
    }
    add_filter('wp_get_attachment_image_attributes', 'featured_image_titles', 10, 2);

I hope this helped you to improve your blog and reach more traffic! If you have any comments, please drop them below.