Here some more pictures of the shoot with Gaelle at the Finca (Spain).  As explained in previous posting it was an interesting shoot and experimenting with light.  To make the pictures look a bit more dramatic, I have been changing slightly the white balance in Raw processing and adjusting the colors.  Then in photoshop I have adjusted as well the blue and red color tones.  Note: white balance and color correction in Raw has been kept mostly the same for all pictures of this shoot, but in photoshop all color adjustments have been different for each picture as I did not want all pictures looking similar in color.

Technical details below for each picture.

f10    1/250    50mm    Iso 200    -0,3 under exposure

Late afternoon sun coming in from the left of camera, golden California sunbounce right below and in front of the model, behind the model but on the right of the camera wireless Flash set at 1/8.  Some dust was thrown from the right of camera but behind model in front of the flash.

f5.3    1/60    90mm    Iso 200    -0,3 underexposure

Sunlight coming in from the back of model and just used a wireless flash put on the floor about 2 meters in front of model lighting up slighty.  The picture was too clean (2 results on my flickr page) so I used ( very light !!) a texture over the picture.

f4,5    1/125    48mm    Iso 200    -0,3 under exposure

Horizontal version of picture in previous post.  Sun left and California Sunbounce right of camera but below model.  Some dust have been thrown behind the model but we waited till there was only a little bit of dust in the air.  Flash behind model on the right of camera set at 1/8 with diffuser clip over the flash.

De laatste dagen is het weer typisch Nederlands weer.. Alleen maar regen regen regen en harde wind. Kortom het ideale moment om met wat vrienden te gaan skaten en fotograferen in een (half) droge garage.

Wat wel tof was dat een maat van mij “Sem” ook zijn camera met flitser had meegenomen. Hieronder is dan ook de making off foto te zien! Tenslotte hebben wij ook nog een paar foto’s geschoten met mijn canon 430 ex flash in combinatie met een shoot through umbrella. De overige foto’s van de sessie is op Flickr terug te vinden.

This post is actually a rather long reply to a question about flash photography in a heritage forum Midland Heritage, so it may read a little strangely.

Blimey now this is a big can of worms. Firstly I would really recommend the strobist blog as an excellent resource lighting 101 this will take you straight to the first page of their (rather long) lighting tutorial which will give you all the info you could possibly want.

One way to use these flashes  is  to fill shadows   when you are lighting a dark dingy room, I would suggest that a set of triggers is a good first purchase for this and will help immensely, especially if you havent got any of the shiny flashes that will trigger wirelessly.

I always find it easier to work from an example and I quite like this one as it is not immediately apparent that I have used a lot of flash.

I have just used the one unit which has been placed just behind the door on the left and bounced off a silver reflector (though the wall would also work).

The reason I needed to light this was that the difference between the sunlight streaming down the stairs and the door which was deep in shadow and rather gloomy, so I metered for the stairs and used a process of trial and error to find the correct fill.

With this shot there is some evidence that I may have used a flash, first the colour of the light is different, cool the side where I have used the flash and warm on the other where the sunlight is coming down the stairs. Secondly the light is concentrated at the bottom of the door which is a giveaway that a small light source has been used (firing two or more flashes through a diffuser or large bedsheet may have helped lessen this but it is not really the most practical or portable of solutions).

I will often use a flash to highlight a section of detail aswell, this shot is the usual long exposure on a tripod which people are used to 1.3 seconds at iso 100 and an aperture of f13. the flash here is lighting the foreground and bringing detail to the “thing” at the front.

In this shot the flash would have been firing at quite a high power despite the long exposure, this is due to the aperture being so small and the way that flash lights a picture.

Put simply the flash only cares about aperture as the burst of light is emitted for roughly 1/10000 sec, only one burst is emitted during a normal exposure so it doesnt matter what the shutter speed is to the flash.

Having said this the ambient light obviously cares about both so in a long exposure the flash may not appear as evident but this is only due to the natural light taking over as the dominant light source and stifling the light from the flash.

Going back to the picture the flash is very evident here because the area it is lighting is in shadow allowing the flash to be the dominant source of light, it needed the high power to allow enough light to hit the sensor through a small hole in a very short space of time.

This was the part of flash photography I always struggled with but the best way is really to experiment.

Another way I will often use flash like this is to kill all the ambient light in a room and allow the flash to light the scene on its own.

The geek info for this image is: 1/250 sec at f10.

It would make sense for me to increase the shutter speed further to something like 1/1000 as this would allow me to reduce the aperture and put less strain on the flash units, however the flash will not sync at this speed 1/250 being the maximum on my camera. So I am stuck with f10 which isnt so bad as it allows me to keep everything nice and sharp.

Without the flash the frame is black, the little detail you can see on the background is due to spill from the lights

To light the picture I used two lights, one on a stand right in front of where the model was jumping at around chest hight on the model. This flash was zoomed in towards the model as I wanted to concentrate the beam of light on her (this also reduces the power needed as more light goes where you want it) doing this makes the beam harder and narrower and is a great way to bring attention to a specific point in an image.

The second light was low down right below the camera and bounced off a silver reflector, this light was as wide as I could make it and lower power than the first as I wanted a soft light just to fill the shadows left by the main beam (it is also this light that caused the spill).

The only problem with lighting this way is you are forced to blend the light, filling any unexpected shadows and keeping the light from becoming a distraction.

You are not restricted to darkness for these techniques either and they can be a viable and interesting alternative to a HDR image. This shot was exposed for the sky on a bright day with the sun at my 5 o’clock. This caused the top of the Helicopter to be exposed, but left the detail at the bottom dark and in the shadow. To counter this I used two lights one either side of the helicopter (my 10 o’clock and 2 o’clock), these lights were used to give the bottom of the helicopter a little more exposure than the light hitting the top, bringing your focus to the front of the helicopter and giving the picture more impact than a normal exposre could allow.

I hope this has been somewhat useful to some people, and sorry about the length, this is a technique I use in most of my images at work and while it may take some getting used to, once you have an idea about what the light will do it becomes a very powerful tool that can be set up quickly and easily

A note on my kit: All the above were taken with a Fuji S5 Pro, a Nikon 17-35mm f2.8 lens and one or two nikon speedlights. I use an old Sb26 connected to a trigger and an sb800 which fires wirelessly when it detects the light from the first flash (or any other flash for that matter) my bag also contains a silver/gold reflector and a cheepo Jessops tripod which I use as a stand. All fairly cheap and most importantly very portable

I regularly put images using this technique on my Flickr page and include a brief description of the lighting used.

фафсфасафсфаасфасфа

Lamborghini Murciélago.

Llegando de trabajar un sabado, si un sabado, en vez de echarme a dormir, agarro mi cam, el flash y me pongo a jugar con mi Lambo Murcielago recien adquirido con mi ostentoso sueldo, 3 lukas me salio, son de una coleccion que sale con el mercurio, me interesaba el puro murcielago y quizas el Honda S2000. Setup, mas fotos y EXIF despues del salto.

Despues de un par de tiros viendo como el juguete me salia borroso sin saber por que, recorde poner el diafragma en f/32 y subir la potencia del flash a 1/16,  ahi recien pude conseguir la maxima profundidad de campo con la misma iluminacion, aun asi me quedo un tanto fuera de foco en la parte trasera, ademas que me jugo en contra el polvo que no dejaba de aparecer aun dandole y dandole con el rocket blower.

La configuracion fue 55-200mm @ 200mm @ f/32 ~ SB-600 @ 24mm @ M 1/16 via CLS + Difusor, el setup se puede ver abajo.

Otras fotos que saque.

It took a while to get round to processing the pictures from a shoot during which I wasn’t thinking all that clearly. (See Doofus) I did have a very high discard rate but there were a few decent pictures as well, thank goodness.

The one of Mieke, above, is one that pleases me a lot. It was pretty chilly and the poor girl’s hands were turning blue, so I did what every self-respecting photographer would have done; I converted to black and white. 

There are already more pictures from that shoot in my Model Shoot Set on Flickr, and I will be adding a few more in the near future.

Too many hobbies, too little time.

This bike is done, and it’s gorgeous (this picture is from the day I brought the frame home, which was probably four weeks ago. I finished building it about two weeks ago). Building it and riding it are two of the many things I’ve been doing instead of photography. I got back home Wednesday from a six day backpacking trip to the Blue Ridge Parkway area of western North Carolina (unfortunately, we were blown off Mt. Mitchell by a hailstorm, but nearby Linville Gorge is incredibly beautiful and has some of the most technical trails I’ve ever hiked), and spent that week surrounded by people who are enthusiastic about photography. This made me want to get back to shooting. Hopefully I will.

Apparently I’ve missed a few things since I’ve been, well, doing other things. I’m a bit of a gear nerd, and I’m working on catching up on the things I’ve missed. Most notable so far:

-Pentax’s K-x, which I can find precious little information about but has an impressive buzz (good for Pentax)

-Pentax’s K-7, which doesn’t seem that impressive to me (come on, Pentax, I thought a K#D would be a professional model, not a K20D with the zero dropped)

-Nikon’s D300s, which means my body of choice is now 1 1/2 iterations out of date

-Canon’s 7D, which is yet another violation of the number-of-digits-before-the-D-connotes-the-level rule (definitely not worth converting over)

I’m sure there’s plenty more that I’ve missed (unfortunately, this does not seem to include a $50 35mm f/1.2 Nikkor or a $75 10-20mm f/2.8, though I am still looking), but I’ll catch up eventually. For now, I need to start shooting again (and to get a Nikon lens that will go wider than 50mm. Or longer).

Nikon D200, Nikkor 50mm f/1.8D, ancient Minolta strobe somewhere off camera.

So, I pretty much was not able to fall asleep due to all the sleep I got earlier. So, I decided to practice some more photography, product photography on some shoes…

Here is the setup for that shot. One 285hv flash above the pair of shoes being bounced off an umbrella. I was too lazy to put the black backing on the umbrella to bounce it easier, so it is shown white. I also had another 285hv that you can’t see because it is behind the umbrella pictured, but it is pointed down towards the back of the shoes with a light blue gel. Both flashes were on 1/16th powerI had the white board to the side to reflect more of the light towards the back of the shoes. You can see the tripod where I had the camera in the lower right…

And also, I tried doing my first “triptych”, haha. Very self explanatory, it is basically a montage of images…

Seoul Strobist Club
“Strobist: The Metro Project” – SSC Shoot 7

Date: Sunday, December 20th, 3:00pm

Shoot Description:
We haven’t gone out and done any strobist work in a while, so I thought we should get one more in before everyone splits for the holidays. With a lot of action this fall concerning the Metro Project, I thought it would be nice to get together and help each other get creative in and around the tube.

Shoot Objectives:
-    Learn how to effectively balance difficult lighting situations indoors and outdoors
-    Learn how to use strobes and small aperture photography together
-    Gelling for dramatic effect

These are the three areas that I’m going to focus the workshop on, but obviously we’ll get through a whole lot more action on the day of. If there’s anything anyone wants to try or practice, by all means, let me know and we’ll get to that, too.

Meet-up Point:
Sindorim Station
Exit 1, 3:00 pm – (?) 7:00 pm
* Subject to chance. I want to do this at a large, outdoor station with some character. If anyone has a better idea for a station, let me know please.

Shoot Leader(s):
Shawn Parker        parker.shawn@gmail.com         010-5824-2632

Shoot rental fees, etc.:
None.

Models:
I think we’re past shooting each other over and over – I know I’m sick of seeing my own face in the group photos – so I’m going to ask a couple of models that I’ve worked with in the past to come along. It’ll be cold and a chunk out of their day, so I’m asking anyone who is interested to fork over 10,000 won to cover the cost of the models’ time. Payable day of.

Food & Beverage:
Not too worried about this pre-shoot. We’ll figure out a place to have a bite once we’re done.

Emergency Backup Plan:
We should be fine indoors or outdoors – the only thing that will really hinder these plans is rain. But pray for snow…that’d be awesome! Just pack a garbage bag to cover your gear.

Gear Inventory:
When you post your interest, please list what strobe-related gear you’ve got and are willing to bring to the event. We will do our best to pare down the inventory this week so you don’t have to lug all the stuff you own out of the house.

For example, we’re usually not going to need more than 4 strobes for a single shot. That means four flashes, preferably two light stands, a monopod, a trigger and one or more receivers (depending whether the flashes can be triggered wirelessly or not). SB-26s, SB-800s and (I THINK) SB-600s and SB-28xs have this function built in. I don’t know about non-Nikon gear.

I’ll pack most of my stuff so we can run a couple of crews at the same time.

I had an image in mind this evening, but couldn’t quite replicate what I was wanting. Sometimes not being able to adjust the output power on my flash is hard to work with. None the less I can still do a lot with it and am having a great time.

Today I  received my very first light kit. Instead of alien bees I decided to go for JTL’s 301 mobile light kit. After using a set I barrowed from school I loved them. I created this shot with them. The kit includes 2 lights ,2 batteries, 2 light stands, 2 umbrellas, and  a carrying case for the whole set. It sells for $699.99 which is steal for all that you get.

READ THIS FIRST:

What I am trying to show you how I use photoshop to enhance the image. I think the image that comes out from the camera is already okay to use but if i can make it look even better, why not. Lightroom can be use to enhance up to a point but to complete the transformation, photoshop is needed. When view the image below, please look at them slowly, think to yourself it was you, will u be happy with the image and leave it as that.

Gotta chance to play a little more with my gel set this afternoon. Set this up really quit. I’m going to use it as an illustration for my quick lighting tips on the blog from time to time. It needs a little work. I need to tune the backlight down one stop and tune the main light up one. Plus I need to make some homemade grids for the 430Ex in the background and then I’ll be a little happier.

I’ve got some 24 Hr. Project info coming in the next couple of days, but it’s Black Wednesday and I’m getting ready to go out. Have a Happy Thanksgiving everyone and don’t forget to save room for pie.

My Grandmother has relatively current head shots of all her Grandchildren on display in her home. I’m in one of those pictures, but it’s anything but current. It’s circa 2001. She’s been asking for a new picture since 2003 or so, so I decided to shoot one for her. I hope she will be happy with it.

De cd met foto’s is eindelijk afgegeven, hoog tijd om ook hier jullie kennis te laten maken met Karen en Diederiek. Enkele weken terug was het zover, fotoshoot met K&D. Twee tot over hun oren verliefde mensen. Als locatie werd gekozen voor de vestingsmuren van Ieper. Toen hingen er nog meer blad aan de bomen dan nu, wat zorgde voor een goede setting. Ook de zon was -gelukkig- van de partij. Wat mij opvalt is dat ik veel liever met hersfstlicht fotografeer dan in de zomer, het is gewoon veel zachter en zorgt voor die speciale sfeer die je in de zomer mss niet zal hebben. Vandaar dat dus hoofdzakelijk gewerkt werd met natuurlijk licht (en omdat mijn plu en statief nog niet in mijn bezit waren > balletshoot) Ook een nieuwe term werd geïntroduceerd: statuut  (statief, samson)

Rest mij nog K&D te bedanken voor de fijne namiddag (en de godendrank natuurlijk, ie zal smaken!) .

First my apologies for being absent so long.  Moved temp. house during summer and had almost no internet.  Then sold my D200 and since end of October I have now a Nikon D300s ( so happy about it !! ).  Did lots of model shoots in the summer but for a model agency and there was some pressure.  You will find my last pictures with the  D200 on my Flickr page.

Yesterday I took the time to do a nice photo shoot with my daughter (and model) Gaelle.  A location which I had already long time in mind and with the right outfit, it was great.  Took my time to experiment a bit with light sources.  Below is the first picture, which is post processed last night, there might be better ones coming.

This picture is taken with the sun coming from the left ( photographer side ), Golden California sunbounce below on the left side in front of the model.  I put on my right but behind the model SB 600 flash to give some depth.   At the same time with my new camera I decided to start a bit of a new style which I had already long time in mind…. so would appreciate any comments if you like or dislike

f5    1/160    75mm    Iso 200    exposure -0,3

Went to this abandoned church last Saturday with Tim, Jeff and Jeremy. Quite an adventure, crouching and climbing through the basement and then climbing up into the main sanctuary. Yes I know i’m still not done with the editing for the orphanage and most of Sam’s shots as well. Heh!

Now in San Diego, gonna do an engagement shoot for my cousin and as well as staying around for Thanksgiving. Missed my initial flights and had to wait 4 hours but thank God, managed to get on to the next flight out plus an upgrade to Economy Plus on the flight out from Buffalo, then on the flight to San Diego, assigned a middle seat but got a window seat in the end so thankful for the little things He provides.

Ended the shoot with this 6 light set-up heh! Pretty awesome i must say

Strobist Info: 1 SB900 + 3 SB800 in the front of the church

(More images after the jump..)

Did a HDR version of the same shot to see what I could get. Slightly more unreal but yet somewhat having the same feel.

Strobist Info: 1 SB900 + 3 SB800 in the front of the church
HDR: 5 exp with Photomatix

Strobist Info: 1 SB900 + 3 SB800 in the front of the church

Here’s a few more shots from the chicachick shoot I did in Brighton. Looks like one or two of them will be in a feature in the local newspaper, The Argus. Result!

I wanted to use the newly restored bandstand on Brighton’s seafront for two reasons; I knew it would be clear of visitors due to the weather; and because it would keep us dry! It’s been restored to its apparent former glory and whoever did it did a great job.
The tiling on the floor converges to a metal plaque at the centre and this was where Katie would stand. Again, Joe held a Speedlite up high to make sure Katie was well lit, then we placed another, snooted, Speedlite on a stand, that would pick out the handbag.
Katie changed in the wind into a white dress, which contrasted well with the broody sky, and off we went.

Katie in the Bandstand

Throughout the shoot I’d use two primes; a lovely Sigma 30mm F1.4 and my trusty Canon 85mm F1.8. But I always carry my mega-wide-angled Sigma 12-24mm aspherical. This thing is almost fisheye at 12mm, but you have to use it carefully, lest you want your subjects to end up with distorted heads.
So I wanted to use my wide angle. I already knew I wanted Katie standing on a wall, so I decided to get down low, below her, and have the bag closest to my lens. Even when I was less than 2ft away from the bag, I could still see the whole of Katie in my field of view. Lovely.
The wind provided the rest. Her hair was nicely blown out of her face, and the bag was waving in the wind. Joe lit her from high, while the other Speedlite added a little fill from camera left.

Blowing in the Wind

Here are a few shots from the  Strobist meet we had last Sunday here in Galway. We had planned for 7 photographers , 5 models and 2 makeup artists.

However due to the floods, bouts of flu and work commitments, we lost lost 3 models and a makeup artist.

These things happen so we just plugged away with what we had. The Location (Thanks Sean) was great… we had loads of corners and interesting backgrounds to use. Ambient Light levels were fairly low, but we did have a lot of interesting pink, blue and red lights scattered around the club.

They came in handy for funky hairlights through out the day.

I only worked with Alex on the day, and was very pleased with the results.

Alex changed into this Marilyn Monroe esque outfit and wig, which was a nice change for the darker images above.

All in all a good day out. Cant wait for the next one……

Check out the Galway Strobist Flick page!!

I’ve been revisiting some of my older shots, applying new techniques I’ve learned and ideas I’ve came up with. Sometimes these work, other times they don’t. This time they didn’t work. Instead of bouncing my flash off a reflector at 45 degrees above the water drops, I tried bouncing the flash off a reflector behind the subject and tilted slightly ahead. Later I added another reflector 90 degrees to the side. Regardless, I still got harsh highlights at the head of the shot. Adding reflectors, changing the angles of the reflectors, changing distance between flash and reflectors, and changing the exposure in camera couldn’t eliminate the highlights. My previous lighting set up worked much better.

 

Elinchrom Ranger Quadra Kit

 

This is for Ed & Gina:

Yes…it works and expensive. Lot’s have been written about this kit but the quick and easy is right here on Terry White’s Blog.

So my cuz and I were chatting one day about applying some Strobist setups and techniques to his work (travel/lifestyle shooter). I have been doing the Strobist thing with my speedlites for about a year now instead of the old on-camera auxiliary flash. The Canon E-TTL system is amazing when it works. The trick to making it work is lot’s of patience and commitment. I read a bunch on Chuck Gardner’s online tutorials which taught me much more than Canon’s manuals ever did. They should hire this guy.

The problem we agreed, with aux speedlites were recycling time, color temperature stability, light quality and of course, batteries. Shooting at 125 or 25oth shutter speeds is really hard on the battery life. The benefits though is the E-TTL run and gun ability when combined with high speed sync. Speedlites are pretty light and you can carry a three light kit in your gear bag with no worries. If you have line of sight things usually go smooth. I shoot a lot this way with a standard 3 light setup: Main (on-Camera as master), 2nd at 45 degrees of the subject, and one usually above and behind as a hair light. At $400 a pop for Canon’s flashguns, plus hardware such as stands, cold-shoe adapters, umbrellas…yada yada yada, things can get pretty expensive. The last bit is a simple fact that you just have to deal with, Ed put’s it this way: Everyone’s photo has that same look (Strobist) and it gets tired after awhile.

Then there is the Ranger…head not much bigger than a 580EX, color temp of 5300K reliably, power enough to kill mid-day sunlight and lot’s of battery power to spare. The recycling time is so fast that you can shoot like a machine gunner at 1/4 to 1/2 power. I don’t like the short cables, weight and price. Making outdoor portraits is pretty snazzy with this kit. Just set you customer WB to 5300K or thereabouts and start shooting. The IQ is pretty good…but honestly I don’t see that much difference from a Strobist setup with aux flash units, but I gave up portability and wireless setup.

580EXII & Ranger Head

I’m giving the Ranger to my cuz this week, it’s off to Thailand for 3 weeks. I love my speedlites and until I find a better solution to the portability, weight and E-TTL feature, I’m rockin’ on with them. I do have an interest in trying out the Q-Flash system and the ABR800 for studio work, but it’s nice to have part-time use of the Ranger.

Op vraag van sommige mensen, de grotere versie van de foto’s uit mijn filmpje.