So, with days getting shorter and shorter in Chicago as we are nearing winter solstice, I find the need of daylight independence more acute. That means that I will need to produce and match daylight (overcast preferably) artificially in the studio with my Nikon SB26 speedlights. The result of my first experience was close to what I want speaking of colors. See here the shot with window overcast lighting, with 1/80 @ f/1.8:

The light looks soft, shadows are not too harsh, just a touch of highlight just as I like it. Now take a look at the one I took of the same still life with the speedlight lighting shot through a 43″ diameter white umbrella coming from camera left pointed at about 45 degrees.

Not bad, huh? The only difference that you’ll immediately notice, is that here we have more detail compared to the window light one before. That’s because the speedlight had too much light output even at 1/64 power so I had to compensate with my aperture set at f/4 this time. Yes, I lost some of that depth of field but at least I got the colors pretty darn close, don’t you think?
I also forgot to change my WB setting from overcast to flash on my camera when I took this one.

Next time I’ll probably tinker with positioning the light source at a greater distance from the subject so I can open the aperture more. Will report back with the results.