Strobist News Feed - http://feeds.feedburner.com/blogspot/WOBq?format=xml
11th November 2008
Strobist
15 November 2008, 07:53:58
Orbis Enters the Ring
14 November 2008, 08:00:34 | noreply@blogger.com (David)
The much-awaited Orbis Ring Flash adapter is finally coming off the production lines. Enlight Photo has moved from a teaser site to the Full Monty, with lots more details and pix.
Orbis is the first (non-DIY) competitor to the Ray Flash, and lowers the entry cost for a commercial ring flash adapter.
Highlights:
• Introductory Price: $169 US (with $16.99 shipping to US - for other areas see site)
• One size fits most all shoe-mount flashes -- except the big-headed Vivitar 285, apparently.
• Requires off-camera sync of some kind (can use off-camera TTL cord)
• Larger lighting surface area than Ray Flash - (should be softer light, will test soon)
• First units ship in December, in three weeks
More details, FAQ, pix, etc., at Orbis website.
-30-
Full RSS feed, from Strobist.com. Videos are not viewable in emailed posts. Click the post title to see any embedded video and/or to view or post comments. This month's feeds are sponsored by:
There Goes the Neighborhood
13 November 2008, 13:14:53 | noreply@blogger.com (David)
I first got to know Drew Gardner by reputation before I ever met him. I was standing in The Flash Centre's London store and I saw these amazing, humongous photos on the wall. They were beautifully lit, but they also had a unique personal style and were full of humor. Anyone who makes shots like this has got to be fun to hang around with, I remember thinking.
The first time I met Drew in person, we had both just arrived at a hotel in Dubai in the middle of the night. I knew he would be there and recognized him from the accent and the clean-shaven head from the back.
We were both dog-tired from the flight. He did not know who I was. We had not yet even met. Perfect time to have a little fun...
So, here's drag-assed Drew, looking like a boneless chicken trying to get registered at the hotel. The only thing he is still carrying is his California Sunbounce kit, which only weighs a few pounds. But we can fix that.
As he talks with the desk clerk, I very lightly place a hand on the CSB kit hanging on his shoulder. If you are going to do this kind of thing, always start with a very light touch. Then add just the tiniest amount of weight to your hand. A little more. A little more.
The object is to make that thing go from a couple of pounds to twenty or thirty pounds without the guy noticing the change. One's goal is to boil the frong, as they say.
About 30 seconds into it, he finally gives up on resisting the pressure. He collapses his shoulder, turns around saying "What the...?" and sees a smartass photographer whom he had never met smiling at him with a hand still on his CSB.
I am happy to report that Drew didn't punch me in the face. Which, of course, means that he truly is a guy who you'd want to hang out and have beers with. And we have tested that beers thing on several occasions since.
But Drew is more than just a good guy, he is a helluva photographer. He is an A-lister out of the UK, and I am very pleased to welcome him to the world of photographers who are blogging with the goal of teaching others.
The guys makes some amazing photos, and has a wonderful sense of humor and whimsy that shows in his work.
He likes to play with the big toys, as shown in this video of him testing out the brand new Phase P65+ medium format digital back:
Drew's world is one of big lights and big ideas. I mean, when is the last time you rented a water buffalo for a shoot?
He has been blogging for a little while now at "The Dark Art," his quirky little corner of the photo world.
I very much hope you'll put him on your rounds / RSS feeds / whatever, as I can tell you from experience that you'll learn a lot hanging out with him.
Right out of the blocks, he has pieces on subtractive fill for white-on-white, the anatomy of a composite shot and a test drive of the new P65+ back.
He even takes you back to a time long ago, when he had youthful idealism and hair, to tell you how it all began.
The world of photographers educating other photographers just got a little bit better. I hope you'll join me in welcoming him to the neighborhood. And if you want to see more of Drew's work, his main photography website is here.
Full RSS feed, from Strobist.com. Videos are not viewable in emailed posts. Click the post title to see any embedded video and/or to view or post comments. This month's feeds are sponsored by:
Light Fare in Bilbao
12 November 2008, 18:30:46 | noreply@blogger.com (David)
If you happen to get hungry for tapas in Bilbao, Spain this month, be sure to stop by Café Iruña. The restaurant, which has been in continuous operation for over 100 years, is featuring an exhibition of photographs by Strobist readers.
There's even a meetup scheduled. Thanks much to Rafa at SeE for the assist.
If you are looking for an outlet for your local band of lighting enthusiasts, consider offering to do a group show at a coffee shop of local café, etc. They are always looking for local art that has a little edge to it. And it will help you hook up with more people in your community, be they fellow photographers or future clients.
These days when I shoot something my workflow is such that I make time to light it. My assignment pace is a little more sane than the two- to three-a-day pace of my days as a newspaper shooter.
Actually, I have had had five- or even six-assignment days on occasion. But thanks to my therapist, I have learned to repress most of those memories. (Calm blue ocean, calm blue ocean...)
Days like that are a recipe to just say "screw it" and shoot everything available light. Or on-camera bounce flash. But it doesn't have to be that way. And on-camera fill against off-camera flash is one technique that would have been a tremendous help to me as a newspaper shooter on those days from hell.
Keep reading for one way to light when you don't have time to light.
Hey, What's This Flash Bracket Thing on Top of My Camera?
Okay, let's be clear here. I am talking about direct, on-camera flash. And before you jump all over me, think about what on-camera fill flash is designed to do: Tame the shadows.
The problems -- the sameness -- that results from typical "3-D, matrixed-balanced, whizz-bang TTL fill flash" when it is used on-camera for ambient fill is that you are still at the mercy of your available light. The flash is merely there to fix the eye sockets. Or whatever else is going too dark.
But we can take that straight fill concept one step further, and add it to light that we have designed. In this environment, bare, on-camera flash can do some cool things for us.
When I say "on-camera," I am talking about either a shoe flash or a pop-up -- either can do the job. But the key difference is that we can use this flash as a third light source if we have a second flash.
For people who own a pop-up flash camera and a shoe-mount flash, this is a great run-and-gun setup. The on-camera flash gets used the same way a ring light would be used -- while crappy as a main, it is pretty cool as fill.
When I say "third light source," I am including the ambient as one of the first two sources. Which means if you have two shoe-mount flashes (or a single shoe-mount and a pop-up flash) you have a three light setup at your disposal. You just need to design the light so all three sources are working for you in concert.
Let's back up. If you are pushing on-camera fill into directional ambient light, you are doing one of two things: You are either filling angular front light or filling a backlit situation.
With the former, you still have no edge lighting to give you three-dimensional form. With the latter, you are basically key-lighting with direct, on-camera flash. Neither is going to be very interesting, and you will have very little control over your exposure choices, either -- it is either right or wrong.
But when you introduce a second flash (which means a third light source) you get the ability to cross-light and fill at the same time.
Take Me to the River
Let's do a walk-through of the above photo as an example. I was shooting a graduate school project to assess the health of a local stream. The light was what I would formerly consider horrible: Mid-day, high, back-ish overhead sun in a mottled, wooded environment.
If I fill that using only on-camera flash it is gonna look like crap. Well, maybe not crap but certainly not very interesting. No, check that. It'll look like crap.
And if I turn around, stick the sun behind me and fill it on-camera, it looks like every other fill flash photo in the back of every camera brochure in the world.
My goal in this setting is to use the sun as my backlight. Why? Because the exact lighting angle does not matter nearly as much as it would if I used it as a key, and it does not get in peoples' eyes. So no squinting.
Given that I am gonna backlight with sun and key light with off-camera flash, I can choose to set the entire scene at any tone I want. Start at a 250th of a second shutter speed to get a friendly aperture. Then dial that aperture around until I see a nice look for the environment. For me this usually means underexposing the ambient by a stop or so.
Essentially, I am exposing for the highlights, as if I were shooting chrome in the old days. (Back when we had to walk to our assignments, barefoot, in the snow, uphill, both ways.) Except that this time, we are not gonna let the shadows fall off the table into the deep, black abyss.
My back light and full scene established with the manual ambient exposure, I can now think about the key light. Since I am walking around on slippery rocks with a few thou in camera gear dangling from my neck, I am gonna go handheld and light them from the left side. Nothing fancy, and no stands. Camera in right hand, flash in left hand.
I normally shoot manual flash, but I am perfectly willing to use whatever mode works best for me in a given situation. So in this case, I stick the flash on TTL. (WTF? On-camera and TTL?)
Yep. For the flash, anyway.
I am in manual mode on the overall exposure, which means a straight TTL flash will be neutral. If I were underexposing the ambient by one stop in shutter priority (to keep a constant 1/250th of a sec shutter speed) I would juice the TTL flash by one stop to compensate for the overall "-1 stop" exposure compensation. That's just the way the camera settings work.
Now, if I TTL my flash (using, say, an off-camera TTL cord) then any frontal area that is not lit by the flash (or the sun) is gonna be very dark. That includes up under chins and the camera right sides of Charlotte and Chris, my stream diggers du jour.
And the more I saturate that environment the more the flash shadows are gonna drop. This will make the scene look very "flashed" and the overall lighting will look very harsh. But the object here is more legibility, a more natural look and total control of the various tones in the whole photo.
That's where the on-camera fill comes in. By dialing that in fill to, say, minus 2 1/3 stops, I can keep my lighting controlled and see up into my shadows. This gives me total control over three light zones of the photo: Environment/backlight, key-lit areas and fill areas.
Take a look at the lit areas up close in this sectional detail of the photo above. Examples of the fill areas would be the shadow side of Charlotte's face and under Chris's chin. Key light areas would be anything that is lit from camera left.
Environment is controlled by overall exposure. Key is controlled by the relative (+-) TTL setting on the key flash. Fill is controlled by the relative TTL setting on the on-camera flash.
If you look at Chris's neck, you can see both a fill area and a small, very dark, no-flash area that shows you how deep all of the key shadows would be without the on-camera fill. You can also see the no-flash area Charlotte's chin. Imagine all of the key shadows being that dark. That's the difference between on-camera fill and not, when key lighting off camera.
Camera/Flash Settings
Yes, you could do this with manual flash very easily if you are not moving around too much. But this is a good example of when to offload that extra thinking and minute control in exchange for mobility. When you are looking for good footing, you can just find a safe spot, compose and zoom to compose. The camera and flash will get it pretty close. If it misses, adjust the key or fill TTL level to taste.
Two light modifiers are being used here: I have a dome on each flash. This does not affect the light quality (no walls or ceiling to bounce off of) but makes both lights pretty omnidirectional. It helps the on-camera flash put out a signal that the off-camera flash can easily see. At this working distance, I got a 1.000 batting average that way -- no misfires at all.
It does force your flash to put out more of it's power to compensate for the light being eaten by the dome. That will shorten the range in which you can work and/or increase recycle time. But it is offset by the fact that this flash is firing at two and a third stops under TTL, which pretty much negates dome-induced problems.
The key light has a dome and a 1/8 CTO get to warm things up a bit. This is a standard gel for my key light. And the dome means I do not have to concentrate on having good aim with my hand-held key. It lights in all directions.
Pop-up flashes work great as fill for this look, as you can see here, but you'll need to work pretty close to your subject. Also, you'll wanna lose the lens shade as it will throw a shadow from the pop-up (which is so close to the lens axis.) But honestly, if you can get away with a pop-up, the fact that the axis is closer makes it work better for this kind of on-axis fill.
In Nikon-CLS speak, my on-camera flash is the master flash and the handheld flash is the remote. They are both set to fire at TTL setting, with the on-camera fill dialed down 2 1/3 stops. Hopefully, people with other camera brands will interpolate these settings in the comments and post a translation. I no speak de Canon.
Recommended by Lazy Photographers Everywhere
If all of this sounds like a lot of work, it's not. Start at a 250th to get a friendly aperture, dial in the aperture that gives you the best saturated-looking scene. Set your key light at TTL and your on-camera flash at -2 to -3 stops under TTL for this look.
These setting are not set in stone, either. Play around. You can go for a natural look or really amp it. Keep your key light close to straight TTL for some level of "visual anchor" if you want to get weird with it. Drop the ambient a little more. Amp the fill a little more. Better to work against the ambient, too. That is to say, shoot into the light.
You'll get a wide variety of looks, and each will be suitable for different situations. But the important thing is the light-against-light control. And even more so, the ability to light three dimensionally on the run without stands, time or worry.
_________
NOTE:
If you are already using this quickie two-flash technique please hit us in the comments on how you are doing it, and what you are shooting with it.
http://strobist.blogspot.com/2008/11/on-axis-fill-run-and-gun-version.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (David)David noreply@blogger.com 27 24 true http://feeds.feedburner.com/blogspot/WOBq?format=xml 2008-11-11T04:19:28.232Z isPermaLink="false">tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-23951026.post-4598911850741537488Fri, 07 Nov 2008 06:00:00 GMT 2008-11-07T06:00:00Z 2008-11-07T16:37:44.868Z New Nikon Video: 154 Minutes of CLS Goodness EDITOR'S NOTE: With all apologies to the Canon shooters who frequent this site: You really shouldn't even read this post. Seriously. Move it along. Nothing to see here...
_________
I have just finished watching an advance copy of Nikon's new DVD, Nikon School: A Hands-On Guide to Creative Lighting.
Short version: It is far and away the best resource available for those of you who want to better learn how to use your Nikon system strobes (SB-900, SB-800, SB-600, etc.) and Nikon's Creative Lighting System (CLS).
I am told they will be hitting the shelves shortly. Nikon Mall is up, but showing out of stock right now. I will post another note when they pop up everywhere. But I wanted to give the CLS-shooting readers an early heads-up that this is exactly the video they have been waiting for.
More info, and a brief trailer, after the jump.
(Uploaded with permission from Nikon.)
The 2 1/2-hour DVD starts off with photographer Bob Krist taking you step-by-step through both basic lighting principles and showing you how to work the CLS settings on the various Nikon flash system components.
Even CLS beginners will feel right at home starting with this portion of the DVD. He shows you how to set up the various flashes and gets you comfortable with the way the system works.
Bob then walks you through a couple of straightforward shoots in the studio to show you how easy it is to get rolling. He does a progressively lit portrait session and a quick, two-flash macro close-up of a pocket watch. This is basic stuff that will be remedial to some of you CLS studs. But is important to include the basics so as not to leave anyone behind.
As expected, it is pretty much a continuous Nikongasm. The gear is explained thoroughly, and they are here to show you how to use the specific components. But they go above and beyond the corporate video/commercial genre, especially when they get to the second part of the video.
A Grande-Sized Cuppa Joe
In Part Two, Bob assumes the role of color man to Joe McNally's lead as they work together to produce a series of increasingly complex location shoots. They progress from simple, one-light potraits to a classic, McNally-esque speedlight orgy.
They shoot dancers at a ballet school, a home bridal portrait series and a sequence of photos at a harbor. Each of these locations include a series of different setups -- they work a lot of different looks from each scene, too. Joe is thinking out loud, explaining what he is doing and keeping a steady stream ofBS rapport going with his subjects.
Bob becomes your stand-in, making sure nothing gets glossed over. They shoot, see the problems, work through them and get to the look that they want. Plenty of time is spent on the process, and no "magic black boxes" obscure the path from start to finish.
They do edit down the final shoot on the boat (13 speedlights, fer chrissakes) for what I can only assume to be time limitations on the single DVD. Or maybe that is where the fight scene happened. (Was that a butterfly Band-Aid on McNally's forehead afterwards?)
I cannot stress enough how pleased I am to see such attention to detail for the lighting processes in the video. It is not just a gear tease -- they are showing you exactly how to use the flashes to get beautiful results. This is everything the Speed of Light video (watch it here) left you wanting. That video felt more like an extended commercial. This one is a legitimate course in small-flash lighting.
If you are a Nikon CLS shooter (or hope to be) this DVD is an absolute no-brainer at $39.95. Grab it as soon as it becomes available. I'll post on that as soon as it starts popping up in stock, too.
Congrats to Bob, Joe and the powers that be at Nikon for looking past the obvious extended commercial to create something of value that will be helpful to so many people.
And Canon, if you are reading this I am calling you out right here and now. Make a DVD like this for the Canon flash system. No point in building in all those bells and whistles and not showing people how to use them. And this site will be happy to help spread the word if you do.
I happen to shoot Nikon, but I would love to see every photo manufacturer doing this kind of thing. Eventually, I would love to see manufacturers skipping the DVD process altogether and streaming this stuff online for free.
When they amortize the production costs over the extra gear that would sell, they would come out ahead. And so would their customers.
http://strobist.blogspot.com/2008/11/new-nikon-video-154-minutes-of-cls.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (David)David noreply@blogger.com 64 23 true http://feeds.feedburner.com/blogspot/WOBq?format=xml 2008-11-11T04:19:28.232Z isPermaLink="false">tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-23951026.post-5305039475117452237Wed, 05 Nov 2008 22:55:00 GMT 2008-11-05T22:55:00Z 2008-11-07T14:47:42.361Z Lighting 101 PDF Translation Project UPDATE: Lots of new languages are in play on the discussion thread linked below. We'll let the discussion fizz a couple more days and then break it up into language-specific threads to get things started. Thanks, Y'all!
_________
Thanks to the multi-lingual talents of reader Andrew Dahms, I am happy to announce that Lighting 101 is now available in Japanese as a downloadable PDF. The document is being released with a Creative Commons license under which it can be printed out, shared and/or hosted anywhere. The only restrictions are that it cannot be altered or used commercially, and attribution must be included.
Keep reading for more -- including the Japanese download link, other PDFs in the pipeline and how to help translate Lighting 101 into your own language.
Hardly a week goes by that I don't get an email from someone offering to create a piggy-back site and translate Strobist into another language. Or a note that they already have been translating the site somewhere. (Which is not cool, actually...)
Having a slew of foreign language sites is good in theory, but in practice tends to create more administrative problems than it solves. As the content creator, I need to keep control over the site's original material. But even being loosely involved with administering a couple dozen translation sites is beyond my capabilities at this point.
And while the written material on Strobist is free -- and always will be -- it is only when people actually visit the site that the economic model of free content works. Not only do the advertisers pick up the tab, but some have actually altered their focus to better serve the site's readers. That's way cool. But I have to center the readership here for that to keep working.
The solution was to translate the core unit on the site into multiple languages within a locked document format. Hopefully, many people will benefit from the translated L101, and enough of them will trickle in to read more in English so that it will have been worth the traffic dilution.
Leading Off: Japanese
The first L101 translation to be released is Japanese. It is available via MediaFire, here. Japan has vibrant photographic community, and it is my hope that some Japanese-speaking photographers will benefit from being exposed to Lighting 101.
If you are part of the Japanese online community (we had 3,451 visits from Japan last month) I hope you will help to seed this Lighting 101 module into some of the Japanese language photo sites. You are free to link to the MediaFire hosting site where it is now, or to download and host/post/share it in any way you like. Just do not alter it or charge for it -- it is meant to be free.
And, thanks to the intrepid Rafa Barbera, who has been running the Strobist en Español site, Lighting 101 will soon be available in Spanish as a PDF. Constructing a mirror site is an ongoing commitment on both ends. So for now, translated PDFs will be the way to go.
Lighting 101 is also being translated into Mandarin Chinese, thanks to the efforts of reader David Li.
As there already are Italian, German and Danish Strobist groups on Flickr, my guess is they will happen as PDFs, too. More on that below.
Help Translate L101 into Your Language
If you are a long-time reader of the site and are native in some other language, you can help to spread the information in Lighting 101 to others. I am looking to crowdsource the process and will gratefully accept the efforts of anyone who wants to chip in.
Many hands make light work, so my preference is to use a team of translators for a given language. If we can get a few people willing to pitch in, I will be more than happy to greenlight a translation PDF and host it. French, Hungarian, Swedish, Klingon -- whatever. The more the merrier.
For each language, we will need:
• A project lead: This person will coordinate the group's translation efforts and help with translation.
• A designer: Someone who can create a PDF document similar to the Japanese example released today -- could also help with translation. A designer could also be a project lead, if they were willing to serve in both capacities.
• An editor: Someone who was not involved in the translation, to make sure the translation is faithful to the original.
• Additional translators: Several people working together in this capacity will make the project easily doable.
Ideally, translators would be native speakers of the target language, be fluent in English and be very familiar with the material (i.e., long-time readers). Once a team has come together to translate into a given language, I'll get it started, including some additional guidelines, Creative Commons image files, etc.
Bear in mind that this is a bit of an experiment, based on the ideas and generous volunteer efforts of those responsible for the languages already in translation. I think it is a wonderful idea, and an ideal way to pay forward any help that this site may have been in broadening your understanding of small-flash lighting.
I have set up a Lighting 101 Translation Thread on Flickr. If you are not already on Flickr, you will need to sign up for a (free) account to be involved. From there, groups can form into various languages, share documents via email (or Flickr mail) and coordinate with me.
I will vet each translation before releasing it on the site in its official form, so please to not turn them out in to the wild before they are complete. I will also monitor the translation thread and answer any questions that pop up. Please ask them there.
For those who choose to get involved in a translation project, my sincere and heartfelt thanks and the thanks of those who speak your language who will learn more about lighting as a result of your efforts. Ditto for those of you who help to propagate the translated documents into your native language site and discussion fora.
I can tell you from experience of running this site that it is a wonderful feeling to be a conduit for knowledge that goes on to help many people -- and that good feeling never goes away.
____________
UPDATE: The above-referenced Flickr thread is where people are organizing for translation efforts (not the comments section of this post.)
http://strobist.blogspot.com/2008/11/lighting-101-pdf-translation-project.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (David)David noreply@blogger.com 32 22 true http://feeds.feedburner.com/blogspot/WOBq?format=xml 2008-11-11T04:19:28.232Z isPermaLink="false">tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-23951026.post-8339653681868388261Tue, 04 Nov 2008 16:42:00 GMT 2008-11-04T16:42:00Z 2008-11-04T18:30:48.109Z Vote -- And Consider Uplighting 
First of all, if you are reading this in the US, get off your butt and go vote today. Either that, or don't complain during the next four years no matter what. I'm just saying.
That said, take a look at this morning's Washington Post. They are running the expected, "same play" careful coverage that a newspaper has to run, lest it get howling complaints.
(Seriously, people count square inches and write in. So you need to keep them even, especially on critical days like November 4th.)
But enough election talk. Thankfully, we are almost done with that. It has been a long two years.
This morning's front page also is a very interesting look into lighting styles -- and media control. After you have voted, make the jump for a little more on the lighter side (so to speak) of this front page.
The Same, But Different
Looking at the two lead photos, McCain by Melina Mara and Obama by Linda Davidson, I am struck by the difference in the lighting. (Click here to see it bigger.)
Needless to say, a lot of thought goes into lighting political events. The campaign staff wants to do all of the heavy lifting, so the media can swoop in and get stuff that looks good with a minimum of effort.
In that sense, how you light your candidate is a point of significant control. Do it well, and he/she looks like a hero. That's a strong visual statement. And it is somewhat subconscious, which makes it even stronger.
McCain is classic Michael Deaver. And by that, I mean, create a little looking-into-the-sunset lighting and line up the shooting pits to where they show your guy in front of a big American flag.
Deaver (Reagan's Deputy Chief of Staff) was the first to exploit on a large scale the idea that, if you controlled the lighting/backdrop/shooting location, you could damn near put your candidate on a movie set. It helps if your candidate was a former actor, too.
Reagan, of course, was exactly that. And since the Reagan/Deaver (or maybe, Deaver/Reagan) one-two punch was so well executed, that strategy went a long way towards crafting a heroic visual image of Reagan in the media. The media could hardly help themselves, either -- Deaver had seen to that.
The lighting and shooting geometry on McCain are now pretty much standard procedure. It works, too. Not even Jill Greenberg could make the guy look bad in that situation.
But looking over at Obama's photo, I find myself wondering if his campaign's lighting person is not trying to evolve the Deaver look a little bit. The first thought that came to my mind when I saw this morning's dual front was to notice the uplighting.
I have been interested in learning more about uplighting when I realized that the technique was one of the reasons I like so many of Greg Heisler's photos. I love the way it sculpts and creates form and texture.
I have played with it a little bit, in a random, clunky way. And even my first clumsy efforts were encouraging enough to make me decide to learn more about it. I want to approach it in a more thorough way, as we presently are doing with on-axis fill. And I hope to write about the technique later.
Seeing Linda's Obama photo above (lit probably not by her but by a campaign staffer who appears to know their stuff) really shows the power of the technique. All the more so because it it juxtaposed against the technique that has been the Gold Standard of making a US politician look heroic and significant for the last 25 years.
Not to say that uplighting is anything new. But clearly, it is a powerful way to accent light -- and one that certainly lends itself to speedlight-based lighting. Sad, but after two years of non-stop campaigning being shoved down my throat, this is what I notice on the Big Day.
To me, the Obama photo looks like it jumped off of the pages of WIRED Magazine. Which is pretty amazing, really, when you consider that the person who shot the photo was not the person who decided the light.
In a time of increasingly sophisticated visual presentation in the media, it is interesting to me that we might be seeing the next chapter in the Michael Deaver playbook.
Feel free to electioneer ad nauseum in the comments. (No). This is a Red-Blue-Free-Zone. But I would be curious to know your nonpolitical thoughts about the differences in lighting above. If you have covered either campaign, feel free to chime in with lighting-related observations. Although, I would think you are probably busy today, at least.
Seriously, the politically-tinged stuff is strongly discouraged. Plenty of other places for that. Save the politics for the one place that it really matters.
Please vote today.
noreply@blogger.com (David)David noreply@blogger.com 37 21 true http://feeds.feedburner.com/blogspot/WOBq?format=xml 2008-11-10T13:02:11.912Z isPermaLink="false">tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-23951026.post-970678508260913364Mon, 03 Nov 2008 22:41:00 GMT 2008-11-03T22:41:00Z 2008-11-04T02:21:21.369Z Speedlinks Bucket Overflows, Flooding Basement What with all of the Halloween festivities this weekend, I completely forgot about the speedlinks bucket. I left it on downstairs, where it continued to fill with links sent in via the comments section.
Long story short, the basement is now completely flooded with excess speedlinks. The cat was marooned on the island/couch and we had to wade through everything to rescue her. She was pissed, and apparently shredded one of the speedlinks beyond recognition.
But there's plenty of good stuff left over, after the jump.
Speedlinks: 11/3/2008
• Over at DG28.com, Neil Turner shows you how to use foreground elements to hide your lights in a photo.
• Too worried about the financial meltdown to spring for a LumiQuest SB-III? Here's a link to a DIY version.
• Remember that killer Kung Fu shoot? Chase did a video on how he did the high-speed water burst shots. Reader's Digest version: Cody knifes a balloon.
• Sports shooter Mark Rebilas spends a rare off-weekend practicing with a ring flash in his garage studio setup.
• Hot shot car photographer Ken Brown stumbled across a video of Martin Schoeller shooting Paris Hilton. (Normally Schoeller's female subjects are more built...)
• Hulu has an "In Harm's Way" episode moved to the web that featured two war photographers. For some reason, this seems to be retricted to US viewers only. If you find a proxy workaround, please post in the comments.
• The F Stop features a walk-thru of a high-end shoot for Adidas. Not speedlight-friendly at all. Not even close...
• Pocketwizard, Schmocketwizard: Robert Benson can trigger his remote cameras from twenty miles away.
• Hiding the Lights, Version 2.0: I have stuck a lot of flashes in a lot of places. But I have never thought of sticking one here. To the recently-married Zack Arias, words of wisdom: Let the assistant position the Sunpak 120j's from now on.
• And last but not least, hippie-to-be-square Dave Honl blogs about his lit Halloween self portraits. Yeah, bay-bee, yeeeeeeeeaaahhh...
http://strobist.blogspot.com/2008/11/speedlinks-bucket-overflows-flooding.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (David)David noreply@blogger.com 11 20 true http://feeds.feedburner.com/blogspot/WOBq?format=xml 2008-11-10T13:02:11.912Z isPermaLink="false">tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-23951026.post-2211068031520103214Mon, 03 Nov 2008 20:00:00 GMT 2008-11-03T20:00:00Z 2008-11-03T21:48:49.018Z London Seminars, Dec 6th and 7th, are Sold Out. UPDATE: The Dec. 6th and 7th Strobist Lighting Seminars in London are sold out.
Discussion thread is here. See full post inside for seminar details.
Important Note to Email RSS subscribers:
If you are reading this via email or RSS, please click through to the main site (click on the headline above) to ensure you have the most up-to-date information.
When the seminars fill, I will close it and remove the registration links on the main site, but cannot edit RSS and email versions once they have left the Mother Ship.
Seminar Info and Registration Details
LOCATION:
The classes are to be held on Saturday, December 6th and Sunday, December 7th, 2008 in Room 3-B at the University of London Union, which is on Malet Street in the Bloomsbury section of London. (See map.) As the map shows, the location is an easy walk from the Russell Square tube station.
This was our location for last year's seminar (although different room) and it worked out great. I am looking forward to returning to ULU.
WHAT WE'RE ABOUT:
With these seminars, my goal is threefold: To refine your approach to creating light, to fill you with as many ideas as possible in a day's time and to have fun doing it. We'll start with a roadmap for the day, which I will do my best to keep us on. But each session will take on somewhat of a life of its own. Which is a good thing.
Our Anticipated Schedule
Arrival / Check-in: 0930 - 1000 hours
Please plan to arrive between these times, as we will still be setting up before then and still waiting for the caffeine to kick in. They only open the building at 0900 on the weekends, so I will be very busy setting up until 0930. Please plan to arrive at any time between 0930 and 1000, as we will start at 1000 hours sharp.
Morning session: 1000 - approximately 1230 hours
We'll talk about gear (I'll have a good gear selection there for a petting zoo) and take an extended, integrated look at what is essentially the Lighting 102 material in it's entirety. The focus will be on taking all of the things we talk about on the site in a day-to-day sense and integrating them to gain more of a holistic approach to lighting. Everything really is interrelated.
Lunch Break
On your own, approx. one hour, and we'll be looking for your nearby suggestions in the Flickr discussion thread related to this seminar. Link to a discussion thread will be posted shortly.
What I remember from last year: Sandwich shop in the basement, which is not bad at all. Other options within a four-block walk.
Afternoon Session:
~1330 - 1700 hours
Assuming we have finished the theory stuff, we'll move into the practical/demo session. (Sometimes we go into a little overtime on the theory.) We'll get into some real-world lighting exercises photographing some models I will have cleverly hidden around the room disguised as ordinary attendees.
This is basically a lighting version of "Whose Line is it, Anyway?" with a focus on improvisational lighting based on available gear, the room, found objects, lighting mods, etc. I never know what ideas we will come up with, which is what keeps me equal parts interested in and petrified of the afternoon session. It's a good thing.
Shortly after each shoot, we will view each setup and discuss the results onscreen. This instant feedback in a group environment is a wonderfully efficient way to drive home the thought and technique process. We can read and write all we want. But for photographers there is nothing better than "monkey see, money do."
The goal will be to incorporate lighting theory, room environment, assignment constraints and our available gear to create a photo that seeks to produce an photograph that is an appropriate response to our situation.
Working within that framework will allow us to concentrate on better freeing ourselves in the other areas: Creativity and subject/photographer interaction.
The entire day will be a non-stop flow of ideas and techniques, punctuated by spur-of-the-moment Q-and-A. I want you to bring lots of questions, and to feel free to voice the ones that pop into your head throughout the day. In fact, if you do not ask me enough questions, I will start throwing some questions at you.
You might want to bring a notebook and pen. (I will have a URL to download the onscreen presentation, so you can relax and listen.) And bring a camera if you want to shoot the setups as a visual reference. And dress is casual, so you won't feel out of place if I show up in shorts. Even in December.
As with my philosophy for the website there will be no secrets and no posturing. This stuff is not rocket science. It's light. And the first step in learning to light is to realize that anyone can get very good at it.
We will plan to wrap up at about 1700 hours, but the conversation has been known to continue in a more pub-like environment nearby. I understand that beer is sometimes consumed, too. All in the interest of lighting, of course.
If, for some reason, you require a cancellation after booking, refunds will be granted up until November 23rd. After that time, you would be responsible for transferring your seat to another attendee.
Very Important: If, through events beyond my control, I am unable to present this seminar, refunds will be limited to the ticket price. As I already have airfare, hotel room and our venue rental paid in advance, I do not anticipate this happening. But I just wanted to cover all of the bases, in case I get run over by a bus tomorrow, or one of those Big Macs finally catches up to me.
Speaking of airfare, I was very happy to see that British Airways allowed me, for a small fee, to automatically tack on a custom-calculated carbon offset for my flight to London and back. I was very happy to do so.
The upshot is, if you are a militant green photographer you may attend without guilt. As an additional green measure, we will be using 100% recycled batteries and jokes.
Bases covered, I have to say that I am very much looking forward to this trip and especially to meeting many of you. As I do more of these seminars, I find that each session develops a vibe of its own. You put a few dozen photographers who are all eager to learn in a room, and what starts out as a simple stack of talking points turns into a rich, organic discussion that ends with everyone - including me - having a head swimming with new ideas.
Feedback from Previous Seminars
Los Angeles (Most recent session):
Extended report
London (2007):
Post-seminar thread | Extended report
Seattle:
Post-seminar thread | Extended report
Paris:
Post-seminar thread | Extended report
Northern California:
Extended report I | Extended report II
__________________________
Registration Details
The cost for either seminar is £125,00 which is a little more than last year due mostly to differences in the exchange rate. The two seminars cover the same material, so you would register for either day, but not both.
To register for either seminar (with any major credit card) please click on the link at the bottom of the post, which will take you to PayPal. A PayPal account is not required to register.
IMPORTANT: If you are in the process of registering and the seminar sells out, your fee will be refunded by the end of the day -- usually within the hour. I will try to monitor the process closely. But depending on how fast it goes, I may have do this to ensure that it does not overfill.
Please leave your name and a working email (if different from the PayPal address) in the info box on the PayPal page, in case I should need to contact you.
I look forward to seeing you there. The discussion thread for this seminar is here.
Registration Links
Register for Sat., Dec. 6th (Saturday is sold out)
Register for Sun., Dec. 7th (Sunday is sold out)
http://strobist.blogspot.com/2008/11/registration-for-dec-6th-and-7th-london.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (David)David noreply@blogger.com 22 19 true http://feeds.feedburner.com/blogspot/WOBq?format=xml 2008-11-10T13:02:11.912Z isPermaLink="false">tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-23951026.post-5603762445520831067Sun, 02 Nov 2008 00:42:00 GMT 2008-11-02T00:42:00Z 2008-11-03T01:13:37.746Z CYBER COMMANDER Launched; Flash Remotes Gain Consciousness, Plot Extermination of Humans 
Paul C. Buff, maker of AlienBees, White Lightning and various other studio flashes, has just announced the "CYBER COMMANDER™."
This marks the first mass-market radio remote for flashes that actually lets you both control the output of the flashes from the camera via radio signals, and provide additional features to boot.
I, for one, would like to take this opportunity to welcome our new Sentient Remotes Overlords...
From the release:
And he is apparently not talking just about Bees and White Lightnings, either:
UPDATE: The CC apparently controls the power levels on Paul Buff brand flashes, but no so other brands.
Release continues:
Power is standard AAA batts, expected battery life is six months to two years. They've also lopped off the delay inherent in the electronics, meaning that some of the special DSLRs that can sync at higher-than-posted speeds reportedly wil be able to sync at up to a 1/2500 of a second via these remotes.
Holy crap. I think we have just moved into the next technological era of remotes. Fortunately, they are not actually here yet. Projected T-Virus date is late Nov to early Dec. We still have time to find Sarah Connor.
There's a lot of info to go through on the CYBER COMMANDER page. I am still sifting through it myself.
So, what's your take? Does this change the dynamic in the PW/eBay/Skyport/etc. landscape? Is it a game breaker? Is flash control worth the 400' range limit? Will Ahnold play the CYBER COMMANDER in the movie version?
Step up to the mic in the comments.
noreply@blogger.com (David)David noreply@blogger.com 43 18 true http://feeds.feedburner.com/blogspot/WOBq?format=xml 2008-11-10T13:02:11.912Z isPermaLink="false">tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-23951026.post-6364858840571145506Sat, 01 Nov 2008 00:22:00 GMT 2008-11-01T00:22:00Z 2008-11-01T00:45:24.835Z November 1st Means Fire Sales on Fog Machines 
It's that time of year again -- Halloween is almost in the books and anyone who sells those cheapo novelty fog machines will be pretty much giving them away tomorrow morning.
They only start out at about $30, were in the low $20's by today and soon will be about ten bucks. The fog juice will be cheap, too.
They don't work too great (they tend to gum up eventually) but at $10, if they smoke up good for even one shoot it is pretty hard to lose on that deal.
Pictured above is one of about 20 decorations at the home of our next-door neighbors, Mark and Prissy. Our block really gets into Halloween. The kids come from far and wide to check out the creepiness and gorge themselves on candy.
Light for this was one SB-800 at her feet, and dragged the shutter to get the backlit fog (courtesy the street lamp). I zoomed during the ~1/4 second exposure for the streaks. Click the pic for biggers.
(Got fun Halloween flash pix? Throw em in the Flickr pool and copy them into this thread!)
-30-
noreply@blogger.com (David)David noreply@blogger.com 11 17 true http://feeds.feedburner.com/blogspot/WOBq?format=xml 2008-11-11T04:19:28.232Z isPermaLink="false">tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-23951026.post-2218248928678916264Fri, 31 Oct 2008 04:17:00 GMT 2008-10-31T04:17:00Z 2008-10-31T04:31:19.287Z On Assignment: Reluctant Poet 
I spent the morning recently with poet Linda Joy Burke, doing photos which were to be used for publicity and marketing. We chose as our location Ellicott City, MD, a neat little historic town that was convenient for both of us.
Linda Joy is a free spirit and a very creative person. So I knew I would be able to play a little with the lighting. But, like many people, she loathes having her photo taken. And that always adds another wrinkle to the shoot.
Keep reading to see how we approached the issues, both lighting and psychological.
"I Hate Having My Picture Taken."
That was the first bit of instruction I got from Linda Joy. And if I had a dollar for every time I had heard that from a subject, I could probably retire. In fact, if someone came up to me and said, "I really love having my picture taken," my first thought might be that they were a tad off-center, if you know what I mean.
So, from square one I know that the lighting, setting and compositional considerations will all take a back seat to Linda Joy's primary concern. And my most important job is to make sure she can relax and to let her know that my primary goal is to make a nice photo of her.
Someone who does not like to be photographed tends to see the camera as a bit of an enemy, and that can easily transfer to the photographer. It's something you should be aware of, and you can work proactively to let the subject know that you are on the same side.
My approach is, as much as possible, to have gear pre-set when they arrive so you can just walk and talk them through the settings before they really have a chance to worry too much. At the same time, I want to pay close attention to whatever happens to be working well during the shoot and to make a point to reinforce those aspects in conversation.
Get There Early
Having chosen a location, my first job is to scout it for good angles. Our light is pretty diffuse here (open shade on a sunny day) so in this case it is about background and environment.
What backgrounds and graphic elements can I use to frame a portrait? That is what I am asking as I walk around and make notes.
There are lots of choices here, and I tend to make notes with the camera as seen at left. I like looking at the location in "picture notes" as they look much closer to how they will look in the final product.
I also will play with my ambient exposures at this point to see what the environment will look like if I walk the ambient down a bit.
In this case, here is the ambient exposed dead-on in the top frame and the dropped nearly two stops in the bottom photo. (If that is confusing, see this post.)
We have talked before in the On Assignment section about the fact that shade is your friend. And as you can see here, it is -- for more than one reason.
First, obviously, the exposure is easier to tame so we can bring the subject back up with flash. Figure three stops -- a big difference -- from the nearby full sun. It is dim enough so that you do not necessarily have to shoot at a 250th, too. Which gives you a little more control over the levers.
I keep a personal catalog of nearby settings and backdrops in my location notes folder, and each backdrop has a cardinal direction attached to it, too.
I live in the northern hemisphere, so the north side of a building will always be in shade. These are my prime backdrops -- they are good 24/7, in terms of controlling the sun.
In this case, my backdrop was on the west side of the building. So that meant a morning shoot. FWIW, this is why west-wall locations are lowest in my personal pecking order. Not a morning guy.
Second, I like the shade because it is cool. Literally, in the summer, but here I mean color temperature. And that coolness is enhanced even more when you drop the exposure a stop or two.
Working Together
When Linda Joy arrives, I am ready to shoot quickly if need be, or to keep going if things work well. For the first setup, I used an older White Lightning Ultra 600 in a Photoflex soft box. The WL's flash tube is UV balanced, and old. This makes it warm enough to forego the usual Rosco 1/4 CTO or Rosco "08" warming filter I normally use on my key light.
You can see the setup here. I have dropped the ambient by about a stop and a half. Where the flash lights, everything is warm. Where the ambient is the primary part of the exposure, things cool down. I always like that as a starting point for people. I'll break that rule on occasion, but usually only for effect.
I brought the WL because I did not know how big of an area I would want to light. In this open shade, I could have done the same thing with an SB-800 (or two, at max) in a shoot-through umbrella.
If you look up the stairs, you'll see a second flash (an SB-800) backlighting them. In my setup I went with this light, but in the end I chose to leave the stairs dark. They were very near the edge of the frame and provided an easy exit point for the view. (Hello -- lit stairs, heading out of my frame. Talk about an engraved invitation to leave the photo...)
So, I sat Linda Joy on the steps to the next building, after placing a soft case from a flex fill under her so her hand-made, vintage dress would not get dirty. Time to make photos.
I kept Linda Joy talking, finding out as much as possible about who she was and what she did, creatively, as we shot. This kept her thinking about things other than the photographer with the digital Uzi pointed at her.
I also used one of my favorite tricks -- coming out from behind the camera. Even though I normally do not shoot with a tripod unless I am bringing up a really dark ambient, I can usually frame a photo and then move my face out from behind the camera as I shoot. Your aim will shift a little bit, but if you zoom out a tad you can fix this easily in post.
The eye contact usually relaxes people a bit, and helps to create a stronger interpersonal exchange. Sounds silly, but it helps.
Before we moved onto the next setup, I walked around to camera left in the previous frame and did some tight headshots. I tried them with the soft box, but now I needed shallow depth of field. So I turned off the strobe and shot natural light at a wide aperture. I love her hair, and wanted to do something close that highlighted its texture. If only all of my subjects had layered frames like Linda Joy's hair.
The open sunlight to the camera right side of the frame made a nice light source and I could grab a series of head shots in just a couple minutes.
Don't ignore what the ambient is offering you just because you trucked in the flashes. Being able to light is an additive skill, not a death sentence to available light shooting.
Next, over to the tree, where I wanted to do another setup.
Remembering the exposure test seen above, I dropped my ambient about two stops and then set up an SB-800 in a Lumiquest SB-III as a key light.
Here is the setup. As you can see, I am almost exposing for full sun (at left) even though I am in deep shade for the shot.Then, I'll build back the light on the subject with flash.
My key (the LumiQuest SB-III) is a pretty hard light source at that distance. But that's okay because I am going to fill with ring to be able to see into the shadows while still keeping that background ambient muted and blue.
Against the blue, I gelled my SB-800 key light with a 1/4 CTO. One of my SB-800's has a 1/4 CTO pretty much permanently attached. I just use it as my key all the time, which saves me any gel swapping.
What can I say? I am lazy.
So, the ambient sets the exposure -- dropped for color and tonal contrast. To that I add in my key, until the tree looks right. (Linda Joy approximates the tree on a tonal basis, so that will be an easy adjustment if needed when she steps in.)
To that, I add some ring fill (hey, I been practicin'...) which will bring up her shadow side exactly as much as I want. Controlling the drop-off amount to shadow allows me to use a smaller key light source and get away with it. If the shadow does not drop off too far, it can be harder with no ill effects.
When I bring Linda Joy in, we are still deep in conversation. It's just that now, she is standing in front of the tree while we are yakking.
Sure, she knows she is getting her photo taken. But by now the edge has worn off a little. Also, I have showed her some of the results of the shoot up until now, and the thought has occurred to her that I just might not be out to make her look terrible. Imagine that.
About five minutes later we were done. And we still had our entire day ahead of us, as we would normally both have been just rolling out of bed about now.
noreply@blogger.com (David)David noreply@blogger.com 32 16 true http://feeds.feedburner.com/blogspot/WOBq?format=xml 2008-11-10T13:02:11.912Z isPermaLink="false">tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-23951026.post-1917312648335607929Fri, 31 Oct 2008 04:00:00 GMT 2008-10-31T04:00:00Z 2008-10-31T12:31:57.020Z UK Readers, Save the Date: London Lighting Seminars Coming December 6th and 7th Just a quick note to the UK folks: I am in London in early December, so I have booked a classroom at ULU for two full-day lighting seminars. We'll be doing the regular format (see here for example). The current exchange rate means the price will be £129,00.
Registration opens Monday, Nov 3rd, at 8:00 p.m. (2000 hours) London time. Full info and links to register via PayPal will be posted at that time.
-30-
http://strobist.blogspot.com/2008/10/uk-readers-save-date-london-lighting.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (David)David noreply@blogger.com 23 15 true http://feeds.feedburner.com/blogspot/WOBq?format=xml 2008-11-10T13:02:11.912Z isPermaLink="false">tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-23951026.post-5118729636700816642Thu, 30 Oct 2008 17:06:00 GMT 2008-10-30T17:06:00Z 2008-10-30T17:21:29.909Z OT, But Critical and Time Sensitive: Digital Railroad Implosion Info Please pardon the OT post. It's a bit of an emergency for many shooters. Thanks.
__________
If your stuff is on Digital Railroad, which is shutting down in such an abrupt way as to hose its photographers, you have until midnight on Oct 31st (PST/GMT-8) to migrate your stuff to someplace safe. Even this short time frame was won of hard negotiation.
This is way off topic for this site, and I have thus far resisted the urge to go off-niche to cover this story. But I am sure that many readers are affected, and DRR simply is not giving its shooters time to migrate in an orderly way.
If youare were a client, act fast -- as in now.
For more info and in-depth coverage:
• Photo Business Forum, shows exactly how to migrate via FTP (Thanks much for that info, John)
• Vincent Laforet, expressing the anger felt by many shooters
• PhotoShelter, just off of a closure of their own, tries to pick up the DRR pieces with help (they negotiated the extension) info, offer
• PDN Online story , with ongoing coverage at PDNPulse
-30-
http://strobist.blogspot.com/2008/10/ot-but-critical-and-time-sensitive.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (David)David noreply@blogger.com 14 true http://feeds.feedburner.com/blogspot/WOBq?format=xml 2008-11-10T13:02:11.912Z isPermaLink="false">tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-23951026.post-3599322931225755665Thu, 30 Oct 2008 04:00:00 GMT 2008-10-30T04:00:00Z 2008-10-30T04:15:08.870Z Nick Turpin Ditches his SB-800s for a Cell Phone
(RSS and email subscribers may have to click on the post title to see the video.)
Remember Nick Turpin, who did those beautiful SB-800-lit street portraits of thriller writers for Arena Magazine?
Now, he has ditched even those and is shooting his current month-long campaign for Samsung using only a cell phone. No DSLRs, no flashes, no female assistants holding long poles. And he is not even in control of what he is shooting -- you are.
Your clicks on each new photo in the the evolving site decide where he is going next. It is live now, at The Photographic Adventures of Nick Turpin. You can follow his cell-phone video diary from his trek via his YouTube Channel, too.
(Via What's the Jackanory)
-30-
noreply@blogger.com (David)David noreply@blogger.com 7 13 true http://feeds.feedburner.com/blogspot/WOBq?format=xml 2008-11-10T13:02:11.912Z isPermaLink="false">tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-23951026.post-7350753975254325771Wed, 29 Oct 2008 04:00:00 GMT 2008-10-29T04:00:00Z 2008-10-31T12:56:11.326Z FYI: DIY PVC CSB 
I finally got a chance to meet Peter Geller, of California Sunbounce, at PDN's Photo East shindig up in NYC last week. He had all of CSB's toys strewn out in a way that is very unfair to those of us looking to escape the show with our wallets intact.
Their system is totally comprehensive and can create just about any light-modifying setup you could possible imagine -- if you have the moolah. But if you are a dirt-broke college puke (or perhaps a former Lehman brothers executive) you may have more time than money at this particular point in your life.
If that is your situation, you might want to take a look at this DIY version of the CSB Micro Mini, which is proving to be popular enough to be in a backorder situation on the accompanying flash mounts.
(And check out "we-knew-him-when-he-wasn't-famous" Bert Stephani starring on the Micro Mini webpage, too...)
Back to the DIY. Thanks to reader John Gibney, if you have a little patience and know your way around a sewing machine you can try out a DIY version to see if all this bouncing stuff is right for you. He gives pretty detailed instructions on his blog -- even how to include a 5/8" stud for mounting a flash or sticking the bounce in an umbrella swivel.
(Thanks much, John!)
-30-
noreply@blogger.com (David)David noreply@blogger.com 16 12 true http://feeds.feedburner.com/blogspot/WOBq?format=xml 2008-11-10T13:02:11.912Z isPermaLink="false">tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-23951026.post-478210477906650142Mon, 27 Oct 2008 05:24:00 GMT 2008-10-27T05:24:00Z 2008-10-27T05:32:30.467Z On-Axis Fill: Ring Fill Against Restricted Light 
Having begun to explore fill with a ring flash, I knew there would be other ways to push light from on or near the lens axis. But before I tried them out, I wanted to learn how a ring light fill would work in combination with a more restricted key light.
Hard key light leaves hard shadows. And if you are not taking into account the ambient light (maybe the ambient light quality sucks, for instance) on-axis fill can reach into shadows and open them up in a highly controllable way.
Keep reading for two quick set-ups, and a refresher on ratio control without a flashmeter.
Swamp Thing
This summer as I was looking for any excuse to experiment with ring-as-fill, my son Ben returned from a day at camp wearing the shoes you see pictured at the top of this post.
My wife: "Do NOT come inside with those shoes. Clean them off with the hose outside."
Me: "Don't clean 'em yet! I want to shoot them. (... on your mother's great-grandma's antique cutting board, I did not say out loud...)"
Hey, we don't use the board for cooking. It is mostly used as decor against the counter backsplash. And it covers up the mess and tangled wires around the phone pretty well, too.
We only have a few minutes before dinner, so this will have to be quick. No problem, as I already have my background (secretly) picked out. I love shooting details like this for the family album, and these shoes say a lot about a well-spent summer day for a seven year-old boy.
Having seen what the ring would do against an umbrella, I wanted to play with some hard light. My thinking was, this combo will let me dial in however much texture I wanted by filling against a hard shaft of light.
But before I could make the hard key, I needed my ring flash as fill. I cranked my lens down to a very small aperture to hold focus and dropped the shutter speed to 1/250th to kill the ambient. Then, I adjusted the power output on the (manual) ring flash until I got the proper exposure.
(I was using a Ray Flash adapter fitted onto a Nikon SB-800 speedlight for the ring light.)
Now, since I was already way down on the aperture, I dropped the ISO a couple of stops to take the ring flash from being properly exposed down to a nice fill. I looked at the histogram and rear display and it looked like a nice "baseline exposure" for what would become my shadows in a moment.
This is no different than dialing down your ambient before you add in your key light, except that it was all being done with flash.
Now, for the hard fill.
Using a set of ten-dollar barn doors designed for small flashes, I closed off the spill of the key light until just a small beam was getting through from hard camera left. I used a 1/2-strength CTO gel to warm up the key somewhat to accentuate the color of the mud.
Given that my shooting aperture is set, as is the number of stops I have already dialed down my fill, the only thing left to do is to adjust the key light until the direction and exposure looks best.
No meters -- just eyeballing the relationship between the tones on the rear screen and making sure my histogram is not out of whack.
Quick and easy, and I notch another quick experience in my goal to get more comfy with on-axis fill. Honestly, the hardest thing about the shoot was smuggling the cutting board out of the kitchen (and back in) without Susan noticing.
I really like the ring-against-raking-light look on the muddy shoes. The highlights are crisp, but you can see right into the shadows -- exactly as much as I want, thanks to the lighting ratio on the fill. The ring also gives that characteristic wraparound shadow -- which looks kinda cool against the highlights, too.
Ring Against Grid
A few days before Ben's shoes, I had done a little more experimenting with ring fill and hard light, and I found myself growing more and more comfortable both with the technique itself and the key-to-fill ratios.
This portrait of Em, done in the last days of single digits before her tenth birthday, was the first time I had worked with ring and grid light. But I already had a good idea what to expect, thanks to experimenting earlier with on-axis fill and umbrella key in Dubai.
There are two ratios to consider here, and if you are into reverse engineering should be able to spot them by looking closely at the photo.
The first is the ratio of the ring (which will end up being the fill) over the ambient. You can see how far the ambient drops off by looking at the depth of the ring flash shadow (around Em) compared to the surrounding bricks in the areas of the photo not lit by the gridded key light.
The second ratio is that of the gridded key light over the ring fill light. This you can see in the shadows on Em's neck and under her nose. (These shadows are left by the key light, but are lit by the ring fill.)
Which means that in this setting, we have two control levers to adjust the contrast range of the photo. The ring flash was about a stop and a half over the ambient and the gridded key (coming from upper camera right) was another stop and a half over the ring light.
(If this shorthand exposure information doesn't make sense, take a look at this post.)
I have to say, I immediately loved the look of the ring fill against the gridded key. It was crisp and open all at the same time, and every portion of the photo was tonally legible in a controllable way.
Baseline Exposure Cheat Sheet
I was starting to get familiar with the Ray Flash, and was finding that it knocked off a little more than the one stop (vs. direct flash) advertised by the manufacturer. To be fair, after testing I found it to knock off about 1.2 stops -- if you used the 24mm throw as a bare-flash comparison.
Real-world (50mm throw) I would call it close to two stops. But that is still plenty powerful to use as a beautiful fill light at portrait distances outside.
Having experimented in a darkened room, I tested it to see how much light it would throw in a given ISO and power setting. To help me learn get faster at future setups, I stuck my standard cheat sheet on the Ray Flash:
The numbers:
1/2 power -- ISO 400 -- 10 Feet -- f/8
From there, I could quickly interpolate differences in any future setups to get a starting point for my power setting in manual.
Comfortable with the tests, I was ready to try ring light as fill on an assignment -- confident that I probably would not screw it up completely.
noreply@blogger.com (David)David noreply@blogger.com 19 11 true http://feeds.feedburner.com/blogspot/WOBq?format=xml 2008-11-10T13:02:11.912Z isPermaLink="false">tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-23951026.post-4075531448229845817Fri, 24 Oct 2008 04:00:00 GMT 2008-10-24T04:00:00Z 2008-10-24T04:00:00.890Z Great Video on Overclocking Your Sync Speed
We talked about this in the sunset tiki hut portrait a ways back, but wedding shooter David Ziser has put together a well-done twelve-minute tutorial on working above your flash's native sync speed for outdoor lit portraiture.
(This, of course, does not get you anywhere near the insane sync speeds with the SB-800 diagnostic mode detailed early last April, but it is way easier to pull of, with no complicated button sequences...)
See the original post at Digital Pro Talk. Thanks to David for the vid and to everyone that let me know about it.
-30-
noreply@blogger.com (David)David noreply@blogger.com 45 10 true http://feeds.feedburner.com/blogspot/WOBq?format=xml 2008-11-10T13:02:11.912Z isPermaLink="false">tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-23951026.post-6254960916143556180Wed, 22 Oct 2008 04:00:00 GMT 2008-10-22T04:00:00Z 2008-10-22T04:19:06.526Z Nikon SB-900: Joe Bob Goes to the Movies 
Those of you of a certain age will remember Joe Bob Briggs, who used to review guys' movies for the newspapers the way a guy would want a movie reviewed.
Steel Magnolias? Zero stars. Way too much emotional junk.
Texas Chain Saw Massacre? Instant classic -- it has chain saws, fer cryin' out loud. Get the Oscar buzz started!
I was very disappointed to find out that the "Joe Bob" in the new Nikon speedlight video were in fact Bob Krist, internationally known travel photographer, and Joe McNally, some guy I have never heard of.
Sadly, the video is not available yet, nor are the online excerpts -- they are coming next week, from what I hear. So why am I even telling you this?
Because the release of the SB-900 video trips in a little gentleman's agreement about the previous, SB-800 "Speed of Light" video...
__________
A few years ago, this Joe McNally guy filmed a video for Nikon on the (then) new SB-800s, showing just what they could do by using CLS in a real-world environment. It was a capabilities/brochure type of thing, and they probably underestimated the demand for nuts-and-bolts, exact "how-to" type of stuff.
The video was called, The Speed of Light (spoiler alert: 186,000 miles per second) and was a great tease to get you pining for six SB-800s.
The feedback, of course, was that now everyone wanted to know exactly how to do this stuff: What do I set the +-TTL at? Why use the dome outside? How do I find a contortionist and a glass box in the middle of the desert?
So, from what I understand at least, they are looking to be more nuts-and-bolts in the current iteration which is now in the can and ready for release. The new video is five times as long as the last, which should allow for more detail in the process.
From what I hear, they had fun filming it, too. Rumor was that Bob and Joe actually pretended to get pissed off at each other, almost to the point of coming to blows (my money is on Bob -- he's a scrapper) just to worry the director while shooting. That's why you never let the photographers outnumber the directors.
But enough of that. Back to the Speed of Light video.
__________
Here it is, embedded. If you are viewing this post via RSS or an email subscription, you probably won;t be able to see the video. You can get to the full web version, with video, here.
The vid has been up on Google Video for several months, and is a total bootleg upload. I was tipped to it by several readers way back when.
Normally this is a strict no-no, and results in DCMA takedown notices out the wazoo almost immediately. But I talked to several people at Nikon and the idea was batted around that letting this one go into the wild at this point might not be such a bad thing. Simple cost-benefit analysis. But I agreed that it would best to wait until the next-gen SB-900 video was announced before linking to the old SB-800 video.
There is a lot of information in it, but the flash itself is discontinued. (Bastards! They killed Kenny!) Which means the commercial value for an SB-800 video is down to the flat part of the long tail chart. So, given that they (a) know it is out there and, (b) have not yet DCMA'd it, you are not starving anyone's babies by watching it.
It's about half an hour long. IMO, the best part of the video has nothing to do with lighting. CLS shooters will learn from it, of course. But the real takeaway is watching this Joe guy work.
When you are watching this, pay special attention to how Joe paces his shoot. Note how he keeps his subjects engaged, how he uses their time and attention efficiently. A good shoot is all about a steady stream of communication and keeping a good rhythm going with the subjects.
He's too modest a guy to tell you this, so I will: His long-practiced ability to interact with his subjects is just as key to the success of his photos as is his lighting skill. More so, actually. It's a dance, and someone has to lead.
You can get great photos all day long with good subject interaction and finessing whatever available light you can find. Not so the reverse. If you do not gel with your subject, all the fancy flash in the world will not make a great portrait.
I am very much looking forward to the new vid (hopefully, with a director's cut including the fight scenes) when it pops up. I'll point to the excerpts online whenever they are posted.
Hey, Nikon -- why not YouTube that trailer and let it fizz a little?
And I would be curious to hear your thoughts on the interaction and rhythm thing in the comments below. What did you come away with?
__________
New Speedlight Video: Nikon Press Release
noreply@blogger.com (David)David noreply@blogger.com 43 9 true http://feeds.feedburner.com/blogspot/WOBq?format=xml 2008-11-10T13:02:11.912Z isPermaLink="false">tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-23951026.post-4866046373254345057Wed, 22 Oct 2008 03:59:00 GMT 2008-10-22T03:59:00Z 2008-10-22T03:59:00.606Z Heading to the Big Apple I'll be out of touch up in NYC without a laptop this week at Photo Plus Expo for a full schedule of meetings, booth browsing and cocktail imbibing. Please say hi if you happen to see a dumpy, middle-aged photographer walking around the convention floor sporting a "Strobist" credential. (Yes, we're sending the entire editorial staff...)
I'll be at hanging out the MPEX booth (they got DVD specials and "dozens" of vintage Nikon SB's) on Friday from 11:00 a.m. to lunch time. Also, Joe McNally will be demo'ing speedlights at the Nikon booth Thursday from 2:30 - 3:00 p.m.
Hope to see you there. Please feel free to leave any party time/location/secret handshake info as a "do not publish" comment below. If I can swing it, I'll try to stop by.
-30-
http://strobist.blogspot.com/2008/10/heading-to-big-apple.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (David)David noreply@blogger.com 2 8 true http://feeds.feedburner.com/blogspot/WOBq?format=xml 2008-11-10T13:02:11.912Z isPermaLink="false">tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-23951026.post-982818098704667719Mon, 20 Oct 2008 04:00:00 GMT 2008-10-20T04:00:00Z 2008-10-27T05:33:45.149Z On-Axis Fill: Experimenting with Ring as Fill 
Having talked about the inspiration to learn more about on-axis fill, I'd like to work through the process of studying a lighting idea to the point where you become totally comfortable with it.
For better or worse, my goal is for this experience to serve as a sort of template for how I approach a new lighting technique.
This week deals with first attempts to reverse engineer how people were getting that cool, controllable 3-D tonality in their shadows, specifically by using ring flash.
When struck by the idea of on-axis fill, ring light is a no-brainer. It doesn't get any more "on-axis" than that, so it was my obvious starting point. What I would go on to find out was not only were there many options for creating on-axis fill, but also a seemingly endless number of combinations between the quality and quantity of the fill and the key light.
Whenever I am struck by a new technique, my programmed response is usually to shoehorn it into the very next opportunity I have to shoot. I'm impatient that way. But the point is to learn it ASAP, and hopefully in a way that does not screw up a paying gig.
Professional shooters asnotorious cowards thorough testers -- much more so than most amateurs I know. We want to do our screw-ups in relative privacy, and not on someone else's dime.
That's the way I normally work, but this time I was too impatient. I felt like a kid in a candy store, and wanted to start playing with on-axis fill immediately, if not sooner.
My first attempt at ring fill was against an umbrella key light, while shooting the lovely and enthusiastic Minty (that's her name) seen at the top of this post. It was at the Gulf Photo Plus event in Dubai. We were working very quickly, trying to get a selection of different looks from three different setups and outfit changes in the span of about 45 minutes.
To my credit I at least saved my on-the-job experimentation until the last of the three setups, which was outside of our conference room in the hall. The walls in the hall basically looked like seamless background paper, which was enough to qualify as a good setting in our academic conference environment.
The idea -- making this up as we went along -- was to position the key (umbrella, camera right) as I would if just shooting normally. Then I would dial in the ring fill and see what happened.
What ratio to use? Heck, I wasn't thinking that far ahead. In retrospect, it ended up being about one and a half stops -- too much fill, IMO.
Much like the first time I had shot someone with an umbrella against a sunset, I was happy enough with the first result that I did not press it by trying variations to see what would look better. That's a big mistake when trying new techniques, and one I will readily own up to. Because I do it over and over again.
In a turn on the old phrase "the perfect becomes the enemy of the good," it's more like "the good becomes the enemy of the way better."
Getting a cool result can keep you from pressing the idea further to see what else might happen. That's something you should always be on guard against.
When I edited my photos that night in my hotel room, I could see my problem much more clearly. The light directions were okay, but the ring fill had too much intensity. The result was that dimensionality had been stripped from the photo, and Minty had been reduced to almost a 2-D cutout.
It was like a layered paper sculpture, lit on different planes.
In general this is not a ring fill ratio I would use on people -- I'd want less of the fill. But, as with any screw up, you learn. And what I learned here was that on-axis fill is basically a control slider to enhance or compress the 3-D quality of your subject.
Much like a field goal kicker who misses a big kick by aiming too far to the right, I would overcorrect on my next attempt.
At left is Asif, a marketing exec in Dubai, whom I shot in the very next workshop. After Minty, you can be pretty sure I wasn't gonna over fill Asif. So naturally, rather than filling him a stop and a half down, I filled him at, like, four stops down.
Had I shot this for The Sun, our presses would have happily filled in all of those subtle, dark tones with nice, black ink. You cannot do this on newsprint and expect to get away with it.
The photo was obviously inspired by Peter Yang's eerie shot of Admiral Fox Fallon. I previously had worked through this poor-man's version of Yang's big, gridded reflector by substituting a small LumiQuest soft box instead. I used a Soft Box II at the time, but my preference now would be the new Soft Box III, as it is a little bigger. (Both will work, though.)
But what about the grid? Isn't that critical?
Well, no. Not really. It is what the grid does that is critical, which is to create a shaft of light that keeps the top of the person's head from being illuminated. You can also go that with a simple gobo.
As you can see from the diagram, the gobo allows the light to reach the subject's face, but not the top of the head. If you place the gobo closer to the subject, the line is harder. Place it closer to the light source and the line into darkness gets softer.
I like to place it pretty close to the (small) source, and at a height to where the subject's eyes can see about 3/4 of the light source. This tells me that the eyes will be positioned about 1/4 of the way into the transition from lit area to shadow area.
This is offset by the fact that the eyes are closer to the light source on a relative basis than are the lips, chin, etc. These two factors tend to cancel each other out in a cool way.
But this post is about ring fill, right? And besides, I am not put on this earth just to ape someone else's light. I want to shape it in new ways and do my own thing.
So I wanted to keep the dark look of the photo, yet still be able to see up into the shadows a little bit in a controlled way. That's where the ring fill does the job perfectly.
I am filling at almost four stops down, which is a tremendous chasm of a lighting ratio by most measures. Example: That's a white piece of paper a few feet behind Asif, going almost black. (That is straight from Lighting 102 - Position | Distance.)
Again, from a newspaper standpoint, it's a big 'ol fail. But, there may be times when I want this tiny peek into the shadows. On an RGB display, it is legible -- just at the edge, really -- but I can dial this in any way I want now, because I have seen the upper and lower limits.
But, the "screw ups" are defining my boundaries. And I could very well decide to go there again, too. It is my choice, depending on the look I want and the medium in which the photo is gonna run.
A stopped watch is right twice a day, and even a blind squirrel finds a nut once in a while. So given that I had missed on both high and low on my ratio, I hopefully would be ready the next time.
Having seen what both "too light" and "too dark" looked like, I felt comfortable that I could dial in the ring fill against an umbrella with a little nuance. Which is what happened the next time I tried the technique.
You can see a full write-up on the contortionist photo, which was a direct offshoot of the test shots above, in this post from earlier this year.
If there is anything that should be stressed, it is (a) that zeroing in on the look you want is a logical process, and (b) you should not expect to happen upon an ideal look right out of the starting gate. It takes testing and experimentation -- and learning from the "close-but-no-cigar" photos is a valuable part of the process.
NEXT: Ring Fill Against Hard Key
_______
UPDATE: For those who asked, the ring flash I was using is a Ray Flash ring flash adapter.
noreply@blogger.com (David)David noreply@blogger.com 24 7 true http://feeds.feedburner.com/blogspot/WOBq?format=xml 2008-11-10T13:02:11.912Z isPermaLink="false">tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-23951026.post-2102000848034542012Fri, 17 Oct 2008 04:01:00 GMT 2008-10-17T04:01:00Z 2008-10-17T04:01:00.603Z And the September Pocketwizards go to...
Congrats to German photographer Puthan Valiyandi, who used a set of eBay remotes to win himself a set of Pocketwizard Plus II's in September's video contest.
The coolest part of the video? Gotta be the "flashlight" mod. I want one.
We still have two more sets to give away -- details here.
-30-
noreply@blogger.com (David)David noreply@blogger.com 19 6 true http://feeds.feedburner.com/blogspot/WOBq?format=xml 2008-11-10T13:02:11.912Z isPermaLink="false">tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-23951026.post-4719349884672418947Fri, 17 Oct 2008 04:00:00 GMT 2008-10-17T04:00:00Z 2008-10-17T04:00:00.215Z Gels: New Developments I am busy working on the next post for the on-axis light series for Monday. But I wanted to take a moment to bring you up to speed on some new gel-related stuff.
After the jump, two new small-flash-related gel items, and an "I Know a Guy" gel source so cool I almost wished I lived in LA.
Almost.
Hold Everything: The LumiQuest FXtra Gel Holder
LumiQuest's Quest Couch would like to personally thank you guys for the free product development consulting, as he reports that the FXtra gel holder was developed "100 percent" due to input from this group.
He tweaked the design to fit most any speedlight other than the Vivitar 285 (which is not only very big but also has its own built-in gel slot) and added a few features that will probably make many of you happy.
First, it mounts to any flash using the (included) hook-and-loop fasteners, and passes the fastener through to the outside. That means that you can mount an FXtra to a flash and then mount another light mod on the outside of the FXtra.
Second, he included a pocket to store gels with the flash when you are not using them. It is almost as if he took a long hard look at the photo stuff strewn all over the floorboards of my car when we met for lunch a few months ago.
Last but not least, included with the FXtra is a selection of commonly used gels (and a few effect colors) cut to size:
• CTO (tungsten conversion)
• 1/2 CTO
• 1/4 CTO
• Plus Green (fluorescent conversion)
• Sky Blue
• Canary Yellow
• Fire Red
The gels are sized to extend past the holder to fit the larger flash heads (SB-26s, Canon 580s etc.) but can be trimmed to fit the SB-800s, -600s and other smaller flash heads.
FXtras are $19.95, and available at MPEX now and soon, everywhere. More info on the FXtra at LumiQuest.com.
Simple Solution to a Sample Problem
A thousand people taking advantage of a sample program is a good thing. A quarter million people taking advantage of it is too much of a good thing.
It is exactly for that reason that the Rosco gel sample packs were in danger of going bye-bye just a short while ago. But rather than shut it down, they decided to address the issue directly and in an economically sustainable way.
The result is the Strobist Gel Pack, which is currently under development. They are speedlight sized, no holes and multiple copies of the gels we use most. There is a selection of standard color balancing gels, with some effect colors thrown in -- and none of the stuff we end usually up throwing away.
I have seen a prototype kit, and I'm stoked. I can't tell you how happy I am that Rosco has chosen to respond to the needs of small-flash shooters -- and solved the gel sample problem with smart thinking rather than an axe.
Mad props to Rosco for this solution. More info as it becomes available and I definitely will be first in line to buy some Strobist gel packs.
They Were Expendable
Several people came up to me at the recent LA lighting seminars and told me about "The Expendables Recycler," a very cool SoCal shop that buys leftover rolls of gels from movie sets and sells them at discount rates.
Typical savings are ~1/3 off of full retail, a price which is firmly supported by your local Theatre Supply monopoly. (They typically justify the full price by spelling it, "theatre" instead of "theater.")
BEFORE YOU COME CRASHING DOWN ON THIS PLACE, owner Todd Parker would like me to pass along a note that if you are just buying single 20x24" sheets to be shipped you are better off going to your local gelmafia supplier. But if you are getting gels in quantity (many sheets, full rolls, etc.) you'll definitely want to comparison shop.
He has lots of full rolls and partial rolls at decent discounts. And yes, I got myself a roll of Rosco #3008 Tough Frost diffusion material on the cheap before I told you about it. Heh.
UPDATE: Shipping costs are steep. If you are ordering via phone or mail, you'd better be prepared to bulk up if you want to save real money. But if you are local to SoCal, it's a no-brainer if you can pick up.
More info at The Expendables Recycler.
http://strobist.blogspot.com/2008/10/gels-new-developments.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (David)David noreply@blogger.com 19 5 true http://feeds.feedburner.com/blogspot/WOBq?format=xml 2008-11-10T13:02:11.912Z isPermaLink="false">tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-23951026.post-5370385681228137468Wed, 15 Oct 2008 04:00:00 GMT 2008-10-15T04:00:00Z 2008-10-15T04:00:00.579Z Steve E. Miller Knocks 'em Dead 
I worked at newspaper for twenty years, and to be honest I do not think I could have ever sold an idea to shoot dead artists for a fall arts preview package.
My problem, of course, was that I shot for the mainstream media, and not the alternative media. In that world, they come up with the dead artists idea all by themselves and ask you to shoot it.
Which is exactly what happened to photographer Steve E. Miller, who shoots for the San Luis Opisbo (CA) New Times.
Video, how-to and links to more of the series, inside.
The video is a time-lapse, which will let you see the physical progression of the lights. But the lighting ratios are what is key here.
This is an exercise in finely tuned fill light, and you can easily do it without a flash meter. The sheets are white, but Steve wanted them to be muted and textured in the final photo. So the idea is to design that fill light first, expose it properly -- white sheets -- and then dial the aperture down until you get the muted greys that you want on the linens.
Now, it is just a matter of gridding the key light to bring up the "demised" photographer's face. Obviously, you can grid the art on the walls, too, to bring up other areas of interest and better sell that tonal shift in the sheets. But the key to the look of the photo is how far down you take the fill, and you can do that by eye and histogram on the LCD screen without a flash meter.
Just dial down your aperture until your sheets look the way you want after you lay in that fill. Watch the histogram for blocked-up blacks, tho. Then bring up the gridded key light to make the dead guy the right exposure. Again, look at the image onscreen for the light relationships, but mind that histogram to make sure you have something you can work with in post.
I'll bet people were talking about Steve's dead artists spread in SLO for several days. You can see the other images Steve made in his Flickr gallery, and more time-lapse videos here. The paper did a nice piece online, too.
And the most important thing to remember (if you are Steve E. Miller) is that you parlay the success of this "kinda-out-there" project into a green light to do your next (even-more-out-there) project. Just be sure you pull it off, so you keep the good times rolling.
Question, to the other newspaper shooters out there: Could you ever hope to sell a "dead artists" spread in your Fall Arts preview? What would your strategy be to make it happen?
(FWIW, I don't think I could ever have squeezed this one past the Features Ed at The Sun.)
noreply@blogger.com (David)David noreply@blogger.com 16 4 true http://feeds.feedburner.com/blogspot/WOBq?format=xml 2008-11-10T13:02:11.912Z isPermaLink="false">tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-23951026.post-7643002012709680627Mon, 13 Oct 2008 04:00:00 GMT 2008-10-13T04:00:00Z 2008-10-13T04:00:00.923Z Platon Interview on Russia Today
Alert Reader Tom Hayton was searching for the photographer Platon on YouTube and found this 25-minute interview from Russia Today, a channel I can safely say I almost never get to watch.
Two things:
One, this is not about light but does give a very good look into Platon's approach and bedside manner. It's an interesting look into some of the thinking that goes into photographing famous (or infamous) people.
Remember, Platon is Mr. Hotshot in Russia after the Putin Time MoY cover. He figured out his light a long time ago, and its the interpersonal stuff that gets him the moments in his photos.
Second, the audio is off. And it creeps worse and worse throughout the vid. So you may as well just listen to it while you have your work stuff up onscreen this morning. Although they do pepper the interview with many of his pix, so there's that.
OTHER PLATON STUFF:
:: Platon Shoots Putin ::
:: Platon: Lose the Smile ::
:: Platon: Three Videos ::
noreply@blogger.com (David)David noreply@blogger.com 17 3 true http://feeds.feedburner.com/blogspot/WOBq?format=xml 2008-11-10T13:02:11.912Z isPermaLink="false">tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-23951026.post-867824621403713482Fri, 10 Oct 2008 04:00:00 GMT 2008-10-10T04:00:00Z 2008-10-10T04:01:04.353Z On-Axis Fill: Introduction A few months ago I was talking about lighting stuff on the phone with Peter Yang and the subject got around to small flashes.
We were talking about old Nikon speedlights (SB-24's, 26's, etc.) when he mentioned that he liked to work with an on-camera speedlight even while he was shooting with the big Profoto 7B lights off-camera.
"You know," he said, "just to kick in a little fill in there."
I didn't quite get it, because we were talking about his very cool photo of Admiral William Fallon at the time. But it stuck in the back of my mind and has been rattling around ever since.
Fast forward a few months, and I am watching one of Joe McNally's videos on Kelby Training. He's shooting some multi-speedlight CLS setup. He is using an on-camera master flash to control several off-camera flashes, and is making really cool photos, as usual.
Then he pops off with something to the effect of always turning the on-camera master to "no flash" because, "why would you want any light coming from on camera?"
Wait a minute... on-camera... on-camera... Oh yeah, Peter Yang!
So, there was one photographer I really admire, asking me why I would ever want to do some particular thing, and another photog I really admire telling me that was one of his go-to techniques.
That's one of the things I love about photography, that there are no real rules. You learn the rules so you can break them on purpose. The main thing is to know why the rules are there, so you know when and why to break them.
Don't get me wrong. I am a huge fan of McNally. God knows I have certainlyripped off learned much from many of his techniques. And for an old guy he still is mentally very spry. He does an admirable job of keeping up with us younger folks. I understand he is even starting to blog now!
My friends, I think that's just great.
So, back at the other end of the chronological scale, here's Peter Yang, knocking the cover off of the ball before the ink was even dry on his driver's license. His pictures all seem to have this "polished snapshot" kind of thing going that just really does it for me for some reason. They are meticulously lit, with a very controlled visibility into the shadows -- no matter which way the key light is coming from.
That's the day I started thinking about on-axis fill almost nonstop. It has totally changed the way I light. Not saying I would use it every time, because I wouldn't. But it is a very powerful tool, and it merits consideration in the context of just about any lighting scheme I might be designing.
Like a 3-D Detail Volume Knob
In years past, I would think of my key light first, then decide how much ambient to dial in for fill. Or if there was no good ambient, I might fill from the shadow side with another light source.
Problem was, that would significantly alter the 3-D quality of my subject and create new shadows and texture on the highlight side. But lately, I have been thinking about my fill -- both in terms of quality and quantity -- before I even start thinking about my key light.
Filling from on (or very near to) the lens axis allows you to sort of "dial in" the detail in a way that can also leave the subject very 3-D in a natural way, or compress it to look like a multi-layered paper cutout.
All of the photos in this post were filled with on-axis light., in different forms and ratios. And they all have a very different look because the on-axis light source can be anything: Umbrella, ring, small softbox right over the lens -- even an on-camera flash.
There. I said it.
(I know -- it was weird to me at first, too.)
And the on-axis fill can not only come from many different types of light modifiers, but can also work against just about any type of key light. And it can come in at just about any intensity, too. Thus, the ability to dial 3-D detail into the shadows.
I have been working with this just about every chance I could get over the last few months. And I will be working through lots of On-Assignment that involve on-axis fill, not to mention some straight "how-to" posts that detail different fill / key light source combos and lighting ratios.
But I wanted to get a sort of "intro" post out there, where I could whet your appetite with the concept. Just as mine was whetted by studying other peoples' work over the last few months.
So stay tuned for a lot more on this -- with lots of specifics -- in upcoming weeks. I am having a lot of fun with it, and I think you will, too.
http://strobist.blogspot.com/2008/10/on-axis-fill-introduction.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (David)David noreply@blogger.com 63 2 true http://feeds.feedburner.com/blogspot/WOBq?format=xml 2008-11-10T13:02:11.912Z isPermaLink="false">tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-23951026.post-1527312419914394842Wed, 08 Oct 2008 04:00:00 GMT 2008-10-08T04:00:00Z 2008-10-08T15:38:44.831Z Today, on the Strobist Surgery Channel...
Remember the chicken neck-breakin' version of making your SB-800 rotate around to 135 degrees in the other direction? Yeah, well, as of today that method has now been ruled Barbarian and out-of date.
Watch as South Carolina shooter Lee Morris shows you how to do it the civilized way -- and it is pretty darn easy. Being a smart guy, Lee sticks his portfolio in at the end, too.
Note that the video seems to load a little slowly, so you might want to let is play for 30 secs and then back it up to keep it going nonstop.
Again, the reason you really want this ability is not to be able to bounce a vertical, on-camera flash off of a wall behind you. But rather you want to be able to point the flash any direction and the CLS receiver (or SU-4 slave) in any other direction.
Same disclaimer applies: You break your SB-800, don't come crying to me. But I am going to try this method on one (and then, hopefully, all) of my '800's.
(You can see more of Lee's work here.)
-30-
noreply@blogger.com (David)David noreply@blogger.com 50 1 true http://feeds.feedburner.com/blogspot/WOBq?format=xml 2008-11-10T13:02:11.912Z isPermaLink="false">tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-23951026.post-7611255162077532317Mon, 06 Oct 2008 04:00:00 GMT 2008-10-06T04:00:00Z 2008-10-06T04:00:00.477Z Bert Stephani: Mo' Bounce to da Ounce
I am in the air all day today, flying back from Los Angeles. Meanwhile, Bert Stephani is across the pond, pretending he is in L.A. So I will leave you in his able hands, as he invades a public beach with a California Sunbounce Micro and a kickin' pair of ND-8 filters over his eyes.
(Seriously, I love Bert's videos.)
See stills from the shoot on Bert's blog. More info on the CSB here.
-30-
noreply@blogger.com (David)David noreply@blogger.com 31 0 true http://feeds.feedburner.com/blogspot/WOBq?format=xml 2008-11-10T13:02:11.912Z
Actually, I have had had five- or even six-assignment days on occasion. But thanks to my therapist, I have learned to repress most of those memories. (Calm blue ocean, calm blue ocean...)
Days like that are a recipe to just say "screw it" and shoot everything available light. Or on-camera bounce flash. But it doesn't have to be that way. And on-camera fill against off-camera flash is one technique that would have been a tremendous help to me as a newspaper shooter on those days from hell.
Keep reading for one way to light when you don't have time to light.
Hey, What's This Flash Bracket Thing on Top of My Camera?
Okay, let's be clear here. I am talking about direct, on-camera flash. And before you jump all over me, think about what on-camera fill flash is designed to do: Tame the shadows.
The problems -- the sameness -- that results from typical "3-D, matrixed-balanced, whizz-bang TTL fill flash" when it is used on-camera for ambient fill is that you are still at the mercy of your available light. The flash is merely there to fix the eye sockets. Or whatever else is going too dark.
But we can take that straight fill concept one step further, and add it to light that we have designed. In this environment, bare, on-camera flash can do some cool things for us.
When I say "on-camera," I am talking about either a shoe flash or a pop-up -- either can do the job. But the key difference is that we can use this flash as a third light source if we have a second flash.
For people who own a pop-up flash camera and a shoe-mount flash, this is a great run-and-gun setup. The on-camera flash gets used the same way a ring light would be used -- while crappy as a main, it is pretty cool as fill.
When I say "third light source," I am including the ambient as one of the first two sources. Which means if you have two shoe-mount flashes (or a single shoe-mount and a pop-up flash) you have a three light setup at your disposal. You just need to design the light so all three sources are working for you in concert.
Let's back up. If you are pushing on-camera fill into directional ambient light, you are doing one of two things: You are either filling angular front light or filling a backlit situation.
With the former, you still have no edge lighting to give you three-dimensional form. With the latter, you are basically key-lighting with direct, on-camera flash. Neither is going to be very interesting, and you will have very little control over your exposure choices, either -- it is either right or wrong.
But when you introduce a second flash (which means a third light source) you get the ability to cross-light and fill at the same time.
Take Me to the River
Let's do a walk-through of the above photo as an example. I was shooting a graduate school project to assess the health of a local stream. The light was what I would formerly consider horrible: Mid-day, high, back-ish overhead sun in a mottled, wooded environment.
If I fill that using only on-camera flash it is gonna look like crap. Well, maybe not crap but certainly not very interesting. No, check that. It'll look like crap.
And if I turn around, stick the sun behind me and fill it on-camera, it looks like every other fill flash photo in the back of every camera brochure in the world.
My goal in this setting is to use the sun as my backlight. Why? Because the exact lighting angle does not matter nearly as much as it would if I used it as a key, and it does not get in peoples' eyes. So no squinting.
Given that I am gonna backlight with sun and key light with off-camera flash, I can choose to set the entire scene at any tone I want. Start at a 250th of a second shutter speed to get a friendly aperture. Then dial that aperture around until I see a nice look for the environment. For me this usually means underexposing the ambient by a stop or so.
Essentially, I am exposing for the highlights, as if I were shooting chrome in the old days. (Back when we had to walk to our assignments, barefoot, in the snow, uphill, both ways.) Except that this time, we are not gonna let the shadows fall off the table into the deep, black abyss.
My back light and full scene established with the manual ambient exposure, I can now think about the key light. Since I am walking around on slippery rocks with a few thou in camera gear dangling from my neck, I am gonna go handheld and light them from the left side. Nothing fancy, and no stands. Camera in right hand, flash in left hand.
I normally shoot manual flash, but I am perfectly willing to use whatever mode works best for me in a given situation. So in this case, I stick the flash on TTL. (WTF? On-camera and TTL?)
Yep. For the flash, anyway.
I am in manual mode on the overall exposure, which means a straight TTL flash will be neutral. If I were underexposing the ambient by one stop in shutter priority (to keep a constant 1/250th of a sec shutter speed) I would juice the TTL flash by one stop to compensate for the overall "-1 stop" exposure compensation. That's just the way the camera settings work.
Now, if I TTL my flash (using, say, an off-camera TTL cord) then any frontal area that is not lit by the flash (or the sun) is gonna be very dark. That includes up under chins and the camera right sides of Charlotte and Chris, my stream diggers du jour.
And the more I saturate that environment the more the flash shadows are gonna drop. This will make the scene look very "flashed" and the overall lighting will look very harsh. But the object here is more legibility, a more natural look and total control of the various tones in the whole photo.
That's where the on-camera fill comes in. By dialing that in fill to, say, minus 2 1/3 stops, I can keep my lighting controlled and see up into my shadows. This gives me total control over three light zones of the photo: Environment/backlight, key-lit areas and fill areas.
Take a look at the lit areas up close in this sectional detail of the photo above. Examples of the fill areas would be the shadow side of Charlotte's face and under Chris's chin. Key light areas would be anything that is lit from camera left.
Environment is controlled by overall exposure. Key is controlled by the relative (+-) TTL setting on the key flash. Fill is controlled by the relative TTL setting on the on-camera flash.
If you look at Chris's neck, you can see both a fill area and a small, very dark, no-flash area that shows you how deep all of the key shadows would be without the on-camera fill. You can also see the no-flash area Charlotte's chin. Imagine all of the key shadows being that dark. That's the difference between on-camera fill and not, when key lighting off camera.
Camera/Flash Settings
Yes, you could do this with manual flash very easily if you are not moving around too much. But this is a good example of when to offload that extra thinking and minute control in exchange for mobility. When you are looking for good footing, you can just find a safe spot, compose and zoom to compose. The camera and flash will get it pretty close. If it misses, adjust the key or fill TTL level to taste.
Two light modifiers are being used here: I have a dome on each flash. This does not affect the light quality (no walls or ceiling to bounce off of) but makes both lights pretty omnidirectional. It helps the on-camera flash put out a signal that the off-camera flash can easily see. At this working distance, I got a 1.000 batting average that way -- no misfires at all.
It does force your flash to put out more of it's power to compensate for the light being eaten by the dome. That will shorten the range in which you can work and/or increase recycle time. But it is offset by the fact that this flash is firing at two and a third stops under TTL, which pretty much negates dome-induced problems.
The key light has a dome and a 1/8 CTO get to warm things up a bit. This is a standard gel for my key light. And the dome means I do not have to concentrate on having good aim with my hand-held key. It lights in all directions.
Pop-up flashes work great as fill for this look, as you can see here, but you'll need to work pretty close to your subject. Also, you'll wanna lose the lens shade as it will throw a shadow from the pop-up (which is so close to the lens axis.) But honestly, if you can get away with a pop-up, the fact that the axis is closer makes it work better for this kind of on-axis fill.
In Nikon-CLS speak, my on-camera flash is the master flash and the handheld flash is the remote. They are both set to fire at TTL setting, with the on-camera fill dialed down 2 1/3 stops. Hopefully, people with other camera brands will interpolate these settings in the comments and post a translation. I no speak de Canon.
Recommended by Lazy Photographers Everywhere
If all of this sounds like a lot of work, it's not. Start at a 250th to get a friendly aperture, dial in the aperture that gives you the best saturated-looking scene. Set your key light at TTL and your on-camera flash at -2 to -3 stops under TTL for this look.
These setting are not set in stone, either. Play around. You can go for a natural look or really amp it. Keep your key light close to straight TTL for some level of "visual anchor" if you want to get weird with it. Drop the ambient a little more. Amp the fill a little more. Better to work against the ambient, too. That is to say, shoot into the light.
You'll get a wide variety of looks, and each will be suitable for different situations. But the important thing is the light-against-light control. And even more so, the ability to light three dimensionally on the run without stands, time or worry.
_________
NOTE:
If you are already using this quickie two-flash technique please hit us in the comments on how you are doing it, and what you are shooting with it.
Full RSS feed, from Strobist.com. Videos are not viewable in emailed posts. Click the post title to see any embedded video and/or to view or post comments. This month's feeds are sponsored by:
http://strobist.blogspot.com/2008/11/on-axis-fill-run-and-gun-version.html_________
I have just finished watching an advance copy of Nikon's new DVD, Nikon School: A Hands-On Guide to Creative Lighting.Short version: It is far and away the best resource available for those of you who want to better learn how to use your Nikon system strobes (SB-900, SB-800, SB-600, etc.) and Nikon's Creative Lighting System (CLS).
I am told they will be hitting the shelves shortly. Nikon Mall is up, but showing out of stock right now. I will post another note when they pop up everywhere. But I wanted to give the CLS-shooting readers an early heads-up that this is exactly the video they have been waiting for.
More info, and a brief trailer, after the jump.
(Uploaded with permission from Nikon.)
The 2 1/2-hour DVD starts off with photographer Bob Krist taking you step-by-step through both basic lighting principles and showing you how to work the CLS settings on the various Nikon flash system components.
Even CLS beginners will feel right at home starting with this portion of the DVD. He shows you how to set up the various flashes and gets you comfortable with the way the system works.
Bob then walks you through a couple of straightforward shoots in the studio to show you how easy it is to get rolling. He does a progressively lit portrait session and a quick, two-flash macro close-up of a pocket watch. This is basic stuff that will be remedial to some of you CLS studs. But is important to include the basics so as not to leave anyone behind.
As expected, it is pretty much a continuous Nikongasm. The gear is explained thoroughly, and they are here to show you how to use the specific components. But they go above and beyond the corporate video/commercial genre, especially when they get to the second part of the video.
A Grande-Sized Cuppa Joe
In Part Two, Bob assumes the role of color man to Joe McNally's lead as they work together to produce a series of increasingly complex location shoots. They progress from simple, one-light potraits to a classic, McNally-esque speedlight orgy.They shoot dancers at a ballet school, a home bridal portrait series and a sequence of photos at a harbor. Each of these locations include a series of different setups -- they work a lot of different looks from each scene, too. Joe is thinking out loud, explaining what he is doing and keeping a steady stream of
Bob becomes your stand-in, making sure nothing gets glossed over. They shoot, see the problems, work through them and get to the look that they want. Plenty of time is spent on the process, and no "magic black boxes" obscure the path from start to finish.
They do edit down the final shoot on the boat (13 speedlights, fer chrissakes) for what I can only assume to be time limitations on the single DVD. Or maybe that is where the fight scene happened. (Was that a butterfly Band-Aid on McNally's forehead afterwards?)
I cannot stress enough how pleased I am to see such attention to detail for the lighting processes in the video. It is not just a gear tease -- they are showing you exactly how to use the flashes to get beautiful results. This is everything the Speed of Light video (watch it here) left you wanting. That video felt more like an extended commercial. This one is a legitimate course in small-flash lighting.
If you are a Nikon CLS shooter (or hope to be) this DVD is an absolute no-brainer at $39.95. Grab it as soon as it becomes available. I'll post on that as soon as it starts popping up in stock, too.
Congrats to Bob, Joe and the powers that be at Nikon for looking past the obvious extended commercial to create something of value that will be helpful to so many people.
And Canon, if you are reading this I am calling you out right here and now. Make a DVD like this for the Canon flash system. No point in building in all those bells and whistles and not showing people how to use them. And this site will be happy to help spread the word if you do.
I happen to shoot Nikon, but I would love to see every photo manufacturer doing this kind of thing. Eventually, I would love to see manufacturers skipping the DVD process altogether and streaming this stuff online for free.
When they amortize the production costs over the extra gear that would sell, they would come out ahead. And so would their customers.
Full RSS feed, from Strobist.com. Videos are not viewable in emailed posts. Click the post title to see any embedded video and/or to view or post comments. This month's feeds are sponsored by:
_________
Thanks to the multi-lingual talents of reader Andrew Dahms, I am happy to announce that Lighting 101 is now available in Japanese as a downloadable PDF. The document is being released with a Creative Commons license under which it can be printed out, shared and/or hosted anywhere. The only restrictions are that it cannot be altered or used commercially, and attribution must be included.Keep reading for more -- including the Japanese download link, other PDFs in the pipeline and how to help translate Lighting 101 into your own language.
Hardly a week goes by that I don't get an email from someone offering to create a piggy-back site and translate Strobist into another language. Or a note that they already have been translating the site somewhere. (Which is not cool, actually...)
Having a slew of foreign language sites is good in theory, but in practice tends to create more administrative problems than it solves. As the content creator, I need to keep control over the site's original material. But even being loosely involved with administering a couple dozen translation sites is beyond my capabilities at this point.
And while the written material on Strobist is free -- and always will be -- it is only when people actually visit the site that the economic model of free content works. Not only do the advertisers pick up the tab, but some have actually altered their focus to better serve the site's readers. That's way cool. But I have to center the readership here for that to keep working.
The solution was to translate the core unit on the site into multiple languages within a locked document format. Hopefully, many people will benefit from the translated L101, and enough of them will trickle in to read more in English so that it will have been worth the traffic dilution.
Leading Off: Japanese
The first L101 translation to be released is Japanese. It is available via MediaFire, here. Japan has vibrant photographic community, and it is my hope that some Japanese-speaking photographers will benefit from being exposed to Lighting 101.If you are part of the Japanese online community (we had 3,451 visits from Japan last month) I hope you will help to seed this Lighting 101 module into some of the Japanese language photo sites. You are free to link to the MediaFire hosting site where it is now, or to download and host/post/share it in any way you like. Just do not alter it or charge for it -- it is meant to be free.
And, thanks to the intrepid Rafa Barbera, who has been running the Strobist en Español site, Lighting 101 will soon be available in Spanish as a PDF. Constructing a mirror site is an ongoing commitment on both ends. So for now, translated PDFs will be the way to go.
Lighting 101 is also being translated into Mandarin Chinese, thanks to the efforts of reader David Li.
As there already are Italian, German and Danish Strobist groups on Flickr, my guess is they will happen as PDFs, too. More on that below.
Help Translate L101 into Your Language
If you are a long-time reader of the site and are native in some other language, you can help to spread the information in Lighting 101 to others. I am looking to crowdsource the process and will gratefully accept the efforts of anyone who wants to chip in.
Many hands make light work, so my preference is to use a team of translators for a given language. If we can get a few people willing to pitch in, I will be more than happy to greenlight a translation PDF and host it. French, Hungarian, Swedish, Klingon -- whatever. The more the merrier.
For each language, we will need:
• A project lead: This person will coordinate the group's translation efforts and help with translation.
• A designer: Someone who can create a PDF document similar to the Japanese example released today -- could also help with translation. A designer could also be a project lead, if they were willing to serve in both capacities.
• An editor: Someone who was not involved in the translation, to make sure the translation is faithful to the original.
• Additional translators: Several people working together in this capacity will make the project easily doable.
Ideally, translators would be native speakers of the target language, be fluent in English and be very familiar with the material (i.e., long-time readers). Once a team has come together to translate into a given language, I'll get it started, including some additional guidelines, Creative Commons image files, etc.
Bear in mind that this is a bit of an experiment, based on the ideas and generous volunteer efforts of those responsible for the languages already in translation. I think it is a wonderful idea, and an ideal way to pay forward any help that this site may have been in broadening your understanding of small-flash lighting.
I have set up a Lighting 101 Translation Thread on Flickr. If you are not already on Flickr, you will need to sign up for a (free) account to be involved. From there, groups can form into various languages, share documents via email (or Flickr mail) and coordinate with me.
I will vet each translation before releasing it on the site in its official form, so please to not turn them out in to the wild before they are complete. I will also monitor the translation thread and answer any questions that pop up. Please ask them there.
For those who choose to get involved in a translation project, my sincere and heartfelt thanks and the thanks of those who speak your language who will learn more about lighting as a result of your efforts. Ditto for those of you who help to propagate the translated documents into your native language site and discussion fora.
I can tell you from experience of running this site that it is a wonderful feeling to be a conduit for knowledge that goes on to help many people -- and that good feeling never goes away.
____________
UPDATE: The above-referenced Flickr thread is where people are organizing for translation efforts (not the comments section of this post.)
Full RSS feed, from Strobist.com. Videos are not viewable in emailed posts. Click the post title to see any embedded video and/or to view or post comments. This month's feeds are sponsored by:
First of all, if you are reading this in the US, get off your butt and go vote today. Either that, or don't complain during the next four years no matter what. I'm just saying.That said, take a look at this morning's Washington Post. They are running the expected, "same play" careful coverage that a newspaper has to run, lest it get howling complaints.
(Seriously, people count square inches and write in. So you need to keep them even, especially on critical days like November 4th.)
But enough election talk. Thankfully, we are almost done with that. It has been a long two years.
This morning's front page also is a very interesting look into lighting styles -- and media control. After you have voted, make the jump for a little more on the lighter side (so to speak) of this front page.
The Same, But Different
Looking at the two lead photos, McCain by Melina Mara and Obama by Linda Davidson, I am struck by the difference in the lighting. (Click here to see it bigger.)
Needless to say, a lot of thought goes into lighting political events. The campaign staff wants to do all of the heavy lifting, so the media can swoop in and get stuff that looks good with a minimum of effort.
In that sense, how you light your candidate is a point of significant control. Do it well, and he/she looks like a hero. That's a strong visual statement. And it is somewhat subconscious, which makes it even stronger.
McCain is classic Michael Deaver. And by that, I mean, create a little looking-into-the-sunset lighting and line up the shooting pits to where they show your guy in front of a big American flag.
Deaver (Reagan's Deputy Chief of Staff) was the first to exploit on a large scale the idea that, if you controlled the lighting/backdrop/shooting location, you could damn near put your candidate on a movie set. It helps if your candidate was a former actor, too.
Reagan, of course, was exactly that. And since the Reagan/Deaver (or maybe, Deaver/Reagan) one-two punch was so well executed, that strategy went a long way towards crafting a heroic visual image of Reagan in the media. The media could hardly help themselves, either -- Deaver had seen to that.
The lighting and shooting geometry on McCain are now pretty much standard procedure. It works, too. Not even Jill Greenberg could make the guy look bad in that situation.
But looking over at Obama's photo, I find myself wondering if his campaign's lighting person is not trying to evolve the Deaver look a little bit. The first thought that came to my mind when I saw this morning's dual front was to notice the uplighting.
I have been interested in learning more about uplighting when I realized that the technique was one of the reasons I like so many of Greg Heisler's photos. I love the way it sculpts and creates form and texture.
I have played with it a little bit, in a random, clunky way. And even my first clumsy efforts were encouraging enough to make me decide to learn more about it. I want to approach it in a more thorough way, as we presently are doing with on-axis fill. And I hope to write about the technique later.
Seeing Linda's Obama photo above (lit probably not by her but by a campaign staffer who appears to know their stuff) really shows the power of the technique. All the more so because it it juxtaposed against the technique that has been the Gold Standard of making a US politician look heroic and significant for the last 25 years.
Not to say that uplighting is anything new. But clearly, it is a powerful way to accent light -- and one that certainly lends itself to speedlight-based lighting. Sad, but after two years of non-stop campaigning being shoved down my throat, this is what I notice on the Big Day.
To me, the Obama photo looks like it jumped off of the pages of WIRED Magazine. Which is pretty amazing, really, when you consider that the person who shot the photo was not the person who decided the light.
In a time of increasingly sophisticated visual presentation in the media, it is interesting to me that we might be seeing the next chapter in the Michael Deaver playbook.
Seriously, the politically-tinged stuff is strongly discouraged. Plenty of other places for that. Save the politics for the one place that it really matters.
Please vote today.
Full RSS feed, from Strobist.com. Videos are not viewable in emailed posts. Click the post title to see any embedded video and/or to view or post comments. This month's feeds are sponsored by:
Long story short, the basement is now completely flooded with excess speedlinks. The cat was marooned on the island/couch and we had to wade through everything to rescue her. She was pissed, and apparently shredded one of the speedlinks beyond recognition.
But there's plenty of good stuff left over, after the jump.
Speedlinks: 11/3/2008
• Over at DG28.com, Neil Turner shows you how to use foreground elements to hide your lights in a photo.
• Too worried about the financial meltdown to spring for a LumiQuest SB-III? Here's a link to a DIY version.
• Remember that killer Kung Fu shoot? Chase did a video on how he did the high-speed water burst shots. Reader's Digest version: Cody knifes a balloon.
• Sports shooter Mark Rebilas spends a rare off-weekend practicing with a ring flash in his garage studio setup.
• Hot shot car photographer Ken Brown stumbled across a video of Martin Schoeller shooting Paris Hilton. (Normally Schoeller's female subjects are more built...)
• Hulu has an "In Harm's Way" episode moved to the web that featured two war photographers. For some reason, this seems to be retricted to US viewers only. If you find a proxy workaround, please post in the comments.
• The F Stop features a walk-thru of a high-end shoot for Adidas. Not speedlight-friendly at all. Not even close...
• Pocketwizard, Schmocketwizard: Robert Benson can trigger his remote cameras from twenty miles away.
• Hiding the Lights, Version 2.0: I have stuck a lot of flashes in a lot of places. But I have never thought of sticking one here. To the recently-married Zack Arias, words of wisdom: Let the assistant position the Sunpak 120j's from now on.
• And last but not least, hippie-to-be-square Dave Honl blogs about his lit Halloween self portraits. Yeah, bay-bee, yeeeeeeeeaaahhh...
Full RSS feed, from Strobist.com. Videos are not viewable in emailed posts. Click the post title to see any embedded video and/or to view or post comments. This month's feeds are sponsored by:
Discussion thread is here. See full post inside for seminar details.
Important Note to Email RSS subscribers:
If you are reading this via email or RSS, please click through to the main site (click on the headline above) to ensure you have the most up-to-date information.
When the seminars fill, I will close it and remove the registration links on the main site, but cannot edit RSS and email versions once they have left the Mother Ship.
Seminar Info and Registration Details
LOCATION:
The classes are to be held on Saturday, December 6th and Sunday, December 7th, 2008 in Room 3-B at the University of London Union, which is on Malet Street in the Bloomsbury section of London. (See map.) As the map shows, the location is an easy walk from the Russell Square tube station.This was our location for last year's seminar (although different room) and it worked out great. I am looking forward to returning to ULU.
WHAT WE'RE ABOUT:
With these seminars, my goal is threefold: To refine your approach to creating light, to fill you with as many ideas as possible in a day's time and to have fun doing it. We'll start with a roadmap for the day, which I will do my best to keep us on. But each session will take on somewhat of a life of its own. Which is a good thing.
Our Anticipated Schedule
Arrival / Check-in: 0930 - 1000 hours
Please plan to arrive between these times, as we will still be setting up before then and still waiting for the caffeine to kick in. They only open the building at 0900 on the weekends, so I will be very busy setting up until 0930. Please plan to arrive at any time between 0930 and 1000, as we will start at 1000 hours sharp.
Morning session: 1000 - approximately 1230 hours
We'll talk about gear (I'll have a good gear selection there for a petting zoo) and take an extended, integrated look at what is essentially the Lighting 102 material in it's entirety. The focus will be on taking all of the things we talk about on the site in a day-to-day sense and integrating them to gain more of a holistic approach to lighting. Everything really is interrelated.
Lunch Break
On your own, approx. one hour, and we'll be looking for your nearby suggestions in the Flickr discussion thread related to this seminar. Link to a discussion thread will be posted shortly.
What I remember from last year: Sandwich shop in the basement, which is not bad at all. Other options within a four-block walk.
Afternoon Session:
~1330 - 1700 hours
Assuming we have finished the theory stuff, we'll move into the practical/demo session. (Sometimes we go into a little overtime on the theory.) We'll get into some real-world lighting exercises photographing some models I will have cleverly hidden around the room disguised as ordinary attendees.
This is basically a lighting version of "Whose Line is it, Anyway?" with a focus on improvisational lighting based on available gear, the room, found objects, lighting mods, etc. I never know what ideas we will come up with, which is what keeps me equal parts interested in and petrified of the afternoon session. It's a good thing.
Shortly after each shoot, we will view each setup and discuss the results onscreen. This instant feedback in a group environment is a wonderfully efficient way to drive home the thought and technique process. We can read and write all we want. But for photographers there is nothing better than "monkey see, money do."
The goal will be to incorporate lighting theory, room environment, assignment constraints and our available gear to create a photo that seeks to produce an photograph that is an appropriate response to our situation.
Working within that framework will allow us to concentrate on better freeing ourselves in the other areas: Creativity and subject/photographer interaction.
The entire day will be a non-stop flow of ideas and techniques, punctuated by spur-of-the-moment Q-and-A. I want you to bring lots of questions, and to feel free to voice the ones that pop into your head throughout the day. In fact, if you do not ask me enough questions, I will start throwing some questions at you.
You might want to bring a notebook and pen. (I will have a URL to download the onscreen presentation, so you can relax and listen.) And bring a camera if you want to shoot the setups as a visual reference. And dress is casual, so you won't feel out of place if I show up in shorts. Even in December.
As with my philosophy for the website there will be no secrets and no posturing. This stuff is not rocket science. It's light. And the first step in learning to light is to realize that anyone can get very good at it.
We will plan to wrap up at about 1700 hours, but the conversation has been known to continue in a more pub-like environment nearby. I understand that beer is sometimes consumed, too. All in the interest of lighting, of course.
If, for some reason, you require a cancellation after booking, refunds will be granted up until November 23rd. After that time, you would be responsible for transferring your seat to another attendee.
Very Important: If, through events beyond my control, I am unable to present this seminar, refunds will be limited to the ticket price. As I already have airfare, hotel room and our venue rental paid in advance, I do not anticipate this happening. But I just wanted to cover all of the bases, in case I get run over by a bus tomorrow, or one of those Big Macs finally catches up to me.
Speaking of airfare, I was very happy to see that British Airways allowed me, for a small fee, to automatically tack on a custom-calculated carbon offset for my flight to London and back. I was very happy to do so.
The upshot is, if you are a militant green photographer you may attend without guilt. As an additional green measure, we will be using 100% recycled batteries and jokes.
Bases covered, I have to say that I am very much looking forward to this trip and especially to meeting many of you. As I do more of these seminars, I find that each session develops a vibe of its own. You put a few dozen photographers who are all eager to learn in a room, and what starts out as a simple stack of talking points turns into a rich, organic discussion that ends with everyone - including me - having a head swimming with new ideas.
Feedback from Previous Seminars
Los Angeles (Most recent session):
Extended report
London (2007):
Post-seminar thread | Extended report
Seattle:
Post-seminar thread | Extended report
Paris:
Post-seminar thread | Extended report
Northern California:
Extended report I | Extended report II
__________________________
Registration Details
The cost for either seminar is £125,00 which is a little more than last year due mostly to differences in the exchange rate. The two seminars cover the same material, so you would register for either day, but not both.
To register for either seminar (with any major credit card) please click on the link at the bottom of the post, which will take you to PayPal. A PayPal account is not required to register.
IMPORTANT: If you are in the process of registering and the seminar sells out, your fee will be refunded by the end of the day -- usually within the hour. I will try to monitor the process closely. But depending on how fast it goes, I may have do this to ensure that it does not overfill.
Please leave your name and a working email (if different from the PayPal address) in the info box on the PayPal page, in case I should need to contact you.
I look forward to seeing you there. The discussion thread for this seminar is here.
Registration Links
Full RSS feed, from Strobist.com. Videos are not viewable in emailed posts. Click the post title to see any embedded video and/or to view or post comments. This month's feeds are sponsored by:
Paul C. Buff, maker of AlienBees, White Lightning and various other studio flashes, has just announced the "CYBER COMMANDER™." This marks the first mass-market radio remote for flashes that actually lets you both control the output of the flashes from the camera via radio signals, and provide additional features to boot.
I, for one, would like to take this opportunity to welcome our new Sentient Remotes Overlords...
From the release:
"Suppose you could control and display virtually every parameter of a complex studio flash setup of up to sixteen light units, right from your camera. Not just the basics – everything. All without wires, from up to 400’ away.
In a single glance you could see and control the relative flashpower and model lamp brightness of all sixteen lights, from 1.56 to 6400WS per light.
But what if you could also see the actual camera f-stop of each light, or of all lights, or of any particular group of lights – from a built-in high accuracy flashmeter that allows setting ISO and exposure time and exact calibration from your lights to your camera?
Say you could then bracket all lights, or any group of lights, in precise 1/10f digital steps, while automatically updating the camera f-stops and power levels without re-metering."
And he is apparently not talking just about Bees and White Lightnings, either:
UPDATE: The CC apparently controls the power levels on Paul Buff brand flashes, but no so other brands.
Release continues:
Say you were using CYBER COMMANDER™ with a combination of AlienBees, White Lightning, Zeus, our upcoming all-digital Einstein lights, other brands and a speedlight or two.
Oh! What if the display told you exactly what light version and head is on each channel and you don’t have to remember what channel number is which light. The naming menu allows you to use names like “Left Main”, etc.
Power is standard AAA batts, expected battery life is six months to two years. They've also lopped off the delay inherent in the electronics, meaning that some of the special DSLRs that can sync at higher-than-posted speeds reportedly wil be able to sync at up to a 1/2500 of a second via these remotes.
Holy crap. I think we have just moved into the next technological era of remotes. Fortunately, they are not actually here yet. Projected T-Virus date is late Nov to early Dec. We still have time to find Sarah Connor.
There's a lot of info to go through on the CYBER COMMANDER page. I am still sifting through it myself.
So, what's your take? Does this change the dynamic in the PW/eBay/Skyport/etc. landscape? Is it a game breaker? Is flash control worth the 400' range limit? Will Ahnold play the CYBER COMMANDER in the movie version?
Step up to the mic in the comments.
Full RSS feed, from Strobist.com. Videos are not viewable in emailed posts. Click the post title to see any embedded video and/or to view or post comments. This month's feeds are sponsored by:
It's that time of year again -- Halloween is almost in the books and anyone who sells those cheapo novelty fog machines will be pretty much giving them away tomorrow morning.They only start out at about $30, were in the low $20's by today and soon will be about ten bucks. The fog juice will be cheap, too.
They don't work too great (they tend to gum up eventually) but at $10, if they smoke up good for even one shoot it is pretty hard to lose on that deal.
Pictured above is one of about 20 decorations at the home of our next-door neighbors, Mark and Prissy. Our block really gets into Halloween. The kids come from far and wide to check out the creepiness and gorge themselves on candy.
Light for this was one SB-800 at her feet, and dragged the shutter to get the backlit fog (courtesy the street lamp). I zoomed during the ~1/4 second exposure for the streaks. Click the pic for biggers.
(Got fun Halloween flash pix? Throw em in the Flickr pool and copy them into this thread!)
-30-
Full RSS feed, from Strobist.com. Videos are not viewable in emailed posts. Click the post title to see any embedded video and/or to view or post comments. This month's feeds are sponsored by:
I spent the morning recently with poet Linda Joy Burke, doing photos which were to be used for publicity and marketing. We chose as our location Ellicott City, MD, a neat little historic town that was convenient for both of us.Linda Joy is a free spirit and a very creative person. So I knew I would be able to play a little with the lighting. But, like many people, she loathes having her photo taken. And that always adds another wrinkle to the shoot.
Keep reading to see how we approached the issues, both lighting and psychological.
"I Hate Having My Picture Taken."
That was the first bit of instruction I got from Linda Joy. And if I had a dollar for every time I had heard that from a subject, I could probably retire. In fact, if someone came up to me and said, "I really love having my picture taken," my first thought might be that they were a tad off-center, if you know what I mean.
So, from square one I know that the lighting, setting and compositional considerations will all take a back seat to Linda Joy's primary concern. And my most important job is to make sure she can relax and to let her know that my primary goal is to make a nice photo of her.
Someone who does not like to be photographed tends to see the camera as a bit of an enemy, and that can easily transfer to the photographer. It's something you should be aware of, and you can work proactively to let the subject know that you are on the same side.
My approach is, as much as possible, to have gear pre-set when they arrive so you can just walk and talk them through the settings before they really have a chance to worry too much. At the same time, I want to pay close attention to whatever happens to be working well during the shoot and to make a point to reinforce those aspects in conversation.
Get There Early
Having chosen a location, my first job is to scout it for good angles. Our light is pretty diffuse here (open shade on a sunny day) so in this case it is about background and environment.
What backgrounds and graphic elements can I use to frame a portrait? That is what I am asking as I walk around and make notes.There are lots of choices here, and I tend to make notes with the camera as seen at left. I like looking at the location in "picture notes" as they look much closer to how they will look in the final product.
I also will play with my ambient exposures at this point to see what the environment will look like if I walk the ambient down a bit.
In this case, here is the ambient exposed dead-on in the top frame and the dropped nearly two stops in the bottom photo. (If that is confusing, see this post.)We have talked before in the On Assignment section about the fact that shade is your friend. And as you can see here, it is -- for more than one reason.
First, obviously, the exposure is easier to tame so we can bring the subject back up with flash. Figure three stops -- a big difference -- from the nearby full sun. It is dim enough so that you do not necessarily have to shoot at a 250th, too. Which gives you a little more control over the levers.
I keep a personal catalog of nearby settings and backdrops in my location notes folder, and each backdrop has a cardinal direction attached to it, too.
I live in the northern hemisphere, so the north side of a building will always be in shade. These are my prime backdrops -- they are good 24/7, in terms of controlling the sun.
In this case, my backdrop was on the west side of the building. So that meant a morning shoot. FWIW, this is why west-wall locations are lowest in my personal pecking order. Not a morning guy.
Second, I like the shade because it is cool. Literally, in the summer, but here I mean color temperature. And that coolness is enhanced even more when you drop the exposure a stop or two.
Working Together
When Linda Joy arrives, I am ready to shoot quickly if need be, or to keep going if things work well. For the first setup, I used an older White Lightning Ultra 600 in a Photoflex soft box. The WL's flash tube is UV balanced, and old. This makes it warm enough to forego the usual Rosco 1/4 CTO or Rosco "08" warming filter I normally use on my key light.
You can see the setup here. I have dropped the ambient by about a stop and a half. Where the flash lights, everything is warm. Where the ambient is the primary part of the exposure, things cool down. I always like that as a starting point for people. I'll break that rule on occasion, but usually only for effect.I brought the WL because I did not know how big of an area I would want to light. In this open shade, I could have done the same thing with an SB-800 (or two, at max) in a shoot-through umbrella.
If you look up the stairs, you'll see a second flash (an SB-800) backlighting them. In my setup I went with this light, but in the end I chose to leave the stairs dark. They were very near the edge of the frame and provided an easy exit point for the view. (Hello -- lit stairs, heading out of my frame. Talk about an engraved invitation to leave the photo...)
So, I sat Linda Joy on the steps to the next building, after placing a soft case from a flex fill under her so her hand-made, vintage dress would not get dirty. Time to make photos.I kept Linda Joy talking, finding out as much as possible about who she was and what she did, creatively, as we shot. This kept her thinking about things other than the photographer with the digital Uzi pointed at her.
I also used one of my favorite tricks -- coming out from behind the camera. Even though I normally do not shoot with a tripod unless I am bringing up a really dark ambient, I can usually frame a photo and then move my face out from behind the camera as I shoot. Your aim will shift a little bit, but if you zoom out a tad you can fix this easily in post.
The eye contact usually relaxes people a bit, and helps to create a stronger interpersonal exchange. Sounds silly, but it helps.
Before we moved onto the next setup, I walked around to camera left in the previous frame and did some tight headshots. I tried them with the soft box, but now I needed shallow depth of field. So I turned off the strobe and shot natural light at a wide aperture. I love her hair, and wanted to do something close that highlighted its texture. If only all of my subjects had layered frames like Linda Joy's hair.The open sunlight to the camera right side of the frame made a nice light source and I could grab a series of head shots in just a couple minutes.
Don't ignore what the ambient is offering you just because you trucked in the flashes. Being able to light is an additive skill, not a death sentence to available light shooting.
Next, over to the tree, where I wanted to do another setup.
Remembering the exposure test seen above, I dropped my ambient about two stops and then set up an SB-800 in a Lumiquest SB-III as a key light.
Here is the setup. As you can see, I am almost exposing for full sun (at left) even though I am in deep shade for the shot.Then, I'll build back the light on the subject with flash.My key (the LumiQuest SB-III) is a pretty hard light source at that distance. But that's okay because I am going to fill with ring to be able to see into the shadows while still keeping that background ambient muted and blue.
Against the blue, I gelled my SB-800 key light with a 1/4 CTO. One of my SB-800's has a 1/4 CTO pretty much permanently attached. I just use it as my key all the time, which saves me any gel swapping.
What can I say? I am lazy.
So, the ambient sets the exposure -- dropped for color and tonal contrast. To that I add in my key, until the tree looks right. (Linda Joy approximates the tree on a tonal basis, so that will be an easy adjustment if needed when she steps in.)
To that, I add some ring fill (hey, I been practicin'...) which will bring up her shadow side exactly as much as I want. Controlling the drop-off amount to shadow allows me to use a smaller key light source and get away with it. If the shadow does not drop off too far, it can be harder with no ill effects.
When I bring Linda Joy in, we are still deep in conversation. It's just that now, she is standing in front of the tree while we are yakking. Sure, she knows she is getting her photo taken. But by now the edge has worn off a little. Also, I have showed her some of the results of the shoot up until now, and the thought has occurred to her that I just might not be out to make her look terrible. Imagine that.
About five minutes later we were done. And we still had our entire day ahead of us, as we would normally both have been just rolling out of bed about now.
Full RSS feed, from Strobist.com. Videos are not viewable in emailed posts. Click the post title to see any embedded video and/or to view or post comments. This month's feeds are sponsored by:
Registration opens Monday, Nov 3rd, at 8:00 p.m. (2000 hours) London time. Full info and links to register via PayPal will be posted at that time.
-30-
Full RSS feed, from Strobist.com. Videos are not viewable in emailed posts. Click the post title to see any embedded video and/or to view or post comments. This month's feeds are sponsored by:
__________
If your stuff is on Digital Railroad, which is shutting down in such an abrupt way as to hose its photographers, you have until midnight on Oct 31st (PST/GMT-8) to migrate your stuff to someplace safe. Even this short time frame was won of hard negotiation.
This is way off topic for this site, and I have thus far resisted the urge to go off-niche to cover this story. But I am sure that many readers are affected, and DRR simply is not giving its shooters time to migrate in an orderly way.
If you
For more info and in-depth coverage:
• Photo Business Forum, shows exactly how to migrate via FTP (Thanks much for that info, John)
• Vincent Laforet, expressing the anger felt by many shooters
• PhotoShelter, just off of a closure of their own, tries to pick up the DRR pieces with help (they negotiated the extension) info, offer
• PDN Online story , with ongoing coverage at PDNPulse
-30-
Full RSS feed, from Strobist.com. Videos are not viewable in emailed posts. Click the post title to see any embedded video and/or to view or post comments. This month's feeds are sponsored by:
(RSS and email subscribers may have to click on the post title to see the video.)
Remember Nick Turpin, who did those beautiful SB-800-lit street portraits of thriller writers for Arena Magazine?
Now, he has ditched even those and is shooting his current month-long campaign for Samsung using only a cell phone. No DSLRs, no flashes, no female assistants holding long poles. And he is not even in control of what he is shooting -- you are.
Your clicks on each new photo in the the evolving site decide where he is going next. It is live now, at The Photographic Adventures of Nick Turpin. You can follow his cell-phone video diary from his trek via his YouTube Channel, too.
(Via What's the Jackanory)
-30-
Full RSS feed, from Strobist.com. Videos are not viewable in emailed posts. Click the post title to see any embedded video and/or to view or post comments. This month's feeds are sponsored by:
I finally got a chance to meet Peter Geller, of California Sunbounce, at PDN's Photo East shindig up in NYC last week. He had all of CSB's toys strewn out in a way that is very unfair to those of us looking to escape the show with our wallets intact.Their system is totally comprehensive and can create just about any light-modifying setup you could possible imagine -- if you have the moolah. But if you are a dirt-broke college puke (or perhaps a former Lehman brothers executive) you may have more time than money at this particular point in your life.
If that is your situation, you might want to take a look at this DIY version of the CSB Micro Mini, which is proving to be popular enough to be in a backorder situation on the accompanying flash mounts.
(And check out "we-knew-him-when-he-wasn't-famous" Bert Stephani starring on the Micro Mini webpage, too...)
Back to the DIY. Thanks to reader John Gibney, if you have a little patience and know your way around a sewing machine you can try out a DIY version to see if all this bouncing stuff is right for you. He gives pretty detailed instructions on his blog -- even how to include a 5/8" stud for mounting a flash or sticking the bounce in an umbrella swivel.
(Thanks much, John!)
-30-
Full RSS feed, from Strobist.com. Videos are not viewable in emailed posts. Click the post title to see any embedded video and/or to view or post comments. This month's feeds are sponsored by:
Having begun to explore fill with a ring flash, I knew there would be other ways to push light from on or near the lens axis. But before I tried them out, I wanted to learn how a ring light fill would work in combination with a more restricted key light.Hard key light leaves hard shadows. And if you are not taking into account the ambient light (maybe the ambient light quality sucks, for instance) on-axis fill can reach into shadows and open them up in a highly controllable way.
Keep reading for two quick set-ups, and a refresher on ratio control without a flashmeter.
Swamp Thing
This summer as I was looking for any excuse to experiment with ring-as-fill, my son Ben returned from a day at camp wearing the shoes you see pictured at the top of this post.
My wife: "Do NOT come inside with those shoes. Clean them off with the hose outside."
Me: "Don't clean 'em yet! I want to shoot them. (... on your mother's great-grandma's antique cutting board, I did not say out loud...)"
Hey, we don't use the board for cooking. It is mostly used as decor against the counter backsplash. And it covers up the mess and tangled wires around the phone pretty well, too.
We only have a few minutes before dinner, so this will have to be quick. No problem, as I already have my background (secretly) picked out. I love shooting details like this for the family album, and these shoes say a lot about a well-spent summer day for a seven year-old boy.
Having seen what the ring would do against an umbrella, I wanted to play with some hard light. My thinking was, this combo will let me dial in however much texture I wanted by filling against a hard shaft of light.
But before I could make the hard key, I needed my ring flash as fill. I cranked my lens down to a very small aperture to hold focus and dropped the shutter speed to 1/250th to kill the ambient. Then, I adjusted the power output on the (manual) ring flash until I got the proper exposure.
(I was using a Ray Flash adapter fitted onto a Nikon SB-800 speedlight for the ring light.)
Now, since I was already way down on the aperture, I dropped the ISO a couple of stops to take the ring flash from being properly exposed down to a nice fill. I looked at the histogram and rear display and it looked like a nice "baseline exposure" for what would become my shadows in a moment.
This is no different than dialing down your ambient before you add in your key light, except that it was all being done with flash.
Now, for the hard fill.
Using a set of ten-dollar barn doors designed for small flashes, I closed off the spill of the key light until just a small beam was getting through from hard camera left. I used a 1/2-strength CTO gel to warm up the key somewhat to accentuate the color of the mud.
Given that my shooting aperture is set, as is the number of stops I have already dialed down my fill, the only thing left to do is to adjust the key light until the direction and exposure looks best.
No meters -- just eyeballing the relationship between the tones on the rear screen and making sure my histogram is not out of whack.
Quick and easy, and I notch another quick experience in my goal to get more comfy with on-axis fill. Honestly, the hardest thing about the shoot was smuggling the cutting board out of the kitchen (and back in) without Susan noticing.
I really like the ring-against-raking-light look on the muddy shoes. The highlights are crisp, but you can see right into the shadows -- exactly as much as I want, thanks to the lighting ratio on the fill. The ring also gives that characteristic wraparound shadow -- which looks kinda cool against the highlights, too.
Ring Against Grid
A few days before Ben's shoes, I had done a little more experimenting with ring fill and hard light, and I found myself growing more and more comfortable both with the technique itself and the key-to-fill ratios.This portrait of Em, done in the last days of single digits before her tenth birthday, was the first time I had worked with ring and grid light. But I already had a good idea what to expect, thanks to experimenting earlier with on-axis fill and umbrella key in Dubai.
There are two ratios to consider here, and if you are into reverse engineering should be able to spot them by looking closely at the photo.
The first is the ratio of the ring (which will end up being the fill) over the ambient. You can see how far the ambient drops off by looking at the depth of the ring flash shadow (around Em) compared to the surrounding bricks in the areas of the photo not lit by the gridded key light.
The second ratio is that of the gridded key light over the ring fill light. This you can see in the shadows on Em's neck and under her nose. (These shadows are left by the key light, but are lit by the ring fill.)
Which means that in this setting, we have two control levers to adjust the contrast range of the photo. The ring flash was about a stop and a half over the ambient and the gridded key (coming from upper camera right) was another stop and a half over the ring light.
(If this shorthand exposure information doesn't make sense, take a look at this post.)
I have to say, I immediately loved the look of the ring fill against the gridded key. It was crisp and open all at the same time, and every portion of the photo was tonally legible in a controllable way.
Baseline Exposure Cheat Sheet
I was starting to get familiar with the Ray Flash, and was finding that it knocked off a little more than the one stop (vs. direct flash) advertised by the manufacturer. To be fair, after testing I found it to knock off about 1.2 stops -- if you used the 24mm throw as a bare-flash comparison.
Real-world (50mm throw) I would call it close to two stops. But that is still plenty powerful to use as a beautiful fill light at portrait distances outside.
Having experimented in a darkened room, I tested it to see how much light it would throw in a given ISO and power setting. To help me learn get faster at future setups, I stuck my standard cheat sheet on the Ray Flash:
The numbers:
1/2 power -- ISO 400 -- 10 Feet -- f/8
From there, I could quickly interpolate differences in any future setups to get a starting point for my power setting in manual.
Comfortable with the tests, I was ready to try ring light as fill on an assignment -- confident that I probably would not screw it up completely.
Full RSS feed, from Strobist.com. Videos are not viewable in emailed posts. Click the post title to see any embedded video and/or to view or post comments. This month's feeds are sponsored by:
We talked about this in the sunset tiki hut portrait a ways back, but wedding shooter David Ziser has put together a well-done twelve-minute tutorial on working above your flash's native sync speed for outdoor lit portraiture.
(This, of course, does not get you anywhere near the insane sync speeds with the SB-800 diagnostic mode detailed early last April, but it is way easier to pull of, with no complicated button sequences...)
See the original post at Digital Pro Talk. Thanks to David for the vid and to everyone that let me know about it.
-30-
Full RSS feed, from Strobist.com. Videos are not viewable in emailed posts. Click the post title to see any embedded video and/or to view or post comments. This month's feeds are sponsored by:
Those of you of a certain age will remember Joe Bob Briggs, who used to review guys' movies for the newspapers the way a guy would want a movie reviewed.
Steel Magnolias? Zero stars. Way too much emotional junk.
Texas Chain Saw Massacre? Instant classic -- it has chain saws, fer cryin' out loud. Get the Oscar buzz started!
I was very disappointed to find out that the "Joe Bob" in the new Nikon speedlight video were in fact Bob Krist, internationally known travel photographer, and Joe McNally, some guy I have never heard of.
Sadly, the video is not available yet, nor are the online excerpts -- they are coming next week, from what I hear. So why am I even telling you this?
Because the release of the SB-900 video trips in a little gentleman's agreement about the previous, SB-800 "Speed of Light" video...
__________
A few years ago, this Joe McNally guy filmed a video for Nikon on the (then) new SB-800s, showing just what they could do by using CLS in a real-world environment. It was a capabilities/brochure type of thing, and they probably underestimated the demand for nuts-and-bolts, exact "how-to" type of stuff.
The video was called, The Speed of Light (spoiler alert: 186,000 miles per second) and was a great tease to get you pining for six SB-800s.
The feedback, of course, was that now everyone wanted to know exactly how to do this stuff: What do I set the +-TTL at? Why use the dome outside? How do I find a contortionist and a glass box in the middle of the desert?
So, from what I understand at least, they are looking to be more nuts-and-bolts in the current iteration which is now in the can and ready for release. The new video is five times as long as the last, which should allow for more detail in the process.
From what I hear, they had fun filming it, too. Rumor was that Bob and Joe actually pretended to get pissed off at each other, almost to the point of coming to blows (my money is on Bob -- he's a scrapper) just to worry the director while shooting. That's why you never let the photographers outnumber the directors.
But enough of that. Back to the Speed of Light video.
__________
Here it is, embedded. If you are viewing this post via RSS or an email subscription, you probably won;t be able to see the video. You can get to the full web version, with video, here.
The vid has been up on Google Video for several months, and is a total bootleg upload. I was tipped to it by several readers way back when.
Normally this is a strict no-no, and results in DCMA takedown notices out the wazoo almost immediately. But I talked to several people at Nikon and the idea was batted around that letting this one go into the wild at this point might not be such a bad thing. Simple cost-benefit analysis. But I agreed that it would best to wait until the next-gen SB-900 video was announced before linking to the old SB-800 video.
There is a lot of information in it, but the flash itself is discontinued. (Bastards! They killed Kenny!) Which means the commercial value for an SB-800 video is down to the flat part of the long tail chart. So, given that they (a) know it is out there and, (b) have not yet DCMA'd it, you are not starving anyone's babies by watching it.
It's about half an hour long. IMO, the best part of the video has nothing to do with lighting. CLS shooters will learn from it, of course. But the real takeaway is watching this Joe guy work.
When you are watching this, pay special attention to how Joe paces his shoot. Note how he keeps his subjects engaged, how he uses their time and attention efficiently. A good shoot is all about a steady stream of communication and keeping a good rhythm going with the subjects.
He's too modest a guy to tell you this, so I will: His long-practiced ability to interact with his subjects is just as key to the success of his photos as is his lighting skill. More so, actually. It's a dance, and someone has to lead.
You can get great photos all day long with good subject interaction and finessing whatever available light you can find. Not so the reverse. If you do not gel with your subject, all the fancy flash in the world will not make a great portrait.
I am very much looking forward to the new vid (hopefully, with a director's cut including the fight scenes) when it pops up. I'll point to the excerpts online whenever they are posted.
Hey, Nikon -- why not YouTube that trailer and let it fizz a little?
And I would be curious to hear your thoughts on the interaction and rhythm thing in the comments below. What did you come away with?
__________
New Speedlight Video: Nikon Press Release
Full RSS feed, from Strobist.com. Videos are not viewable in emailed posts. Click the post title to see any embedded video and/or to view or post comments. This month's feeds are sponsored by:
I'll be at hanging out the MPEX booth (they got DVD specials and "dozens" of vintage Nikon SB's) on Friday from 11:00 a.m. to lunch time. Also, Joe McNally will be demo'ing speedlights at the Nikon booth Thursday from 2:30 - 3:00 p.m.
Hope to see you there. Please feel free to leave any party time/location/secret handshake info as a "do not publish" comment below. If I can swing it, I'll try to stop by.
-30-
Full RSS feed, from Strobist.com. Videos are not viewable in emailed posts. Click the post title to see any embedded video and/or to view or post comments. This month's feeds are sponsored by:
Having talked about the inspiration to learn more about on-axis fill, I'd like to work through the process of studying a lighting idea to the point where you become totally comfortable with it.For better or worse, my goal is for this experience to serve as a sort of template for how I approach a new lighting technique.
This week deals with first attempts to reverse engineer how people were getting that cool, controllable 3-D tonality in their shadows, specifically by using ring flash.
When struck by the idea of on-axis fill, ring light is a no-brainer. It doesn't get any more "on-axis" than that, so it was my obvious starting point. What I would go on to find out was not only were there many options for creating on-axis fill, but also a seemingly endless number of combinations between the quality and quantity of the fill and the key light.
Whenever I am struck by a new technique, my programmed response is usually to shoehorn it into the very next opportunity I have to shoot. I'm impatient that way. But the point is to learn it ASAP, and hopefully in a way that does not screw up a paying gig.
Professional shooters as
That's the way I normally work, but this time I was too impatient. I felt like a kid in a candy store, and wanted to start playing with on-axis fill immediately, if not sooner.
My first attempt at ring fill was against an umbrella key light, while shooting the lovely and enthusiastic Minty (that's her name) seen at the top of this post. It was at the Gulf Photo Plus event in Dubai. We were working very quickly, trying to get a selection of different looks from three different setups and outfit changes in the span of about 45 minutes.
To my credit I at least saved my on-the-job experimentation until the last of the three setups, which was outside of our conference room in the hall. The walls in the hall basically looked like seamless background paper, which was enough to qualify as a good setting in our academic conference environment.
The idea -- making this up as we went along -- was to position the key (umbrella, camera right) as I would if just shooting normally. Then I would dial in the ring fill and see what happened.
What ratio to use? Heck, I wasn't thinking that far ahead. In retrospect, it ended up being about one and a half stops -- too much fill, IMO.
Much like the first time I had shot someone with an umbrella against a sunset, I was happy enough with the first result that I did not press it by trying variations to see what would look better. That's a big mistake when trying new techniques, and one I will readily own up to. Because I do it over and over again.
In a turn on the old phrase "the perfect becomes the enemy of the good," it's more like "the good becomes the enemy of the way better."
Getting a cool result can keep you from pressing the idea further to see what else might happen. That's something you should always be on guard against.
When I edited my photos that night in my hotel room, I could see my problem much more clearly. The light directions were okay, but the ring fill had too much intensity. The result was that dimensionality had been stripped from the photo, and Minty had been reduced to almost a 2-D cutout.
It was like a layered paper sculpture, lit on different planes.
In general this is not a ring fill ratio I would use on people -- I'd want less of the fill. But, as with any screw up, you learn. And what I learned here was that on-axis fill is basically a control slider to enhance or compress the 3-D quality of your subject.
Much like a field goal kicker who misses a big kick by aiming too far to the right, I would overcorrect on my next attempt.At left is Asif, a marketing exec in Dubai, whom I shot in the very next workshop. After Minty, you can be pretty sure I wasn't gonna over fill Asif. So naturally, rather than filling him a stop and a half down, I filled him at, like, four stops down.
Had I shot this for The Sun, our presses would have happily filled in all of those subtle, dark tones with nice, black ink. You cannot do this on newsprint and expect to get away with it.
The photo was obviously inspired by Peter Yang's eerie shot of Admiral Fox Fallon. I previously had worked through this poor-man's version of Yang's big, gridded reflector by substituting a small LumiQuest soft box instead. I used a Soft Box II at the time, but my preference now would be the new Soft Box III, as it is a little bigger. (Both will work, though.)
But what about the grid? Isn't that critical?
Well, no. Not really. It is what the grid does that is critical, which is to create a shaft of light that keeps the top of the person's head from being illuminated. You can also go that with a simple gobo.
As you can see from the diagram, the gobo allows the light to reach the subject's face, but not the top of the head. If you place the gobo closer to the subject, the line is harder. Place it closer to the light source and the line into darkness gets softer.
I like to place it pretty close to the (small) source, and at a height to where the subject's eyes can see about 3/4 of the light source. This tells me that the eyes will be positioned about 1/4 of the way into the transition from lit area to shadow area.
This is offset by the fact that the eyes are closer to the light source on a relative basis than are the lips, chin, etc. These two factors tend to cancel each other out in a cool way.
But this post is about ring fill, right? And besides, I am not put on this earth just to ape someone else's light. I want to shape it in new ways and do my own thing.
So I wanted to keep the dark look of the photo, yet still be able to see up into the shadows a little bit in a controlled way. That's where the ring fill does the job perfectly.
I am filling at almost four stops down, which is a tremendous chasm of a lighting ratio by most measures. Example: That's a white piece of paper a few feet behind Asif, going almost black. (That is straight from Lighting 102 - Position | Distance.)
Again, from a newspaper standpoint, it's a big 'ol fail. But, there may be times when I want this tiny peek into the shadows. On an RGB display, it is legible -- just at the edge, really -- but I can dial this in any way I want now, because I have seen the upper and lower limits.
But, the "screw ups" are defining my boundaries. And I could very well decide to go there again, too. It is my choice, depending on the look I want and the medium in which the photo is gonna run.
A stopped watch is right twice a day, and even a blind squirrel finds a nut once in a while. So given that I had missed on both high and low on my ratio, I hopefully would be ready the next time.
Having seen what both "too light" and "too dark" looked like, I felt comfortable that I could dial in the ring fill against an umbrella with a little nuance. Which is what happened the next time I tried the technique.You can see a full write-up on the contortionist photo, which was a direct offshoot of the test shots above, in this post from earlier this year.
If there is anything that should be stressed, it is (a) that zeroing in on the look you want is a logical process, and (b) you should not expect to happen upon an ideal look right out of the starting gate. It takes testing and experimentation -- and learning from the "close-but-no-cigar" photos is a valuable part of the process.
NEXT: Ring Fill Against Hard Key
_______
UPDATE: For those who asked, the ring flash I was using is a Ray Flash ring flash adapter.
Full RSS feed, from Strobist.com. Videos are not viewable in emailed posts. Click the post title to see any embedded video and/or to view or post comments. This month's feeds are sponsored by:
Congrats to German photographer Puthan Valiyandi, who used a set of eBay remotes to win himself a set of Pocketwizard Plus II's in September's video contest.
The coolest part of the video? Gotta be the "flashlight" mod. I want one.
We still have two more sets to give away -- details here.
-30-
Full RSS feed, from Strobist.com. Videos are not viewable in emailed posts. Click the post title to see any embedded video and/or to view or post comments. This month's feeds are sponsored by:
After the jump, two new small-flash-related gel items, and an "I Know a Guy" gel source so cool I almost wished I lived in LA.
Almost.
Hold Everything: The LumiQuest FXtra Gel Holder
LumiQuest's Quest Couch would like to personally thank you guys for the free product development consulting, as he reports that the FXtra gel holder was developed "100 percent" due to input from this group.He tweaked the design to fit most any speedlight other than the Vivitar 285 (which is not only very big but also has its own built-in gel slot) and added a few features that will probably make many of you happy.
First, it mounts to any flash using the (included) hook-and-loop fasteners, and passes the fastener through to the outside. That means that you can mount an FXtra to a flash and then mount another light mod on the outside of the FXtra.
Second, he included a pocket to store gels with the flash when you are not using them. It is almost as if he took a long hard look at the photo stuff strewn all over the floorboards of my car when we met for lunch a few months ago.
Last but not least, included with the FXtra is a selection of commonly used gels (and a few effect colors) cut to size:
• CTO (tungsten conversion)
• 1/2 CTO
• 1/4 CTO
• Plus Green (fluorescent conversion)
• Sky Blue
• Canary Yellow
• Fire Red
The gels are sized to extend past the holder to fit the larger flash heads (SB-26s, Canon 580s etc.) but can be trimmed to fit the SB-800s, -600s and other smaller flash heads.
FXtras are $19.95, and available at MPEX now and soon, everywhere. More info on the FXtra at LumiQuest.com.
Simple Solution to a Sample Problem
A thousand people taking advantage of a sample program is a good thing. A quarter million people taking advantage of it is too much of a good thing.
It is exactly for that reason that the Rosco gel sample packs were in danger of going bye-bye just a short while ago. But rather than shut it down, they decided to address the issue directly and in an economically sustainable way.
The result is the Strobist Gel Pack, which is currently under development. They are speedlight sized, no holes and multiple copies of the gels we use most. There is a selection of standard color balancing gels, with some effect colors thrown in -- and none of the stuff we end usually up throwing away.
I have seen a prototype kit, and I'm stoked. I can't tell you how happy I am that Rosco has chosen to respond to the needs of small-flash shooters -- and solved the gel sample problem with smart thinking rather than an axe.
Mad props to Rosco for this solution. More info as it becomes available and I definitely will be first in line to buy some Strobist gel packs.
They Were Expendable
Several people came up to me at the recent LA lighting seminars and told me about "The Expendables Recycler," a very cool SoCal shop that buys leftover rolls of gels from movie sets and sells them at discount rates. Typical savings are ~1/3 off of full retail, a price which is firmly supported by your local Theatre Supply monopoly. (They typically justify the full price by spelling it, "theatre" instead of "theater.")
BEFORE YOU COME CRASHING DOWN ON THIS PLACE, owner Todd Parker would like me to pass along a note that if you are just buying single 20x24" sheets to be shipped you are better off going to your local gel
He has lots of full rolls and partial rolls at decent discounts. And yes, I got myself a roll of Rosco #3008 Tough Frost diffusion material on the cheap before I told you about it. Heh.
UPDATE: Shipping costs are steep. If you are ordering via phone or mail, you'd better be prepared to bulk up if you want to save real money. But if you are local to SoCal, it's a no-brainer if you can pick up.
More info at The Expendables Recycler.
Full RSS feed, from Strobist.com. Videos are not viewable in emailed posts. Click the post title to see any embedded video and/or to view or post comments. This month's feeds are sponsored by:
I worked at newspaper for twenty years, and to be honest I do not think I could have ever sold an idea to shoot dead artists for a fall arts preview package.My problem, of course, was that I shot for the mainstream media, and not the alternative media. In that world, they come up with the dead artists idea all by themselves and ask you to shoot it.
Which is exactly what happened to photographer Steve E. Miller, who shoots for the San Luis Opisbo (CA) New Times.
Video, how-to and links to more of the series, inside.
The video is a time-lapse, which will let you see the physical progression of the lights. But the lighting ratios are what is key here.
This is an exercise in finely tuned fill light, and you can easily do it without a flash meter. The sheets are white, but Steve wanted them to be muted and textured in the final photo. So the idea is to design that fill light first, expose it properly -- white sheets -- and then dial the aperture down until you get the muted greys that you want on the linens.
Now, it is just a matter of gridding the key light to bring up the "demised" photographer's face. Obviously, you can grid the art on the walls, too, to bring up other areas of interest and better sell that tonal shift in the sheets. But the key to the look of the photo is how far down you take the fill, and you can do that by eye and histogram on the LCD screen without a flash meter.
Just dial down your aperture until your sheets look the way you want after you lay in that fill. Watch the histogram for blocked-up blacks, tho. Then bring up the gridded key light to make the dead guy the right exposure. Again, look at the image onscreen for the light relationships, but mind that histogram to make sure you have something you can work with in post.
I'll bet people were talking about Steve's dead artists spread in SLO for several days. You can see the other images Steve made in his Flickr gallery, and more time-lapse videos here. The paper did a nice piece online, too.
And the most important thing to remember (if you are Steve E. Miller) is that you parlay the success of this "kinda-out-there" project into a green light to do your next (even-more-out-there) project. Just be sure you pull it off, so you keep the good times rolling.
Question, to the other newspaper shooters out there: Could you ever hope to sell a "dead artists" spread in your Fall Arts preview? What would your strategy be to make it happen?
(FWIW, I don't think I could ever have squeezed this one past the Features Ed at The Sun.)
Full RSS feed, from Strobist.com. Videos are not viewable in emailed posts. Click the post title to see any embedded video and/or to view or post comments. This month's feeds are sponsored by:
Alert Reader Tom Hayton was searching for the photographer Platon on YouTube and found this 25-minute interview from Russia Today, a channel I can safely say I almost never get to watch.
Two things:
One, this is not about light but does give a very good look into Platon's approach and bedside manner. It's an interesting look into some of the thinking that goes into photographing famous (or infamous) people.
Remember, Platon is Mr. Hotshot in Russia after the Putin Time MoY cover. He figured out his light a long time ago, and its the interpersonal stuff that gets him the moments in his photos.
Second, the audio is off. And it creeps worse and worse throughout the vid. So you may as well just listen to it while you have your work stuff up onscreen this morning. Although they do pepper the interview with many of his pix, so there's that.
OTHER PLATON STUFF:
:: Platon Shoots Putin ::
:: Platon: Lose the Smile ::
:: Platon: Three Videos ::
Full RSS feed, from Strobist.com. Videos are not viewable in emailed posts. Click the post title to see any embedded video and/or to view or post comments. This month's feeds are sponsored by:
A few months ago I was talking about lighting stuff on the phone with Peter Yang and the subject got around to small flashes.We were talking about old Nikon speedlights (SB-24's, 26's, etc.) when he mentioned that he liked to work with an on-camera speedlight even while he was shooting with the big Profoto 7B lights off-camera.
"You know," he said, "just to kick in a little fill in there."
I didn't quite get it, because we were talking about his very cool photo of Admiral William Fallon at the time. But it stuck in the back of my mind and has been rattling around ever since.
Fast forward a few months, and I am watching one of Joe McNally's videos on Kelby Training. He's shooting some multi-speedlight CLS setup. He is using an on-camera master flash to control several off-camera flashes, and is making really cool photos, as usual.
Then he pops off with something to the effect of always turning the on-camera master to "no flash" because, "why would you want any light coming from on camera?"
Wait a minute... on-camera... on-camera... Oh yeah, Peter Yang!
So, there was one photographer I really admire, asking me why I would ever want to do some particular thing, and another photog I really admire telling me that was one of his go-to techniques.
That's one of the things I love about photography, that there are no real rules. You learn the rules so you can break them on purpose. The main thing is to know why the rules are there, so you know when and why to break them.
Don't get me wrong. I am a huge fan of McNally. God knows I have certainly
My friends, I think that's just great.
So, back at the other end of the chronological scale, here's Peter Yang, knocking the cover off of the ball before the ink was even dry on his driver's license. His pictures all seem to have this "polished snapshot" kind of thing going that just really does it for me for some reason. They are meticulously lit, with a very controlled visibility into the shadows -- no matter which way the key light is coming from.
That's the day I started thinking about on-axis fill almost nonstop. It has totally changed the way I light. Not saying I would use it every time, because I wouldn't. But it is a very powerful tool, and it merits consideration in the context of just about any lighting scheme I might be designing.
Like a 3-D Detail Volume Knob
In years past, I would think of my key light first, then decide how much ambient to dial in for fill. Or if there was no good ambient, I might fill from the shadow side with another light source.Problem was, that would significantly alter the 3-D quality of my subject and create new shadows and texture on the highlight side. But lately, I have been thinking about my fill -- both in terms of quality and quantity -- before I even start thinking about my key light.
Filling from on (or very near to) the lens axis allows you to sort of "dial in" the detail in a way that can also leave the subject very 3-D in a natural way, or compress it to look like a multi-layered paper cutout.All of the photos in this post were filled with on-axis light., in different forms and ratios. And they all have a very different look because the on-axis light source can be anything: Umbrella, ring, small softbox right over the lens -- even an on-camera flash.
There. I said it.
(I know -- it was weird to me at first, too.)
And the on-axis fill can not only come from many different types of light modifiers, but can also work against just about any type of key light. And it can come in at just about any intensity, too. Thus, the ability to dial 3-D detail into the shadows.I have been working with this just about every chance I could get over the last few months. And I will be working through lots of On-Assignment that involve on-axis fill, not to mention some straight "how-to" posts that detail different fill / key light source combos and lighting ratios.
But I wanted to get a sort of "intro" post out there, where I could whet your appetite with the concept. Just as mine was whetted by studying other peoples' work over the last few months.
So stay tuned for a lot more on this -- with lots of specifics -- in upcoming weeks. I am having a lot of fun with it, and I think you will, too.
Full RSS feed, from Strobist.com. Videos are not viewable in emailed posts. Click the post title to see any embedded video and/or to view or post comments. This month's feeds are sponsored by:
Remember the chicken neck-breakin' version of making your SB-800 rotate around to 135 degrees in the other direction? Yeah, well, as of today that method has now been ruled Barbarian and out-of date.
Watch as South Carolina shooter Lee Morris shows you how to do it the civilized way -- and it is pretty darn easy. Being a smart guy, Lee sticks his portfolio in at the end, too.
Note that the video seems to load a little slowly, so you might want to let is play for 30 secs and then back it up to keep it going nonstop.
Again, the reason you really want this ability is not to be able to bounce a vertical, on-camera flash off of a wall behind you. But rather you want to be able to point the flash any direction and the CLS receiver (or SU-4 slave) in any other direction.
Same disclaimer applies: You break your SB-800, don't come crying to me. But I am going to try this method on one (and then, hopefully, all) of my '800's.
IMPORTANT: Mind you do not touch any wires that appear to be heading toward the main capacitor, which is likely inside the tube where the flash head pivots (haven't opened mine yet.) That cap can hold hundreds of volts and be very dangerous.
Additionally, I would fire the flash on full manual and then immediately turn it off. Then wait a day or so before opening it up to bleed what little juice will have gotten back into the capacitor. If you are not comfy with this kind of stuff, skip this one or get help from a solder monkey friend.
(You can see more of Lee's work here.)
-30-
Full RSS feed, from Strobist.com. Videos are not viewable in emailed posts. Click the post title to see any embedded video and/or to view or post comments. This month's feeds are sponsored by:
I am in the air all day today, flying back from Los Angeles. Meanwhile, Bert Stephani is across the pond, pretending he is in L.A. So I will leave you in his able hands, as he invades a public beach with a California Sunbounce Micro and a kickin' pair of ND-8 filters over his eyes.
(Seriously, I love Bert's videos.)
See stills from the shoot on Bert's blog. More info on the CSB here.
-30-
Full RSS feed, from Strobist.com. Videos are not viewable in emailed posts. Click the post title to see any embedded video and/or to view or post comments. This month's feeds are sponsored by:
