As I said, the sky was just downright ugly with no color in it at all, and worse, it only looked like it was going to get worse. My goal of teaching how to balance flash and bright sunlight was certainly not working out so I decided to show how to make a blue sky of of the drab sky we were looking at.

To start off, I switched the camera’s white balance from Auto to Tungsten. What this will do is to add a blue color cast to the clouds. Here is how the sky looked in both Auto and Tungsten White Balance.

Auto White Balance

Tungsten White Balance

Now that we have some color in the sky, its now time to shoot our model. If we just used a flash, the Tungsten white balance setting would make our subject look more like a Smurf than a human. In order to compensate for the much cooler color temperature we have to reverse that by making the light from the flash much warmer. To accomplish this, I used the ExpoImaging Rogue Gel Kit with the 1/2 CTO (Color Temperature Orange) gel.

Using the gelled flash to light our subject, we get the natural looking lighting on the subject while retaining the blue in the sky.

You can use this same technique with different gels to create more dramatic skies by using the opposite of this effect with a nice sunset. Using a cool (blue) gel and setting the color temperature to a higher temperature will create extremely vivid colors. No lighting kit is complete without at least a few color correction gels.

This one was recorded in our cargo van so the noise reduction makes it sound pretty tiney. I apologize for the poor audio quality.

Host: Kerry Garrison

We set up the first lightstand with an umbrella, and the wind almost blew my gear and girl away. Debra asked, “Bare flash?”. I replied, “Yes, I think that would be best.” So we set up 3 light stands, each with a bare BB560 flash and Blackbelt receiver. We moved the lights around as needed, sometimes lighting Brian in the car with 1 or 2 lights (plus the sun of course). In a few images we had 1 or 2 lights on Brian, while at the same time having 1 or 2 lights on the car, just to open up the details that would otherwise be black shadows from the low sun.

I shot these images on a Canon 5dmk2, mostly with a 70-200 lens, and a few wide angle shots were done with a 17-40 lens. Lighting conditions being constant, the shots were taken at ISO 50 or 100, from f5.6 to f8, at a 1/200 shutter speed (the maximum sync speed for the BB560). Flash output was set to 1/2 power and sometimes bumped up to full power as needed. I have been using the BB560′s for sometime now and this was one of those shoots where the reliability and power output was really put to the test. They worked flawlessly.

Photos were edited in Adobe Lightroom 4, the black and white images were done with Nik Silver Eex Pro 2, and Nik Color Efex Pro 3 Tonal Contrast preset was used on some of the color images.

If you would like to see more of this collection shot with Blackbelt Lighting Products, you can visit my blog post here.

Thank you Kerry for letting me share this collection with your Dojo friends.

I’ve talked about basic and advanced lighting techniques commonly used for virtually any studio photo shoot, but those lighting setups require more than a single light, and for a beginning photographer, especially one who has a limited amount of studio space and a small budget, retaining multiple lights can be a problem. There is a way to get around using multiple lights though, and that is low key lighting.

Low key lighting is a type of portrait lighting that creates a very dramatic light setup, as well as creates some intense classic looking photos. Low key lighting lends it’s self strongly to a darker side of glamor and artistic photography. This type of lighting can cast a strong exposure on the subject, creating harsh contrast between the light and shadows of your subject, and leaves a majority of the background darkened. There are a few ways to set up a low key lighting setup, but the common factor in almost all low key setups is that they are predominately lit by only a single light.

45 or 90 Degree Angle

Image by Andy Leddy

This setup is the simplest by far, but still creates powerful, elegant images. Place your key light at either a 45 or 90 degree angle from the subject, on either the left or right side of your camera. That’s the entire setup, one light, in one of four locations. While it is a simple setup, the effects of the setup can very greatly. At a 45 degree angle, exposing the front of your subject, you will create a beautiful front exposure, with harsh contrasted shadows. At a 90 degree angle, if you expose your subject from the front you can create an intense split light where the subjects back will virtually vanish into the background, but if you expose the subject from the back you will create the exact opposite effect.

45 or 90 Degree with a Reflector

Image by Cillian Storm

This setup is the exact same as the previous, with the inclusion of a new piece of equipment, a reflector. The reflector is placed on the opposite side of your subject, and directly in front of your light. The light that wraps around the subject, or misses them entirely, is diffused and reflected on the back of the subject, creating a softer exposure. In this way the reflector acts as a fill light. Images shot in this way will not be as dark and contrasted as the previous manner, but will still maintain a much darker contrast ratio.

From Behind

Image by spunkinator

This type of lighting is commonly used to create a much more brooding, or sinister look, by creating an intense silhouette of the subject, only exposing a small area outlining the subject. The best way to achieve this look is with the help of two strong lights, but it can be done with as little as one. Place both lights behind the subject at 45 degree angles on opposite sides. An addition trick to really enhance images shot like this is to actually include the lights in the image. This will create a lens flare look behind the subject, and really enhances the visage of a foreboding or sinister subject.

Kyle Miller has been a professional wedding and portrait photographer for several years. He shares his knowledge on his blog Photography Tips where you can also download his eBook 7 Essential Photography Tips for free.

Even though I have talked about this setup several times, recent events have prompted me to bring it up again and for good reason. As I am writing this, I am on a cruise ship sailing towards St. Maarten. One thing about cruise ships is that they make a good chunk of money selling photos. They take photos of you getting other ship, arriving at ports, at dinner, and they have multiple static setups with different backgrounds. When you are needing to pound out hundreds of portraits per day you can’t be spending a lot of time messing with your lighting. So what lighting setup do they use for quick, simple, and consistent lighting? The standard three light portrait setup of course.

Let’s dissect their secret recipe and see how they are using the three light setup so effectively.

To the camera right is a 32″ softbox as the key light. On the camera left is a 42″ umbrella as a fill light, and then high right off the background stands is a third light with a honeycomb grid as a hair light. Why does this setup work so well that they use it exclusively at every one of their stations? The answer is simple, its because it works. The softbox provides some nice directional lighting while the umbrella softens the shadows. The high gridded light adds a splash of hairlight which looks natural for both indoor and outdoor scenes.

While the cruise ship is using 500 watt second monolights, a Westcott Apollo, and a Westcott umbrella, you can put together the same setup for much less. Let’s break down all of the pieces and see what it would cost to replicate this tried and true lighting setup.

(3) Blackbelt Lighting BB560 speedlites @ $95 each
(1) Blackbelt Lighting. Stealth 32″ Softbox @ $79
(1) Blackbelt Lighting 10′ x 12′ backdrop stand @ $85
(1) Blackbelt Lighting Ninja Speedlite Triggers @ $65
(1) Blackbelt Lighting swivel mount @ $15
(1) Shoot through umbrella @ $10
(1) Blackbelt Lighting Samurai Light stand kit @ $65
(1) Bogen Superclamp
(1) Expoimaging Rouge Grid
Printed backgrounds from Backdrop Outlet

All in you are going to be between $700 – $900 depending on the background you get. While this may sound like a lot of money, you would easily spend over $2,500 for big name products. The beauty of a setup like this is that it is a very versatile lighting kit that makes for a great starting point for building upon as your skill increases.

Why Was This Difficult

Generally this may not have been too hard of a shoot but if we look at the first test image here we can see that the label is very transparent and that is wraps around the bottle leaving about a 1″ gap in the back. The gap lets in more light than the rest of the label causing the front of the label to wash out. We can also see the lettering on the back of the bottle which is very distracting to the overall image.

Lighting this wasn’t overly complicated, there were three Blackbelt Lighting BB560 speedlites on either side at about a 45 degree angle with no modifiers. The background was lit with a third BB560 that was flagged to cut down on some of the light from the flash hitting the bottle directly.

The lighting worked, the background went solid white, the colors were accurate, but that label was just going to work.

I Don’t Suck At Photoshop

I made a number of different attempts including cutting the label down and putting it on a new bottle but the label just wasn’t popping the way we wanted it to. It was time to take some more drastic moves in order to make this shot work.

First off we shot a clear bottle of water. Getting this shot would give us a properly lit bottle with enough reference lighting on it to enable us to composite in the label.

Next we used a flatbed scanner to scan the label in. This gave us a nice vibrant label to work with and we can always adjust the transparency of it in Photoshop.

With the label composited in, using a small amount of Warp to get it all lined up on the bottle, we now have an image that looks very flat and pretty well obviously composited. In order to fix this, we need to bring back the lighting from the clear bottle shot and maybe adjust the opacity of the label layer slightly.

Now we are getting somewhere. The extended lines of the lighting help to give it back a rounded look and since they match the clear bottle light lines, we know it should look pretty natural.

The Finishing Touches

Finally, the client wanted a shadow underneath the bottle to make it look like it was floating. To accomplish this I copied the bottom of the bottle, flipped it vertically, and then applied a Gaussian Blur to it.

Summary

This should go to show you that a good photographer needs more skills than just being to setup lighting and press the shutter. A good knowledge of Photoshop is essential in order to get the desired result. While I am not saying that you can always just “fix it in Photoshop”, its just that there are times when there really are no options and you need to pull out the stops and do whatever it takes in order to make the shot come out as you intended.

During this presentation you will learn how to balance lighting, setup hair lights, rim lights, background lights, and more while maintaining a proper exposure.If you are wanting to move into multiple lighting setups, this will be a great primer to get you going and learn how to use different modifiers such as softboxes, snoots, grids, and other accessories to really control your lighting.

Event Details

OC Photo Club (website)
Tuesday, Oct 11th 6-9pm
Irvine Heritage Park Library
14361 Yale Avenue
Irvine, CA 92604-1901

LA SmugMug (Meetup Group)
Thursday, October 20, 2011, 6:30 PM
Beverly Garland Holiday Inn
4222 Vineland Avenue, North Hollywood, CA

• White balance
• Light quality
• Exposure
• Aperture
• Shutter
• ISO
• Metering
• Equipment

All About Lighting is available for immediate download for only $4.99. For more information, please visit http://learningphotographyebooks.com

One of my favorite features of speedlites is High Speed Sync. This feature allows you to work with speedlites way past your camera’s normal sync speed (1/160 – 1/250 depending on camera). By shooting at very fast shutter speeds you can dramatically cut ambient light and can shoot what looks like night-time shots at high noon. Sounds incredible huh? Guess what, using it is as simple as pressing a single button.

In this post we are going to look at how to control exposure by manipulating the different settings on the camera such as ISO, Shutter, and Aperture.

What is exposure?
Exposure is, simply put, the amount of light that enters the camera and hits the sensor. The more light that hits the sensor the brighter the scene will be. If too much light hits the sensor, parts of the image will be “blown out”, this is considered to be over-exposed. A scene that is too dark and the details in the shadows are lost is under-exposed.

Under Exposed Image

Over Exposed Image

How to control exposure
There are three camera settings that control the exposure, these are:

• ISO speed
  • Controls the sensitivity of the sensor to light
• Aperture
  • The aperture controls the size of the diaphragm over the shutter, the smaller the aperture number the more open the diaphragm is, allowing more light to enter.
• Shutter speed
  • The slower the shutter, the more light will enter the camera

We will look at these settings in more detail to see exactly how the play together later. First, you need to start thinking of light in terms of “stops”. A stop is not an exact amount of light, it is a relative amount of light, each stop of light doubles the amount of light. For example, if we have a single lightbulb as our base light source, adding a second lightbulb (doubling the amount of light) increases the light by one stop. If want to increase the light by another stop we have to again double the amount of light to four lightbulbs. Understanding this is going to be the key to understanding how the different camera settings affect our exposure.

ISO Speed
As already mentioned, the ISO speed will control the sensitivity of the sensor. The lower the number, the less sensitive. For low light you will need a higher ISO number to make the sensor more sensitive. The downside is that the higher ISO the more digital noise (grainy look) will show up which will degrade the image quality.

Each time you double the ISO speed you increase the exposure by one stop, so ISO 400 will give you one stop of exposure more than ISO 200, and ISO 800 will give you one more stop over ISO 400 etc. Some cameras have some in-between ISO settings to provide a finer level of control.

You currently see high ISO performance as being a major selling point for new DSLR cameras as this allows them to shoot in lower light conditions with less noise.

Pro: Higher ISO allows shooting in lower light conditions
Con: Higher ISO settings result in more digital noise

High ISO Digital Noise

Aperture
Aperture is a little confusing because the larger the number the smaller the size. The largest aperture lenses are f/1.0 although most of the good prime lenses start at f/1.4 – f/1.6. Zoom lenses typically are not available that can do more than f/2.8.

So besides letting in more or less light, what does the aperture actually do? The more light that comes in at a particular shutter speed, the shallower the depth of field. If you want more depth of field you use a smaller (higher number) aperture setting.

Pro: Larger apertures allow more light in and thus allow shooting in lower light conditions
Con: Larger apertures reduce the depth of field which may not be desirable

Shallow Depth of Field

Deep Depth of Field

Shutter
The faster the shutter, the less light enters the camera, the slower the shutter the more light will enter the camera. If you are shooting in low light conditions, you may need a slower shutter speed, however, too slow of a shutter and you can introduce blur from the subject moving, accidental camera movement, or both.

Sometimes a little blur can help portray movement and action, a sharp bike rider with a blurred background will make the rider look like he/she is moving fast where a tack sharp image shows no motion at all and would make the same image look boring. While blurring on other images can ruin the image.

Pro: The right shutter speed can really make an image more dramatic. Fast shutter speeds can freeze action, slow shutter speeds can add a dramatic motion blur.
Con: Fast shutter speeds require lots of light, slow shutter speeds are harder to control

Fast Shutter Speed

Slow Shutter Speed

Summary
By understanding the three variables that control exposure along with the pros and cons of each one, you will be able to better control the different options that are available to you.

The Math
Feel free to skip right over this part, this is the boring part, it’s so boring I thought of putting a picture of an artistic nude shot next to it just to keep people awake. Ok, so here we go. Before you can calculate the depth of field you first must know the circle of confusion for your camera.

Don’t get too lost on me yet, for most of us digital SLR users this is  one of two numbers. For most of us with APS/APS-C sized sensors this number is 0.019948, for full frame sensors (the big Pro cameras) and 35mm film the number is 0.02501. This represents the sensor size. Again, don’t get all lost on me yet, just remember the number for your particular camera.

The first thing we need to calculate is the Hyperfocal distance, for this calculation you will need to know the focal length of your lens. the aperture you are using and the CoC (circle of confusion) for your camera.

The math to calculate the hyperfocal distance is as follows:

HyperFocal = (FocalLength * FocalLength) / (Aperture * CoC)

Thus, the Hyperfocal distance of a 50mm lens at f/2.8 on an APS sensor (Canon 30D in my case) is 146.85 feet.

Next we need to calculate the near point which is the closest distance that will be in focus given the distance bdetween the camera and the subject. The math here (yes, it gets SO much worse) is as follows:

NearPoint = (HyperFocal * distance) / (HyperFocal + (distance – focal))

This is somewhat  complicated because the focal length is in millimeters and those of us in the US are better with feet and inches still so if you want the end value to be in feet you have to do some more conversions. If we are using the same 50mm lens, at f/2.8 on an APS sensor at a distance of 10 feet (3048mm) then our HyperFocal distance is 146.85 feet (44,749.23mm), giving us a near focus point of 9.37 feet (2,856.66mm). Are we following along still? Did I lose anyone?

Alrighty then, let’s now calculate the far point distance, this is almost the same as before but using slightly different math, so here we go.

FarPoint = (HyperFocal * distance) / (HyperFocal – (distance – focal))

Without changing our values that we used before, we now know that are rear point is 10.72 feet (3,266.81mm). Take note that the near point is actually closer to you than the subject is, typically the focus is 1/3 in front of the subject and 2/3 behind the subject.

The final step is to calculate the total amount of focal distance. This is one I can even do without a calculator, we simply subtract the far point distance from the near point distance.

TotalDof = FarPoint – NearPoint

Giving our example so far we have a total depth of field of 1.35 feet (411.48mm).

Let’s get practical
Why on earth would you want to know this? The simple answer is you may not, nor may you ever care to know it. When shooting portraits, weddings, events, and pretty much anything else it really isn’t going to matter much. However, if you are the type that wants to set up a shot and have it be EXACTLY what you want, there is simply no other way to know what the camera is going to do. This is important in macro, food, and product photography. By knowing exactly where you focus points begin and end you can more accurately design and execute precise shots.

Ok, how about the easy way?
This is kind of like taking a digital photography class and having to spend a semester cooking your own B&W film, its good to know the theory before taking on the practical application. So how can we do this easier than having to pull a scientific calculator each time you want to set up a shot?

• f/Calc Spreadsheet (download) – This is an Excel spreadsheet that will do all the math for you. This was development by me and is free to use.
• f/Calc Windows and Palm App (website) If you want a simple but powerful Windows or Palm based application, f/Calc does Field of View, Angle of View, Magnification, Spot Meter, f Numbers, Depth of Field and Hyperfocal distance
• PhotoCalc for iPhone (website) – Not only does it do everything for DoF, it also incorporates a sunrise/sunset function, flash exposure calculator, and Exposure Reciprocation calculator.
• CamCalc (Market) Android App for Depth of field, field of view, focal length equivalents, flash calculations, color temp. conversion, miniatures, and sunrise, sunset.
• PhoforPho (Market) Android App with Exposure calculator, Hyperfocal calculator, DoF calculator, Timer, and Exposure compensation calculation for multiple exposures.

I know this has been a doozy of an article to read through just to get to some free or almost free (PhotoCalc is $2.99) tools to make it dead simple to do these calculation. Hopefully this will help you perfect your images help you to use depth of field to its full extent.

1. Light travels in constant directions

Have you even shot pool? If so, you have had an extremely practical lesson in how lighting works. If you aim a light straight, it goes straight, if you aim it into a wall, it bounces off in the opposite direction at the same angle. Before the comments fill up talking about diffusion, refraction, etc, the goal of this is to make the concept easy to understand here.

By understanding this basic concept you can control the angle that light is hitting your subject. This can be used to create soft or harder lighting, change the mood of an image, and create different lighting styles. Again, there is more to this with sub-topics on light spread and reflectivity but the number of variables involved are almost infinite. For the sake of keeping it understandable, you need to keep the concept simple. Light does not follow general guidelines, nor does it follow suggestions, it absolutely follows the laws of physics. Getting a handle of how light functions will give you many, many more options.

2. The Inverse Square Law

“The inverse-square law is a law stating that a specified physical quantity or strength is inversely proportional to the square of the distance from the source of that physical quantity.” – Wikipedia

Pretty heady stuff huh? Let’s break this down so it is as simple as possible to understand, if you double the distance between the light source and the subject, you need four times the amount of light. Ok, simple if you are always doubling the distance, but what if you want to do it fairly quickly? If we need to calculate the light falloff we can take the distance, multiply it by itself, and take the inverse of that number. So if we take a distance of 2 feet, multiply it by itself, we get 4, and take the inverse which would be 1/4.

Putting it Together

Keep in mind that these two things work together in that when you bounce light off something you are adding to the distance between the light source and the subject, therefore you need more light. If the angle causes you to double the distance, you need four times as much light. Often the easiest way to increase or decrease the power of the light source is simply to move it towards or away from the subject.

If you are trying to learn how to shoot with manual flash, understanding these core principles will put you well on your way.

To put it simply, on a bright sunny day, set your camera on f/16 and set the shutter speed to the reciprocal of the ISO speed. So if you are set to ISO 200, then set your shutter speed to 1/200^th. If you want a faster shutter speed then increase the shutter speed and set the ISO to match. For example, if you want to shoot at 1/400^th of a second, set the ISO to 400.

f/16 ISO 200 - Shutter 1/200th

f/16 ISO 400 - Shutter 1/400th

To compensate for overcast conditions, simply adjust the f-stop to a more open setting like f/11, and keep adjusting as needed. A good chart of recommended settings is in the following table:

By utilizing the sunny 16 rule you will help ensure that you get the right settings dialed in quickly and easily. It’s always nice to have some frame of reference when getting started. When all else fails and you don’t know what settings to start with, remember the sunny 16 rule and adjust as needed.

We have arranged to use a small studio in Anaheim this weekend for the first workshop, Portrait Lighting.

For instructors, we have myself, Kerry Garrison and Brandon Cruz from Lumodi Beauty Dishes.

All of the lighting gear will be provided, you just need to bring your camera!

When: Saturday July 2nd, 12:30pm – 1:30pm right near Anaheim Stadium
Registration: http://www.eventbrite.com/event/1861051455

Workshop sponsored by Blackbelt Lighting Products & Lumodi

The two most common issues are not being able to get the background color bright enough or the background color gets too washed out. Let’s get right into it and see how we can improve our technique and use colored gels for our backgrounds more effectively.

The Setup

The setup is very important to make sure everything goes smooth. First off, I prefer using a black seamless paper for the background. Black paper will result in more vibrant colors where a white background will make the colors look duller.

Secondly, you need to make sure that your lights that are lighting your subject are not hitting the background which will cause the colors to wash out as well. The two ways to do this is to use more side-lighting and to increase the distance between the subject and the background. The other advantage of increasing the distance between the subject and the background is that you will be less likely to get color spill on your subject from the background light.

Getting The Exposure

Probably the biggest mistake people make when learning to use gels is to get the lighting for the subject all setup and then try to dial in the background. If you do this in the opposite direction you will get where you want much faster. The following are the three images I took in order to get my light dialed in.

Initial Background Shot

In the initial background shot you can see that I had no light turned on the subject. The background wasn’t quite bright enough so I needed to power up the background flash another stop.

Subject Lighting Test

in the first lighting test with the subject light, the background is nice and bright from turning the power up, but the subject is still underexposed by about a stop so the main flash needed to be powered up more.

Final Shot

In the final shot we have enough light on the subject which is coming from about a 45 degree angle to camera-right and using a Large Rouge Flashbender to flag the light from hitting the background giving me exactly what I needed to get the shot.

The final settings are as follows:

Main Flash: 1/8 Power
Background Flash: 1/8 Power
ISO: 200
Aperture: f/5.6
Shutter: 1/250th

Be sure and experiment with gels and see what you can come up with and be sure and share your images with us.

To really understand the difference, we need to look at how the light comes out from both types of devices so we can decided when best to use which modifier.

Side by Side Comparison

It shouldn’t take too much effort to understand how an umbrella should throw light out. The spherical shape sends light in all directions. This is great for providing a large soft light source that is easy to control and manage and provides a lot of latitude in how it is positioned.

A softbox controls light a lot more keeping it from spreading out so much. Because the beam of light is a lot narrower, the light fall off is much faster so positioning is more important.

Test Setup

For our test setup we used Supermodel Venus Garrison as our model and setup an umbrella and softbox in the same positions. Below are shots of the actual setups.

Umbrella Setup

Softbox Setup

The umbrella is a standard 32″ shoot-thru umbrella while the softbox is a 24″ x 24″ Ez Softbox from Blackbelt Lighting (my own lighting products company). In both cases, a YN560 speedlite was used on 1/32 power. The camera settings were ISO 200, 1/160th second shutter, and f/5.6.

The Results

Looking at the results you should be able to easily see the difference. With the larger apparent size of the umbrella, the light wraps around the face more and creates a softer transition between the highlights and shadows. The softbox provides much more directional light with a faster fall-off. Also notice that the background is darker with the softbox because much less light is hitting it from the softbox.

Umbrella

Softbox

Choosing the right modifier

Umbrellas are great for beginners since they are easier to use because of their forgiving nature. As you progress and want to create more dramatic images, being able to have more control over your light will become more and more important. Moving up into softboxes will help you to be able to create the look you want.

While the difference in these two images may seem subtle at first, the differences actually fairly dramatic. The umbrella image has some light on the shadow side while the softbox image goes almost completely dark at some points. Softer, light such as the umbrella shot usually make women look better while men are often shot in harsher, more dramatic light. If you are just getting started, I usually recommend starting with umbrellas and moving to softboxes as you want to create more dramatic and edgy images.

Getting Started
Most cameras, including newer point and shoot cameras will let you shoot in full manual mode. The problem with going manual is that if you don’t have your settings “just right” you can end up with an image that is too dark or too light. Without a basic understanding of the different settings, it can be difficult to get a good shot. However, with a basic understanding of the three variables even the most newbie photographer can learn to take better pictures by getting away from the automatic settings.

ISO Speed
The ISO speed is equivalent to the ISO speed we used to use on film cameras, this describes the light sensitivity of the film that is being used. The higher the ISO speed, the more light the sensor can pick up. For example, if your camera is set to ISO 800 you can take a well exposed image in a darker room than you could with ISO 100. By definition you would always want to run your camera in the highest ISO speed possible. While this may sound like a good idea, the downside is that the higher the ISO speed, the more “noise” will be introduced to the image, thus degrading the image quality. In most cases, you will get excellent results by using ISO 200-400 outdoors and 400-800 indoors. This does not take into account your camera model as some cameras do better than others at the higher ISO settings.

Shutter Speed

Medium Shutter Speed to Show Movement

The shutter speed is one of the easiest settings to understand as it simply means how fast the shutter opens and closes when you press the shutter button. The faster the shutter speed the better the camera will freeze the action of an event. This setting is represented in seconds, a fast shutter speed would be something like 1/2000^th of a second. A long shutter speed such as 1/30^th of a second or slower can result in blurry images if you don’t use a tripod. Like the other settings, the shutter speed also affects the amount of light that hits the sensor. The faster the shutter speed, the less light that comes into the camera. So while a fast shutter speed can freeze action, you need more and more light in order to prevent getting a dark picture the faster you set the shutter. When you cant get a bright enough image, you will need to slow down the shutter speed. In some cases you may want to get a motion blur such as a waterfall or freeway traffic, these shots require a very long shutter speed.

Shallow Depth of Field

Aperture
Understanding aperture is probably the most difficult setting for most people to grasp, because of this we wrote an entire article about it. The aperture is an adjustable opening in the lens that controls the amount of light that can enter the camera. The aperture setting is expressed in f stops with the largest opening having a smaller number so a wide open aperture is going to have an f-stop of around f/1.4. The aperture setting can have a big effect on the depth of field which allows one part of the image to be in focus and the rest of it being blurry which helps to highlight the subject of the photograph.

Starting Points
Without having a light meter or lots of experience how do you know what settings to start with? The way I learned was to set my ISO to what I wanted, typically 200-400 ISO outdoors and 400-800 ISO indoors, and put the camera in P mode and press the shutter half way down. Inside the viewfinder the camera will show the settings it will use to take the picture. Then you can put the camera into Manual mode and adjust the settings to match. After some practice you should be able to set some basic settings fairly close to what they need to be, then, by pressing the shutter half way down the camera will autofocus and then take a meter reading which should show in the viewfinder or on a display depending on your camera. Then you can adjust shutter speed or aperture to change the exposure to get it where you need.

Using the Histogram
If your camera will display a histogram after shooting an image, then you need to take advantage of this feature. By looking at the histogram of an image you can quickly tell if the image was properly exposed or not. With a digital SLR camera you want the histogram to be a nice curve with the curve being just to the right of center like our example one here. This is actually saying that the image is just slightly overexposed. With film, if you overexposed the image, you would lose detail so it was better to slightly underexpose. With digital, shadows will lose detail so it is better to slightly overexpose.

Practice Practice Practice
There is nothing that will beat getting out and getting behind the camera and learning how to use it well. If you plan on making photography a serious hobby or more, you will need to learn how to use manual mode for those times when the automatic or program mode settings just won’t cut it or for when you want to create an effect that you just can’t get any other way.

Get out and practice and be sure to post some comments and post some pictures to our Flickr group.

Before I just jump in and explain what he was doing wrong, let’s break down the situation and explain why this shouldn’t have been a problem.

The room wasn’t very bright and you needed to shoot at around f/5.6 to keep multiple people in focus. Using this aperture and a reasonable shutter speed of 1/60th required an ISO setting (without flash) of 6,400. A Canon 580 ex II zoomed to 105mm at full power easily has a working distance of 150 feet so I was able to get good exposure at a much lower ISO at only 1/4 power. I didn’t even bother to use manual flash settings as eTTL was doing just fine.

Given the ability of the equipment, why was it that the other guy was having problems even though he actually had a better camera? Well, the other guy had something I didn’t, he had a Sto-fen diffuser on his flash. But wait, isn’t a Sto-fen supposed to improve your flash? Why was this killing the shot?

Let’s break this down. At full power he should have had 150 feet of flash range. Just having the Sto-fen on the flash will cut the total light output by two stops (Understanding Light Stops), add to that the diffusion that is throwing the light in every possible direction and you are probably losing 60-70% of your forward facing light. If we start with a practical 150’ working range and cut our light by two stops, we cut our working distance down to 37.5’ which would still be in range of having a good exposure. Now let’s be really conservative here since I don’t have a Sto-fen here to test and say that its really only wasting 30% of the light and 70% is still going forward, 70% of 37.5’ is 26..25’ which is too short of a working distance to light a subject 40 feet away. All he had to do was remove the Sto-fen diffuser from his flash and he would have got instant great results.

I am not telling this story to mock him for using a Sto-fen, but you have to understand what different modifiers will do to your light and how it will affect your working distance. The following day I saw people at the final graduation event sitting in bleachers close to 350’ away from the subjects and having their flash turned on. Not on the best of days with the wind behind you and finding a four leaf clover will your flash give you an exposure at 350 feet…this is physics, it just aint gonna happen.

This is why you need to learn how your equipment works, try your different modifiers, figure out what the longest working distance you have is and even write it on the device. If you decide a Sto-fen device is best used at 20 feet or less, write a “20-“ on it so there is no second guessing when you really need something to work.

Again, I am not knocking the Sto-fen diffuser here, I am simply saying that there is a time and a place for almost any modifier and knowing that some devices will give you a shorter working distance is absolutely critical to making sure you are setup properly.

Any time you get a new light modifier you need to really practice with it and figure out its strengths and weaknesses, and they ALL have weaknesses. Some are better for individuals, some are better for groups, some are better for soft lighting, some are better for dramatic lighting. The point is, they are all different and don’t assume that you can take one specific modifier, put it on your flash, and never have to worry about it again..

https://www.fuzemeeting.com/fuze/42b310f1/13466693

The Image

The shot is an evening shot taken after sunset so there is no visible sun and almost no ambient light. The subject is a girl so she needed to be lit properly which meant artificial light. I also wanted the water to be sharp and not have any motion blur in it.

Making The Image

The light from the sun was almost non-existent so any normal exposure that would freeze the water in mid-air would have resulted in a pitch black background. In order to get any color at all out of the background the shutter speed needed to be 1/15th of a second, now that is one slow shutter! But with that slow of a shutter, why isn’t the water all blurry (not to mention the subject since I shot it hand-held, not with a tripod)? Since there was almost no ambient light, what freezes the subject and the water is not the shutter but the flash. The speed of the flash is about 1/20,000th of a second so it is this short burst of light that, in effect, acts like a fast shutter speed. The flash was a Canon 580 EX II with a 14″ Lumodi Beauty Dish mounted on it about 3′ away from the subject.

The aperture was set at f/8 to provide a wide field of view for all the water as well as the subject and the ISO was at 200 so keep digital noise to a minimum. The flash was fired using a PocketWizard MiniTT1 Transmitter with AC3 ZoneController mounted on a Canon 50D and a PocketWizard FlexTT5 Transceiver on the flash. This combination allowed me to take a few shots and adjust the flash power right from the camera while an assistant held the flash into position.

ISO 200 - f/8 - 1/15th - Handheld

While you may not think you can get a sharp image with a long shutter speed, if flash is the only light source then you can use a very long shutter speed and the light from the flash will be so brief that it will effectively freeze the objects in the frame. This is the same technique for freezing bullets in mid-air and other fast moving objects.

What you will need

To start off with, you should get a set of gels. The set I recommend is the Strobist Gell Collection since it contains a large number of gels of different colors that are pre-cut to fit most speedlites. Second, you will need some way to attach the gels to your speedlite. I generally use the Lumiquest Gel Holder or just some basic gaffers tape.

Once you have the gel attached to your flash, you are ready to get going.

The Lighting Setup

This is where people often get hung up because a poor setup can cause light to spill on to the subject or the main lights can wash out the color effect. Ideally you want 3 feet or more between the background and the subject to prevent spill and you want the main lights to be angled enough to not spill onto the background to wash it out. Later on we will look at some actual setups to show how they are done.

In the first image, we saw just a plain black background which was done with black seamless paper and the lighting was coming from an side angle to prevent hitting the background. In this image we have a single speedlite one 1/2 power with a purple gel shooting up from behind the subject. This is a very simple yet effective setup since it used a single light source. To help the light spread out, the flash zoom was set to 24mm to make it as wide as possible (without a modifier).

If the flash isn’t set high enough you won’t get much of an effect. If it is set too high, the color will wash out and you will get white.

If you want to take it a step further add a second light with the same or a different color. In this case I changed the purple to a red and added a second flash with a blue gel. Take notice that where the colors overlap they actually mix and become purple. If you are trying to use two different colors, you will need to keep this mixing effect in mind and might have to take steps to flag the two flashes to keep the colors from mixing.

Another thing to try is to use multiple gels on a single flash by covering half of the flash with one color and the other half with a different color. For a recent benefit shoot I tried this with pretty decent results.

Again you can see the distinct blue and red colors but a purple where the colors mixed. I am going to continue to play with this technique and see what I can get with possibly using a vertical card in between the two gels to try to keep the colors separated more.

Even though the colors mixed more than I would have liked, the overall effect was very nice although I later wished I had used a white or black background as the gray seamless was a little too drab where the color wasn’t hitting it.

The following is an image from the shoot showing how the images turned out.

What I really wanted to achieve was a red, white, and blue effect so back in the studio I start experimenting to see what I could come up with. What I finally came up with was a three light setup with bare flashes with the gels on the bottom and an non-gelled flash higher up to provide a white splash. If I used just a bare flash for the white, the spot was too big and washed out the other colors so I added a Rouge 3-In-1 Grid to keep the light contained.

The first test was alright but the white spot was too small.

To solve this, I took the small grid out of the Rouge Grid so I would get a little larger of a spot and got the resulting image.

There I had it, a red, white, and blue background effect. The next image is a shot of the actual lighting setup so you can see how it was all put together.

Hopefully this will inspire you to get creative with using gels for different background effects. It just takes a little patience and practice to get it all dialed in right, but once you do, the possibilities are endless.

For more information about the show, please check out http://www.bargaincamerashows.com/bcs_sd_map.htm

What is the AC3?

The PocketWizard AC3 ZoneController is an add-on to the ControlTL system that brings a new level of control to your lighting setups. Before we get to deep into this we need to take a step back and look at what the Canon system delivers so we can see how the AC3 ZoneController enhances the original functionality.

While I am not going to go deep into detail here as that would require an entire book, let’s break it down into two main types of control the Canon system has.

• eTTL Ratio Control
  With eTTL Ratio mode you have an A and a B channel that will provide automatic metering through the camera. You can provide more power to one channel while taking power away from the other. This is a very basic ratio control and the only override you have is a general flash exposure compensation. You can then add to that a C channel which operates independently and has its own power adjustment. The downside with this setup is that a simple ratio control sometimes isn’t enough.
• Manual Control
  In manual control you can simply adjust each of the three channels independently. This is generally my favorite mode but the main problem is still the line-of-site issue and that pesky third channel is often now in a good position to get a signal from the main flash.

While the PocketWizard ControlTL system solves the line-of-site issue, the problem has always been that if you still want all of the functionality of the Canon wireless system, you still had to put a 580 EX/EX II flash on top of the MiniTT1 module to enable the full range of controls. What I really wanted was to be able to use ALL of my speedlites off-camera and not have to sacrifice one just for the controls.

This is exactly where the AC3 ZoneController comes in. The AC3 provides you with three different channels to work work (make me now wish for 4 or 5 though) that can be managed in three different ways:

• Off
  Should be self-explanatory here, if not, this allows you to simply turn off each channel by itself.
• Auto
  Uses the Canon TTL system for automatic metering while provide a simple override dial giving you plus or minus three stops.
• Manual
  Provides manual control over each channel from 1/64th power to Full Power.

Using the AC3 ZoneController

I certainly have to admit that I don’t miss having to have a complete speedlite on top of the camera to give me the control of my lighting since this give me one more light at my disposal to use to light the scene. I also should admit that I shoot the vast majority of my work with manual flash. I find it to be more reliable and consistent than using eTTL. The ability to turn channels on/off and adjust the power without having to walk over to where the speedlite is can come in very handy.

For most portrait setups, the Automatic mode will work the vast majority of the time, its usually only when the subject has odd-reflective properties do things have a tendency to get a little wonky. Still, I shoot my camera in manual, and I generally keep my flash in manual.

One of the biggest advantages is the time savings in dialing in your lighting output power. I can start with all of the lights off to adjust for the ambient. Then turn on the accent light to get it’s power set, add the fill light, and then the key light and everything comes together very quickly without multiple trips to each light or having to have a VOLS handy.

Keep in mind that you are paying for this convenience. A three light ControlTL power system would consist of the following components:

• MiniTT1 Transmitter $199
• Three FlexTT5 Transceivers @  $229 each
• AC3 ZoneController $79

So a three light setup will set you back $955.00. While a cheap, manually only trigger kit will run less than $100. While this does sound like a staggering difference in cost, and it certainly is up front, you have to consider the time factor of being able to control everything from your camera. You simply do not always have the luxury of time to run around adjusting lights to get exactly what you want. The time factor can certainly pay for itself fairly quickly since you can dial in all three zones without having to waste your own time or have an assistant.

Putting the AC3 ZoneController to Use

The following sequence of images shows exactly what I described above from starting with ambient light and adding the three lights in order.

Get Exposure for Ambient Light	Setup Background Light
Add Fill Light	Add Key Light

The beauty of the PocketWizard AC3 ZoneController is that turning lights on and off and adjusting their power is all done without have to step away from the camera. If your lights are pointed in the right direction it should only take a few shots to get everything you need dialed in quickly and accurately.

If you have already made the investment in the PocketWizard ControlTL system, plunking down another $79 in order to have the AC3’s level of control should be a complete no-brainer.

Pockwizard Website: http://www.pocketwizard.com/
PocketWizard Blog: http://blog.pocketwizard.com/

Amazon Links

• MiniTTL Transmitter
• FlexTT5 Transceivers
• AC3 ZoneController

I personally love using grids to help control light spread. Grids are great for hair lights, accent lights, and can even be used as a primary light for some really dramatic lighting. The downside to grids is that you basically get what you get. Even the most popular companies that make grids make them in different styles so you can get different amounts of light spreads. If you want any variety you have to buy multiple grids. ExpoImaging has attempted to solve this problem with the 3-In-1 Grid by providing three different styles in order to get different light spreads from a single piece of equipment. How does it work? Well, you need to read the complete article for details.

How Does it Work?

The Rogue 3-In-1 Grid consists of four pieces that work together. First you have the sleeve that fits onto your speedlte, by itself it could actually be used as a small snoot. Next you have the outer bevel that fits onto the end of the sleeve. Then you have a 45Ëš screen and a 25Ëš screen. These screen can be used individually or stacked together to create a 16Ëš screen.

The smaller the grid angle, the smaller the beam size will be on the subject. Having three different angle degrees means you only have to buy one device that can provide you with multiple lighting styles. Since the sleeve is very similar to the FlashBenders, it lays flat and the complete package isn’t any larger than other grids on the market. This is a very welcome design feature for people who have a limited amount of space in the camera bag.

16Ëš Grid

25Ëš Grid

45Ëš Grid

Using The Rogue 3-In-1 Grid

One of the more common used of a grid is to add an accent light such as a hair light. In this shot here, our model Venus is shown being light from camera-right with a beauty dish while the Rogue 3-In-1 Grid is used high and left to provide a hair light (ok, so in the case the word ‘hair’ is used rather loosely).

In this case we used the 16Ëš configuration, had we used a larger grid angle we could have lit the entire side of the face.

What I really like about the Rogue Grid is that it puts out a nice circular pattern. With almost all other honeycomb grids,  they create a more rectangular shape because of their design. Now sometimes that may be what you want, but generally I would prefer as round of a beam as possible.

Background Lights

Beyond hair and accent, another great use of grids is controlling light on backgrounds. Instead of attaching a Velcro strap, then attaching a Lumiquest FX, and then putting the Grid over that, I simply use the sleeve of the Grid to hold the Lumiquest FX in place and fire away.

To get this background shot the speedlite with the Grid and blue gel was positioned just below shoulder and pointed slightly up onto the background.

Summary

The Rogue 3-In-1 Grid hits the mark on a number of key areas. First off its three different grid sizes in one on top of a short snoot and even a nice size catch light card. Any product that is a true multi-tasker is much more welcome in my camera bag than a uni-tasker.  Secondly, it takes up very little space in my bag and since bag space is not infinite, the more functionality you can fit into the same amount of space, the better off you are.

At $49.95, its not the cheapest piece of gear but when you consider the versatility it really is quite a bargain. When you look at competing products that require you to buy multiple units along with attachment straps, the Rogue 3-In-1 is actually a cheaper, and more versatile solution.

If you want to get really creative with your lighting, the ExpoImaging Rogue 3-In-1 Grid should really be part of your lighting gear.

At a recent event I only had a few minutes to get whatever I was going to do setup and tested and I didn’t have anyone available to stand in for the speaker to test the lighting. While I would usually throw up a couple of YN560’s and some wireless flash triggers, the problem was I didn’t have either the time or a subject to help dial in the lighting. Sure I could have used a light meter but I also didn’t really know how things might change as the spotlights came on and I wanted to make sure things were going to work right.

For me, this would normally be a simple case of using the PocketWizard ControlTL system with the Zone Controller so I could change my lighting on the fly from wherever in the room I ended up. The reason I didn’t go with my regular Blackbelt Lighting triggers was simply a convenience factor so I could change the flash output remotely.

The second concern I had was where to put the lights to get good lighting on the speakers without blocking the view from the tables. While I had a good position and angle, using an umbrella would get in the way of some people’s view while also flashing the audience at the same time.

The solution had to have the following qualities:

• Small enough not to block the view from the side
• Big enough to provide a good light source
• Can’t be obnoxious to the audience
• Had to be able to adjust the power output remotely

While this isn’t a huge list of requirements, it does represent a unique challenge. How to you get something big enough to give a good light source but not be really visible from the audience? My solution was actually quite simple and required very little in additional equipment over two Canon 580 flashes.

The Lighting Setup

Let’s start with the actual lighting setup. The main light is a Canon 580 EX speedlite on a lightstand to camera right. The fill light is a Canon 580 EX II mounted on-camera. The 580 EX main light was switched to Slave mode on wireless group B with the body of the flash aimed back towards the audience.

The 580 EX II on the camera was in Master mode on Group A. With this setup, especially because the remote flash was in front of the Master light and aimed back to the on-camera flash’s position, this setup should work quite well without the need for a radio transmitter system.

While I would normally use the PocketWizard ControlTL system for this setup, except that the battery in the MiniTTL transmitter was dead, and since it is not a common battery, I had no means to replace it before the shoot. (The battery sells for about $12 at Radio Shack or $3.99 at Batteries Plus).

The Modifier

The choice of modifier here is what really pulled everything together. I used a Rogue Large FlashBender. The large size provides a nice size light source so the shadows wouldn’t be too harsh. The FlashBender also allowed me to fold down one side so that when the flash went off the audience didn’t really see it, so the flash going off wasn’t annoying to the audience.

Since the FlashBender is much smaller than an umbrella, it was basically hid behind the existing balloons so it wasn’t blocking the view from the audience on that side of the room.

The Results

Using only the eTTL Wireless System built into the Canon 580 EX/580 EX II flashes I had the ability to adjust lighting ratios between the main light and the fill light.

The FlashBender rounded out the solution by being “big enough†without being too big that it would block the view. The ability to fold the one side down to flag the flash from the audience kept the flash from bothering the audience.

In the end, we ended up with what looked like nice window light even though there were no windows in the room at all.

The flash ratio was generally 1:4 (B group 4x brighter than fill) and with the A being a bare flash firing right at the subject and the B light firing up through a modifier, this create a fairly nice directional light.

If I had to do anything differently, I would have brought in a larger lightstand so I could have got the flash higher to add a little down-angle to the shadows.

With all of the gear I have, this shoot really boiled down to the camera, two 580 EX/EX II flashes, a light stand, a swivel mount, and a simple light modifier. The end results look quite nice, certainly much nicer than just using an on-camera flash and blasting flat light on everyone.

This is exactly the case with the upcoming workshop that Dave Montizambert is going to be teaching in Temecula, Ca on May 15-16. Dave was a long time assistant of Dean Collins and presents his material in a very similar way which helps you learn quickly. Dave’s commercial clients include companies such as McDonalds, Motorola, Toyo Tires, Warner Brothers, Kodak, and many others.

If you want to learn what it takes to make compelling images that stand apart from the competition, then this is most certainly an excellent workshop to attend.

For more information, please check out: http://www.wix.com/sarahreid/lightingworkshop

Book Mention: How to Get Ideas – Jack Foster

Upcoming Workshop
http://photonortheast.com/

4 day fusion workshop
http://www.niagaraschool.com/

Be sure and check out Jason’s work at http://jasongroupp.com

Show Host

Kerry Garrison
http://kerrygarrison.com
Twitter / Facebook

Update: Jason has offered almost a 30% discount on the DVD using discount code “cameradojo”, this is a very limited time offer so take advantage of it this week!

What is it all about?

As you have seen here on CameraDojo time and time again, I am really big on off-camera lighting to help you make the best images possible. Shooting flash straight from your camera will get you rather flight and unflattering light while off-camera light provides more natural looking shadows to give your subjects depth and dimension.

One of the biggest issues is that people are intimidated with big studio lights, portability and power issues, and how to position them. Jason’s approach to lighting mirrors much of my own style with using inexpensive speedlites, cheap wireless triggers, and simple setups to provide professional quality lighting that is affordable for virtually everyone.

What do you get out of it?

“25†gets you 25 different lighting setups where Jason and his team go through the thought process, setup, and shooting of each situation. Jason then goes into Adobe Bridge and Photoshop to show you detailed lighting diagrams and analyzes the final image.

What really separates 25 from other lighting tutorials is that Jason doesn’t get bogged down into tons of different modifiers, in fact, all 25 shots are done without using any modifiers at all. The only exceptions to this are the use of a reflector and some neutral density filters, other than that Jason gets his shots using just the bare speedlite. Jason also does a great job of showing how to use the zoom function on the speedlites to act as a modifier to give narrow or wider beams of light.

The two hours of content on the DVD goes right from setup to setup without getting into theory or talking about classic portrait styles. Instead, 25 is more of a collection of lighting recipes that show you how to get amazing lighting with simple, easy-to-replicate setups. This is a refreshing difference than many of the products out there in that you can quickly find a few of your favorite lighting setups very quickly and instantly make them your go-to lighting setups.

Is 25 for you?

If you just want to take basic photos of people and are happy with the images you are getting then why spend any money on additional training? On the other hand, if you want to separate yourself from the massive hoard of photographers out there by adding dynamic and creative lighting to your images, then the cost is likely to be a very good investment.

As I said in the into, most of the DVDs I have looked at are generally not worth the money and since I am already a big proponent of off-camera lighting, the first few setups are fairly common but do get less experienced people up to speed quickly. As the setups progress, Jason shows some very unique setups that I had never thought of, one of my favorites being the Ghetto Ring Flash. While this simple ring flash effect creates an interesting effect, you do need to have a cooperative assistant that will gladly invade your personal space to assist in the lighting or a set of light stands if your assistant doesn’t care to be in close proximity to you.

While I rarely ever like most DVDs on the market, I found Jason’s 25 to be a refreshing change, loaded with great setups and unique styles, while Jason’s very approachable personality helps to bring everything together. At $150, 25 isn’t exactly an impulse purchase but it very well could be a valuable investment in helping you to master off-camera lighting.

Jason Groupp’s Website: http://jasongroupp.com/

Jason Groupp’s 25 Information Page: http://jasongroupp.com/25dvd/

Camera Features

First off many people think that all film cameras are probably very difficult to use and all manual. Newer film cameras like a Canon Rebel are just as easy to use as a digital SLR with all the same features like aperture priority, shutter priority, program mode, automatic mode, creative modes, auto-focus lenses, etc. Internal meters make getting your exposure quick and simple and really the only downside is the lack of an LCD on the back.

Older film cameras like the AE-1 lack many of those features. While the AE-1 does have an internal exposure meter, what the meter tells you is what aperture it thinks you should be at for the currently selected shutter speed. The general process for taking an image goes something like this:

1. Set your shutter speed where you think you want it
2. Look through viewfinder at scene and press shutter half-way
3. Find the suggested aperture setting in the meter
4. Look at lens and adjust aperture as needed
5. If you do not have enough aperture to get the shot, adjust shutter speed and go back to step 2
6. Look through viewfinder again and try to get a good focus (no autofocus here)
7. Press shutter
8. Crank film advance

Certainly a little different than how fast we can get a good shot with a modern DSLR.

Rolls 1 and 2

I started off with a roll of color film and a roll of Black and White film. I shot away for two weeks using the camera every so often until the film was used up. I rewound the film and dropped it off at the local lab. The next day I go in to get it and the entire roll was bad. Apparently I hadn’t loaded it right and there wasn’t a single image on either roll. Not to be put off, I grabbed another roll of film on the way out.

Roll 3

Roll 3 was a 36 exposure roll of color film and I made sure to load it right, click off a few frames and make sure the takeup reel was turning with each shot. To kill off the roll I pulled out the camera during a weekend drive-around shoot with my friend Chris Diset. On Monday I dropped off the roll back off at the lab and opted to only have a CD with the images instead of getting prints. The lab told me to come back at 4pm the following day for the images. Day 2, I head over to the lab at 4pm as instructed and get told that their developer machine has died so come back tomorrow. Day 3, I run back to the lab again and am told they had to replace the developer machine and the prints will be done tomorrow. Day 4, back to the lab and this time I get told that they sent the film out because their system was still not back up, but fortunately my film was now back…except that I had ordered a CD and their scanner was down. Day 5 I head back to the lab AGAIN and this time I get my CD of images finally. Back to the studio and load them into Adobe Lightroom.

Of the 36 images, I am pretty happy with 8 of them. Focus is certainly an issue. Its very hard to manually focus in low light and the dimmer shots certainly proved that point. Other images suffered from too short of a depth of field. Overall though, the shots I really wanted to get right did turn out good.

It helps to really know how to use your camera, understand exposure controls and know how shutter and aperture work together. The Canon AE-1 was a serious workhorse and many iconic images from the past were taken with it. The quality of the images is still excellent even if you need to take some extra time to take the shot.

We live in a world of instant gratification and shooting film most certainly does not give you that. Besides the time from shooting to getting the film to the lab, this last experience added four more days to process, really testing my patience.

Is 8 out of 36 a good ratio? Considering what I was shooting, I am going to say yes. Some of the “not keepers†were experiments with some of the lenses I had, so in a since they did turn out. On the next roll there will likely be no experiments and I will be focusing on making each image count.

Oh yes, there will be more rolls dropped off at the lab this year but not to prove a point to anyone, not to be able to call myself a film shooter, and not to be able to say that I can shoot film and other people can’t.  My renewed interest in film, especially on essentially what is a completely manual camera is much more about preserving the craft, continuing to hone my eye for exposure, and teaching myself to slow and make each shot count. At $6 for a roll of film and another $6 in developing each click of the shutter drains about 33 cents from your wallet. This can add up quickly and you certainly want your percentage of keepers to be as high as possible. By pulling out the film camera and having a real cost for each picture, it certainly puts much more value on each shot versus loading up a 16gb CF card and cranking out a few thousand pictures during the course of a wedding.

To Use or Not to Use

The next question is whether or not I will be using film at any weddings or other events this year and I think I actually might. Certainly not as my primary camera but I may drop a single roll at each wedding, engagement, or model shoot. If they turn out, then great, if I blow another roll then I am not out any important images.

Think You Can Do It?

If you don’t have a film camera than I am not going to suggest that you go drop some money on one. You can get a lot of the same experience with your digital camera. Try using some gaffers tape and covering up the LCD on the back on the camera. Bonus points for shooting only in manual mode, and double points for shooting with manual focus. The goal here is to really learn how your camera works and not rely on chimping the result on the back.

If you do experiment with this, please post your results and comment here. I would love to hear what you think of trying it out for a weekend.

With even just a single light you can create really nice portraits. All of the examples here were created with just a single light with the only change being the position of the subject’s face in relation to the light.

For some people, the shadows may be too harsh in which case adding a reflector to bounce some light back into the shadows will help brighten up the shadow side of the face.

With the light shooting through an umbrella and the umbrella positioned just above the subject’s head and angled down to point right at her eye, we get some nice directional lighting which is quite flattering.

In the second we turned the subject’s body away from the light and had her look almost directly into the light.  This gave us a little more light wrapping around her face while still giving a little directional light.

Because of the size of the light source and the closeness of it to the subject we still get plenty of light on her body while the directional light brings out the detail in the dress.

Because the light is higher than the subject’s head, we also get the advantage of lighting up the hair nicely.

In the next example, we look at the same scene with and without the use of a reflector.

Without Reflector

Gold Reflector to Camera Left

As you can see, even if you are on a budget and can’t afford a multiple light setup yet, you can still create great images with just a single flash and a adding a reflector greatly increases your versatility.

Start off with a simple setup and learn to use it to it’s full advantage before trying to complicate things with multiple light sources. You also don’t need a big studio either, all of these shots were shot in the exact same location which was no more than ten feet wide and deep.

To wrap this up, here are a couple more shots that were also done with just a single light.

Syl Arena

• Syl’s Blog: http://pixsylated.com/
• Speedliting.com
• OCFGear.com
• Speedliter’s Handbook

Show Host

Kerry Garrison

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This podcast is also available on iTunes.

There were five speedlites used on this setup with a mix of 580 EX, 580 EX II, and YN560′s all fired with Pocketwizard FlexTT5′s. To get the signs on the top light with minimal spill, they left and center one were fitted with Harbor Digital Quick Spots and the one on the right was fitted with a large Rouge Flashbender if a half roll to act as part snoot but also to spill some light on the side of the building. Two more speedlights were on the ground pointed inwards to light the area under roof area.

Lighting Setup

While we tried to use a longer exposure to try to pull in the stars, the problem was that too much shutter and we were getting light contamination from nearby street lights. All of the flashes were set to 1/4 power and the three pointing at the signs were also zoomed to 105mm while the ground lights were zoomed to 24mm.

24mm - ISO 400 â€

For more information about this image and to see the rest of the Photo Project 24 images, please visit http://photoproject24.com

The swivel mount included with the BlackBelt Lighting Kits solves both of these issues with a very deep V groove to prevent shorting and a clamp on the side to securely hold your gear. Instead of sliding your flash/trigger into the cold shoe and using the wheel on the device to get a friction fit, the Blackbelt swivel mount actually clamps your gear in place making it the most secure swivel mount available. The all-metal design ensures that it will last a long time as well.  Right now the Blackbelt swivel mount is available only with the Blackbelt Lighting Kits. If there is enough demand we can start selling them by themselves.

For more information, please visit http://blackbeltlighting.com

This is one of those times when things just didn’t work right immediately. We tried to get some star trails…didn’t look good. We tried to light paint the hill behind us, didn’t work. We tried to get headlight trails from the road, but it was so dark you couldn’t see the road. So…time to light the bushes around us. We tried front lighting, side lighting, gels, and nothing was coming together. We then came up with the idea to backlight it and see what we would get.

We mounted a speedlite on a lightstand about 30 feet away with a PocketWizard TT5 and set it on about 1/4 power.   The shutter was at 1/40th but since it was so dark you couldn’t see your hand in front of your face, the shutter speed was meaning less. The backlighting came through the shrubs nicely and reflected off the snow which then light the underside and even the front of the bushes somewhat. We both looked at the image and thought it was finally a pretty cool shot and off we went to the next location.

24mm - ISO 400 â€

Lighting Setup

To read more about this and other images from the Photo Project 24 adventure, please visit http://photoproject24.com

The Lighting Setup

With almost no ambient light left and just a little rim of light in the background, we would need a long shutter speed to bring some light back to the sky. We also wanted to try to lose focus on the trees behind the wagon so we set on an aperture of f/4 and at ISO 500 we would need a 1 second exposure.  We could have used a lower ISO and longer shutter but there were still enough cars whizzing by that any longer than a second and we would likely end up with headlights streaking by.

With the camera setup for the sky, we now needed to light the wagon. This was done with two speedlites fired with PocketWizard FlexTT5′s and the Mini TT1 on the camera. We put both lights in manual mode at 1/4 power with no modifiers on them.

Lighting Diagram

32mm - ISO 500 - 1 sec - f/4

Fairly simple setup, a few practice shots, and we got the image we were looking for and headed down the road to the next location.

Be sure and follow the complete set of images and stories at http://photoproject24.com

A Solution in Search of a Problem?

When discussing the frio with a handful of photographers some didn’t see the need for it while others see the frio as an absolute God-send. It really depends on the gear that you work with. Cheap cold shoe swivel mounts often don’t have enough surface area for a good solid fit and combined with inexpensive flash triggers that have rather course threads, its really hard to get a secure and solid fit. I have aimed swivel mounts and had the flash literally fall right out.

With the frio, one end is closed so your gear can’t fall out of the front. What is really different is that and hinged plate that pops up to secure the back side. With the lock down feature of your gear, the pop-up plate provides a second level of security.

The narrow design also makes it very easy to tighten down your gear onto the cold shoe area. This is a big time saver and when you are on location, being able to setup and tear down quickly is a huge advantage.

The only real issue is if you are an umbrella user. With a typical cold shoe swivel mount with a built-in umbrella holder your flash is relatively close to the umbrella shaft. If you are using a swivel mount with a mounting stud (as shown above) you can end up adding a couple of inches between your gear and the umbrella shaft, this might can cause some uneven lighting.

Does it fill the bill?

While I do use umbrellas on a regular basis, more often I am using on-flash modifiers such as Rouge Flashbenders, softboxes, Quick Spots, or other types of gear. Other than the umbrella issue (which isn’t that big of a deal for me) there really isn’t downside to using the frio…almost.

Let’s face it, the frio costs money, at $15 it may seem trivial to some people  and if you are buying 3-4 you will be set back up to $45.  Since you can buy an inexpensive cold shoe swivel mount for about $16-$18, the frio isn’t cheap.

The question for you is really if the cost of the frio is worth the security of your gear. I can only speak for myself but there really wasn’t a question that it was worth it. Just to be clear on this, I have never had any contact with enlight photo, or distributor. I bought three of these units, they weren’t given to me to review. I heard about the frio from my buddy Syl Arena who said “The frio is ingenious. For me it was love at first sight.â€

As I said earlier, I have actually had flashes and triggers slide right out of some of the swivel mounts that I own. Fortunately none of my gear has ever been broken during one of these incidents. However, it only takes one time to have a couple hundred dollars smash to pieces on the ground. For around $15 I consider it cheap insurance.

I always like innovative solutions and the frio is definitely innovative and solves a real world problem.The only thing that would make it perfect (or closer at least) would be a real short mounting stud to keep it lower when using umbrellas. Given this unique design, I would also like to see versions designed for 2 or 3 flashes.

I love how easy it is to get gear on and off my lightstands now and the extra security is well worth the price. I absolutely recommend the frio to help keep your gear secure.

Official Website: http://www.friocoldshoe.com

Frio on Amazon (link)

For more information about this shot and the interesting location where it was shot, please check out the complete story at:
http://photoproject24.com/2011/01/photo-3-tilapia-trailer-at-the-salton-sea/

With each image there is a story about the shot, sometimes with interesting information about the location, lighting diagrams, and much more. Each day a different image will be posted. Today’s image, Dinosaur in Cabazon was lit using a video light and a long exposure. For a more detailed explanation and lighting diagram, check it out at:
http://photoproject24.com/2011/01/photo-1-dinosaur-in-cabazon/

Photo Project 24 Image #1 - Dinosaur in Cabazon

Chris’ work can be seen at http://chrisdset.com and his blog is at http://chrisdiset.net

Show Host

Kerry Garrison
http://kerrygarrison.com

The Quick Spot is a basic grid spot designed to fit over the end of your flash without needing an extra strap or Velcro. A unique feature of the Quick Spot is that is comes apart in order for you to put different colors gels (several included) in order to color balance the light or provide special effect lighting.

What is a Grid Spot

A grid spot at its most basic description is a series of straws that take the light from the flash and confine it to keep it from spreading out like a bare flash would. The smaller the size of the straws, the more confined the beam of light will be.

Some people have tried to simply use the Zoom function on their flash to create a similar effect but it doesn’t really do the same thing. Let’s take a look at how the zoom function works.

Flash Zoomed at 24mm

Flash Zoomed to 105mm

As you can see at 24mm almost the entire frame is filled with light and at 105mm we get distinctly smaller source  but it still has a pretty large pattern.

When you want a much tighter pattern with less light fall-off then a grid spot can be your best choice. Harbor Digital Design has the Quick Spot in both 1/4†and 1/8†patterns. The system is designed to custom fit most popular speedlites. I ordered the units for the Canon 580 EX/EX II and was very pleasantly surprised to find that it fit perfect on the YN560 as well.

Let’s look at the light pattern when using the Quick Spots.

1/8†Quick Spot

1/4†Quick Spot

For portrait work, grid spots work great for hair lighting so you can get a nice shine on the hair without spilling the light into places you don’t want. With product photography you can really control where you want the lighting to be.

For an example of using the Quick Spots, check out the following article:
http://cameradojo.com/2010/12/18/using-multiple-flashes-evolution-of-a-shot/

At first glance, $34.95 might seem a little much for a small piece of plastic but considering it is close to $10 less than competing brands when you factor in extra straps you need.  Also consider you also get a decent gel kit to go along with it and you have yourself a pretty good bargain. If you need to attach the Quick Spot to different flashes, you can order just the adapter piece for about $13 and just interchange the outer Quick Spot attachment.

Harbor Digital Design may not be a household name but if they continue to make innovative products like the Quick Spot I am sure you will hear about them more and more.

I am quite happy with the Quick Spots and certainly recommend them as an inexpensive accessory that you should have in your camera bag.

Harbor Digital Design
http://www.harbordigitaldesign.com

• 1 Wireless Flash Trigger Transmitter
• 3 Wireless Flash Trigger Receivers
• 3 Light Stands
• 3 Swivel Mounts
• 3 Umbrellas
• 3 YN560 Speedlites
• 1 5-In-1 Reflector

All kits come with a $50 Gift Certificate to Nations Photo Lab. You get this entire three-light kit for only $499!! [More Information]

Be sure and check out the new Blackbelt Lighting website at http://blackbeltlighting.com

During this article we will start with an on-camera flash and build up to a three-light setup.

On-Camera Flash

This first shot here is what I would expect from a simple on-camera lighting setup. We get a nice even lighting, plenty of detail, but the floor and background are easily visible. These example images are not cropped or adjusted and yes, with some fair amount of Photoshop work, this could be turned into a decent image. The goal though is to minimize post-production and get the effect that we want in-camera. This shot was taken with a Large Rouge Flashbender on top of the flash to provide a larger, diffused lighting source.

In this second image the only change was that the Rouge Flashbender was removed and the light was bounced off the white ceiling. This did a great job at killing the floor and background lighting while maintaining some specular highlights. Because of the overhead lighting we lost the tail rotor completely, detail in the fuselage, and detail in the lower part of the canopy. The flash was set at 1/8th power.

On the plus side we also lost some harsh specular highlights in in the canopy that we didn’t want. At this point I thought we had a good baseline to start adding in some additional lights.

Light Number 2

The second light to be added was for the rear of the helicopter. This was another YN560 fitted with a Harbor Digital Designs 1/8†Quickspot to keep the light from spreading onto the table or background. This really kicked up the light on the back of the helicopter and added some nice detail lighting to the tail boom and rear assembly.  The flash was set to 1/32 power, any more and it would have overpowered the subject .

At this point I felt we were really getting close but I didn’t like the lack of detail on the bottom of the canopy and you couldn’t really read the text on the canopy either.

Light Number 3

The third light was added just left of the camera and fitted with a Harbor Digital Designs 1/4†Quickspot so I could get just a little more spread without much light contamination. The flash was also a YN560 and was set to 1/128th power. This provided a nice little kicker light on the front of the canopy and light the bottom section of the canopy nicely to really make the letters pop.

This is the part where I start to get all OCD about the lighting and although I was actually right were I wanted I get compelled to keep tweaking and tweaking but I fought the urge this time because the point isn’t always about getting the shot perfect in-camera, it really should be about minimizing your work overall.

The Final Image

As I said, I actually stopped with the last image because while I could have spent another 20 minutes tweaking the lights to get exactly what I wanted, I also could spend 2 minutes in Lightroom and get the same result. Taking the last image into Lightroom 3.3, some Clarity was added, a little Vibrance, a post-crop Vignette, and then the Local Adjust Brush set to -30 Exposure was quickly drawn to minimize the line you could see between the table and the background.

Setup

All of the images shown in the article were shot with the following settings:

• ISO 800
• 1/60th Shutter Speed
• F/8 Aperture

Summary

Lighting is not magic and it really isn’t that hard either once you start practicing different techniques and lighting setups. If it seems frustrating at first just remember to stick to the basics. Build up from one light source at a time in order to see the effects of each light as you go to make sure you know what light is doing what.

While I do try to get as close as possible to the final image in-camera there is also a point of diminishing returns when it comes to how perfect you can get something. If this wasn’t true we would have no use for tools like Lightroom or Photoshop. Sometimes it is best to spend a few moments in post-production versus spending many more in studio.

Equipment Used

The only lighting used was a Blackbelt Stage 1 Lighting kit which contains a YN560 Speedlite, a set of wireless flash triggers, a lightstand, swivel mount, umbrella, and a reflector.

What you will see in the video is the effect of just using the one light, then we bring in a reflector to cut down on the contrast and make the shadows softer for a better final image.

Equipment Used

Blackbelt Phase 1 Lighting Kit
Canon 50D

Check out the video for more information about the setup.

Equipment Used

Westcott Magic Slipper Kit
Blackbelt Phase 1 Lighting Kit
Blackbelt YN560 Flash

Why Manual?

One question that a lot of people have at this point is why would you want to use manual flash when you have eTTL mode available and the camera will try and determine the lighting? There are actually a number of reasons why that isn’t always the right answer:

• Using studio strobes
• Using wireless flash triggers that don’t support eTTL
• Using manual speedlites that don’t support eTTL
• Conditions when eTTL is not giving you what you want

Usually eTTL will try to give you a pretty balanced lighting so it does not always give you what you are trying to achieve. By understanding how to use manual flash you can create dynamic lighting that may otherwise not be possible.

Fear Not The Flash

So why are people intimidated by manual flash? Mostly because they think its complicated and they don’t know where to start. So let’s break it down into some basics. First off, If we look at the range of a flash there is really only eight stops between full power and the lowest setting of 1/128th power. While better strobes like the Canon, Nike, and YN560 also have incremental settings in between each stop, let’s just look at the primary settings to get started.  So long as the flash has enough light output, the proper setting is going to fall somewhere along this scale.

Keeping this in mind if you start with a mid-range setting such as 1/16 or 1/8 power the worst you can be is already halfway to the best setting. Take a test shot and then adjust the power up or down accordingly. With just a small amount of practice you should be able to get your lighting dialed in within a two to three shots.

Keeping it SAAF

SAAF is a little acronym that you should learn as well, this stands for Shutter/Ambient – Aperture/Flash. What this helps you to remember is that shutter speed will control the ambient light and aperture will control light from the flash. If you need more ambient light, slow down the shutter speed. If you need more light from your flash, use a larger aperture (smaller f-stop number). Being able to use your aperture to control the light from the flash also allows you the ability to fine-tune the light to get exactly what you want.

Putting It Together

Hopefully this has helped demystify manual flash lighting. If you have a Canon or Nikon speedlite, I highly encourage you to put it in manual mode to learn how to use manually rather than relying on the automatic modes. I have put together a little video to help go over the concepts I have talked about here.

Features

These are four channel wireless flash triggers for using off-camera flash with either speedlites or studio lights. The transmitter can be triggered either by having it on the hot shoe of your camera or via a PC Sync cable connected to your camera body. The receivers can fire a flash either from the hot shoe or via PC Sync as well. Unlike many similar products available, these also include a built-in umbrella holder.

Specifications

• 4 channels with hot shoe connector for external flashes
• Transmitter Power: 23A 12V battery
• Receiver Power: 2 AAA Battery (Not included)
• Maximum Working Distance: 30m (open area, without interference)
• Operates on Frequency: 433MHz
• Sync speed up to 1/320s (depending on camera)
• Standby time: one year
• Triggering life: up to 20,000 times

Compatible with

Canon SpeedLite 580EX II, 580EX, 550EX, 540EZ, 520EZ, 430EZ,430EX, 430EX II, 420EX, 420EZ, 380EX
Nikon SpeedLite SB900, SB-800, SB-600, SB-28, SB-27, SB-26, SB-25, SB-24
Olympus FL-50R, FL-50, FL-36R, FL-36
Pentax AF-540 FGZ, AF-360 FGZ, AF-400 FT, AF-240 FT
Sigma EF-530 DG Super, EF-500 DG Super, EF-430
Sunpak Auto 2000DZ, 622 Pro, 433AF, 433D, 383, 355AF, 344D, 333D
Vivitar 285HV, DF-400MZ, DF-340MZ, 2700
Other flash models with a trigger voltage of 12V or lower

Setup

The only real setup you need to do is to make sure the switches on the transmitter and the receiver are set to the same channel. Press the test button and make sure the LED on the receiver flashes. If the two are talking you are good to connect your flash to the receiver and put the transmitter on the camera.

In my tests I can reliably get 90 feet of range, any more than that and reliability starts dropping fast with almost no firing occurring at 100’.

Usage

There is nothing really magical about using wireless flash triggers, you press the shutter and the flash goes off. What really matters is being able to put your light where you want it, when you want it. Over the years there have been plenty of times when I wanted to set up a quick remote flash but my light stands were out in the car or worse, back at home. However, I always have my tripod with me attached to the side of my camera bag. With the built-in umbrella holder I can now pull out my tripod, put the flash trigger on the tripod, and pop in an umbrella for a quick lighting setup.

If you are expecting complete control of your remote flashes just as if you were using the wireless system built into your Canon or Nikon brand flashes, then your expectations are going to be off a bit. These wireless triggers are designed to fire remote speedlites or studio monolights that have manual output control. Once you manually set the power output on the flash, then these are good to go.

In the Camera Dojo Store we are now selling these wireless flash triggers as a kit with a transmitter and two receivers for $49.95 and additional receivers for $19.95. Until the end of November, get 15% off with discount code Dojo15. Check them out at the online store at http://blackbeltlighting.com. We also have a mini-site for all of the lighting products at http://cameradojo.com/blackbelt.

Welcome to BlackBelt Lighting products here at Camera Dojo. These videos were created specifically for you to help you make the most out of your equipment.

Testimonials

Just got my flash triggers today and did some test shots. Everything worked great, for $49.99 these are a steal! Just remember they are for manual flash only, which is a great way to really learn to use off camera flash. I have two holiday family portraits to shoot this weekend and I’m looking forward to using them. I’ll be buying one or two of the YN560 speedlites soon to supplement my Canon 580EX ll.
Chris from Grand Island, NY

Features

I want to start off with the negative to get it out of the way. This is a manual flash, it does not talk to the camera to determine the correct amount of flash to fire like the Canon or Nikon flashes do with their associated camera bodies. With the YN560 you set the amount of power the flash is going to put out. Do not panic! Learning to set correct lighting power is fairly simple and there are some basic guidelines to use to get dialed in quickly, more on that is the Usage section.

Enough with the negatives, this flash is otherwise loaded with features. From a power point of view it is virtually identical to a Canon 580 EX II or Nikon SB-800. The head rotates 90 degrees to the right and 180 degrees to the left while being able to tilt just over 90 degrees.

Just like the Canon 580 EX/EX II, the YN560 features a pull-out Wide Angle lens and Catch-light card. The head also allows you to zoom the focus point of the light from 24mm to 105mm. The flash power is fully adjustable from 1/128 power to full power.

One of the big problems with many manual flashes with optical slaves is that any flash will cause them to fire. Canon or Nikon flashes send out a pre-flash to determine exposure and then send out the final flash for the exposure, this pre-flash will fire most manual flashes. The S2 mode on the YN560 will ignore the pre-flash and only fire when the main flash goes off. Along with optical slave firing, the YN560 also has a PC Sync Port and can be used in the hot shoe of your camera.

• Flash zoom from 24mm – 105mm
• GN58 @ ISO100
• Optical Slave
• Hot Shoe Trigger
• PC Sync Port
• External Power Port
• Audible Ready Tone
• Fast Recharge Rate
• Granular control from 1/128 to full power
• Vertical Rotation angle: -7~90 degree
• Horizontal rotation angel: 0~270 degree

Setup

The only thing you need to do in order to start using the YN560 is to install batteries. In “M†mode, the YN560 can be used in your camera’s hot shoe or can be connected to your camera with a PC Sync cable. In “S1†mode the YN560 will use the optical slave and fire when any other flash goes off. This setting is fine when using other YN560’s or studio strobe lights. As mentioned earlier, the “S2†mode will ignore the pre-flash of TTL flashes allowing you to use the YN560 along with those flashes.

Usage

If you have never used a manual flash before it can seem rather intimidating but with just a little knowledge you can learn to use the YN560 as even your main flash in just a few minutes.

If you need to add some light to a scene, unless you have had a ton of experience, it is rather hard to simply know what the flash settings should be. Here is a quick shortcut to getting the right settings within just a few test shots.

1. Power up the flash by holding down the On/Off button until the flash is fully powered up
2. Use the left/right buttons to adjust the power output to the middle position
3. Take a test shot
4. If the scene is too bright, press the left button twice / If the scene is too dark, press the right button twice
5. Fine tune the lighting with single presses left or right
6. If you cant get the scene bright enough, you will need to increase your ISO or open your Aperture up more
7. If the scene is still too bright even on the lowest setting, you will need to lower your ISO or close your Aperture down more

That’s really it. Assuming you are already in the ball park with your aperture and ISO settings, you should generally be able to get the power output dialed in within three test shots.

When using the YN560 off-camera, turning on the audible ready alert is a great way to be sure that the flash is fully charged and ready to fire without being able to see the ready light.

A cool trick I learned from David Ziser a year or so ago was to use the flash’s zoom feature. A good example for using this is when you shooting a table of people at a reception. Let’s say you are shooting the table with a 100mm focal length, with a Canon 580 EX/EX II the flash will automatically zoom to 100mm to help focus the light, this can cause the people at the back to be lit but the people that are much closer can be too dark. By zooming the flash back to 24mm you get a wide angle of flash to light the entire table evenly. Conversely, you can zoom all the way out to 105mm when shooting a short focal length and the zoomed flash will give you a snooted effect with a natural vignette around the subject.

Results

The light from the YN560 is consistent in power and temperature and the unit recycles nice and fast. It’s actually fairly hard to say anything bad about the YN560 unless you just have to have TTL control in which case this is not the flash for you. For anyone wanting to have a very affordable lighting kit, the YN560 is really a terrific purchase considering you can buy three of them for the cost of a single 580 EX II or SB-800.

The fact is, the YN560 impressed me so much that I bought several hundred of them in order to sell to people wanting to get their lighting kits started. If this batch sells I will continue to bring them in and offer them on CameraDojo.com.

The list price of the YN560 is $120 which includes free shipping. Camera Dojo readers can get an additional $20 off by using the discount code Flash20. To purchase the YN560, please visit http://blackbeltlighting.com.

The first product will be the YN560 speedlite. This is a highly capable flash unit that is just as powerful as Canon or Nikon flagship products. The YN560 features:

• Flash zoom from 24mm – 105mm
• GN58 @ ISO100
• Optical Slave
• Hot Shoe Trigger
• PC Sync Port
• External Power Port
• Audible Ready Tone
• Fast Recharge Rate
• Granular control from 1/128 to full power
• Vertical Rotation angle: -7~90 degree
• Horizontal rotation angel: 0~270 degree

All of the YN560′s and lighting kits also come with a $50 gift certificate from Nations Photo Lab for new users.

The YN560′s will be available to order from CameraDojo.com next week.

The upcoming lighting kits will be announced shortly and will complete systems with the YN560 flash, wireless flash triggers, light stands, umbrellas, swivel mounts, and an instructional DVD. Watch for more information, availability dates, and pricing coming soon.

Update: You can now place orders for all of these lighting products at http://shop.cameradojo.com

To be receive notification about these and other product updates, please complete the form below:

This week Kerry and David discuss a variety of topics including lighting, business, marketing, and staying in touch with your clients.Show Links

David Ziser
http://digitalprotalk.com

Matt McGraw

http://www.mattmcgrawphotography.com/home.html

Worldwide Photography Webcast
http://kppablog.blogspot.com

Discount code for David’s Captured by the Light Tour: cbldpt10
http://capturedbythelight2010.com

Show Host

Kerry Garrison
http://kerrygarrison.com

The Flashbenders are available in three different sizes so you can find one that is most appropriate for the type of shooting you need to do.

The Flashbender Family

As I mentioned in the introduction, the Flashbenders come in three different sizes. The smallest version, the Bendable Bounce Card/Flag measures approximately 5†x 9†(127mm x 228mm. The Rogue FlashBender Bounce Card can be used either as a reflector to bounce light onto a subject, or as a flag (using either the built-in white surface, or included black fabric attachment) to shield light away from it.

When using an accessory flash on-camera for fill light, I like to use the Bounce Card to help diffuse the light and create a nice catchlight in the subject’s eyes.

The medium sized unit is actually called the Small Positionable Reflector and measures approximately 10†x 7†(254mm x 178mm). The Rogue FlashBender Small Positionable Reflector can be used either as a reflector to bounce light onto a subject, as a flag to shield light away from it or as a small snoot to produce a wide circle of light. I like using this version when I am shooting people outdoors and have nothing to bounce the light from the flash off of. Using this Flashbender it raises the height of the light to provide a little directional light and also helps to eliminate red eye.

The Large version measures approx. 10†x 11†(254mm x 280mm). I find the large version is a bit too intimidating to use when the flash is on-camera but when I have the flash off-camera it makes for a quick-setup light source that will provide a much larger light source than the flash itself. This is a great setup when shooting small groups  or single subjects up to 3/4 body shots.

These aren’t just big white reflectors, the metal strips on the back (1 on the bounce card, 2 on the small reflector, 3 on the large reflector) allow you to bend, twist, roll, and otherwise modify the shape from being a large flat shape to a tight snoot and pretty much anything in-between.

The white side cleans up very nicely so its quite simple to keep it nice and bright.

I have been using the Flashbenders more and more since they provide you with so much flexibility in how you can shape the light and reflect it in any number of ways.

I was a bit skeptical at first of the bendable strips but they don’t add much weight and are able to hold their shape without any sagging.

Like I mentioned in the introduction, each of the Flashbenders has the attachment strap built-in so you can never lose it. While this may be redundant if you have the entire family of Flashbenders, it ensures that you can’t lose a separate strap and you don’t need to purchase straps for each flash you may end up using it on.

The straps have plenty of adjustment to them so they should be able to fit on any speedlite that is on the market today.

Using the Flashbenders

I have been using the Flashbenders from everything from wedding shoots to product shoots because they do such a great job at creating a larger light source that makes for nice lighting for people and helps to evenly light products.

The results have been quite good and the Flashbenders have found a permanent home in my camera case. Since they lay flat when wide open they are pretty easy to fit most anywhere

The Rogue Flashbenders are also priced competitively as well.

Rogue FlashBender Bendable Bounce Card/ Flag – $29.95

Rogue FlashBender Small Positionable Reflector – $34.95

Rogue FlashBender Large Positionable Reflector – $39.95

I highly recommend the Rogue Flashbenders for anyone that is using speedlites and is looking for an affordable, flexible, and efficient light modifier. Be sure and visit their website for additional information.

The following are additional images taken while using the Flashbenders:

Expo Imaging
http://expoimaging.com

http://pixsylated.com

http://speedliting.com

Show Host

Kerry Garrison
http://kerrygarrison.com

You can follow CameraDojo at http://twitter.com/cameradojo and http://facebook.com/cameradojo

Show Links

Gadget Infinity
http://gadgetinfinity.com

Flash Zebra
http://flashzebra.com

Show Hosts

Kerry Garrison
http://kerrygarrison.com

Jason Anderson
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Stop the Madness
So…what is a stop exactly? Simply put, if you take a given amount of light and double it, you are moving up one stop, if you cut the amount of light in half then you have gone down a stop. So a stop isn’t a specific amount of light, instead it is a measure of difference between the amount of light. To be completely technical about it, the term “one f-stop” refers to a factor of √2 (approx. 1.41) change in f-number, which in turn corresponds to a factor of 2 change in light intensity. So how can we visualize this easily? If we have a single light bulb as a base light source, then two light bulbs would increase the light by 1 stop. Going to 4 light bulbs doubles the output again giving us 2 stops, to get to 3 stops we then need 8 light bulbs, etc.

So let’s take the sentence in the introduction, if we wanted to expose one side of the face 1 stop under the other side of the face, what we are saying is we want half the amount of light on the shadow side that we have on the lit side. Pretty simple concept huh?

For the most part, we are actually going to be doing a lot of guesswork unless we have good light meters and can measure each piece of the scene. Using our DSLRs we can zoom into each area of the scene and look at the exposure meter in the camera for a pretty good meter reading as well.

How aperture and shutter affect light
Ok, so now we have a basic understand of what a stop is, now we need to see how to control this using the two basic controls, shutter speed and aperture. To illustrate the effect of aperture, we have created this chart that shows the amount of light that is gathered at typical aperture settings. While each camera/lens may have slightly different available aperture numbers, they are typically in multiples of 1.4 (as described in the previous section). As you increase the f-stop number to the next 1.4 increment, you halve the amount of light.

The effect of shutter speed is the same concept. Every time you double the shutter speed, you decrease the amount of light in half. If you cut the shutter speed in half, you double the amount of light.

Again, you can see this represented by a similar chart.

Where this gets interesting in combining aperture and shutter speed, you can get the same exposure with different combinations of aperture and shutter speed. For example, a shot taken at 1/500 at f/2.8 and a shot taken at 1/60 at f/8 will have the same equivalent amount of brightness, what will change is the depth of field.

Let’s take a look at one of our favorite studio lights, the Westscott TD5 Spidelite. The light head has 5 bulds in it, you can control the center bulb, and two sets of two bulbs. To show how this affects stops we can use the different combinations to control how many stops of light we have:

If we only turn on the center bulb and use that as our base reference point, we can then use the different variations to come up with the following amounts of light changes:

How can we use this information?

If you have a light meter than putting this information to use is just a matter of measure-adjust-repeat until you get the desired light readings you want. With a modern DSLR, we can do this with the camera’s light meter with fairly good results.

Let’s say we want to use a two-light setup to light a subject’s face and we want one side 1 stop darker than the lit side. To begin with we zoom into the lit side of the face (or use the Photovision Digital Calibration target aimed at the light source , the small size works best for this) and adjust the lights until you get a good exposure reading. This is the time to make the camera adjustments to center the exposure in your camera’s meter.

Good Exposure Reading

The next step is to meter the shadow side of the face, using the same technique of zooming into the subject or a target to get a meter reading. This time however we want to underexpose by one stop.

-1 Stop Under Exposed

At this point we now have the camera setup for the right exposure on the lit side of the face and we checked to make sure the shadow side was one stop underexposed, we are now good to take our shots and be confident that the lighting will turn out good.

Summary
Hopefully this has helped to explain the concept of stops as it pertains to the relative amount of light and how we can use the tools we have available to make sure we have good lighting and exposures. To discuss this with others, please join us in our Camera Dojo Flickr Users Group.

In order first sample shot we have a couple standing against a wall with light coming in from the right of the camera creating a fairly simple broad lighting effect. The problem here was that the shot was taken at 4:30pm in May so we still had a good two hours before the sun would go down and give us ideal lighting. Secondly, the two walls we had available faced either due west directly into the sun or faced east and was completely in the shade. I ruled out the first option and went for the easier shot by placing the couple in the shade. With no additional light coming in we just didn’t have an interesting shot and because we were under a bridge, there wasn’t a good angle to use a reflector to bounce any light into the area.

In order to create the directional lighting, a Canon 580 EX II speedlite was fitted with a Lumodi 14†beauty dish and a PocketWizard FlexTT5 transceiver. The camera was a Canon EOS 50D with a PocketWizard MiniTT1 transmitter. My assistant positioned the light at about a 45 degree angle to the couple’s left and about two feet above their heads. This provided a nice directional quality to the light by simulating a late afternoon sun position but with the ability to completely control the light output. The beauty dish provided for a softer transition from the highlights to the shadows versus the sun would have been much harsher shadows due to is smaller apparent size.

The following diagram illustrates this lighting setup.

ISO 200 Sigma 24-70mm f/2.8 IF EX DG HSM @ 63mm f/5.6 1/200 sec Flash: eTTL

In our second example we wanted to create more of a rim or Rembrandt style lighting on the subject. In this case the shot was taken at 7:15pm and the sun was far too low on the horizon to provide and real light other than a little bit of ambient. Using basically the same exact setup as before, a Canon 580 EX II speedlite was fitted with a Lumodi 14†beauty dish and a PocketWizard FlexTT5 transceiver. The camera was a Canon EOS 50D with a PocketWizard MiniTT1 transmitter, this time the setup was stationary on a lightstand and positioned just to the left and above the subject and is just barely out of the frame in this shot.

ISO 400 Sigma 24-70mm f/2.8 IF EX DG HSM @ 70mm f/5.6 1/160 sec Flash: eTTL

Had this shot been taken about 30 minutes earlier the sun would have created basically this identical light pattern although we might have had to use a touch of fill light to keep the shadows from being too harsh. Shooting later in the evening, we can create the effect that we wanted the sun to have created had it not been too late in the day.

As we continue to look at more lighting setups we will add additional light sources, reflectors,  different diffusers, and other tricks to get the light to look as natural as possible but still trying to maintain as much control over the light as possible.

Equipment Used:

How does eTTL Work?

In order to really understand how to make our speedlites do what we want, we first need to understand what our speedlites are actually doing, then we can use that knowledge to use their automatic modes to our advantage.

The Pre-Flash

You may not even notice it, but when you press the shutter, your speedlite will actually flash twice. The first flash is at 1/32 power and the second flash is at the setting the camera determines the flash should be at. You can see this by setting your camera to a very slow shutter speed and having the flash set to second curtain sync (more on this in just a moment). What is happening here is that the speedlite is throwing out a low power flash that the camera is evaluating to determine the exposure. Based on the reflected light from the pre-flash, the camera sets the power output of the speedlite to an appropriate level and then fires the main light burst. The speedlite itself is not using any intelligence here, it is simply firing a low power burst and being told by the camera what to do next.

Explanation of Second Curtain
Your shutter actually operates by sliding one panel (curtain) up to expose the sensor and the a second curtain slides up to cover the sensor and stop the exposure. If your flash is set to second curtain then the flash will go off just before the second curtain closes. With a long exposure, you will see the pre-flash, the first shutter will open, then at the end of the shutter time the main flash will go off before the second curtain closes.

The Problems with eTTL

The two main issues with eTTL is that it relies on the camera being able to see the reflection of the pre-flash to set the exposure and that the system does not compensate for ambient light. Since the pre-flash is used to set an exposure, this requires that the pre-flash is hitting the subject in a way that the camera can evaluate (the e in eTTL) the scene and change the flash output. What happens if you are trying to backlight a subject? Or if you are really feathering the light across the subject, these are two very simple situations that will completely bork up eTTL since the light isn’t completely hitting the subject in a way that the camera can see it. These will usually result in the camera telling the flash to fire a full power burst since it didn’t get enough light off the pre-flash.

The second problem is that eTTL is only metering for the light on the subject and is not dealing with any ambient lighting. If you are in a fairly dark room and are not using manual or shutter priority modes, you can often end up with just the subject lit and the room being pitch black. Again, this is the flash/camera trying to guess that you simply want to light the subject and will ignore the ambient light in the room.

eTTL Not Taking Ambient Light Into Account
ISO 200 – f/7.1 – 1/50th

Telling eTTL What We Want It To Do

The good news is that we actually do have some control over what we want our speedlite to do when in eTTL mode. When we are in eTTL mode, we have one control over the flash power and one control for the ambient light, this will actually change when we learn about using speedlites in manual mode.

If we want to be able to adjust for ambient light, the only control we have is the shutter speed. Since the camera and speedlite will always be trying to make a good exposure, our aperture setting will have no effect since if we close down the aperture to let in less light, the camera will simply tell the speedlite to fire at a higher power. To adjust for ambient light, we either need to use a slower shutter speed to let in more ambient light, or speed it up to let in less.

The following images demonstrate this concept:

ISO 200 f/5.0 1/400th	ISO 200 f/5.0 1/50th
ISO 200 f/5.0 1/13th	ISO 200 f/5.0 1/6th

As you can see from these examples, the main exposure on the can is always the same, only the ambient light is different. In the very slow shutter images the ambient begins to burn into the subject since the speed is slow enough to alter the main subject exposure.

Let’s look at two real world examples of this.

Dark Room Situation

In the following image, the room was quite dark (as seen in the image earlier. However, the ceiling was quite beautiful. To the human eye, the room was most certainly not as bright as it appears in this image, to get this effect, a slow 1/4 second shutter speed was used to let the ambient room light burn onto the sensor. I wasn’t too concerned about the slow speed with the model since the flash would have the effect of freezing the model in place. The eTTL metering provided a good exposure on the model, while the slow shutter speed allowed me to capture the room light.

Slow shutter speed to capture ambient light
ISO 200 – f/5.6 – 1/4th

Bright Daylight Situation

In a bright daylight situation you can run into the opposite problem. If you are trying to capture a subject against a bright blue sky, one of two things tends to happen, either the subject is exposed well and the sky is completely blown out (white) or the sky is a nice blue but the subject is too dark. The simple solution here is to meter for the sky and set your shutter speed fast enough to pick up the color of the sky and then let the eTTL system meter the subject for a good exposure. The easiest way to do this is to point your camera at the sky behind the subject and adjust your shutter speed so your exposure meter is centered, then when you shoot your subject, the eTTL system will properly expose the subject.

Shutter Speed to Capture Blue Sky
ISO 100 – f/5.6 – 1/1250th

When eTTL Isn’t Giving You The Power You Want

Usually I find that eTTL mode will do a pretty good job with the subject exposure, the images so far have been shot completely in eTTL mode with no fine tuning other than adjusting the shutter to adjust for ambient light, but I have not had to adjust the flash output at all.

As mentioned earlier, there are simply times that eTTL’s best guess simply isn’t working. It can be because of light placement, distance of light to subject, or the reflective nature of the subject, these things can play havoc with eTTL and cause undesired results, this is when we need to tell the eTTL system we want it to do something different.

Flash Exposure Compensation (FEV)

Fortunately we have a very simple tool we can use called Flash Exposure Compensation, this simply let’s us dial the flash output up or down to make it put out more or less light. The eTTL system will still be doing the metering, but we can tell it to use that metering and factor in our guidance to achieve the exposure WE are looking for and not what the camera thinks it should be.

When your speedlite is mounted on your camera, you should have very easy access to the FEV setting right on the top of your camera. On Canon cameras you press the button under the icon shown here spinning the large wheel up or down to adjust the flash output. When you need to override what the eTTL metering is doing, simply adjust the FEV as needed. In the following images, all of the camera settings were the same for all three images, only the Flash Exposure Value was changed.

ISO 200 f/5.6 1/200th FEV 0

ISO 200 f/5.6 1/200th FEV -1

ISO 200 f/5.6 1/200th FEV -2

Summary

These few tips are not going to make you a Flash Master all by themselves but it should help you understand what your flash is doing in the eTTL mode and help you to fine tune it to get the results you are trying to achieve. For more information than you could ever possibly want, there are a couple of books available.

• Speedliter’s Handbook: Learning to Craft Light with Canon Speedlites by Syl Arena (pre-order)
• Mastering Canon EOS Flash Photography by NK Guy

Equipment Used

Understanding The Shutter

First we need to look at how a typical camera shutter works. In the shutter mechanism are two “doors” or what are called curtains. When you press the shutter, the first curtain drops down out of the way, the sensor is exposed, and then the second curtain drops down to cover the sensor and stop the exposure. In this mode of operation, the flash goes off when the shutter is fully opened to get a good exposure. At slower shutter speeds, when you are trying to get more ambient light cooked onto the sensor, you can control if the flash goes off right when the first curtain is open or right before the second curtain closes. This can allow you to create interesting effects.

Once you get above your camera’s sync speed, usually around 1/250th of a second then the shutter starts to behave differently. At faster speeds the second curtain starts to close before the first curtain has fully opened causing a small gap between the curtains to move across the shutter. If you fire a flash only a portion of the sensor will be exposed during the duration of the flash bulb going off. This will cause banding in your image.

Example of Banding

What is High Speed Sync?

Since a single flash burst will only expose a small portion of the sensor the solution is to have a continuous light output throughout the shutter cycle. Without speedlites this isn’t possible but we do have an interesting work-around. With High Speed Sync (HSS) the speedlite outputs a large number of short bursts while the shutter is in motion, around 50,000 bursts per second, emulating a constant light source. There are two downsides to HSS mode, the first is that you will lose some light output since the speedlite can’t put out full power when trying to spit out tens of thousands of bursts. The second downside is that you cannot freeze action with a longer shutter speed since the light output isn’t a very short burst, however, you can freeze just about anything by speeding that shutter up. This means the best use of high-speed sync is to light a subject that is heavily backlit by another light source such as the sun. Even in the brightest daylight can be taken to almost pitch black with a fast enough shutter speed. The challenge is to get enough light from your speedlight to get a good exposure on your subject.

Normal Flash Mode

Flash Bursting in High Speed Sync Mode

Enabling High Speed Sync

On the Canon speedlites its very simply to enable high speed sync. To get started, simply press the third button until the icon appears at the top of the speedlite’s LCD display. High Speed Sync is available in both eTTL mode and Manual mode. If High Speed Sync is not enabled, the fastest your camera’s shutter will be 1/250th of a second. Once you enable High Speed Sync you can set your shutter speed to any speed that your camera body will support. Most modern DSLRs can go up to 1/8000th second.

Why Do We Need Faster Shutter Speeds Anyway?

If 1/250th is fast enough to freeze most action, why would need to shoot faster than that or why would we need to use flash outdoors in the daylight? To begin with, if we are shooting people against a bright blue sky and we try to expose the scene for our subject, the blue in the sky will get completely washed out and turn white. On the other hand, if you crank the shutter speed fast enough to get the sky to stay nice and blue, the subject will be underexposed. The best way to solve this is to expose for the sky and then use flash to light the subject. While this sounds simple the problem is really bright conditions is that you may need a shutter speed significantly faster than your sync speed, sometimes well over 1/1000th of a second. Let’s take a look at a very typical outdoor, mid-day shooting situation.

In the first sample set the sun was almost directly overhead and subject was sitting in a gazebo so she was covered by shade. While the first shot is “ok” it certainly doesn’t stand out or have any real mood to it. The second image is unusable, and the third image has a real edgy tone to it due to the directional lighting that was done completely by flash since the settings and conditions were identical to the second image where the subject was completely dark.

Scene Exposed for the Subject - Background Blown Out - Lighting Looks Flat 1/1000th sec f/4.0 ISO 400

Scene Exposed for the Background - Subject Underexposed 1/8000th sec f/4.0 ISO 400

Scene Exposed for the Background - Subject Lit By Flash 1/8000th sec f/4.0 ISO 400

In the second example set we set our subject completely unshaded and then started with an exposure metering of the sky and the knocked it down another two stops to knock it down as much as possible. Then, with the flash, we added the light back in with the flash.

The only issue was that the subject was basically looking into the direct sunlight, but we did want to prove the point that you could completely override the sunlight with a fast shutter speed. To take it a step further, we moved the light to the opposite side. Take note that the shadow side of the face was actually facing the sun but by cranking the shutter speed we virtually eliminated the effect the sun had on her face. We also changed the ISO from 400 to 100 to stop the overall lighting down by two stops without affecting the subject.

1/1600th sec f/5.6 ISO 100

As you can see, we ended up with a great short lighted loop light. Could you do this with just natural light and reflectors, well not exactly. You could use a scrim over the model to cut down the sunlight and then bounce sunlight onto the far side of the face with a reflector. However, as you sped up the shutter to kill the background light, you would also be reducing the sunlight so it would be difficult, if not impossible to completely replicate. We can do it easily with flash because a speedlite at close range is going to provide more light than the sunlight and it is because we can create more light that we can do shots like this with flash.

Feel The Need for More Speed(lites)

Now let’s say you need to create a shot that appears to be taken at night, but your only opportunity to get the shot done is at high noon, the sun is blaring down and reflecting back up the ground. 1/100th at f/16 will give us a good exposure but if we need to knock it down significantly, without having enough depth of field to reach into the next county, we can easily find ourselves in a position where we need to be at 1/4000th or even faster to kill off the ambient light. Now usually we can get into the ball park with a single flash, but there is a really good reason why several companies have come out with dual, triple, and even quad speedlite holders. Remember, once we are in high speed sync, we can lose 2-2.5 stops of light, but if we add a second speedlite we double out light output. If one speedlite at full power (not really full because of HSS remember) isn’t quite enough, then two speedlites may be more than enough, as you add a third or fourth speedlite, you can usually run the speedlites are much less than full power which means faster recycle times and longer battery life. Running two speedlites each at 1/2 power is much better than 1 speedlite at full power. So three at 1/3 power each is better still. If you want to get really crazy, try twelve speedlites all connected together.

Summary

Hopefully you have now seen the power of using High Speed Sync to get shots that your normally wouldn’t be able to get. It does take some experimenting to get your settings dialed in for exactly what you are trying to achieve, but once you get the hang of it, it will totally open up your ability to be more creative.

Equipment Used

The Setup

The setup consists of a seamless paper background suspended on a background stand. To the camera right is 45″ Westcott Halo with a Westcott StrobeLite Plus which is very similar to using a shoot-thru umbrella which provides a good key light for but is big enough to provide a soft transition between the shadows and the highlights. To camera left is a 28″ Westcott Apollo softbox with a Westcott Strobelite Plus which is mostly used to light the background to soften any shadows that fall on it but also spills onto the subject slightly to help soften the shadows caused by the key light. The camera I use is a Canon EOS 50D with a Canon 580 EX II flash mounted on it along with a Lumiquest 80/20 diffuser. The key here is that the 580 EX II is set to manual mode and dialed down to 1/32 power. This means the light from the flash is fairly insignificant to the exposure and is really only used to fire the optical slaves on the StrobeLite’s. To me this is preferred to having PC Sync cords and can be more reliable than using cheap radio slaves in some conditions.

Portrait Lighting Diagram

Portrait Lighting Setup

Using the Lighting Setup

Short Lighting

Given a perfect setup, I would use a backlight on the background but there isn’t always enough room to work with when doing these kinds of shoots. By using the Apollo and the Halo in this configuration I am still able to get enough light on the background to give it a type of gradient look that keeps the background from being too boring.

If someone is facing to their right, I get a nice broad lighting effect, if they are looking to their left, I just pull them a little more away from the background so that the light from the Apollo to the right of the camera will provide a short lighting effect.

Having a versatile lighting setup means you can run people through very quickly and still be able to get a variety of looks without ever having to move lights around.

Avoid Issues With Glasses

Avoid Issues with Glasses

By having the lights more off to the side rather than more straight on to the people, we can also minimize issues with glasses.

Lighting is very much basic geometry, the light will bounce off an object at the same angle it hit it. Therefor, is you angle the lights so that light is not going to bounce back to the camera, the lenses in the glasses will show almost no reflection from the light source. The only time this lighting setup presents any issues with glasses is if someone has a tendency to raise their chin up during pictures. A simple suggestion for them to lower their chin should be all that is needed to solve the glasses issue.

Getting Group Shots

Large Group Shot

The biggest problem you will run into in this situation is a large group. This is the only time I will move the lights at all and the key light will be pulled back towards the camera to help reduce shadows on people caused by standing behind or beside someone else that is blocking the light. The bigger issue is getting people to squeeze together enough so that the frame doesn’t exceed the edges of the background. You might have to get creative in placing people to keep the group width narrow enough. I take the 9′ wide rolls since they will (barely) fit into my car. The 12′ rolls would be better for groups but they are harder to transport and are available in less color options.

Summary

The biggest thing when doing a shoot like this is to not over-think it. A simple lighting setup can be very effective. The more complicated you make it, the more problems can arise, the more time it takes to setup and tear down, and the more it costs to acquire in the first place. Keep it simple, position the lights in good spots, get a good meter reading and you will be able to just fire away all night.

Equipment Used

With an accessory flash like a Canon 580 EX II the top piece can rotate around to different angles, this will allow the flash to fire in a different angle than the camera is facing. If you then bounce that light off something like a wall or reflector you can then redirect the light back at your subject to create good directional light. The only thing you have to really watch for is that you are blocking and light directly from the flash to contaminate the scene which can completely diminish the look you are trying to get.

First let’s look at the flash configuration we are going to use. A 580 EX outfitted with Velco and then a Honl Photo Gobo to cover the bottom and right side of the flash head. This blocks direct light from the flash from hitting the subject but still allows some extra light to move up and left which will help add a little fill light. If we used a snoot, we wouldn’t have any extra fill light and the shadows would be much harsher.

The key to this working with such a simple setup is actually having things to bounce the light off of. Without walls and a ceiling that are close enough to effectively use as reflectors we might have to bring in our own reflectors to create the desired effect.

Let’s take another look at the lighting diagram.

The flash is mounted on the camera and is turned towards the wall aimed to hit a midpoint between the camera and the subject. This will illuminate the wall and act like new source of light angled back towards the subject giving us light that appears to come from the right side of the subject. Now let’s look at an example image to see exactly what this looks like.

As you can see, we have effectively created a short light setup by bouncing the light off the wall while also using a small amount of bounce light from surrounding walls and the ceiling to add a small amount of fill light to keep the right side of the subject from being completely black.

The point here is that learning how to use your on-camera flash to behave differently than simply blasting your subject with straight on lighting will open up your ability to create much better images. Experimenting will different distances, angles, and reflector surfaces and soon you will find that you can find useful locations and/or objects to use as your bounce target.

Understanding the problem

In the intro, we stated that the Canon wireless speedlite system has a lot of features and is reasonably flexible in how you can use it. While that is true, there are some serious limitation to the system that Canon has yet to address, and given the installed base, probably isn’t likely to address in the near future.

The primary problem is that the Master light needs to communicate with the slave units and does this via bursts of flash just before the main flash goes off. This “pre-flash†happens so fast that you can’t tell it from the main flash. This works quite well in optimum environments like inside your studio. However, once you get outside and you have issues like the sun interfering with the speedlite’s communication, trying to use modifiers that block communication, or worse, trying to put speedlites in places with no direct line of sight such as outside a door, or around a corner, and the Canon system by itself starts to have issues very quickly.

While there are inexpensive radio triggers available and some of them work very reliably, the problem is that they only allow you to use use speedlites in manual mode only. Now this may be ok for you, and it is for many people, they lack several very key features:

1. The ability to use Canon’s eTTL system for automatic exposure control
2. The ability to remotely adjust the power output of the slave units
3. The ability to use high speed sync

Again, these things may not be of interest to you based on the style of shooting you do, but for many people, these are critical components of getting the lighting they want.

How the ControlTL System Solves the Problem

While I will go into more technical detail in a moment, simply put, the ControlTL system intercepts the signals going to the speedlite and transmits the information over radio frequencies to the remote receivers.

There are two available components as part of the system, the MiniTT1 transmitter and the FlexTT5 transceiver. At a minimum you need one transmitter and one transceiver which would allow you to do off-camera lighting in eTTL mode and allow you to adjust power output by adjusting the flash compensation on your camera body.

Adding additional transceivers and speedlites adds to the flexibility of the system and allows you to build up to using multiple zones, ratio control, and remote setting of manual settings.

Why is eTTL Important?

Is eTTL over-rated or the magic bullet? For the most part, eTTL does a pretty good job the majority of the time. Let’s say we are shooting a scene and we set our camera to ISO 200, f/5.6, and 1/60th of a second shutter speed. The Canon speedlites will do a pre-flash to determine the best flash output for those settings and adjust accordingly. If we then change our camera settings to ISO 400, f/5.6, 1/100 of a second, even though we have effectively adjusted the camera settings by two stops, the eTTL system will determine that it simply needs less flash output to properly light the scene. Of course, with any system that is trying determine how to light something, it isn’t always going to be perfect because the camera simply can’t read your mind to figure out what it is you are trying to do, but generally speaking, eTTL does a pretty good job most of the time and can be a big time saver in getting your lighting dialed in.

ControlTL Modes

The new PocketWizard ControlTL system has several basic operating modes, the following are explanations of the basic setups.

• Basic eTTL Mode
  In the most basic mode you need either a MiniTT1 transmitter or a FlexTT5 transceiver on the camera’s hot shoe shoe and a flash on a FlexTT5. In this basic mode, all speedlites  are grouped together into a single zone.
• Ratio eTTL Mode
  This mode requires Canon 580 EX or EX II be in the hot shoe of the MiniTT1 or FlexTT5 that is in the hot shoe on the camera. Remote flashes can be assigned to zones A, B, or C by selecting the zone switch on the remote FlexTT5 module. The ratio control is managed on the speedlite mounted on the camera. You can also use a Canon STE2 Commander on top of the camera to adjust the lighting ratios.
• Wireless Manual Mode
  “Wireless Manual†system allows setting a remote flash to a desired manual level from the MASTER flash. You must use a 580EX II on the MiniTT1 or FlexTT5 as transmitter. The original 580EX or earlier flashes cannot perform
  this function via ControlTL radios. “Wireless Manual†uses controls similar to ratio mode.

In both of the eTTL modes, the new PocketWizards double the output of the pre-flash boost for determining exposure making it more accurate, usable at longer ranges, and improves functionality when using modifiers such as umbrellas and softboxes.

One feature that I love is being able to use high speed sync. The way high speed sync actually works is that the flash will output thousands of small bursts very quickly to provide virtually continuous light output when the shutter is moving at high speeds. The downside to HSS is that it’s pretty harsh on batteries. The MiniTT1 and FlexTT5 communicate directly with the flash and PocketWizard came up with a means of optimizing the burst output to match the shutter speed which can result is massive improvements, 2-4x improvement in output power, 2-4x increase in battery life, and 2-4x faster recycle time.

There is yet another mode called HyperSync which allows high shutter speeds with studio strobes. While you do take a light output hit in this mode, it can enable some incredible shots that were previously impossible to get. This is a mode I am really looking forward to playing with more.

Finally there are even optimizations for rear curtain sync that ensure the flash goes off as late as possible ensuring a proper exposure while making sure the shutter is in the right position when the flash goes off.

Although you may have heard that putting a ControlTL device on your camera’s hot shoe will fool your camera into thinking there is a flash there, this is not completely accurate. The only in-camera flash control you have is Flash Exposure Compensation. Any zone control or ratio adjustments have to be done with an actual 580 EX/EX II mounted on top of the MiniTT1 or FlexTT5 device.

When the Zone Controller is available, this will help solve the ratio issue by allowing independent adjustment of three different zones without having to have a speedlite on the camera itself. This will allow photographers with two speedlites to use them both off-camera with individual output control. The Zone Controller can also operate each zone in manual or eTTL mode for maximum flexibility. The Zone Controller should be shipping at the end of May for around $70.

How I use the PocketWizard ControlTL System

I can’t really address every possible scenario but I can tell you how I have been using the ControlTL system in the shooting I have been doing. This generally breaks down into a couple of different situations. As seen in this first image, a remote flash on a lightstand is outfitted with a Lumodi Beauty Dish to provide directional lighting and make it appear as if the subjects are being lit by the sun. Shooting at this distance and still having eTTL control of the flash is a huge benefit. This is also used with high speed sync to be able to properly expose for a bright sky and still get a proper exposure on the subjects.

Usually only a simple adjustment of the flash compensation is all that is needed to dial in the exact look that I am going for.

The second most common usage is the ability to place a subject is complete shade to minimize harsh shadows from the sun but still provide the look of an afternoon sun but with far greater control over the contrast.

The bottom line is that the ControlTL system provides the means accomplish the style of images that I try to create with minimal setup time and quick remote adjustments.

Is the ControlTL System for you?

You are the only person who can decide if the ControlTL system is the right fit for your photography style and especially your budget. The components are not cheap, this is a system designed for professionals. The MiniTT1 transmitter sells for $199 while the FlexTT5 transmitter sells for $225. With the Canon 580 EX II selling for $445, a multi-light setup starts to get expensive very quickly.

Why not just use studio strobes and radio triggers? There are certainly situations where that is appropriate and even preferred. However, studio strobes are not as portable, do not offer eTTL control, cannot do high speed sync, and can’t dump their light fast enough for higher speed shots. The small speedlites are extremely flexible and having them be able to be used at fairly long distances gives you control over your lighting that you simply can’t get with a studio strobe.

For more information as well as numerous instructional videos, check out the PocketWizard website at http://pocketwizard.com

Disclosure: CameraDojo, Kerry Garrison, and associated editors do not receive any monetary compensation for any reviews or articles written for the
CameraDojo.com website. PocketWizard supplied loaner equipment to use for this article as well as several upcoming lighting tutorials.

Why PocketWizards?

This isn’t really an article about why or why not to use PocketWizards per-say, but the PocketWizards do provide unique functionality that other systems do not. Could I fire the flash with the dish on it using a $24 Cactus v4? Of course I could, and many times that may be all you need. If you are good with a shutter speed of around 1/160th of a second, these cheap wireless systems will work just fine. Let’s take the first image above, notice the well exposed sky and background, this was taken with the sky overhead in bright sun. That image was taken at ISO 200, f/5.6 with a shutter speed of 1/1,600th of a second. Thats TEN TIMES faster than a cheap manual flash can do. With a shutter speed this fast, the sky is exposed properly (this technique is called high speed sync), if I had to shoot at a much slower shutter speed, the sky would be completely blown out. Also, since the PocketWizard system is wireless, the flash can be hidden behind the dish and will still fire.

Why not just use natual light?

ISO 100 f/5.6 1/640th No Flash

Because natural light sucks. Maybe I should explain that some more. You have very little control over natural ligh and no way of “fixing” bad natural lighting. Sure, I might be able to bring in a reflector and completely blind the subject (in this case me) but reflectors can have their own issues and more often than not, they require an assistant to hold and adjust to get the light just right.

Notice with these two images that were taken at the same time, one with flash and one without, the image without flash suffers from heavy, sharp shadows and dark eye sockets (racoon eyes).

ISO 100 f/5.6 1/640th

The image taken with flash is more evenly lit. Granted, I don’t make the best subject and I am trying to overexaggerate the lighting effect to help make it more understandable, but you can see that the racoon eyes are gone as well. Learning to balance the flash and ambient is really the key to making your images look natural even when throwing in flash to help them out.

So again, yes, you can certainly start off with cheap wireless triggers but you also need to understand their limitations and be able to work within those confines, you would not be able to balance flash and ambient in a bright outdoor shoot while being limited to less than 1/200th of a second. For studio work or more controlled lighting environments, manual flash and remote triggers will very often be the only thing you need. However, if you really want to take full advantage of your system and be able to switch from manual to eTTL and let the camera and flash help get your exposures right, as well as do tricks like high speed sync, then the ControlTL system is going to be the solution you are looking for.

Final lighting setup

For those of you wanting to see the final lighting setup used on the last two images, here it is. The camera was about 20 feet away using a Sigma 24-70 lens. A 580EX II flash was mounted on a tripod using the FlexTT5 Transceiver with the Lumodi 14″ beauty dish mounted on it. The light was position to the right of the subject at about a 45 degree angle to provide direction lighting in the same angle that the natural sunlite was coming from.

Neil was born and raised in Johannesburg, South Africa, but emigrated to the USA in 2000. Neil is now a resident of New Jersey, USA, where he lives with his wife and daughter. He has also traveled through parts of Africa and Europe.

You can check out Neil’s website at http://neilvn.com or follow him on twitter at http://twitter.com/neil_vn.

Show Host

Kerry Garrison
http://kerrygarrison.com Twitter Facebook FriendFeed

This podcast is also available on iTunes.

CameraDojo listeners can get 10% off of Scott’s products and workshops with discount code: camdojox

Scott’s Website
www.scottrobertgallery.com

Scott’s Current Portfolio
http://gallery.me.com/scottrobertlim#100029

Scott’s Learning Guide
www.scottrobertmasterflash.com

1 day workshops and mentoring program
www.scottrobertworldtour.com

Show Host

Kerry Garrison
http://kerrygarrison.com Twitter Facebook FriendFeed

This podcast is also available on iTunes.

Syl’s new book LIDLIPS Lessons I Didn’t Learn In Photo School is available on Amazon for only $13.45.

Be sure and check out Syl’s websites: http://pixsylated.com and  http://speedliting.com

Show Host

Kerry Garrison
http://kerrygarrison.com Twitter Facebook FriendFeed

This podcast is also available on iTunes.

Roberto talks about composition and gives the following guidelines:

• Choose a selective focusing technique
• Placement and composition of your main subject
• Use converging lines
• Use repetitive elements
• Use Framing techniques

http://www.robertovalenzuelaphotography.com or follow Roberto on twitter at http://twitter.com/robertophoto

Roberto also mentioned the Magic Lantern Guides Camera Books that help your learn your camera and what the controls do.

Show Host

Kerry Garrison
http://kerrygarrison.com Twitter Facebook FriendFeed

This podcast is also available on iTunes.

Elmsford NY – December 29, 2009 -

Two key version 5.0 capabilities are Rear Curtain Sync and Pre-Flash Boost. PocketWizard’s rear curtain sync allows the photographer to set the shutter speed at which rear curtain sync automatically engages while optimizing the timing of rear curtain sync to fire at the absolute end of the shutter opening. Pre-Flash Boost provides enhanced E-TTL performance when using flash diffusers, doing bounce flash, or at ranges just beyond the normal E-TTL capabilities. By increasing the pre-flash power, PocketWizard has offset the loss of light in these challenging E-TTL situations.

Another significant new feature is Automatic Camera Detection. The ControlTL system can now automatically detect exactly which camera is being used to optimize system performance precisely for that camera. For Canon 5D and 5D Mark II users, this means the system will set the High Speed Sync crossover point to 1/320th versus the default of 1/400th to compensate for those camera’s slower shutter mechanisms. Camera compatibility for the Canon 7D has been added as well as E-TTL flash compatibility for the Metz 58 AF-1 flash.

Several other new features and refinements have been made and complete details can be found at www.PocketWizard.com/downloads. Current MiniTT1 Transmitter and FlexTT5 Transceiver owners can upgrade to the new firmware for free via the recently revised PocketWizard Utility.

About PocketWizard and the MiniTTI and FlexTT5

The PocketWizard MiniTT1 Transmitter and FlexTT5 Transceiver for Canon allow photographers to wirelessly control single or multiple off-camera flash units. These radios interpret the flash and exposure data communicated through the camera’s hot shoe and digitally transmit the information through a reliable radio signal. Photographers can place E-TTL flashes connected to a dedicated FlexTT5 Transceiver for wireless E-TTL operation wherever they need to illuminate a scene, even out of sight or in bright sun. Any change in ISO, aperture, shutter speed and even flash compensation is automatically communicated and adjusted wirelessly. A ControlTL system for Nikon is in the works as well as compatibility with some studio lights. The ControlTL system is also compatible for standard triggering with all PocketWizard radios.

For More Information

For more information on firmware version 5.0, including all new features and refinements, please visit PocketWizard.com.

###

Kerry and Jules also announce their upcoming workshop on Jan 26th. For more information on the Light, Location, and Love workshop, please check out:
http://cameradojo.com/2009/12/09/light-location-love-workshop-with-jules-bianchi-and-kerry-garrison/

Be sure and check out Jules’ website at http://julescafe.com.

Don’t forget about our CameraDojo MediaSmart Server Giveaway

Show Host

Kerry Garrison
http://kerrygarrison.com Twitter Facebook FriendFeed

This podcast is also available on iTunes.

The “Easy Way”
The easy way to get this shot is to shoot the card laying on its side. Once you have the image, take it into Photoshop and rotate it 90 degrees clockwise so it is then standing up, copy a portion of it, rotate it vertically, then add a gradient to fade to white, and viola, you are done. This would certainly have been less time in shot setup but more time in post production. What I wanted was to actually do as much of the shot in-camera as possible, hence, I didn’t do it “The Easy Way” and then “Fix it in Photoshop”.

The Shot Setup
The first thing I needed to get was the reflection under the product. A reflection actually isn’t very hard to do, I do it quite often. I just shoot the product over a sheet of thick plexiglass that is sitting on top of a sheet of white muslin. The image of the product will be reflected into the plexi and you have yourself a sweet reflection.

Getting the card to “stand up” required a little bit of thought. At first I tried some acrylic blocks but that stood out too much and would require more Photoshop work than I wanted to do. The same thing happened with white blocks. The final solution turned out to be super simple. I used a boom arm and suspended the cards using fishing line. With the strobes going off the fishing line just disappeared making touch-ups for real fast.

The Post Production
To get started, the images were imported into Lightroom and the Clarity and Vibrance were bumped a hair, the shots were cropped, and then the Adjustment Brush was used to completely blow out the background. A Foreground to transparent gradient was used to fade the reflection to white so the image would set nicely on a website.

The Results
The final images are exactly what I set out to accomplish with very little post production because I tried to get as much done in-camera as possible. While I could have used Photoshop I often think that it is better to get the shot as close to the finished product as possible when you capture it. By even taking simple shots like this and figuring out how to get the shot a different way is good exercise for when something more complicated comes up. Being able to improvise and come up with creative solutions to problems is a very valuable skill.

More Images

Video Explanation

Equipment Used

Strobelite Plus w/Barn Door Kit
Strobelite Plus w/24×36 softbox
Canon 50D
Canon 50mm f1/8
Photoflex Boom arm
Westcott light stands
Vanguard Ball head
Calumet tripod
Phottix Cleon II Trigger

Features

As we have already said, the core purpose of DSLR Remote Pro is to allow for tethered shooting. While that seems like a pretty trivial thing, its all of the extra things that DSLR Remote Pro brings to the table.

• Take control of your Canon DSLR camera from your PC (supported models)
• Retain full control from the camera
• Photos automatically downloaded to the PC and displayed in a large preview window
• Large high quality live view display on the  PC with live histogram, autofocus and intuitive manual focusing using mouse wheel with Canon EOS 40D, Canon EOS 50D, Canon EOS 500D/Rebel T1i, Canon EOS 450D/Rebel XSi, Canon EOS 1000D/Rebel XS, Canon EOS 5D Mark II, Canon EOS-1Ds Mark III or Canon EOS-1D Mark III
• Photos are saved on the PC’s hard disk and can also be saved on the memory card in the camera
• Full size preview window can display a critical area of the photo e.g. the eyes and face of your model during a portrait shoot
• Flashing highlight display to highlight over exposed areas
• Grid overlay display for accurate alignment of studio shots. The size and color of the grid is user definable
• Color management and sharpening options for more accurate display of preview images
• Auto bracketing of up to 15 shots ideal for HDR images, interior shots and product photography
• Timed bulb exposures controlled from the PC – ideal for astronomy (Canon EOS-1Ds Mark III, EOS-1D Mark III, EOS 5D Mark II, EOS 40D, EOS 50D, EOS 500D/Rebel T1i, EOS 450D/Rebel XSi and EOS 1000D/Rebel XS only)
• Focus point overlay display for more precise control of auto focus
• Automatic screen blank option – blanks the screen before taking a photo so that the light from the PC display doesn’t affect the subject lighting
• Fullscreen mode for large, uncluttered display of images
• Automatic edit option – automatically loads the image after downloading into the editor or program of your choice
• Automatically stores a short comment in the shooting data of images for easy identification e.g. the person’s name when taking id photos. The comment can also be used for the image filename to make it easier to identify images when taking product shots, school portraits etc.
• Automatically stores IPTC data in images as they are downloaded
• Time-Lapse feature which allows the number of photos in a sequence and the interval between shots to be specified.

Stack it and Bracket

Typically if you want an exposure bracket for HDR images you are limited to the camera’s 3 shot bracket. While three shots is often sufficient, there are times you really want to use more images, with DSLR Remote Pro you can do bracket sequences using either shutter speed or aperture of up to 15 shots. Using tools like PhotoMatix, you can get really incredible results when using larger groups of images.

Another interesting thing you can do with multiple images is called focus stacking. With Focus Stacking you take a series of images of the same object with the focus positioned at different points. When you combine the images you can achieve a super sharp image with a longer depth of field. Photoshop CS4 now has this ability and there are some free tools that can do the processing as well. To use Focus Stacking you actually need a script that will automate some of the steps in DSLR Remote Pro. If you are interested in this functionality, read more about it at http://www.breezesys.com/DSLRRemotePro/focus_stacking.htm.

Live and in Color!

With the newer Canon cameras that support Live View, a whole realm of possibilities is opened up to you since you can display full-screen Live View with a live histogram. The Live View mode also allows you to zoom into the frame at 100% magnification to ensure that your focus is dead on. This is exceptionally useful when doing macro, product, or food photography.

What’s really unique is the ability to do autofocus while in Live View mode. Hitting Ctrl-F will perform a contrast detection routine that may be a little slow but is usually quite good. This however will not work well with moving objects.

Another interesting feature is Onion Skinning. Onion Skinning is a term that is used in animation to be able to see an overlay of the previous image in order to draw a smooth animation. With DSLR Remote Pro in Live View mode you can load in another image or the previous image in order to get precise alignment. This is good for stop motion animation or to accurately align images for panoramas.

Step into my booth

One thing you really wouldn’t expect from a program like this is the Photo Booth mode since there are a handful of companies that make specific photobooth software. With DSLR Remote Pro you can setup a nice photobooth station, even build a whole booth around it, and offer prints right after a series of images are taken. This can be a fun option to offer your clients at different events.

Integrating with Lightroom

Since Adobe Photoshop Lightroom doesn’t have direct tethering ability at this time, the next best thing is to use DSLR Remote Pro and Lightroom together. Lightroom has a feature that allows it to watch a folder and import any files that it sees show up in the folder. This allows you to take full advantage of all of DSLR Remote Pro’s features while having the images go into Lightroom automatically.

Summary

If you want to take tethered shooting to the next level than DSLR Remote Pro is probably worth looking into. The only real downside is that you are limited to the length of cable between the camera and the computer. For $95 you pick up a ton of functionality that the free EOS Utility doesn’t have. For my own studio shooting, I rely heavily on DSLR Remote Pro and as it continues to evolve it just keeps getting better and better.

Breeze Systems Website: http://www.breezesys.com

During this tutorial Kerry shows how to use a light meter to determine the difference between the background and the subject to achieve a good high-key look as well as using the meter to determine the proper exposure.

In this video Kerry demonstrates using a simple light meter in a product shoot.

How to use a light meter from Kerry Garrison on Vimeo.

Related Articles:

• Using a Light Meter for Proper Exposure
• Podcast #53 – Using a Light Meter

How to get the lighting we want

By now we would hope you wouldn’t be asking how to get your lighting setup dialed in, but if you need a little refresher you should start off with the following articles:

• Lighting ratios for portraits
• Using a Light Meter for Proper Exposure
• Understanding Light Stops

For the rest of the article, different images will also be presented with lighting diagrams to help illustrate exactly how each look was obtained.

Broad Lighting

Broad lighting is certainly the easiest lighting style to use since the camera side of the face is lit brighter than the far side of the face. This look is easily obtained by simply bouncing your flash off a wall or reflector to the side of the camera back onto the subject. Broad lighting used to be taught as the “feminine lighting†but that is certainly not always the case.  Broad lighting will tend to make a face look wider which is not always a look that is the most flattering. With the right subject, broad lighting can certainly achieve very nice results.

With the subject facing to the camera right and a large light source to the camera left a broad light effect is created putting the side of the face furthest from the camera into shadow. With the tilt of her head it gave her face a more rounded appearance.

Short Lighting

Short lighting is considered by many to be the most flattering style and is certainly my personal favorite. Short lighting will tend to make a face look thinner. Short lighting is also harder to achieve because it virtually requires off-camera lighting since the light is coming from behind the subject.

With the shadow on the camera side of the face, the face looks thinner. Keep in mind, the examples so far have been achieved on the same location spot using only natural light and simply moving the subject and camera position to get the desired look.

Split Lighting

Split lighting is not very popular and is probably the least used of the different lighting styles. In split lighting the light is split down the middle of the subject’s face dividing it in half. The lighting setup is fairly simple with two lights on either side of the subject and one using less power than the other. I personally really like the split lighting effect to give someone some images that will have a different look than they are likely to get from other photographers.

As you can see, split lighting can be very effective and with just a slight turn of the head can look like a mix of split lighting and short lighting,

Summary

I hope this has given you a new set of tools to use to improve your portrait lighting techniques, done properly you can achieve a very classic, timeless look that your clients will love. The key to mastering any of these is to practice, practice, practice. Get some lights setup for one style, maybe get a model from a place like Model Mayhem, and work on each style until you really have it nailed down. Next time we will look at Rembrandt and Butterfly lighting.

Stop, Drop, and Roll

We we are talking about lighting ratios, we first need to understand a few key concepts. The first being what we mean when we refer to stops of light. For an in-depth article on this, please refer back to our article on Understanding Light Stops. To put it briefly, a stop is not a measurement of light output, it is the relative difference between two light values. If we double the output of a light source, we have increased our light by 1 stop, if we cut our light in half, we have decreased our light by one stop. This is an exponential increase or decrease since we have to again double, or half our output to change by a whole stop. For example, if we take the light output from a single light bulb, it will then take two light bulbs to increase by 1 stop. To increase by another stop we would then need four light bulbs, then eight, etc.

We we are setting up for doing portraits using light ratios, we typically want to have one side of the face lit properly and then the opposite side dropped by 2 or even more stops. Why do we want to purposely add shadows, because flat lighting (1:1 ratio) is actually unflattering. Using shadows will add depth, dimension, and realism to you portraits.

Be yee subtle or be yee dramatic – that is the question

Working with shadows can give you very dramatic differences in the mood of an image from being soft and feminine to being very hard and more masculine. While that is typically the case, there are excellent examples even when reversing the gender roles. One of my favorite recent images is of Hayley and uses some very dramatic lighting and yet because the transition areas between shadows and highlights are fairly soft, the feminine nature of the image is retained.

By making the transitions between the shadows and the highlights harsher, you can change the mood. In the following two images, the models were light with pretty hard side lighting with high ratios in order to achieve a more rough look that would really make all of the details on their bodies stand out more.

Notice in both images the shadow side of the image is almost completely dark and featureless adding to the dramatic feel of the images.

Sculpting with light

In this final section we are going to look at how we can actually appear to change the shape of someone’s face with the use of light and shadows. In the first image, Taylor is light with a 1:1 ratio which appears to make her face seem flatter and really shows her cheek and chin structure. In the second image we throw shadows into the cheek and chin which give her a different look altogether.

With the 1:1 ratio broad lighting, Taylor’s face looks more featureless and wider. With a 2:1 ratio short lighting setup her nose has more detail and her face looks thinner and taller.

Summary

Based on the recent poll here on Camera Dojo we know that many of you are struggling with lighting and we hope that this, and future articles on lighting will help take your images to a whole new level.

Later, the guys discuss the use of a light meter and how it can help you get your exposures fast and accurately in-camera and save you time in post-production.

Show Hosts

Kerry Garrison
http://kerrygarrison.com
Twitter: http://twitter.com/kerrygarrison Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=822369545

David Esquire
http://esquirephotography.com
Twitter: http://twitter.com/esquirephoto Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=636655600

This podcast is also available on iTunes.

Presented by Camera Dojo publisher and podcast host Kerry Garrison, this should be a fun and educational workshop that will really help you improve your portraits.

For more information and to RSVP please visit the event page on Facebook at:
http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=116391356208

That Cheatin’ Histogram

Let’s look at what happens when we take a picture with our DSLRs. The exposure meter in the camera is using reflective light instead of incident light so a man’s tux will show a different meter reading than a bride’s dress even if the exposure for both of them was correct since the white dress will reflect more light than the tux, thus throwing the exposure meter out of whack. Secondly, when we press the shutter the camera creates a JPEG image with all of your picture settings and an S-Curve applied. Yes, this happens even if you are shooting in RAW mode since the display on the LCD is actually the JPEG image which is also the image the camera uses to calculate the histogram. I can’t count the times that my exposure meter was dead center, the preview looked great, and the histogram was good but when I brought up the RAW image in Lightroom, the image wasn’t quite exposed as well as I expected. Anyone who shoots a lot can attest to this issue. Yes, your LCD and histogram are usually accurate enough, but if you want to be accurate all the time then you need a reading from the point of few of the subject by measuring the actual amount of light hitting the subject and not the amount of light reflected by the subject.

What does a light meter tell you?

I asked a handful of photographers who had never used a light meter what they thought a light meter would tell them and surprisingly few actually knew even the basic functions of all light meters did with “Measure the light I guess†being the top answer. Even the most basic of light meters will allow you to set the ISO speed you want to use, then you set the shutter speed or aperture to what you want to use and the meter will give you the correct settings for a proper exposure. More fancy ones can also fire your flash equipment and some will even calculate the amount of flash versus ambient light.

Let’s say we have a nice bright sunny day and we set our ISO to 200, and our aperture to f/16, if we take a reading we will probably get something like 1/200th of a second as our shutter speed for a good exposure. With most digital light meters you can then make adjustments to the shutter or aperture and it will change the values on the screen to tell you what to change the other setting to.

If you aren’t familiar with the relationship between ISO, Shutter Speed, and Aperture, you should read the article we have about it (Link: The Exposure Triangle).

Testing the theory

Ok, I am sure many of you are skeptical that your camera, even a high end pro-series camera isn’t going to be dead-nuts accurate, but let’s take a few tests and see what our camera is telling us.

The following is a series of images of a product that has a black front and a light top, not something a camera’s meter is going to be good at so it will help illustrate the point well. Simply adjusting the camera’s settings to center the camera’s exposure meter at ISO 200, f/5.6 the camera gave us a setting of 1/400th shutter speed. Shooting the gray side of a WhiBal card it changed to 1/400th of a second, and shooting the gray/white/black side we got a setting of 1/640th of a second. By doing this test we can see that the camera’s exposure meter is going to change based on how reflective the subject is. In each image you can also see Photoshop’s histogram to see where the image’s exposure actually came in at.

Image 1 – ISO 200 f/5.6 1/400th – Slightly Underexposed (Based on WhiBal Gray)

Image 2 – ISO 200 f/5.6 1/640th – Underexposed (based on WhiBal White/Black/Gray)

Image 3 – ISO 200 f/5.6 1/200th – Showing good exposure (based on light meter)

Now some people may say that a perfect exposure should be centered in the histogram, however, digital sensors retain more detail in the highlights than they do in the shadows so you actually want your highlights to be fairly far to the right without going into the last little bit of the histogram which is exactly what we got with the final image.

But how does the meter know what the background is?

One of the most commonly asked questions is how does the meter know what the background of the subject is, since that should affect the exposure right? Well, let’s just try some experiments and see what we get. The following images were taken using the exposure settings provided by the light meter which were identical for both images, take a close look at the histogram for each image.

ISO 400 f/4.0 1/125th – Properly Exposed yet histogram says its underexposed

ISO 400 f/4.0 1/125th – Properly Exposed yet histogram says its overexposed

Of course the white paper is providing some bounce light that is providing more details around the edges and since I only metered for the center of center of the phone. So yes, the background can affect the exposure because you may not be metering for any reflected light, although this is typically only a problem with a situation like this. If I wanted to expose for the edges, then I could have metered at the edges. Does this mean the background affected the exposure? Yes, but only because the background in this situation actually is acting as a light source that is reflecting light into the edges around the product.

Will a light meter work properly in every situation?

So far we have looked at using a light meter for incident lighting, where this can break down is with highly reflective surfaces or in situation where the lighting is uneven, in this case a reflective meter is going to be more accurate. Most all light meters can do both types by adjusting or moving the light sensor dome. In reflective mode, the meter is going to act just like the meter on the camera.

Like anything else, a light meter is just another tool that is designed for a specific purpose. Used properly, it can dramatically improve your exposures and you camera setup time. The following image was taken in bright daylight with a large diffuser to the camera right and a large beauty dish flash to camera left. Combined with the ambient light, that is three different light values. With the light meter getting a reading taken at the subjects face, and the meter facing the camera, the settings provided were certainly dead on.

Model: Taylor Thorne

Ok, I want one, what do I do?

Light meters, especially used ones can be had for pretty reasonable prices. I see meters like the Sekonic L-358, which is a pretty nice meter with lots of functionality, often sell for $150-$200 on Craigslist. Cheaper models with less features, but still fully capable can be had for as little as $50-$60.

Model: Taylor Thorne

SpyderCUBE by Datacolor

Once in a while a product comes along that is so clever, so right, it is just a “must have” product.  While at PMA, I stumbled on such a product.  The SpyderCUBE by Datacolor is one of those products.  Nothing it does is really new, but it does everything right, in a small package, with more features than most any competitive product on the market.  For me personally, this gadget has single-handedly obsoleted my gray cards, ExpoDisc and most all other white balance devices I have seen.

Overview

First, this is an ABS plastic/resin cube with a tripod mount on the bottom stem and a metallic ball on the top.  By putting this object in a photo you shoot, you get a whole slew of exposure, white balance, specular highlight, black level, absolute black, neutral gray and white readings in light from multiple directions, all in one place from a single tool.

Features

It’s not a complexly built product, but it is a lot more sophisticated than a piece of gray cardboard that gets bent up in the pouch of your camera bag.  Each and every feature and surface of the device has a specific purpose.  If you use Aperture or Lightroom, taking advantage of this tool is quick and easy.

Specifications

Usage

I have used this product in a couple of tests so far with my Canon 5D Mark II, and the results are both amazing and as expected.  At the beginning of my shoot, I put this SpyderCUBE (attached to a flexible tripod) on a flat surface somewhere in the shoot.  I take an initial shot with it in the photo.  Once I get into Lightroom, I use the eyedropper to set my white balance setting for the room, and then apply that setting across the rest of the photos that I shot in that scene.

Another possibility is to use the cube in a photo to set the on-camera custom white balance.  If you get the cube to take up a a good bit of the image, the camera can set white balance right from it.

Results

Original Auto White Balance Canon 5DII

So, here are some tests that I did to see how well this works.  Follow along with me.

First, I grabbed my Canon 5D Mark II with a 16-35MM F2.8L lens and set white balance to auto white balance (AWB), walked out my back door, sat the SpyderCUBE with a mini-tripod onto a crate of travertine on my back patio.  There is some white Styrofoam and fairly white stone there in the shot, so I figured it would get a pretty decent white balance with the auto setting on my camera.  As you can see, the photo isn’t too bad for color (click it to enlarge).  The camera calculated the white balance at 4500ºK.

Lightroom's eyedropper tool

I then brought the image into Adobe LightRoom to do a little light balance work there.  In the develop mode of lightroom, there is a small eyedropper you can select and use to point to a neutral gray on the image.  This is what the SpyderCUBE is all about… giving you that perfect neutral gray in both direct light and indirect light.  You can see from the image to the right that the Lightroom eyedropper gives a pattern of pixel colors around where you are about to click, as well as the RGB value of the pixel you are hovering over.

Lightroom Corrected - 5000ºK

Once you click the mouse, Lightroom immediately re-calculates the white balance for the scene and changes the white balance setting to the new calculation.  In this case, that setting is 500ºK warmer, or 5000ºK.  If I had just shot a whole series of photos in this scene, I would now apply the new white balance setting to all of the images in the series to get the color correct on all of them.  This one step alone can save many of us from manually tweaking the color settings in our images, but shooting outdoors is not typically a hard situation to white balance.

Mixed lighting indoors + AWB

A scenario that is really hard for most cameras to auto white balance is a mixture of indoor light sources, including halogen, tungsten, fluorescent and ambient light from windows.  I am sure that many of you have had this situation where you shoot an indoor scene with AWB set and what you get is an orange cast image that is just completely wrong as your camera’s auto white balance just cannot figure out the lighting.  So, I have set up that exact situation with the modeling lights from my strobes through soft boxes and halogen overhead lights, plus mid-day sunlight coming in through the windows.  This shot is a mess!  And it is so typical of using the AWB setting on so many cameras when shooting indoors.

Camera AWB reading

Looking at the settings in Lightroom, this image was read as a color temperture of 4050ºK.  The multiple light sources have thrown the camera for a loop.  But again, with the eyedropper and selecting the neutral gray, and this time you can see a much more dramatic change over the last example.

Corrected White Balance

The corrected image now has a color space of 2750ºK, which is 1300ºK different than the original calculations by the camera.  And look how obvious that difference is! As a matter of fact, I could not find a single situation where the color wasn’t ever so slightly off from my camera using the AWB setting.  That alone tells me that this SpyderCUBE needs to travel everywhere my camera travels.

Histogram as shot

This brings up another interesting tip with Lightroom and using the Histogram in the upper right corner.  Let’s take a look at the Histogram for this image (right).  Notice the triangles at the upper left and right of this image?  They actually serve a purpose.  They can tell you if your image has absolute blacks and whites in the range of the image.  Notice how both triangles are gray – the same color a the background of the Histogram?

No blue shows here

If you click on the triangle, it will highlight.  If you look at your image, it will now show blue wherever absolute black appears in the photo.  In this case, there really isn’t any absolute black to notice.  Even the hole in the bottom of the SpyderCUBE is not showing any blue.  But we can fix this.

Sliding the Histogram

Next, we roll our mouse pointer over the lower portion of the Histogram, and click.  A <|> symbol appears and we can now drag the histogram for the lower light portion of the image and move the black point.  As we slowly move it left, you will see the triangle turn blue just as the first pixels of absolute black appear on the screen.  Move it a touch more and it turns white.  When the triangle is gray, none of the image is at absolute black.  When it turns blue, the image is perfectly set with the darkest color in the photo at absolute black.  As you drag further and it turns white you are now clipping some of the darker colors in the image to black.  This is a powerful tool and tells us a lot about the luminance range of our image.

White point clipping

The upper end of the histogram serves the same purpose with the white point of the image.  When I click it, the specular highlight of the SpiderCUBE’s chrome ball reflects the brightest light source in the image and pixels begin to appear in red where the white point of the image begins to clip.  By adjusting this area of the histogram, we can fine tune the white point of the image and control the clipping at the brightest point we wish. You can also click both of the triangles and see the white and black clipping points in red and blue at the same time.

AWB shot for in camera WB

One last test was to see if I could set the camera’s custom white balance from just shooting the SpyderCUBE.  Using the same lighting setup as the studio shots above, I put the SpyderCUBE about 6″ away from my lens and shot it with AWB.  As you can see, the same white point issues.  This shot came out at around 4150ºK, which is pretty far off.  I then went into the menu on the camera and told it to set a custom white balance using this photo as a reference.  This was an interesting test as I made sure that there were other colors visible in the photo.

In-camera custom white balance

The camera re-set the white balance to 2900ºK.  I changed exposure slightly, took the SpyderCUBE out of the shot and re-took the photo with the new white balance setting, and as you can see… a huge improvement!  Once again, the SpyderCUBE has done its job.  even with all kinds of strange light combinations, it has saved the day and set the white balance properly.  From now on, this little baby goes wherever my camera goes.

The SpyderCUBE is available at B&H and Amazon for $59 as of the writing of this review.  Although it is a bit more than you will pay for a white balance card, and a little bulkier, there are some distinct advantages to having the extra features of this product… like specular highlight and absolute black.

The SpyderCUBE and a series of demonstration videos videos can be found at the Datacolor website.

Product Review Scorecard

*PHD Cameras – Acronym for “Push Here, Dummy”, meaning the world of simple point and click digital cameras.

Author: Maurice Naragon
Digital Creations
Website Development and Marketing
Professional Photography in Orange County, CA

The Original TD-5′s

Spiderlite TD-5

The TD-5 Spidelites comes standard with five 27 watt fluorescent bulbs which each put out about 110 watts giving you a total of around 550 watts. For portraits this is just a tad under powered for my tastes since I need to bump my ISO in order to get a good exposure since a slower shutter speed just doesn’t always work well with some subjects. With product photography this isn’t an issue since products don’t typically move on their own so a slower shutter speed can usually be used.

The New Bulbs

TD5 Spiderlite Bulb

To say that the new bulbs are bigger than the previous bulbs is a monster of an understatement. The new high wattage bulbs simply dwarf the original bulbs in raw size and thickness of the elements. In fact, the bulbs are so big that you can no longer put five of them into the TD-5 light head.

As the saying goes, “size matters” and these huge bulbs can really shine (ok, bad joke, I know).  Being rated at 50watts gives them about 200 watts of output each and then an additional 20watt bulb that fits into the middle position pushes the total output to close to 900 watts.  With around 1.8x the original power output you gain just shy of a full stop of light.

The Results

High Wattage Spiderlite TD-5 Bulbs

As much as I liked my Spiderlite TD-5′s before, now I love them! The extra light output was exactly what I needed to use them for more situations that I would have had to switch to strobes for. Not only can I use them for more photo situations but they work great as video lights as well.

These new bulbs are not cheap, the five bulb pack will set you back almost $180. I know that this seems like an awful lot of money for bulbs but keep in mind that a typical 500 watt bulb will have a life expectancy of about 60 hours while at 60 hours these fluorescent bulbs are just getting broken in and can be expected to last a total of about 8,000 hours. Think about that for a second. A typical 500 watt tungsten bulb will last just about 2.5 days of continuous use while these fluorescents will last over 333 days! That can be a huge cost savings over time.

Example Image

The bulbs do work as expected as with the old bulbs in on a simple lighting setup I was shooting at 1/25th at f/5.6 and the same setup with the new bulbs gave the same exposure at 1/50th at f/5.6 which is right what you should get by increasing the light output by a stop.

If you like using constant lights like I do but don’t like the extreme heat of tungsten bulbs, not to mention the danger of using such hot lights, than SpiderLite TD-5′s outfitted with the high wattage bulbs may be just the setup you are looking for. Let’s also not forget to mention that these bulbs are daylight balanced so they are real easy to work with without having to mess with custom white balances.

The SpiderLite TD-5′s are not your bargain basement quality lights, they are high quality studio lights that will last you for many years so yes, they are a little costly but they are seriously worth it if you are serious about your lighting.

For more information check out Westcott’s website at http://fjwestcott.com

Canon’s new EOS Rebel T1i is packed with features, both refined and new. In addition to its admirable performance with an all-new 15.1 Megapixel Canon CMOS sensor, DIGIC 4 Image Processor, a 3.0-inch Clear View LCD with anti-reflective and scratch-resistant coating, and compatibility with the EOS System of lenses and Speedlites, the EOS Rebel T1i adds remarkable Full HD video capture at resolutions up to 1920 x 1080. An HDMI port allows for quick connections to high definition TVs and monitors for easy viewing of your stills and video. The entire operation is simple and easy even if you are a beginner. You’ll have uncompromised EOS Digital performance with power and flexibility right in the palm of your hand.

• New 15.1 Megapixel CMOS sensor with DIGIC 4 Image Processor for faster processing of fine detail and natural color reproduction, 14-bit A/D conversion for smooth color tones and gradations.
• Full HD video capture at 1920 x 1080 resolution with HDMI output for HD viewing of stills and video.
• Live View Function for stills (Quick, Live and Face Detection AF modes) and video.
• 3.0-inch Clear View LCD (920,000 dots/VGA) monitor with anti-reflective and scratch-resistant coatings for improved viewing and smudge protection.
• Auto Lighting Optimizer for superior highlight-shadow control.
• Wide range ISO setting 100-3200 (ISO expansion: 6400, 12800).
• Creative Auto goes a step beyond auto allowing control over frequently-changed settings.
• Compatible with over 60 Canon EF/EF-S lenses and most EOS System accessories.

Suggested Retail Price: $899.99

Website: http://www.usa.canon.com

Jim is a world reknowned photographer with an amazing carreer and is one of the few people granted the title of Explorer of Light by Canon.

Jim Divitale’s Websites

http://www.jimdivitale.com
http://www.divitalephotography.com

Show Hosts

Kerry Garrison (http://kerrygarrison.com)
David Esquire (http://esquirephotography.com)

You can listen to this podcast now using our player widget in the right hand sidebar

This podcast is also available on iTunes.

Overview

I often see posts in different forums from people trying  to figure out how to provide remote power for on-location shooting. I have seen everything from picnic coolers full of electronics to generators with expensive inverters strapped on.  or the cost of building one of these picnic cooler power packs and your time to buy all the parts and assemble it, you are just as well off to spend the $349 for the Explorer XT and have a professionally built package that you know is going to work well.

Features

The Explorer XT is rated at 350 watts of continuous power and 1200watts peak power. For studio strobes this can handle up to 2400ws. The Explorer XT is designed as a portable power source for most flash and power pack units to be used on location, away from available power.

The Explorer XT is equipped with two (2) 12V, 7Ah sealed lead acid batteries, with an auto volt-charging feature which accepts 100-240V. It also has a 14V car battery charging where an internal circuit converts the 12V/14V source to a 24V. It also has an auxiliary battery port, allowing the user to connect another battery in case you need extended battery life. Battery power level indicators with beeper and charging indicators allow you to monitor power consumption and charging status.

The Explorer XT comes with a handy carrying bag to make hauling it around easier. The bag opens on both ends to allow access to all of the ports without removing it from the bag.

Specifications:

• Power Output: 350 watts (continuous)/ 1200watts (peak)
• Number of output sockets: 2
• Battery: Two (2) 12Vdc, 7AH SLA provision for external battery pack
• Charging Voltage Input: 100V-240V / 14Vdc (car battery charger)
• Charger: Built-in
• Weight: 8.5 kg (18 lbs)
• Dimensions: 14.5″ x 5.5″ x 7″
• Available Models: 115V/60Hz (North American, Japan) 230V/50 Hz (EU, Asia-Pacific, Middle East
  230V/60Hz (Philippines)

Setup

What setup? You take it out of the shipping container and its ready to go.  The only thing you need to do is keep it charged up. According to the instructions, you should keep in plugged in even when not in use, this will keep the lead acid batteries in optimum condition as well as always being ready for use.  This was a concern of mine since a fan is running and even though the instructions say it will use a trickle charge, I wanted to know how much power draw it was really taking. Using a Kill-A-Watt to measure to power draw I found that while the system is charging (charge light is blinking) was 80 watts, wow, that would be pricey to have plugged in all the time. However, as soon as the system hit a full charge (charging light went solid) then the power draw dropped to only 6 watts, now that’s more like it as I have numerous electronics around the house that use more than 6 watts when in standby mode so keeping the Explorer XT plugged in all the time.

Usage

The Explorer XT is designed to be dead-simple to use. Just turn it on and plug in your devices and use them like normal.  The Explorer XT has two outlets on the front that output clean power from the Explorer XT’s internal pure sine wave inverter.  Having a top-notch pure sine wave inverter is important as it helps protect the devices that you have plugged into it. Besides just being a portable battery solution, it can also be used in between your equipment and a low-cost gas generator. At first that may not make sense, why would you need the Explorer XT if you have a generator? The issue is that low-end generators can’t handle the peak demands that studio strobe lights require and they don’t have pure sine wave inverters. By using both a generator and the Explorer XT the Explorer XT will handle the load of the strobes while the generator will work to keep the batteries charged up.

Results

The only way to really test out the Explorer XT was to hook up some strobes and start shooting. While the unit is rated for up to 2400ws, I don’t have anything near that power, nor do I need it in my home studio. I hooked up two PhotoBasics Strobelites (150ws each) and one PhotoBasics StrobeLite Plus (200ws) for a total of 500ws and started shooting away with all three lights on full power.  The Explorer XT has three charge level indicator lights, High, Mid, Low, at 225 shots the light flickered between Hi and Mid and finally went solid on Mid at 250 shots. The only difference from being plugged into the wall socket is that the recycle time dropped from four seconds to five seconds, and if I was shooting as fast as they could recycle would creep up to about six seconds. A short pause in the shooting and the recycle rate would speed up again. At 250 shots and only having drained about 1/3 of the battery charge I finally ended the test since I don’t like putting unneeded wear and tear on my lights or camera but it did show me that I can easily do most any typical shoot that I do and still have plenty of power left to also run other accessories like a blower or laptop.

I am very impressed by the performance considering the small size and relatively light weight of the unit.

Top Ten Contest Entries

Nashville Train Station (link)
The Link (link)
Millenium Bridge (link)
Nicholson Viaduct (link)
The Road Goes on Forever (link)
Gothic Walkway (link)
Quase Infinito (link)
Golden Beach Dock (link)
DC Metro (link)
Her first day on the job (link)

And the winner is……

LShadrack's The Link

LShadrack’s entry, The Link is our contest winner. This killer shot of a bridge in Kansas City played well with the theme of the contest, nailed the symetry of structure, was exposed well, and made for an excellent image. Congrats!

Show Hosts

Kerry Garrison (http://kerrygarrison.com)
David Esquire (http://esquirephotography.com)

This podcast is also available on iTunes.

I have mentioned David Ziser’s upcoming seminar series several times and I will continue to until it is over as it is going to be the one big not-to-miss seminar this year. David is an expert on lighting and technique and presents these topics in very easy to understand ways so that you can go back and start implementing them immediately.

David Ziser’s Digital WakeUp Call 2009 Tour will get underway on March 30 and hits 58 cities across the country. I got a sneak peak at some of the material while at WPPI and it made my entire trip worthwhile so I am personally excited about the Digital WakeUp Call Tour.

I had asked David how I could help promote tour for him and he responded with a special discount code for Camera Dojo readers. The discount code ZKGDWC09 will get you into the seminar for only $59 (a $20 savings!).

Who Should Attend?

I have been asked this a lot, and while David is one of the best wedding photographers in the world and certainly many of the examples will be of wedding images, anybody that wants to shoot people, make their images better, and learn Lightroom, should most certainly attend. Even if you are not selling weddings or portraits, for $59 you will improve the quality of your images signifigantly by using the techniques that David will be teaching.

Is It Worth Attending?

Again, yes yes yes!! For $59, you will leave with materials worth $250 more than you paid to get in:

• Tour Handbook including: program notes, photography, marketing and more
• 2 Hour DVD with extended program content
• $100 Rebate from American Color Imaging
• 1 year membership to WPPI and Rangefinder magazine, a $99 value
• FREE 3 month membership to DigitalProTalkPlus.com, a $45 value
• FREE 3 month subscription to PPA Magazine, a $15 value
• FREE PPA Indemnification (no-fault) insurance for all new PPA members, a $50 value
• Over $2,500 in door prizes awarded each evening
• And a chance to win 1 of 4 Grand Prizes worth over $5,000

Where will it be held?

The answer is, almost everywhere. David (and his amazing model LaDawn) will bring DWC to 58 cities across the country. The the schedule and registration page lists all of the days and locations. I will be attending the one in Irvine, Ca on May 20th.

Links:

Digital WakeUp Call Tour
David’s Digital Pro Talk Blog

Please check out California Sunbounce at http://www.sunbounce.com

Want to make your shooting easier so you do less cropping in post production? CropLines has the answer with engraved focus screens for 8×10, Rue of thirds, school portrait, or other designs so that you can nail your image in-camera.

Many photographers use or are considering flash brackets so that you can keep your accessory flash above your camera regardless of whether or not you have your camera in its vertical or horizontal position. The Reporter Flash Ring is one of the simplest flash brackets I have ever seen Instead of a series of hinges and brackets, the Reporter Flash Ring has a rong around the lens that doesn’t move and the flash slides around on the ring on a set of rollers. The design is simple and effective.

While not everyone wants their own photobooth, if you are looking to make you own, check out the new photobooth software from TOFURIOS. Their photobooth software is the best I have seen so far.

Stay tuned, more to come!

It all adds up

If the visual references isn’t quite enough, then another way to think about it is to think of a perfect exposure as the combination of the right proportion of ingredients made up of ISO, Shutter Speed, and Aperture setting. If a perfect exposure = 9, and you have equal parts of Shutter, ISO, and Aperture, then you have a good mix (3+3+3 = 9). If you need to adjust one of the ingredients, then you have to adjust one of the others to come up with the same final number (2+4+3=9), subract from one, you have to add to another to make up the difference. If you have too much of one, without substracting from another, you end up with an overexposed image. Conversly, if you take away from one but don’t add another, you end up with an underexposed image.

The Sunny 16 Example

In a previous article we looked at the sunny 16 rule, this states that on a bright sunny day, a perfect exposure should be f/16, ISO 200, 1/200th of a second. (ISO and shutter are the reciprocal of each other). If we wanted a shallower depth of field and wanted a larger aperture like f/2.8, then since f/2.8 is 5 stops brighter than f/16, we would then need to compensate with either a lower ISO or a faster shutter. Increasing the shutter is the easiest in this example then we need 5 stops of shutter giving us a speed of 1/6400th of a second.

Low Light Adjustments

In low light we have the opposite issue, trying to get enough light into the camera. We only go so slow before we run into blurring issues with slow shutter speeds, and the aperture limit is going to be based on the lens we are using. If we still don’t have a bright enough exposure then we have to compensate by increasing the ISO speed.

Bringing it all together

While each setting can have an effect on the overall image quality, the sum of the three effect the overall exposure. For a refresher on the other settings, be sure and go back through these previous articles:

• Beginner’s Guide to Aperture
• Controlling Exposure
• The Sunny 16 Rule in Photography
• Capturing movement with shutter speed
• Understanding Depth of Field

Author: Kerry Garrison

Watsonville, CA (PRWEB) January 26, 2009 — ExpoImaging Inc. (www.ExpoImaging.net), developer and marketer of innovative camera accessories, including the Ray Flash Ring Light Adapter, ExpoDisc Digital White Balance Filter and the ExpoAperture2 Depth-of-Field Guide, today announced that it is now the exclusive U.S. distributor of Honl Photo Professional Products.

Developed by veteran photojournalist David Honl, The Honl Photo Speed System is a collection of lightweight, durable and affordable light modifiers for shoe-mount flashes including an assortment of grids, snoots, reflectors, gobos and gels. With retail prices ranging from $9.95 to $29.95, these practical tools were designed to universally fit all shoe-mount flashes without the use of annoying adhesives. As photographers increasingly take advantage of the power and flexibility of modern portable shoe-mount flashes, the Honl Photo Speed System allows them to affordably bring studio-style lighting effects into the field.

“With more than two decades of professional experience, David Honl’s work has been published worldwide,” said Erik Sowder, president of ExpoImaging. “David developed and field tested the Speed System while traveling on assignment under very challenging conditions. We firmly believe that there are no similar products available that are more practical or easy-to-use. And we are pleased that David recognized our sales and marketing success and chose ExpoImaging to be his exclusive U.S. distributor. We look forward to representing these innovative and unique lighting products.”

The Honl Photo Speed System consists of:
· The Honl Speed Strap: a simple, non-slip velcro strap that wraps around the flash head and attaches and removes in seconds. The Speed Strap avoids rubber bands, tape and sticky residue, and universally fits any shoe-mount flash. The Speed Strap provides a large wraparound surface area to quickly attach Speed Grids, Speed Gobos/Bounce Cards, Speed Snoots or Honl Gels. The Honl Speed Strap retails for $9.95.

· Honl Photo Speed Grids (patent pending): weighting just 3 oz and available in 1/4-inch and 1/8-inch grid, the honeycomb-like cells narrow the beam of light from a portable flash unit, producing a small circle of light on a subject. Perfect for dramatic lighting effects, Speed Grids fit any shoe-mount and most handle-mount portable strobes and attach quickly and easily to a Speed Strap. Honl Photo Speed Grids retail for $29.95.

· The Honl Photo Speed Gobo/Bounce Card: a versatile gobo made of black ballistic nylon on one side and white polymer on the other. The black side can be used to keep light from flaring into a lens when using a flash as a background or hair light. The white side can be used as a bounce card. Utilizing two gobos, photographers can create a barn door setup. The Honl Speed Gobo/Bounce Card attaches quickly with a Speed Strap. The Honl Photo Speed Gobo/Bounce Card retails for $14.95.

· The Honl Photo Speed Snoot/Reflector (patent pending): available as a 5-inch “Shorty” or 8-inch “Regular”, this snoot is constructed of black, ballistic nylon with a gray interior that produces a soft falloff. The snoot can be shaped to concentrate the light from a shoe-mount flash for dramatic cinematic lighting or opened-up to use as a flash bouncer/reflector. Ideal in a variety of settings, from basic portraits to dramatic background lighting, the Speed Snoot/Reflector attaches and removes in seconds using a Speed Strap. The Honl Photo Speed Snoot/Reflector retails for $29.95.

· The Honl Photo Gel Kit: colors strobes to correct for tungsten, fluorescent or daylight lighting environments or adds artistic color effects to images. These superior quality gels are pre-cut and have attached strips of velcro to secure quickly to a Speed Strap, and can be used in conjunction with Honl Snoots, Gobos and Grids. The usable gel area is 2.5 inches by 4 inches (approx. 64mm by 102mm) and can be trimmed to fit individual strobes. The Honl Photo Gel Kit retails for $29.95.

“We feel fortunate for the opportunity to partner with ExpoImaging,” said David Honl. “We chose to work with ExpoImaging because they’re good at marketing and they have a great reputation in the industry. We look forward to a long and mutually beneficial business relationship.”

The addition of the Honl Photo line further solidifies ExpoImaging’s position as a leading supplier of unique and exciting products that meet the needs of photographers at all levels.

Honl Photo Professional Speed System Products are now available at photo dealers nationwide and online by visiting www.ExpoImaging.net.

About ExpoImaging, Inc.

ExpoImaging Inc. markets and develops innovative camera accessories and is the pioneer in digital white balance filters. Ray Flash: The Ring Light Adapter, Honl Photo Speed System, ExpoDisc Digital White Balance Filters, and the ExpoAperture2 Depth-of-Field Guide are available at select photography dealers worldwide, or online at www.ExpoImaging.net.

###
David Griffin
Matter Communications — Providence
401-351-9504 (direct)
508-648-1176 (mobile)
dgriffinmatter (AIM)
david@matternow.com
www.matternow.com

Carlos lays down the challenge to Camera Dojo listeners to post images taken with a single light source. To submit your images, add them to the comments on this page.

Be sure and check out Carlos’ website at http://carlosbaez.com and check out his DVD at http://www.photographymentor.com/school/seethelight

Show Hosts

Kerry Garrison (http://kerrygarrison.com)
David Esquire (http://esquirephotography.com)

This podcast is also available on iTunes.

From Scarlett:
“I had so much fun last year shooting a sizzlin’ bride and groom session in the glamorous lights of Vegas with Ross of Flosites.com and his bride Leysa, and this year, I want to give you the same opportunity for some rockstar portfolio pieces too! For those attending WPPI this year, I’m hosting a stylish photoshoot in Vegas again. Lyndsay, who won my “I Want to Spend A Day With Scarlett” contest will be the model with her hot husband as we shoot around the city that never sleeps! ”

To join in on the photoshoot, the session fee is $199 and we’ll shoot on Monday, February 16 at 7pm. To sign up, send Scarlett an email at scarlett@scarlettlillian.com! This a FIRST COME, FIRST SERVE event, and WILL sell out, so by emailing, you are agreeing to reserve your spot by paying the registration fee!

One of the sponsors, Pocket Wizard, will be at the workshop filming an exclusive BEHIND THE SCENES video of Scarlett and all of you participating in the workshop! So bring your inner rock star and get ready to be on camera! Seriously, you won’t want to miss this!

One lucky winner will get a chance to win a FREE spot in the workshop, so let’s do another CONTEST! The winner will ALSO win a pair of Pocket Wizards, AND the 1st, 2nd, & 3rd place winners will all win a Trendy Camera Strap, and Camera Dojo Powertools & Dojo Wedding Tools Lightroom presets! Woo hoo!!

You guys got so creative with the “I Want To Spend A Day A With Scarlett” contest, but this time, let’s call it, “I Want To Shoot With Scarlett in Vegas!”

THE RULES:

1. You have to be in the pic. You are welcome to have others in the picture as well!
2. The pic has to say somewhere “I Want to Shoot With Scarlett In Vegas” whether holding a sign or photoshopped or whatever.
3. Get creative as you want, and try to tie in something Vegas into it! You can dress up like Elvis, or reenact Britney’s quickie Vegas wedding, or show me your winning hand at poker, or whatever you want!
4. Once voting is opened up, you will want to blog/Facebook/Twitter about your contest entry and direct people to come vote for you here on my blog!

Because WPPI is quickly approaching, the DEADLINE for contest entries is next Monday, February 2 when the Finale of my video blog premieres!! Then we’ll have my blog readers vote on the winning photo to award the winner! There is limited availability for the workshop to keep the group intimate for learning and getting the best shots, so for those interested, go ahead and sign up now, and if you win, I’ll refund your session fee!

Thanks to these amazing sponsors! Check them out!!!

Trendy Camera Straps (Scarlett will be hanging out at their booth, more details later on how you can come say hi!)
Pocket Wizard
Camera Dojo
Modern Photographers

“Hey Guys,

I got a question for ya. Sorry the answer to this might already be on your site somewhere but I’d just thought I would msg you instead. I was wondering if you had any suggestions for photography books either having to do w/ business or the technical side of things. I’ve read Professional Wedding Photography by damien lovegrove and am in the process of reading understanding exposure bryan peterson. I have fast track photography on order..

Maybe one to do w/ posing??? Its weird I study photography all day long everyday.. but when it comes down to being w/ the couple it’s like I forget everything I ever learned and freeze. Then i want to slap myself because I could have done this or this shot but was having a brief moment of anxiety. I suppose posing and things will come with practice and the more I do it but I really thought I would have the hang of it by now. Any suggestions? ”

Yes Heather, David and I both have a list of suggestions for you.

David’s Picks

• Jerry Ghionis’ Pic Pockets $80
  These are small reference cards that show a specific scene, then on the back it goes into detail as to how the shot was taken.
  https://www.theicesociety.com/?page=72
• Bambi Cantrell’s Cue Cards $100
  These are stacks of cards demonstrating different poses and ideas to give you recommendations for setups.
  http://cantrellportrait.com/extra/online_store.php
• John Mireles Look Book $75
  More like a paint swatch sampler, the look book contains a wide variety of common poses to help you from getting into a rut or just for inspiration if you need some.
  http://photographerstoolkit.com/lookbook

Kerry’s Picks

• Photographing People – Rotovision $26.00
  Excellent book on posing and lighting setups and each shot includes a 3D drawing showing exactly how the set was designed with the placement of lighting, subject, reflectors, camera, etc.
  Photographing People: Portraits, Fashion, Glamour
• Posing for Portrait Photography: A Head-to-Toe Guide by Jeff Smith – $21
  This is  great book that goes through the correct placement of each section of the body from head to toe with plenty of example images to help make the point.
  Posing for Portrait Photography
• Professional Portrait Posing: Techniques and Images from Master Photographers by Michelle Perkins $23.72
  This book goes through the particular styles of a handful of professional photographers to show their distinct styles for posing and lighting subjects.
  Professional Portrait Posing: Techniques and Images
• The Moment it Clicks – Joe McNally $39.59
  Joe is a master of lighting and this book, while designed as a book on lighting, uses almost exclusively human subjects so it also is an excellent book for posing.
  The Moment it Clicks

What is a RAW image?

By RAW, I mean an image that is shot with your camera image quality set to RAW mode which stores the actual sensor data for the scene that was shot. This is different than a JPEG image that is a rendered image of the RAW data that has different effects applied to it by the camera such as sharpening, saturation, and contrast. A good quality JPEG image can look incredibly good and can be printed at large sizes and will look great. A RAW image will need some form of software program to convert the RAW data to something usable. The most popular programs for this today are Lightroom, Photoshop, Aperture, Capture One (Nikon), and Digital Photo Professional (Canon).

Is there a technical difference?

Anyone that tries to tell you there is no difference in image quality between a RAW image and a JPEG is simply mistaken or ill-informed. From a purely technical perspective, a RAW image will always give you a better image. A RAW image simply has more data, for each pixel there is at least twice as much data on older cameras like my 30D and as much as eight times as much data with newer cameras that have more bit depth. This means that a RAW image has the ability to have a greater tonal range than a JPEG. A RAW image will also then have greater latitude than a JPEG image, giving you the ability to process the image to recover shadows and highlights more than you can if you started with the JPEG. Since white balance settings are applied when an image is saved as a JPEG, shooting in RAW will allow you to adjust the white balance during post processing without sacrificing any image data.

This is not an opinion, it is a pure technical fact. So let’s accept that this is true and that RAW has a distinct technical advantage over a JPEG saved from the camera. I don’t think we need to debate that RAW has an inherent technical advantage and I think some people get caught up in this. I think the real issue is whether or not you need the advantages of RAW versus the negative reasons for using RAW that we will look at later.

Getting down with the downside of RAW

The big debate over RAW vs JPEG is whether or not the pros outweigh the cons so let’s look at the cons and see what the downside of using RAW images is:

• Increased file size
  This is probably the biggest issue there is. RAW images are considerably larger files than their corresponding JPEG images. With my 30D, a RAW file will typically be around 5mb while a fine quality JPEG will be around 1.5mb. As the megapixel count goes up, the files get downright huge with RAW images from a new Canon 5D MkII being around 22mb each. If you are shooting lots of images, at a wedding for example, then the larger size of RAW files will be a significant hit. Since the files are larger, they will require more horsepower from your computer to process. For the same number of images, you will need more flash card storage.
• Specialized software needed to process
  If you can call Photoshop, Lightroom, or Aperture specialized software, then yes, you will need something like this or use the software that came with your camera. If you use something other than these programs then you may have issues dealing with RAW files. For a brand new camera, you may have to wait for updated versions of these programs before they can recognize your files. This also means that if your camera is discontinued in the future, there is no guarantee that your camera’s format will always be supported (this is a good reason to use DNG files, but that’s for another article).
• RAW workflow is different than a JPEG workflow
  Is it? If you are already using Aperture, Lightroom, or Adobe Bridge for processing JPEG’s, then there is little to no change in your workflow. Two years ago, before tools like Lightroom and Aperture, working with RAW images was such a pain that RAW was said to mean “really awful workflow”. Since many of us are using Lightroom and Aperture now, there is little to no changes at all for working with RAW files other than they take longer per image to download off a CF card.
• RAW images in third party tools don’t look as good as the JPEGs
  This has been a real serious problem for a while as only the camera manufacturers really have the secret sauce for decoding their RAW images properly. Adobe has pretty much solved this issue with Lightroom 2.2 and the inclusion of camera profiles that setup the RAW processor to match the settings used to create the JPEG images in your camera.

Again, we are looking at facts here and not opinions, but it is important to understand that there is a downside to using RAW files even if I personally feel that the negatives are typically blown a bit out of proportion with the exception of the increased file size which can be a really significant issue for heavy shooters.

The non-destructive workflow

One of the biggest advantages of shooting RAW is that it inherently provides you today with a non-destructive workflow. What it means is that there is no image degradation between saves and any given step in the editing process can be removed. If we are using any of the three most popular tools today (Photoshop, Aperture, or Lightroom) then when we edit a JPEG, and make our changes, those changes are permenant, and because we just re-saved our image as a JPEG some compression has occured, every time we do this we lose some image quality. Sure you can make multiple copies along the way so you can go back to previous versions, but that negates the whole point of JPEG’s saving disk space. I personally work in Lightroom and I can take my RAW images and apply as many edits to them as I want but these changes are simply stored as a set of instructions to Lightroom, thus the original image is never modified. This also allows me to make virtual copies of an image so I can have a color, B&W, Sepia, or dozens of different versions of an image and take up only a trivial amount of disk space since it is only storing the steps to make the changes and isnt storing a new copy of the image itself and again, no matter what I do, there is no image quality lost at all during the post-production process.

Is anyone still using JPEG these days?

If nobody was shooting JPEG anymore than I wouldn’t have so many questions about it but are any real professionals shooting JPEG and the answer is yes.

Carlos Baez is a wedding photographer from Florida, this is someone who makes his living delivering top quality images to high paying clients and yet Carlos shoots JPEG because he can consistently deliver great images without the extra overhead of RAW files. Carlos is an expert at lighting and understanding exposure so he doesn’t rely on post processing to get his images right.

Ken Rockwell is a huge advocate for shooting in JPEG mostly because a lot of people use it as an excuse to not get the image right in camera. Although he has an article about this (http://www.kenrockwell.com/tech/raw.htm). I have posted a link to his article because he does make a few valid points but I think he does go over the top a little on some of the negatives while I do agree that many people use RAW without either knowing why or using it to correct their mistakes from not knowing how to use their camera properly.

Pros against JPEG

It’s only fair that I point out a few pros who have made the switch to RAW and some of their reasons for doing so.

Scarlett Lillian from Florida has been shooting RAW since she started shooting weddings but then tried going to JPEF to save disk and CF card space. After really giving it a try, she finally switched back to RAW because she felt she just wasn’t getting the color and skin tones from the JPEG files that she was when she was using RAW. She uses Photoshop with Bridge as her workflow tool.

David Ziser is, without a doubt, one of the biggest names in wedding photography and recent convert to the RAW side. David’s big switch came when he started using Lightroom for his workflow and then discovered that the images he was getting with Lightroom and RAW files simply gave him a better image than starting with JPEG. David details his experience in a post on his site, although he also make a case for use JPEG for less critical shots that will never be printed at larger than 5×7. Anything destined for the album or enlargements he suggests shooting in RAW and the filler shots can safely be shot in JPEG to conserve space.

Rick Miller who is a Senior Solutions Engineer at Adobe does a segment when he is demoing Lightroom where he shows a picture of his girlfriends dog that is a white curly haired dog. Rick took a picture of the dog that when the rest of the scene is properly exposed, the dog is overexposed. Saved as a JPEG, the details in the dogs fur are completely lost and unrecoverable. The same image shot in RAW is able to use tools like recovery and exposure control to regain all of the detail in the dog’s fur. This demonstrates how even a shot that is technically correct for the rest of the scene may still suffer from being shot in JPEG.

RAW or JPEG — Which is for you?

Since I am far more likely to forget to change my camera from JPEG back to RAW when I need to, I simply leave it on RAW and take the disk space penalty. With a large wedding costing me around 10-12gb of space, it isn’t that big of an issue. If I upgrade this year to a 50D or 5D MkII and I move to having 30-40gb of space per wedding, I may have to rethink this strategy. What I like about shooting RAW for weddings is that in the thick of things, if you do make a small error in exposure or white balance, it is far easier to correct it afterwards. I don’t use this as a crunch, but it is a safety net.

To decide If you should stick with JPEG all you need to do is to take a close look at your images and compare them with what you can get from a product like Lightroom and then decide if your images are good enough or if any improvements that you get from using the RAW image are noticeable and worthwhile.

What do some other photographers say?

Mark Teskey “RAW only. Shooting JPEG is like working without backing up files or a second body/flash. There’s no safety net with JPEG.”

JE Images “RAW all the way. if I need to tweak anything then I have full access to all the info..”

Denise Clay “[I shoot] RAW – I used the best film I could that matched the job in film days, why not do the same now with the best digital file?”

MrsBoesch “I shoot JPG. It takes up less space on my hard drive, and I am of the opinion that you should try to “get it right” the 1st time”

So what are you to make of this?

There is certainly a case to be made that higher quality final images can be made from using RAW files and that shooting in RAW provides a technical safety net (even if you dont need it because you are wicked good). The main issues of working with RAW for me are the non-destructive workflow and the ability to have multiple virtual copies of an image without eating up more disk space. I do believe that almost all of the main complaints about RAW have been more than satisfied with current software leaving the issue of disk space and storage being the only real issue, albeit a signifigant issue for some people.

In the end, the only thing that matters is that you are happy with the images that you are delivering and if you are shooting for clients, that they are happy with the images you are delivering. If you are shooting in JPEG and are happy with your images and you see no compelling reason to switch, then don’t. If someone like Carlos Baez can shoot a wedding in JPEG and he makes a LOT more per wedding than I do, I am not going to tell him he is wrong for shooting in JPEG. On the flip side, if you are shooting in RAW and the disk space is killing you and you are good enough that your images require basically no tweaks for color, white balance, exposure, fill light, highlight recovery, or saturation, then you may be a good candidate for shooting in JPEG. It all comes down to a personal choice. There is no right or wrong answer to this debate, its just a question of what works for you in order for you to deliver the best quality images to your clients.

Author: Kerry Garrison

Getting the Camera

Since I am not sponsored by Canon (any help here would be appreciated – wink wink) and I haven’t been able to justify the cost yet, I decided that another way to get one for a little while was to call up the good folks over at BorrowLenses.com. I hooked up with Max to get a weekend rental on the 5D Mk II so I could use it on a wedding shoot I had planned as well as to play around with the other features. If you have never rented equipment, you can’t go wrong by using BorrowLenses.com as their prices are great and you don’t get slapped with a huge deposit (no deposit in fact), but more about BorrowLenses.com in an upcoming article as I review their service.

I got the camera and couldn’t wait to slap in a card and start playing with it.

First Impressions

When picking up the body the first thing you notice is the surface has a much better texture on it than previous cameras making it easier to hold. The form factor is much like the 30D/40D/50D/5D. For users of those mentioned cameras, the control layout will be very familiar with the only noticeable exceptions being that the delete button has shifted due to the large screen and the top LCD illumination button has been moved to the right side of the display. For people moving up from a 30D/40D you will notice the lack of a pop-up flash and no preset modes on the mode dial (this is much more of a Pro camera than a consumer camera after all).

The large LCD on the back is just stunning with its much higher resolution display which enables you to better see if an image is sharp and in focus.

The new menu system is super clean and sharp looking on the big display although a little hunting around the first few times to find some of the features will be in order. The only thing that threw me for a loop for a minute was figuring out how to setup exposure bracketing. Not wanting to turn to the manual, I figured it out quickly enough. What I did have to crack the manual for was to figure out how to  use the video mode. Simple enough, go into Live View mode and press the Set button in the middle of the large dial on the back to start/stop recording.

First time setup

Before really being able to push the 5d Mk II to it’s limits, you will need to go into the menus and setup a few options first. Here are the things I did to get it ready for my tests.

C. Fn I : Exposure
Custom Function 3 changed to 1 to enable ISO expansion. This is needed to shoot at ISO ranges above 6400.

C. Fn II : Image
Custom Function 3 changed to 1 to enable Highlight Tone Priority. This enables Highlight Tone Priority which can help from overexposing important aspects of your image. Note however that when this is enabled, you will not be able to go over ISO 6400 regardless of the previous setting.

C. Fn III : Autofocus/Drive
Custom Function 3 changed to 1 to enable Multi-controller direct. This option enables you to select the autofocus point by using the multi-controller (mini joystick).

Live View Function Settings
LV Func. Setting set to Stills+movie, Screen Settings set to movie display

Image Quality
Image quality was set to RAW.

Finally, I made sure the date and time was correct, dropped in a compact flash card, formatted it and I was ready to go.

Shooting the 5D Mk II

Like many people getting the 5D Mark II, I have been shooting APS-C sized sensors for the past few years as I use a 30D as a primary and a 20D as a backup. Functionally, the 5D Mk II is virtually identical in how to operate the camera although the shutter sound is different and quieter. The big difference comes into play when using the same lenses you were using on the smaller sensor. If you aren’t familiar with this phenomenon, the smaller sensors in the 20D/30D/40D/50D are smaller APS-C size sensors versus the full frame sensor in the 5d Mk II. The smaller sensor size introduces an effect referred to as a zoom factor (also known as crop factor) which, in essence, magnifies the focal length of your lenses by 1.6.  To put it into simple terms, subjects on an APS-C sized sensor will appear closer (as if zoomed in by 1.6x) and the same lens on the 5D will give you an wider field of view. If we take a 50mm lens and put it on a camera with an APS-C sensor, what we get is basically an 80mm lens. A 70-200mm on the 50D becomes a 112-320mm lens on the APS-C sensor. This is interesting to note that a telephoto lens will get you more reach on a smaller sensor but you lose width at the smaller focal lengths. With my typical lenses, I now have to move closer to the subject to get the same effect as before, but I now have the added bonus of wide angle lenses being wider than before.

Image shot with 50mm on 30D (APS-C)

Image shot with 50mm on 5D Mk II (Full Frame)

Ok, so how about this ISO stuff, how good is it really? Yeah, well, its pretty damned good. On my 30D, it pained me to go up to 1600 ISO, on a 40D, 1600 would give you a very usable image but 3200 got to be a bit much, on the 5D Mk II, 3200 is a no-brainer and 6400 will give you very usable images. Moving up into 12,800 gets to be noisy but should be usable with a good noise reduction software while 25,600 ISO is basically unusable unless you convert the image to black and white and then you will get something looking like an older newspaper image.

Comparison of ISO settings from 5D Mk II

A feature that first appeared on the 40D is Highlight Tone Priority which can be a saving grace in numerous situations. Instead of going into how great this feature is, please refer to David Ziser’s post about Highlight Tone Priority.

What’s missing from the 5d Mk II?

Yes, the 5d Mk II is a huge leap forward for Canon, so much so that some shooters with the higher end 1Ds Mk III are actually “downgrading” to the 5D to get the improved sensor cleaning and higher ISO performance. But surely the 5D Mk II is not the Holy Grail of cameras, something must be missing right? Well, of course, otherwise it would be an $8000 camera. So what is it that we don’t have on the 5D Mk II that it’s big brother has?

• Dual memory card slots
  Many people think this is a major disappointment that the 5D wasn’t outfitted with dual memory slots to provide real-time redundancy when shooting.
• Built in battery grip/portrait grip
  The original 5D didn’t have one, and the 5D Mk II is aimed at the high end Pro-sumer market, not the professional market so this is an option. Unfortunately, the 5D Mk II uses a redesigned grip so existing ones will not work.
• Long life shutter
  The big gun 1Ds Mk III is rated as about double the shutter activations as the 5D Mk II (150,000 (5D) vs 300,000 (1Ds)).
• Dual Digic processors
  While the 5D Mk II does have the newer Digic IV processor, the 1Ds Mk III has dual processors for faster image processing.1

Granted, the higher ISO performance, larger, higher resolution LCD screen, improved dust reduction, 21 megapixel , full frame sensor, full HD video, and significantly cheaper price does make for a very compelling camera.

Focusing on Video

Yeah, the 5D Mk II is the Grand Poobah of DSLR’s that can shoot video with its full 1080p video capture. Being able to use all of the lenses at your disposal to shoot video is quite awesome indeed to achieve the same shallow depth of field that you can get in stills. So look out Sony, your days of being a video camera manufacturer have come to an end and the 5D Mk II is taking its rightful place of the King of all things video…..well….not exactly.

There is no question you can get stunning HiDef video out of the camera, there are plenty of examples online. But let’s look at the reality of shooting video with the 5D Mk II.

First off, abandon all hope of using autofocus when shooting video. If you are using the on-board microphone, you will hear constant whirrrr whirrrrrrrr whirrrrrrrr as the contrast-based autofocus “attempts” to focus. In some situations it may do alright, but the majority of the time you will end up with lots of times where the camera is trying to focus but tracks back and forth a few times before locking on. You really need to consider the camera as a manual focus camera when shooting video. Use autofocus in still mode to get your focus, then switch to video mode with autofocus off for best results. As for the built-in microphone (located just underneath the 5D logo), its alright for playing around, but anything serious will require an external mic plugged into the microphone jack on the side of the camera.

5D Mk II LowRez Video from Kerry Garrison on Vimeo.

Sample HiDef Video from 5D Mk II from Kerry Garrison on Vimeo.

Megapixels = Mega Storage

Oh sure, we all SAY we want more megapixels, but you really have to think of the ramifications of that. Here is a comparison of the same image taken with several of the different available image quality settings:

This means that a RAW file from the 5D Mk II is 4 times larger than a RAW from a 30D and even the 5D Mk II’s Fine JPEG is 2mb larger than the RAW file on the 30D. That’s 1/4 of the number of images I can fit on the same memory card and a typical wedding shoot for me will balloon from 10gb to 40gb. Add to that the additional disk space required to hold the images, and the addition computer horsepower (CPU and RAM) needed to process these huge files and you need some seriously beefy hardware to use this camera to its full potential.

For best results, UDMA Compact Flash cards are recommended, using these will speed up write times to the disc. Keep all of these things in mind if considering moving up to the 5D Mk II as it could turn out to be a bigger investment than just the camera itself.

Using the 5D Mk II

The first project I had was a small wedding reception, shooting out on a golf course at 11am presented some really harsh lighting conditions, the highlight tone priority system did a great job at keeping the subjects from getting blown out. One thing that I noticed was that the autofocus was really fast and super accurate. This is compared to the 30D that I normally shoot with. Normally I will get a handful of out of focus shots for no apparent reason, of almost 500 shots, there were only two that were out of focus, a significant improvement in the autofocus system over my camera.

The shutter noise is fairly quiet and doesn’t draw attention which is nice for quiet ceremonies and for catching candids without disturbing anyone.

For all your Shamu fans out there, here are some shots from Sea World.

5D Mark II - 70mm 1/640 f/9 ISO 200 Mode: Program sRAW1

5D Mark II - 70mm 1/5000 f/8 ISO 200 Mode: Program sRAW1

5D Mark II - 70mm 1/500 f/8 ISO 200 Mode: Program sRAW1

5D Mark II - 24mm 1/25 f/6.3 ISO 400 Mode: Manual sRAW1

5D Mark II - 42mm 1/60 f/2.8 ISO 400 Mode: Manual sRAW1

Is the 5D Mk II Right For You?

I only had the 5D Mk II available to me for a few days but I am completely impressed with it from a technology point of view. One of it’s biggest selling points is also one of its biggest problems, and that is the size of the images. A typical wedding will take up 30gb of space and just a simple day at an amusement park could easily eat up 6gb.  The ability to use the smaller sRAW sizes is a plus, but its painful to have to limit the camera, something I think I could get over easily enough but it remains to be seen if it is too limiting for doing paid wedding shoots in the reduced file format sizes.

Unless you already have a beefy uber-computer and have more compact flash cards than pairs of underwear, then there are going to be some hidden costs of getting into the 5D Mk II. I am probably fairly typical (or at least not abnormal) in that I am currently shooting with a 30D and put together some numbers as what it would take for me to purchase and use the 5D Mk II, and this is not upgrading the CPU or RAM in my machine as it isn’t that terrible to work on images with what I have.

That’s well over $4,000 with tax and shipping and isn’t counting having another as a backup. I would certainly recommend the 5D Mk II to anyone who can afford one, but, for myself, I need to take a look at the 50D before deciding to save up for the 5D.

Author: Kerry Garrison

Rental Equipment by: http://BorrowLenses.com

Overview

The VerteX is designed to give the ultimate in lighting control from a typical speedlight by allowing almost an infinite amount of adjustment. The VerteX is a mechanical device that can accept one or two panels on it to allow you to send the light in the specific direction(s) that you want.

The VerteX works by having a swinging arm that can have either one or two flaps attached to it that can rotate 360 degrees. Each flap has a mirrored side and a white diffusion side.  By adjusting the swing arm and the flaps you can split the light coming out of your accessory flash and send the light in different directions. Nothing else on the market today gives you this much control over your lighting.

Setup

Normally I would go into a real lengthy section and maybe even some step-by-step pics showing how to assemble a product. Bust seriously, the VerteX takes about 30 seconds to setup, you will spend more time reading this paragraph than you will spend setting the VerteX up. You take the two arms and snap them into place in the holes on the sides of the rubber band, push them together over the cross piece, and push the flaps into place, which are held there with magnets. That’s it. I find it easier to get onto the flash if you attach the rubber band to the flash head right after putting the two arms on and before attaching the cross bean and flaps. In under a minute you are ready to start taking pictures with the VerteX.

Usage

I am going to be really honest here, if you really don’t understand lighting, you may have trouble previsualizing what you can achieve with the VerteX. However, if you are the type of person who can look at a scene and know, for example,  that you want a slight shadow from one direction, a little fill up front, and some top lighting, then you will be able to use the VerteX to it’s full potential. Since you can split the light and send some forward, some up to bounce off the ceiling, some left to bounce off a wall, you can achieve lighting effects that otherwise would have required multiple strobes.

Results

Before getting into wedding photography I did mostly product photography so using multiple lights was second nature, getting into wedding photography felt very limiting as it really isn’t practical on most shoots to lug around multiple light sources, radio remotes, light stands, etc and the current light modifiers on the market work very well in specific situations, but there hasn’t been a product that could really give you the flexibility of multiple light sources from a single strobe head until the VerteX. Here are a few shots from a recent wedding where I used the VerteX to get some really nicely lit indoor shots.

Summary

While the VerteX may look like a homing beacon for an alien spacecraft, it does exactly what it is intended to do. I am thrilled with the control over the light that it gives me and enables lighting that simply wasn’t possible before.  For $49.95, it isn’t any more than other brand-name modifiers but it does give you a level of control that other products do not. I have used the VerteX at several weddings now and it has not come off my flash yet. The only real negative thing I can say is that if you happen to bump something and one of the flaps comes off, they are so light that you stand a good chance of not noticing since you usually wont hear it hit the ground. Most of the time I use it as pictured in the image to the right with only one flap, so if I actually lost one for good, I could get by for a while, so keep an eye on the panels wqhen you are moving your equipment around.

Here is a little video showing more about the VerteX and how I use it.

VerteX Light Modifer from Presslite from Kerry Garrison on Vimeo.

Product Review Scorecard

Product Page: http://www.presslite.com/vertexinfo.php
Company Page: http://www.presslite.com

Author: Kerry Garrison

1. DIY Photography
   (http://www.diyphotography.net)
   Udi does a terrific job at bringing alternative ways of lighting, shooting, and creating light modifiers to people without unlimited budgets.
2. John Nack’s Blog
   (http://blogs.adobe.com/jnack/)
   John is the product manager for Photoshop and almost every day has a new blog entry with something interesting or cool to look at.
3. Photo Business News
   (http://photobusinessforum.blogspot.com/)
   John Harrington writes several times a week with news and information relevant to the business of photography. This is one of my must-read blogs every week.
4. Strobist
   (http://www.strobist.blogspot.com/)
   David Hobby has several posts a week that specialize in talking about working with small accessory flash units and getting the most out of them. This is definitely one of the best sites if you are into lighting.
5. Lightroom Journal
   (http://blogs.adobe.com/lightroomjournal/)
   This is the official blog from Adobe for Photoshop Lightroom. All official Lightroom news is posted here.
6. Lightroom Killer Tips
   (http://lightroomkillertips.com)
   Matt Kloskowski posts excellent tips and presets several times a week for Lightroom users.
7. Digital Pro Talk
   (http://digitalprotalk.blogspot.com/)
   This is the home of David Ziser, one of the top wedding photographers in the world. David is one of the most prolific bloggers around and posts awesome shooting and lighting tips virtually every day. He posts so much that its hard to keep up with all of his posts. This is another must-read site.
8. Flash Flavor
   (http://flashflavor.com/)
   Matt Adcock takes some of the most amazing photos you will see anywhere and is simply an inspiration to go through and see what he is doing and how he does it.
9. Digital Photography School
   (http://digital-photography-school.com/blog/)
   This site from Darren Rowse is chock full of good tips and tutorials with new content on a regular basis.
10. Rob Galbraith DPI
    (http://www.robgalbraith.com)
    Rob always has good information and is often the first with breaking news.
11. TWIP
    (http://twipphoto.com/)
    Although known more for their podcast than their blog, the This Week in Photography blog has a new post every day. Maybe someday CameraDojo will get mentioned on their show (hint hint) – wow, CameraDojo got mentioned on their site today!
12. Photoshop Insider
    (http://scottkelby.com)
    Another site with several new posts every week from Scott as well as regular guest bloggers.
13. 1001 Noisy Cameras
    (http://www.1001noisycameras.com)
    With new info more often than you change your underwear, 1001 Noisy Cameras may never win a design excellence award but certainly is at the top of most lists of useful and informative sites.
14. Pro Photo Life
    (http://www.prophotolife.com)
    This site from Jim Talkington amazes me that I don’t see it on most “top sites” lists like this. Jim does regular video tutorials and the wealth of content on his site is awesome. If you aren’t visiting this site every week, you are missing out on some fantastic stuff.
15. PhotoJojo
    (http://photojojo.com)
    You don’t even have to remember to go to PhotoJojo, this is a twice a week newsletter that is emailed to you with cool stuff in every email. Sign up and never miss it.
16. Photo Walk Pro
    (http://www.revellphotography.com/blog/)
    Jeff Revell’s site is another often-0verlooked site since many people think it is just about photo walking. Jeff also does a good amount of tips and tutorials for shooting and for working with Photoshop.
17. The Pioneer Woman
    (http://thepioneerwoman.com/photography/)
    Ree Drummond must be the most amazing woman on the planet, with multiple blogs about her life including photography, cooking, home and garden, and more she is a non-stop blogging phenomenon. While her sites appeal mostly to women, her photography stuff appeals to everyone.
18. Lighting Essentials
    (http://www.lighting-essentials.com)
    This is another excellent site for tutorials on lighting. Don Giannatti is an awesome photographer and is bringing his knowledge and experience into this website.
19. DPReview
    (http://dpreview.com)
    If you just have to know everything there is to know about camera bodies and lenses, DPReview is the encyclopedia of all camera knowledge when it comes to specs and unbiased technical reviews.
20. AllTop
    (http://photography.alltop.com/)
    Alltop.com is the brainchild of Guy Kawasaki and the photography section is filling up with a great list of photography sites. Bookmark this page there and never have a lack of reading material.

While there are dozens of other sites out there that are all worthy of being on any list like this, I decided I was going to stick to the top 20 sites that I personally use. Please add your own favorites into the comments.

What is selective Focus?

We have talked about selective focus here numerous times using depth of field (here) (here) (here) and lenses such as the Lensbaby 3G. Selective focus simply means that the main subject of the image is in sharp focus while the rest of the image is blurred out, this forces the viewer’s eye to the section of the image that we want them to be looking at. This can have a dramatic effect on the image and give it a much more dramatic feel. The problem with simply using aperture settings to control the selective focus is it doesn’t allow you to control the shape, direction, direction, or opacity of the blur effect. With a Lensbaby lens you have more control over the sweet spot of the focus area but you are limited to a round pattern and you don’t have some of the other controls either, and you can’t do a true tilt-shift effect with a Lensbaby lens. With a tilt-shift lens you have more control in the different directions but you still can’t control some of the effect, a tilt-shift lens will also set you back over $1,000. This is where Focal Point comes in. You can use your high quality auto-focus glass to take a great picture, and then add a variety of selective focus effects to the image in post production.

Lensbaby Image

Comparison to using a specialty lens

Before jumping to conclusions, bear in mind that I am a fan of the Lensbaby lenses and I use them at different times to achieve a look that I know how to get in-camera. I have the new Lensbaby Composer and have a review of it coming as well. I know what that lens will do and I use it to create images like the one you can see here. You get a sweet spot where the lens is pointing and then there is a blurring effect that gets more intense the further away from the sweet spot you get. If you are a huge fan of doing things in-camera, then a Lensbaby is a great lens to use. However, the amount of effects that you can get is limited. If you have the time to swap lenses and get the image dialed in, the effect is very cool. If you don’t have a Lensbaby, or if you find later that you have a great shot that would have been even better with that effect, then you are out of luck without a re-shoot. With Focal Point, we can now add the effect in post production and get very similar results.

What can we get with Focal Point?

The best way to see what Focal Point can do is to take a look at several before and after images for comparison.

Original Shot		Focal Point Effect
Original Shot		Focal Point Effect

Using Focal Point

Focal Point installs as a Photoshop plug-in for Photoshop CS3 or CS4. Once launched you can move the “Focus Bug” around to select your sweet spot, and then grab on the handle to adjust the effect. You also have 3D effects that can control the focal plane by holding down the alt key on Windows or the Option key on the Mac and dragging within the focus bug.

Focal Point Plug-In Interface

On the right side of the interface are sliders for fine tuning the effect as well as adding a vignette effect and film grain into the blurred image. Any of the settings can then be saved as a preset for easy access at a later time.

Key Features of Focal Point

While we have mentioned most of them already, let’s take a quick look at the key features of the Focal Point plug-in:

• Focus Bug
  This unique control gives you very simple control over the effects. Just drag and click to move the sweet spot or to adjust the amount of effect.
• Aperture Shape
  While we have only looked at the round shape so far, you can also use a planer shape that simulates narrow depth of field that is often used with food or macro photography or for simulating the miniature effect that you can get with a tilt-shift lens.
• 3D Tilt
  As mentioned, you can adjust the tilt of the sweet spot to create the effect of a tilt-shift or view camera.
• Blur Types
  You can choose from a standard “defocused” look or add a bit of motion to the blur
• Add Layer Mask
  By default (you can turn this off if you want) a new layer is created in Photoshop containing the image with the effect applied. This allows you to change the opacity of the layer or paint out areas that you don’t want affected.
• Vignettes
  Focal Point allows you to add either a dark or light vignette effect to the image with the ability to adjust the amount of the vignette as well as the midpoint.
• Presets
  If you have created an effect that you like and may want to use again, you can save it as a preset within Focal Point so you can easily apply it to another image later.
• Film Grain
  While you may not think you want to add grain to an image, adding the film grain effect to the blurred image will help to maintain a realistic image as well as prevent posterization during printing.

System Requirements

Macintosh

• Mac OS X 10.4.10, 10.5 or Higher
• 1 GHz or faster G5 or Intel Core Processor(s)
• 1GB RAM (2GB+ recommended)
• 25 MB hard disk space for installation
• OpenGL 1.5 Compatible video card with 128MB VRAM at 1024×768 or higher.
• Adobe Photoshop CS2 (9.0.2) CS3 or Elements 4.0.1 and higher.
• Internet Connection & Flash 9 player
• Adobe Acrobat 6 Reader or higher

Windows

• Windows XP SP2, Vista or Higher
• 1 GHz or faster Pentium 4 processor(s) or equivalent
• 1GB RAM (2GB+ recommended)
• 25MB hard disk space for installation
• OpenGL 1.5 Compatible video card with 128MB VRAM at 1024×768 or higher.
• Adobe Photoshop CS2, CS3 or Elements 5 and higher
• Internet Connection & Flash 9 player
• Adobe Acrobat 6 Reader or higher
• Microsoft dotNET Framework 2.0 or higher

Focal Point Demo

Here is a video of Focal Point in action so you can get a feel for how it works.

Focal Point Demo from Kerry Garrison on Vimeo.

Results

Focal Point retails for $159.95 which puts it into the mid-range of prices for lenses from Lensbaby and is significantly cheaper than a tilt-shift lens.  Given that you have more control with Focal Point than you do with any type of lens, its hard to argue the value of Focal Point. There are certainly people like myself who enjoy using specialty lenses as they force you to slow down and really think about the image you are trying to make. Even for me though, there are times when I look at an image and wish I would have broke out the Lensbaby to take the shot and now I can get the effect that I want in post production. The effect that Focal Point creates may not be for everyone but if you shoot weddings, food, macro, still life, or nature shots, then Focal Point can add a new dimension to your images.

Product Review Scorecard

Product Page: http://www.ononesoftware.com/detail.php?prodLine_id=35
Company Page: http://ononesoftware.com

Author: Kerry Garrison

While there are a number of other programs available to do HDR with, we are going to look at the three most common ones mentioned in most posts and blogs, these are:

• Adobe Photoshop CS4 – Merge to HDR Function
• Photomatix
• Enfuse

Photoshop CS4

To be completely fair, I am using the different HDR tools here with their default settings and am not doing any additional tweaking afterwards to make the images look better. That being said, the Photoshop result is certainly the worst of the batch. The dark areas are too dark, the bright areas are too bright and it just didn’t do anything to really impress me. I also cannot find any noticeable difference between Photoshop CS3 and Photoshop CS4 in the final output. Even though you could tweak this image in Photoshop, it would be quit a bit of work because you really need to darken the sky and brighten up the building and parking lot. There may be a particular type of image that Photoshop likes better, of perhaps it doesn’t like that the images covered a 4 stop range. If someone has some tips on working with the Photoshop HDR merge, please post them in the comments.

Photomatix

Photomatix is another commercial tool (http://www.hdrsoft.com) that many people consider to be the best HDR tool available. Comparing the images, the Photomatix output most certainly gave the most dynamic range, so much range that it is actually easy to get an image that doesn’t actually look natural. The way Photomatix works is a complete mystery as even in the overexposed image, you can’t see the detail in the windows and doorways of the building the way you can in this Photomatix output. From a “wow” perspective, it is most certainly the most vivid image and has an amazing amount of range, there is almost nothing in the image that is too bright or too dark. While this may be good for some images, if you are trying to replicate what you are seeing with your eye, this isn’t quite accurate. Is it stunning in it’s range? Absolutely, no question there, it wins hands down in that area.

Enfuse

Enfuse is a different type of tool that compares multiple images and chooses to keep the pixels it feels are the best exposed. Using Enfuse by itself can also be an exercise in frustration. To simply using Enfuse, I use LR/Enfuse from Timothy Armes (http://timothyarmes.com/lrenfuse.php) which integrates into Adobe Photoshop Lightroom. Using just the default settings, the result is an image that is much more natural and is truer to what you would see with your eye. A big advantage of using Enfuse (especially with LR/Enfuse) is that it is significantly faster than Photomatix, the downside is that you don’t get the amazing results that you can get from Photomatix. Enfuse is going to give you a far more natural look.

Summary

It’s not entirely clear if these is a real no-brainer choice between Photomatix and Enfuse as it is really dependant on what you are trying to accomplish with the final image. Photomatix can certainly deliver outstanding images that are virtually impossible to achieve any other way and can also create more natural looking results by toning down the resulting image making it a more versatile tool overall. Enfuse has its advantage in being fast and easy to use when integrated into Lightroom and will create very nice, natural looking results, and if that is your goal then sending a few bucks to Timothy for LR/Enfuse is well worth it. Personally, I have both installed and will choose when to use each tool based on what result I am looking for, and knowing the strengths and weaknesses of each option will make it easier for me to decide when to use which tool.

Author: Kerry Garrison

Certainly some people think that David has lost his marbles, but is he completely off-base here? Even Chase Jarvis has some thoughts on this idea. I do not believe this idea is anything really new here, and perhaps explaining it in the way David does may make it sound like something new and unique. The fact is, many of us have done free work for a variety of different reasons. Here are some examples of what I have done, and often continue to do with any money exchanging hands.

Work with models when I need subjects for lighting tutorials or to experiment with new products
Absolutely, I don’t get paid for writing articles for CameraDojo (any potential sponsors, please contact me) so when I need subjects for shoots to try out new lights, techniques, or for a subject of an article, I turn to craigslist or Model Mayhem to find someone that will work with me in exchange for some nice headshots, body shots, or whatever they need for their portfolio. Since I am not bound by any constraints during these shoots, some of my best work has come out of some of these collaborations.

Shooting with big names in the industry
My bread and butter is wedding photography and I have had the pleasure of shooting with a number of excellent photographers which is how I learned the ins and outs of the business. I did plenty of those shoots for free in order to learn that segment of the trade. I would still be willing to second for the likes of David Ziser, Dane Sanders, Mike Colon, Frank Salas, or a number of people who are vastly more successful than me in order to get the experience working with them.

Social Interaction with other like-minded people
Two weeks ago I got together with a number of other photographers up at Robert Evans’ studio in North Hollywood to do a trash the dress shoot for a couple. They probably ended up with hundreds of images from a dozen photographers, none of which charged a nickle. Robert opened his studio, I brought fog machines and dry ice, Candice supplied several dresses, and a dozen people worked together on a project that was for the betterment of all involved. This was so fun and worthwhile, we have decided to try to do it once a month.

I suggest you take a good read at David’s article as well as Chase’s response and think about what you are doing with your photography. This will actually tie in well with next week’s podcast with Dane Sanders about figuring out who you are as a photographer. In these tough times, we need ideas that are outside the box, those who survive and push through, those who do whatever it takes to weather the storm and find ways of improving themselves at the same time will flourish as things get better.

Author: Kerry Garrison

What is this aperture thingy anyway?

Inside each lens is a diaphragm that can open and close, the size of the opening at any given setting is what we refer to as the aperture setting. On our cameras we refer to specific size settings as f-stops such as f/2.8, f/5.6, f/11, etc. While the obvious value of adjusting the aperture is to control how much light enters the camera, there is a secret hidden world beneath the hood that we will need to get a grasp of as well, but let’s start at the basics first.

For a given ISO setting and shutter speed we can adjust the amount of light entering the camera by adjusting the aperture, a smaller diameter (higher f-stop value) will allow less light in, while a larger aperture (smaller f-stop number) will allow more light it. If we refer to the Sunny 16 rule, we know that on a bright sunny day, if we are using ISO 200 and a shutter speed of 1/200^th then we will get a good exposure at f/16. As the sun goes down and there is less light, we need to allow more light into the camera, we can do this by opening the aperture up (again, using a smaller number) to allow more light in. This sounds easy enough right?

Image showing relative sizes of aperture

If that is all there is to it, then this whole aperture thingy would be a piece of cake and life would be good. It is enough to get you going into how aperture plays a role in getting a good exposure, so it is certainly a lesson worth learning and understanding well.

Have you collimated your rays lately?

The opening of the diaphragm also will control cone angle of light coming into the camera and this is why adjusting the aperture can affect the depth of field. To see how this works use your thumb and pointer finger to make a big circle, with one eye closed look through that at a finger on your other hand held about 12″ away. This is going to simulate a large aperture, you will be able to focus on the finger but you will have far less focus on something across the room. Next, make the circle very small and look through it again (now simulating a small aperture), you will be able to focus on both your finger and something across the room equally well. The reason for this has to do with the angle of light coming into your eye, with the large circle, light is able to come in very straight which creates a shorter focal plane, with a smaller aperture opening the light comes in as a cone shape giving a longer focal plane. While this simple experiment has a very subtle effect (not everyone may even notice it working) in your camera it can have a dramatic effect on how your images look.

Factors that determine depth of field

There are three factors that will determine the amount of depth of field you will have in your image, and taking from a comment post from Photo Larry, this points out the different factors:

In a comment from an earlier post, Photo Larry provided this very simple guide:

• Distance from the subject (Close=shallow, Far=Deep)
• Focal Length (Short=Deep, Long=Shallow)
• Aperture (Small=Deep, Open=Shallow)

Aperture Setting
We have already covered this one, the larger the opening (smaller f-stop number) the shorter the depth of field will be.

Focal Length
The longer the focal length the shorter the depth of field will be. This is why you will get more blurring effect on telephoto lenses than you will with wide angle lenses. The most popular portrait lens is the 70-200 f /2.8 because as you back up from the subject and use the longer focal length with a large aperture the more the background will get blurred out.

Distance to Subject
The further you are away from the subject, the more depth of field you will have as well. This is much easier to see with a long telephoto lens, if you focus on something very close to you, much of the background will be blurry, as you focus on things further away less of the foreground and background will be blurry.

Two images with different aperture settings

Summary

Hopefully this will help you understand the basics of what your aperture setting can do for you and how to begin to use it to your advantage both in getting enough light into your camera and by being able to add some extra flair to your images using the depth of field.

Author: Kerry Garrison

With Extreme 24.5-Megapixel Resolution, Processed Image Files Exceeding 138 MB, Five Frame-per-Second Burst Speed and Nikon Core Technologies, the D3X Ushers in a New Level of Image Quality

MELVILLE, N.Y. (Nov. 30, 2008) - Nikon Inc. today announced the D3X, an FX-format digital SLR featuring extreme 24.5-megapixel resolution and superb low-noise capabilities, which provides professional photographers with commercial-quality image performance in a familiar and extraordinarily versatile D-SLR form factor. In conjunction with the groundbreaking Nikon FX-format D3, the D3X tops off a collection of flagship level, rugged, professional caliber digital single lens reflex cameras engineered to excel in all types of professional photographic disciplines from photojournalism and sideline sports, to commercial in-studio applications.

The foundation of the enhanced performance of the D3X is its FX-format, 24.5-megapixel (6048 x 4032) CMOS sensor providing commercial, high fashion, fine art and landscape photographers with the extreme resolution, dynamic range, color depth, detail and sharpness that clients demand. Whether creating catalogs, magazine covers, billboards or gallery prints, the large 5.49-micron pixel size and high signal to noise ratio produces vibrant images with breathtaking image fidelity while reducing lost highlights and shadows, and ensuring smoother tone reproduction with minimized noise. With full resolution shooting speeds of up to five frames-per-second (fps), and 14-bit files, that when processed are approximately 138 MB, the D3X offers today’s photographic artists an extreme level of performance and versatility ready for demanding assignments in the studio or on location.

“In 2007, the 12.1-megapixel FX-format D3 delivered groundbreaking digital SLR image quality, coupled with incomparable high ISO, low noise performance and high-speed handling. In doing so, the D3 broke photographic barriers, enabling photographers to work in ways never before possible,†said Edward Fasano, general manager for Marketing, SLR Systems Products at Nikon Inc. “Now, the new 24.5-megapixel FX-format D3X D-SLR provides the extreme resolution and high dynamic range capabilities needed to meet the extraordinary needs of photographic disciplines such as high fashion, commercial advertising and fine art. The D3X delivers this remarkable capability while fitting seamlessly within the Nikon system, taking full advantage of Nikon’s world-renowned collection of NIKKOR lenses and Speedlights.â€

Image Quality Takes Center Stage
To re-emphasize the importance of image quality above all else, the D3X delivers an incredible level of digital SLR performance to provide photographers with extremely high resolution, exceptional dynamic range, phenomenal total gradation and outstanding color reproduction. Image files can be recorded as TIFF, JPEG or NEF (RAW) formats in either 12- or 14-bit compressed or uncompressed formats, and recorded to UDMA compatible CompactFlashâ„¢ cards for optimum speed. Photographers can save image files directly to the dual card slots as overflow, backup, or as separate file formats to different cards. Building on the D3X’s flexibility, users have the creative option to shoot in the 5:4 crop mode with 20.4-megapixel resolution, the ideal format for creating 8 x 10-inch portraits. While using DX-format lenses, faster continuous shooting of up to seven frames per second can be achieved at a resolution of 10.5 megapixels.

The exceptionally low noise of the D3X is essential to any professional commercial application, and it provides photographers with an ISO range of 100 to 1600, expandable to 50 (Lo-1) and 6400 (Hi-2). The ultra smooth tones and lack of grain at ISO 1600 as well as at low sensitivity settings result in smooth, natural skin tones and exacting detail that, before the D3X, required larger and far costlier studio-bound camera systems.

Advanced Technologies, Meticulously Executed
In a commercial setting or on location, imaging professionals need high performance in both speed and processing. The Nikon D3X can shoot at up to five fps at full resolution or up to seven fps in DX crop mode, allowing photographers to catch the split-second difference in a model’s expression or capture all of the action in a sequence. Just like the D3, the D3X achieves a start-up time of a mere 0.12 seconds and a shutter release time lag of 0.04 seconds.

The D3X’s speed, as well as high levels of performance, leverages Nikon core technologies including a newly enhanced EXPEED™ Image Processing System, specially designed for the D3X to provide superior image quality, faster processing speeds and lower power consumption. This advanced system is able to achieve extremely precise color reproduction for a broad spectrum of hues, in addition to vivid saturation and smooth gradation. What’s more, Nikon’s advanced noise processing function is engineered to minimize noise at all sensitivities and operate seamlessly without interfering with other image color parameters.

The D3X also features Nikon’s exclusive Scene Recognition System, which continuously analyzes information from the 1,005-pixel RGB light sensor, to further refine auto exposure, auto white balance and autofocus calculations. This results in flattering portraits and awe-inspiring landscapes that portray accurate color and fine details. Nikon’s exclusive 3D Color Matrix Metering II helps ensure accurate exposures, even in the most challenging lighting conditions. Instantly evaluating each scene before capture, input data from the system’s sensor is automatically referenced against an internal database of more than 30,000 images derived from actual photographs to calculate correct exposure values. Active D-Lighting, used in combination with 3D Matrix Metering II, helps to determines proper exposure, and creates realistic contrast while compensating for lost shadows and highlights. Prior to shooting, users can choose from Extra High, High, Normal, Low or Off settings, as well as an Auto mode.

Additionally, the D3X features Nikon’s exclusive Multi-CAM 3500FX focus module, with 51 AF points, 15 cross type sensors and 36 horizontal sensors that easily track and lock onto moving subjects, delivering the same fast and accurate AF performance that helped make the D3 immediately successful. Users can select any of the AF points, making it easy to consistently attain accurate focus right on a subject’s eyes, frame after frame. Additionally, three AF-area modes – Single point, Dynamic-area AF and Auto-area AF – are available to maximize the use of the 51 focus points by selecting the most suitable one to match subject conditions. AF is also available in one of two Live View modes optimized for the studio, including a phase detection handheld mode and a tripod mode. This feature allows the user to zoom in up to 27x on the LCD screen to ensure critical focus. While in Live View, the graphic indication of a virtual horizon is also available, making it easier than ever to confirm camera orientation.

To further ensure each photographer’s ability to balance their personal style, Nikon’s Picture Control System enables users to adjust their images to pre-set parameters such as Standard, Neutral, Vivid and Monochrome that apply tweaks to image sharpening, tone compensation, brightness, overall tone and saturation. Photographers have creative control over these image parameters with the use of up to nine available customizable presets.

Synchronizing Both Form and Function
Engineered for real-world functionality, the D3X retains a rugged shell with moisture, dust and shock resistance that has become a hallmark of flagship Nikon D-SLRs, while preserving the usability and ergonomics that allow the camera to remain an extension of the photographer’s vision. Attention to detail goes so far as to include a self-diagnostic shutter system that is tested to exceed 300,000 cycles for maximum durability and longevity. The camera’s body also maintains the resilient magnesium alloy construction and form factor of the D3, promoting consistent Nikon system synergy.

A bright and accurate viewfinder offers 100 percent coverage with 0.7x magnification. The body also houses Nikon’s acclaimed 3.0-inch super density LCD screen, now relied upon by so many photographers. The high-resolution 920,000-dot screen is viewable at wide angles up to 170 degrees, and will allow photographers to quickly zoom in to confirm critical focus. Users can also output the video signal to an external display via HDMI to allow client viewing. Thanks to incredibly efficient internal circuitry, the D3X can capture up to 4400* shots per single charge of the camera’s Lithium ion battery.

System Strength Withstands the Test of Time
The D3X is fully compatible with Nikon’s Creative Lighting System (CLS) to give photographers a mobile lighting solution that is easy to manage. To further enhance mobility, the D3X is compatible with Nikon’s GP-1 GPS receiver to gather information such as latitude, longitude, altitude and date of shooting. Photographers can easily shoot tethered via USB, or use the WT-4a wireless transmitter to send images wirelessly when speed and mobility are essential. D3X users will also enjoy the system strength of more than 50 genuine NIKKOR lenses that provide outstanding sharpness and high resolution across a broad range of focal lengths.

Price and Availability
The Nikon D3X will be available at Nikon Authorized Professional Dealers starting December 2008, and will be available for an estimated selling price of $7999.95.**

* Based on CIPA Standards
** Estimated selling price listed is only an estimate. Actual prices are set by dealers and are subject to change at any time.

Real and fake SanDisk Ultra II CF cards

The first fake CF card I came across was pretty obvious, visually. I received it with a used camera I bought, so I really couldn’t complain. It was basically free and I was thrilled at the time (2006) to have a 2GB card thrown in with a camera. But it was the performance of the cart that tipped me off to the real problem. The card was significantly slower in the writes than my other SanDisk Ultra II cards; about half the write speed or worse. Here is a look at the fake card next to the real card (right):

Back of 2GB SanDisk Elite CF cards

It is pretty obvious here which is the fake card. Come on, counterfeiters, can’t you do a better fake label than that? As I read up more, it seems that the early cards were easier to detect. Not only were the front stickers obvious, but the rear stickers were missing a lot of telling information. There were no serial numbers on the fake card. This was the first give-away. There was really not much of anything specifically identifying the card on the back label of the fake card. Notice that the real card on the left had the SDCFH identifier, as well as the patent numbers. This would be easy enough to fake too, if they weren’t so lazy. (right):

Close-up of real & fake SanDisk Ultra II CF cards

When you zoom in close (these images were made on a cheapo flatbed scanner at 1200DPI), you can also see the difference in the grain of the plastic. The fake card has a rougher texture and surface on it than the real SanDisk card. On closer inspection, you can see that the grain in the printing is finer on the real SanDisk card also. But these differences alone are harder to distinguish with the naked eye. If the labels were better duplicated overall, you might not even notice such small details as those. You can click to enlarge the photos to the right and get a better, more detailed blow-up of these differences. (right):

Sides of SanDisk Ultra CF cards

But here is one place that they did get clever… the serial numbering. Notice how close the printing is on both of the cards? Without contacting SanDisk, there is no way to tell which one is real and which one is a fake. (right):

So, recently I decided that it was time to buy me a new, 8GB SanDisk Ultra IV compact Flash card as my Canon 1DS Mark III burns through a lot of space at around 25MB per image. 2GB and 4GB cards were just not enough for events. I decided again to test my luck with a new SanDisk Ultra Card, and thought I would try to save a few bucks on ebay. What the heck… if the owner says it comes new in the box, that’s a pretty good sign, right? And sellers in Hong Kong can have real product once in a while too, right? Especially if it is in the new, retail box? And since it is not from the U.S., it could be cheaper, right? Like half price?

O.K., I have to say that right off the bat the first signs of trouble are right here. Half price, easily duplicated product from Hong Kong is a sure sign of fake product on ebay these days. However, for $29.97 shipped, it was worth it to see how good they really are.

Fake SanDisk Extreme package

Here is what I received, in a padded envelope from Hong Kong, partially crushed (right). Surprisingly, the box looks very very real. The gold foils are vibrant and shiny, the texture of the box is identical. And inside the box was the card in a plastic holder, a SanDisk keychain card holder and an SanDIsk RescuePRO 4.0″ installation CD. Pretty much every detail of the real box and contents was duplicated here with extreme care, and with only minor differences. At first glance, I was fairly convinced that this was actually real, or was it just a really damn good knock-off. After closer inspection, it seems that the later was the case. How could someone afford to go to all of this trouble?  Was there really that much profit in selling a $70 card for $30 on eBay with all of these production costs?

Real and fake SanDisk Extreme CF boxes

Looking at the box itself side by side with the real thing, it is hard to see many differences. The boxes look identical from the front, outside of the print color being a little off at the bottom (which is much more apparent in these photos and to the eye). Producing boxes like this with the gold embossing is not cheap process. Either these are the real thing, or someone is mass producing these to keep the costs down. I fear at this point that the compact flash counterfeiting business is not a small one. Someone is investing a lot of money into fake product and fake packaging here.

Back of SanDisk boxes

The back of the box is a bit different too. That would be the next clue on first, unopened inspection of the box. The real SanDisk IV box is the one on the left with a lot more text on it.  I only have 4 SanDisk Extreme IV boxes in my office (real ones).  The boxes for my SanDisk Extreme III cards are in storage, so I cannot see how much the back of the boxes changed from the III series to the IV series, but I assume that all boxes of series IV cards are pretty much the same.  This makes these changes on the back of the card more suspicious.

Real SanDisk Exreme Box

Fake SanDisk Extreme box

Now let’s look at a real box and content next to the fake box and content. They both have the same sleeve and slide-out insert format. They both have the same inside plastic housing and clear cover. They both have manuals, a CF hard plastic case and mini CD with software on them. They even both have a keychain CF card holder, although the real one has red text on it and the fake one white text.  The only piece missing from the fake packaging is a small advertising insert.

Real and fake SanDisk manuals

The manuals/documentation are slightly different.  The fake manual (on the right) is printed on cheaper paper with a much yellower cast to it.  The print quality is slightly lower than the original, real documentation pamphlet.  Interestingly, my real documentation is in Spanish, even though it was bought right here in the U.S. from an authorized SanDisk dealer (samys.com),   Notice the difference in phone numbers? I tried calling the number on the fake document and it rings SanDisk.  The phone number on the real pamphlet… wrong number/disconnected.  Now that’s funny.

Bottom of SanDisk boxes

On closer look at the bottom of the boxes you can see a numeric difference with the 8.0GB box. The real 2.0GB box has a part number of SDCFX4-2048-901. I assume that the 2048 is for 2,048MB, or 2GB. The 8.0GB fake box has a part number of SDCFX4-4096-904. Would that not be the part number of a 4,096MB card, or a 4GB? In an internet search for SDCFX4-4096, it seems it is the part number for the SanDisk Ultra IV 4.0GB compact flash card. There is our first clue.

8GB Fake SanDisk Ultra IV CF card

But, once we take out the CF card and begin to examine it, the details start to appear. The first thing I noticed was that it looked very close in all aspects to a real card. “Hmmm… maybe this is a real SanDisk Extreme IV.†Even the bottom edge of the card has a full serial number and ‘Made in China’ perfectly stenciled onto the case.

In further examination, I started to notice that the label was on crooked. But hey, that could be an issue in assembly that could randomly happen, right? Then, as the light caught it right, I also noticed two bubbles in the front label sticker. “Hmmm… this is getting more suspicious. SanDisk usually doesn’t let these kind of flaws through. This must be a hand-applied label.†Also notice that the corners of the label are square and not slightly rounded. This is another sign of a shortcut in the die cutting process of the fake label. On even further examination, you can see that the outer plastic edged of the card is different – different plastic to metal widths in the edges of the card.

8GB real vs fake SanDisk Extreme IV CF cards

The next thing I noticed is an issue which began to appear in several other articles, is that the holographic background to the lettering scans as a blue tint, and not gold like all of my other SanDisk Extreme cards. In this image (right), you will see that the fake card on the right has a blue tint to the lettering and the real card on the left appears more gold. Some of the elements are a little different size (like the E.S.P. logo), but overall it’s a pretty decent copy label sticker copy.

8GB real vs fake SanDisk Ultra IV CF cards

Next, lets look at the back of the cards. Again, the card on the left is the real card and the one on the right is the fake. Notice how it is a little dingy looking? That’s about the only difference on the back side. Even the corners of this dingy white label are rounded. It is hard to tell from the back side what makes this one fake, outside of the off-white paper used in making the label.  Again, a lot of work to make a fake card.  We are almost seeing efforts on the level of paper money counterfeiting here with all of the attention to detail in the print work.  Isn’t that another scary issue we have been reading about these past few years coming from China?

6 different CF cards

O.K., looks aside, its time to get down to the real meat of this.  How does the fake card perform in comparison to the real SanDisk Extreme IV cards?  To start, I do not have a real 8GB SanDisk Extreme IV card to test against, but I do have many 2.0GB Extreme IV cards that I bought from an authorized dealer.  This should be fine for our tests as the complete series of SanDisk Extreme IV cards are expected to perform similar to each other, within a small margin of error.  I also decided to throw in a few other generic and non-generic cards for comparison, and I included 2 separate SanDisk Extreme IV 2.0GB cards in the test to make sure that the real SanDisk IV cards perform equally in all aspects. You can see all of the cards (except for a 4.0GB PhotoFast Super card that looks identical to the 2.0GB Fotofast Super card) all in the image to the right.  The results are absolutely fascinating.

The test machine is a Mac Pro tower, 8 Core 3.0GHz Intel Xenon processors, 12GB RAM, Seagate 750GB SATA drive, Mac OS X v10.5.5 and a DELL 30″ monitor with 9in1 USB2 card reader built into it.  These specs are really irrelevant as every read and write was done with the same hardware and data.  That part is equal throughout the test.

The read/write copies were done with a folder containing ~1,000 jpg image files, 500k to 4.5MB each in size, 1.83GB (1,949,350,680 kbytes) total in size. 2 identical reads and writes were performed with this folder of images on each cards to insure consistency. All results were rounded to the nearest second. Margin of error is +/- 1.0 second.

Sandisk cards compared

This first chart is of read and write times for this folder of information to just the SanDisk cards, both real and fake. Notice how the read times are all pretty close, with the real SanDisk Extreme III and IV cards being almost identical, and how far off the 8.0GB fake card is from the others.  This is your first solid confirmation that you did not get what you paid for.  When you buy a card of this class and price, you are paying for speed, quality of build and the reputation of the company standing behind it.  This card is dropping the ball on all of those factors.  Below are the actual numbers from the tests.

All CF cards compared

Now, let’s throw some other cheapo cards into the mix.  The first is a Kingston Elite Pro 50X CF card (not necessarily a cheapo) and the other two are FastFoto Super CF cards, 2.0GB and 4.0GB.  These cards were bought 2 years ago off of an online discount house having a sale.  The interesting thing here is that these cards are really out of whack when it comes to write speeds, but their read speeds are good.  These were really cheap at the time I purchased them, and now you can see why.  However, the fake SanDisk 8.0GB cards are not terrible by comparison to the 2 year old generic CF cards. Below are the actual numbers from the tests.

SanDisk and fake CF cards

So, taking the data from the test and calculating MB/sec, we can see the relative performance each of these cards attains.  Let’s start with just the SanDisk cards and the fake SanDisk card.  Below are the actual numbers from the tests.

Transfer rate of all cards

Here is a comparison of all of the cards for transfer rate in MB/sec.  Below are the actual numbers from the tests.

A note to SanDisk:  Please forgive me for straying from authorized dealers just this one time.  The economy is rough, especially for those of us in photography.  The price was just too tempting.  I have purchased over 10 authentic cards from authorized SanDisk dealers in the past.  I promise not to stray again.  I offer this article to help others not stray either as a peace offering to you.

Maurice Naragon
Digital Creations
Website Development and Marketing
Professional Photography in Orange County, CA