Camera Dojo

For the most part I come home from a shoot and dump the images from the CF cards onto the computer and then do my backups. Once in a while I am gone for a weekend without the benefit of a laptop and I want to make sure I have my CF cards backed up every night. For this reason I picked up a Wolverine Flashpac several years ago and have been using it ever since. Since you should always make backups as soon as possible, I can’t recommend some type of device like this enough.

Continue reading to learn more about remote backup devices…

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Your’s truely was just a guest on the digital photography show podcast. Please stop by http://www.prophotoshow.net/ and download the podcast while myself, Gavin Siem, Michael Anderson, and Dennis Zerwas discuss the news, new products, Lightroom 2.0, and discuss issues like marketing, insurance, new cameras, and a bunch of other randomness. If you don’t listen to the podcast, you really should.

I have had the opportunity to shoot with a number of other people as both the “second” photographer as well as being the primary photographer. Today I want to talk about my feelings about shooting with other people as my own experience has covered the gamut from extremely enjoyable to absolutely horrible. So while this is not a technical article by any means, it is my own opinion as to how shooting with someone else can be both a rewarding, educational, and enjoyable experience.

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The home studio has been making amazing progress lately and we did some major work on it today to get it ready for it’s first test shoot. The final width comes in at twelve feet and the shooting area is fifteen feet from the main shooting wall. The back wall was painted with gloss white for high key background that will mostly be used during product shots. For other types of shots a background support is in place with a ten foot wide white seamless paper roll on it.

Was it as simple as cleaning out the garage and painting the walls? Absolutely not, continue reading to see what else we did to put some finishing touches on the studio.

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The transformation of the garage is nearing completion and the L7 Studio is coming together nicely. Unfortunately its not going to be as nice as this shot of 8443 Warner, but hay, someday right? So where are we and what have we had to do so far? Besides tons of trash, lots of craiglist sales, and multiple car loads of stuff to Goodwill, there is only one pile of trash left. Continue reading to find out what it has cost to get to were we are at now.

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Long time readers will note that I have been using a room in the house as my photo studio, alas I feel I have outgrown my humble beginnings, but what to do? My wife won’t let me kick any of the kids out of their bedrooms and she won’t let me take over the larger living room. This left two options, 1) Rent a space somewhere, 2) Build a new studio in the garage. Given budgetary contraints, I opted for number 2, and the Project L7 Studio has begun. Today we look at the plan do build my ultimate home studio. Read on for more details.

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If you haven’t been visiting JPG Magazine than get over there and check it out. JPG Magazine is all user contributed content based on different themes each month and then readers vote on which images shoud be included in the magazine. So while you are over there, be sure and vote for me!

So here they are - a first glimpse of the P1 production units. Pictured are the v1.0 preproduction prototypes. These are functional units from the first short run batch. They were manufactured with micro sized internal antennas. These micro antennas, though highly and specially tuned for this application, failed to provide the even signal pattern they were looking for. The pictured units have been refitted with connectors for external antennas. The unit pictured displays the antenna to be used on final production units.

Both units sit on half of the enclosure to be used for production units. The finished dimensions 2.6 inches long by 2 inches wide, by 0.75 inches thick. The antenna length is approximately 4.5 inches. This enclosure is very slightly larger than the one they originally designed to. The original enclosure didn’t allow enough room for the antenna mount. A major bonus with the move to this new sized enclosure is they now have room for a standard AA battery. That’s right! They went from watch batteries, to AAA batteries, and now, finally - the battery you already own a bag full of - a standard AA. That’s progress!
Website: http://www.radiopopper.com

If you haven’t visited the L7Foto Flickr Group, we post regular assignments to help people have inspiration for taking different types of pictures.  This new assignment is for you to go out and take a picture where you live that shows something unique or special about your city and shows what winter in your city is like. Showing a tree covered in snow may be a pretty picture but it may not represent anything about where you live. In my entry, I am showing the new balloon ride that is in the Great Park that is being built from an old Marine base. Since I am in southern California, I don’t have snow, but we do get low laying fog on cold mornings and you can see this in the image around the base of the balloon ride. So stretch your imagination and go out and show us winter in your hometown and post it to the L7Foto Flickr Group.

Gavin over at The Pro Photo Show put up a nice link to our recent article about shooting in manual mode.  If you haven’t heard of Gavin’s site or his podcast, I encourage you to subscribe to it. It is on my list of “must listen to podcasts every week. Please go see what’s going on over there! Thanks for the link Gavin.

Link: http://www.prophotoshow.net