We're doing just such an assignment this morning. My camera is floating about seven feet in the air at the end of a long boom arm and it's looking straight down at the big piece of stainless steel I have carefully positioned on the floor. Since the camera is directly centered on the 4x6 foot piece of steel, and since I can't put a ladder on the props, it just make sense that I needed to make the camera a bit more autonomous than usual. I did swing the arm around to set up the camera and attach the USB 3.1 cable to it. After I set the menu items correctly and painstakingly leveled the camera I swung it back around and then plugged in the other end of the cable to a USB 3 to USB C adapter and then into one of the two USB C ports on my MacBook Pro.
I launch Adobe Lightroom (Classic) first and then turn on the camera. I go into the file menu and find the tethered capture command and then we're off and running with Fuji's Tether Pro plug-in. This plug in will allow you to operate the camera and nearly all of it's major controls ( profile settings, shooting modes, noise reduction, sharpening, etc) from the interface on the laptop. You just have to fill in the blanks with stuff like which folder you'd like the images to land in and whether you'd like to save Raws, Jpegs or both.
The app and the camera worked well together in all my testing and worked perfectly when I hit the studio earlier this morning to make sure I had all my critical boxes checked.
I got the stainless steel weeks ago. My client will arrange his props on the surface and we'll shoot several variations. I'll probably have him in and out of the studio in a couple of hours, leaving with a memory stick full of files as he goes. But the shoot will have taken far longer than a couple of hours.
We spent half a day researching the steel background and another half day acquiring it and having it delivered (just a bit too big to fit into a sports car like the Subaru Forester...). I spent a better part of the day yesterday setting up the studio and pre-lighting. Shooting a big sheet of brushed stainless steel is like shooting with a giant, hazy mirror; it picks up everything so lighting properly is critical and I was out of practice. I finally got everything dialed in just right in time to quit for the day and have a late dinner.
Once the shoot is over I'll spend time this afternoon breaking down the set and then billing. Engagements like this are not as efficient or as time profitable as shooting events like the one I did last week but in smaller markets, like Austin, it's good to have a little bit of everything hitting the ledger.
The biggest question I have now is what to do with the 4x6 foot stainless when its usefulness to me is over. I know, I know, you wannabe computer engineers out there would love to have it in order to craft your own desktop computer chassis. Blow torch ready. But I don't even own a hammer so I'm not about to start a craft project.
It is kind of fun to shoot tethered every once in a while. It feels.....science-y. Using the Fuji X-H1 + 23mm f1.4 @ 5.6. Lighting provided by three Godox SL60W lights, two Aputure LightStorm LED lights and a few smaller Aputure LED panels for accents. Another all LED shoot. Make sense though. Nothing is supposed to move.
New motto: Everyone cares. We care harder.
30 minutes to client arrival, I'd better put on the coffee....
6 comments:
Hey Kirk,
It would be good to see how the shots turned out! Also the cable holding bit, is that a camera accessory or an OEM part? Also why the wide wngle for the product?
Keep well
Hi ODL, So far the shots are working out well. We're still in the shoot and the art directors are arranging the props to the comp. The cable holder comes with every X-H1 and it does a good job keeping the plugs where they are supposed to be. I'm using the 23mm because it's the correct angle to get me the full sheet of stainless with a manageable camera height. If I went with a 60 macro I'd need three times the height and a much higher ceiling. The 23mm f1.4 at f5.6 is really sharp and, looking at the stuff we're shooting at 1:1 it's really nice.
It was always fun to hear stories about the strange pieces of equipment and props that were hiding in studio dark corners and storage rooms.
"Oh, that was for a shoot we did about a year ago. The client said he would pick it up. Maybe it's time to pitch it."
So, this being Texas and all my client today drove over to my studio in a big pick up truck. I kiddingly asked at the end of the shoot what I should do with the big sheet of steel. The art director immediately replied, "If you don't want it I'll take it!" We helped him load it into the bed and secure it and in the space of ten minutes all my storage woes evaporated. I am no longer the "owner" of a huge piece of sheet metal the may have lingered in the corner for another decade..... Nice when that happens. His agency did pay for it after all...
Kirk,
Do you find any use for more traditional flash setups these days, or do LEDs replace them for all intents and purposes?
Don't overlook the wireless remote app for your phone. I'll be honest, it will probably piss you off doing the first setup. It's clunky. (Actually they recently updated the app, maybe it's better now.) But after that - the freedom of being able to put the camera in weird places and control it wirelessly, with EVF view on the phone, is priceless. I also find it valuable to be able to give a human subject an idea of what they look like from camera position.
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