Showing posts with label Fotodiox 312AS LED Panel. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Fotodiox 312AS LED Panel. Show all posts

Thursday, December 19, 2013

A PSA for Zach Theatre's Show, "This Wonderful Life."

This Wonderful Life 2 hi res SQ from Kirk Tuck on Vimeo.

The folks at Zach Theatre needed a PSA for their one man play starring Martin Burke. Martin plays all 37 main Bedford Falls characters in this somewhat wacky play based on the Jimmy Stewart movie, It's a Wonderful Life. I had some free time on a Saturday afternoon just before one of Martin's first performances so I was happy to help out.

I used four of the Fotodiox 312AS LED light panels to light Martin on the stage. I stuck a Panasonic GH3 camera on a tripod, used a Rode NTG2 boom microphone and ran the audio straight into camera. Since Martin was moving off his mark I was able to set the microphone on a stand and aim it pretty precisely. I monitored his levels through a set of headphones plugged into the camera. The taking lens was an older Olympus 40mm 1.4 Pen manual focus lens used at around f2.8.

This was a classic "one man crew" project with me doing the grip work, the audio, the direction and at the end, the editing.

The folks at Zach had local radio talent, Dave Jarrett, do the voice over and we dropped that into the mix. The 30 second spot was edited in Final Cut Pro X running on an ancient Mac Pro laptop.

Every time we do one of these I realize that I need to move the camera more and I need to edit tighter. I'm sure friend Frank will have some good critiques for me. I listen to him because he knows what he's talking about. An even better idea would be to start with a script instead of just starting with a loose idea.

I promise. Next time I'll write a script. And the time after that I'll do a story board.....

edit: If you want to see the high res version click on one of the links under the video window and go see the HD version at Vimeo. 



Saturday, February 02, 2013

Doing my craft with real craft as my subject. Giving it the boot.


Welcome back to the VSL blog. I've been running around Texas for the last three days photographing food and cowboy boots and now I'm back home in the land of perfect swimming pools and heady post production. I thought I'd jump right in and talk about the job photographing cowboy boots, today. You probably know that there are cowboy boots and then there are COWBOY BOOTS. And the difference is pretty wild. 

Most boots are mass produced and aren't really made for the long haul. The advantage the mass produced boots enjoy is that they are cheap to buy. If you have the time, the money and the inclination nothing really compares to a pair of boots that have been created specifically for your feet. You'll want each foot to be exactly measured (most people have one foot that's bigger than the other...or differently shaped) and you'll want your boots hand crafted out of the very best materials. The icing on the cowboy boot cake, at least for Texans of means, is the ability to specify custom designs, colors and materials that make a pair of boots a one of a kind art piece the inspiration for which springs from you.

I spent the last two days at Little's Boots in San Antonio. My mission was to photograph all the different kinds of boots the company makes and has made over the course of the last 100 years. I photographed current designs and historic boots and everything in between. From boots made of cow leather to Nile crocodile to ostrich. Each pair was unique with different hand tooling, designs and intricately cut patterns. 

(note: The boot images I'm sharing here have not been retouched or post processed to completion. You'll see small specular reflections on the boots and tiny flaws on my background that will be excised in the find images....).



Over the course of two days, working with the owner of a very successful San Antonio advertising agency, we photographed nearly eighty pairs of boots, handmade wallets, belts and some boot accessories. We also photographed the craftsmen who make the boots. Most of the men have been with the company for decades. Little's Boots is a family business with three generations  working in the shop and in the showroom. People come from all over the world to buy boots from Little's but they have to be patient...from the time you are measured until the time you get your boots you might have to wait up to six months!

On this particular project I really wanted to work with continuous light. It was be so much easier to see exactly what we got as we shot. My recent experiences with my oldest LED panels led me to know that I'd finally zero'd in both the filtration for the lights, and the best way to do a custom white balance with my Sony a99 camera, in order to get rich, accurate colors every step of the way. I packed two of my 1,000 bulb panels, three of my 500 bulb panels, four of the Fotodiox 312AS panels and a new addition to the studio cool light arsenal, a Fiilex high output par light that's fan cooled and comes with barn doors. It runs off A/C power and uses very large diameter LEDs in a tight pattern to give me the kind of beam spread we used to get out of focusable tungsten fixtures like the Lowell DP lights or the Lowell Pro-Lights. 

I packed ten light stands, a full set of Westcott Fast Flags and frames, three Chimera panels with a selection of diffusers and nets, background stands, my hand painted (and coffee encrusted) background and a hand steamer.


The Think Tank Airport Security rolling case contained the cameras, batteries, lenses and other necessary tools. I took just two cameras, the Sony a99 and the Sony a57. Lenses included the 70-200mm f2.8 G, the Sigma 70mm f2.8 macro, the Sony 24-105mm f3.5 to 4.5, a 35mm, 50mm and 85mm. The two zooms saw all of the action.  And I have to tell you that at f4 to f13 on the big lens everything is Nirvana. Sharp, contrasty and detailed. The shorter zoom has a bit of veiling flare wide open but it clears up one stop down and by the time you get to f8 it's just as good a lens as the big guy.  The Sigma 70 is very, very sharp but I didn't need the close up capability and the flexibility of focal lengths on the big zoom made it my all the time lens for this job.


We arrived at the boot company's spare building at 8:30am on Thurs. and I began hauling all the gear into a temporary studio space. I could have used an assistant but I also have fallen behind on my weight training program so I practiced doing curls with bags full of light stands as I brought them into the space. I did overhead lifts with the sandbags. Everything else I just muscled in as well as I could. You should see me now. Totally ripped. (kidding).

First thing we did was block as much of the windows as we could with two enormous and crazy heavy solid core doors that were hanging around. Then we set up a shooting table and draped the background that I had painted, specifically for this project, over the table, hanging from background stands. Our key light source was a 1K (LED)  and a 500 (LED) aimed down through a silk diffuser stretched onto a Westcott Fast Flags Frame. We used a frame with a black fabric to scrim light off the top part of the background so we'd get a gradation from dark at the top to light at the bottom.

I added a front light as partial fill. It was a 1k (LED) with a layer of ToughSpun diffusion clothes-pinned to the front of the unit. I use the new Fiilex light as a back light or skimming side light in situations where we needed to add a little more detail to dark boots without sacrificing the continuity of our background look. All the lights except the Fiilex were filtered with a 1/4 minus green (magenta) gel. We buy it by the yard now and it's a great correction tool. The Fiilex was tested two days before we packed, has a CRI of 90 and is very close in overall color to the filtered resident panels without needing any filtration whatsoever. 

Since we didn't need to match any existing light sources we didn't need to worry about mismatches and could just go with a good custom white balance. I used a Lastolite Gray Target to white balance with and then modified the WB setting by adding one step of cyan in the WB menu on the Sony. Their cameras are very, very easy to custom white balance and the custom setting can be further tweaked in the menu. All of the product shots were done at my favorite high quality ISO setting: 100.  If you are using a fifteen pound Series 5 Gitzo Studex tripod do you really need anything higher on your ISO dial?  Our basic exposure was f8 at 1/13th of a second.
Sounds slow if you are used to using flash for everything but it seems just right for stationary boots.

In the interest of practicing best technique I used an electronic cable release and I insisted that no one walk on the bouncy pier and beam floor during exposures. You can have the best tripod in the universe but if the floor it's sitting on is bouncy you lose. I shot two frames of every set up as a superstitious ritual. I wanted to ward off the spirits of file corruption... I also lit candles and burned a little sage just for good luck.

Generally the lights stayed in the same spots and we modified our set by changing angles on our diffusion scrims or blocking errant light with our black flags (see behind the scenes images below). The only light that moved around during the times we were shooting all the pairs of boots and single boots was the Fiilex spot light that I just added, with the barn doors pulled in to form a very surgical slice of light. I could position this light to add just enough light to the back boot, in most cases, to give me adequate separation.

One thing I will mention (and I learned this the hard way in the days of film and polaroid) is that the LCD screen on most (all) cameras is not calibrated in any meaningful way. It is contrastier than you think and tends to oversaturated colors due to its more limited (compared to a good monitor) gamut. With this in mind I decided I could save us all a lot of time in post if I brought along a MacBook Pro 15 inch laptop, recently calibrated with a Pantone Spyder, equipped with a matte screen and set up to emulate what we normally see on the screen of our monitors back in the studio. Then, instead of wasting time trying to make the images look good on the camera's LCD (and screwing up the real color, which would add so much wasted time in post....) we did some tests on the first few files and iteratively adjusted color and tone based on seeing the images on the known screen. 

You can shoot tethered with the Sony a99, it comes with the requisite software, but I find tethering a camera, once you have a test and you aren't changing lights, to be a process slowing encumbrance. We tested, nailed our color and then went commando with the camera.

A master craftsman fine tuning a heel.

We started our product photography in the morning on Thurs. and finished shooting products, including belts, wallets and accessories on Friday around noon. Our only break on Thurs. was to go to an amazing BBQ restaurant and meat market in the neighborhood called, Bolner's. I had the best beef rib I have ever eaten in all of my 57 years. Amazing texture and flavor. I will make a pilgrimage back to Bolner's in the very near future. You should go there too. Amazing.

On friday, after shooting the last of the product images we had lunch at a local restaurant called, Nicha's. The enchiladas verdes were really good and the refried beans were so much better than what we get in Austin....

So, after finishing with products and lunch we came back to take available light images in the workshop and the show room. My favorite part, from a photographer's point of view was a room filled with shelves filled with lasts. Every custom boot starts with a custom last. The older ones were carved from wood while the newer ones are done in resin. I could spend a day making art of the old wooden lasts. The hand making of a good wooden last is also one of those vanishing skills.

The "Last" Museum.

On many shoots I don't have the leisure to step back and make a few behind the scenes documentary photos of how we set the lights up. This time I decided to do so to show the many people who e-mail me asking how we actually use the LED lights for product and still life shoots. It's more like lighting for movies than the traditional (short cut) still photography method of blasting everything with one big softbox and then adding some fill cards to the dark areas....


This is my general set up. The two top lights blast through the 24 by 36 inch white scrim over the top of the boots. Just behind the white diffuser is a black blocker that gives a gradient to the background: dark at the top to light at the bottom. It's a way of building contrast between the background and the product.

To the far left you see another 1000 bulb LED light aimed in at the front of the set. It is flagged off so that it doesn't add light into the darker part of the background gradient but it does add shadowless fill light to the front of the boots, helping to even out the top light. Note the orange sandbag that anchors the light stand holding the heavy, top main light. Safety is good.

On the surface of the table are three white cards (one is gray on the side facing the camera....) which also adds light to the dark leather and other materials without adding appreciable light to the background.


This is a closer view taken slightly over to the right of the set compared to the view above. You can see the Fiilex light just to the bottom left of the main top light. It's adding a bit of separation  lighting to the rear boot.  It is also scrimmed with a black blocker to keep light on the boots but off the background. I think the scrims and modifiers are vital to good photographic work. So many people miss the boat by concentrating on the light fixtures (which can, for the most part, be considered interchangeable) and not even considering the critical tools to control and shape the light. Silly economies, I think.


Here's the back of the little Fiilex LED "spot light" that the company sent  me to test. I'll have a more in depth review of it in the next week or so.  It's one of the first LED lights I've used that throws a tight enough spot to be used as a hard light or a controlled beam light. It was incredibly useful.



When the boots switch direction the accent light switches sides. It's there to light up the space between the two boots. 


The a99 is hands down the best production still life digital camera I've ever used. Live view coupled with focus peaking coupled with no vibration means accurately focused images with no camera movement or vibration at all. What that translates into is amazingly detailed images. I'd bet, with the exception of shooting with fast flash to freeze motion, that the actual resolution of this camera rivals the D800 for this kind of work. The flexible rear screen is wonderful for high tripod, high angle work and for sharing real time images with clients.

The exposure tracking between the rear screen and the exposure parameters I see in Lightroom is the best I've seen. I anticipate ordering a second body in the next few weeks as a peer backup. My clients deserve it and as I work more and more with the camera I want to make sure I have no downtime and no down market time (lesser back up) for high dollar assignments.


I don't have cost figures yet from Fiilex on their LEDs but if they are at all reasonable I'm pretty certain, based on their functionality and great color, that I'll want to end up with four of them to use both in still productions and even more so in video production. Used straight (no modifiers) they are hard and bright; used through a one stop silk they are creamy and still have some kick. Add in a fan to cool the semi-conductors for long life and you have one heck of a professional tool set.


If you are serious about good still life then bring your "A" game tripod. It's the foundation for everything else...

The project was a lot of fun and a pretty intensive two days of work. I feel like I've gotten back into photographic shape and I'm ready for more. Hope everyone enjoys the Super Bowl....I'll be out shooting.

Please consider using the Amazon links below and help support the Visual Science Lab. The kid (always) needs new running shoes....















Tuesday, November 27, 2012

The One Camera that has me Salivating Today. And the one that's still prodding my acquisition gland....


I've got a short list of cameras and lights I want for Christmas. It's a really short list. There are only three objects of desire on it as of right now. And with bountiful rationalizations all three of them could (just barely) be considered practical purchases. The top of my list is pretty obvious. I've been buying up Sony and Minolta lenses over the course of the year and I seem to have jettisoned all my other non-historic cameras in favor of Sony a57, a77, and Nex 7 cameras. All of which have evolutionarily cool electronic viewfinders. So it's only logical that I should rush out and buy a Sony a99.  It's got all the stuff I like and adds in what may be the best all around, full frame sensor sitting in a camera today. Yeah, I know that people are losing a lot of saliva playing around with the Nikon D800 but while its specs seem drool inspiring I think the reality is that 24 megapixels is the current hyper-sweet spot for most workflows and for most subject matter.

The 36 megapixel chip in the Nikon feels kind of like an after market hood scoop and super charger slapped onto a Honda Accord. Not the most practical everyday car. And, at a zillion megabytes per file the D800 might not be the most practical daily driver for a working photographer either.

I want the Sony a99 but I'm trying to be disciplined and wait until I've saved up the cash to pay for one. I turned over a new leaf this year and decided to go easy on the credit cards where non-essential camera purchases are involved. But to quote Wayne Campbell in the movie, Wayne's World: "It will be mine.  Oh yes, it will be mine...." It just seems to be taking me longer than usual.

The more I read about the Fuji X-E1 the more I think that this camera might just leapfrog over the Sony a99 and cut in line, priority-wise. The truth is that I was ready to buy the Fuji Pro-1 when it first came out and I rushed to the store with a checkbook in hand when my personal sales consultant called to tell me the store was holding one for me.  I went and played with the demo and I was even willing to overlook the slow focusing but the one thing I was not willing to overlook on a modern camera (and at my eyes' age) was the absence of an adjustable diopter adjustment. Yes, at sometime in the not exact future I might be able to special order an eyepiece that would make the camera workable but in its raw form....no. And I'm not really a special order kind of guy.

I'm glad I waited because it appears like the X-E1 is everything the Pro 1 offered but more by having less. In getting rid of the vestigial optical finder Fuji was able to provide the same sensor and guts for about 1/3 less scarce American dollars. I like the X-E1 because it's simple and the body is elegantly spare.  I've owned Fuji S2's and S3's and even an S5 and while the bodies (largely Frankenstein adaptations of cheesier Nikon bodies) were operationally ragged the sensors were really, really good. The skin tones remarkable.  All reports so far (both the Pro-1 and the X-E1) point to the same gorgeous skin tones and color palette but this time around bundled with ample pixels and very low noise.  My Nex 7's will get jealous, no doubt, but I'm not in this to make friends with my cameras. They need to serve me and not the other way around.  I'm heading into town tomorrow to look at the X-E1 and the kit zoom lens, which is also supposed to be a cut above the competitors. I'm sure, if I pull the trigger, my VSL readers will be among the first to hear about it.

The final thing on my short list is just more and more of the small Fotodiox 312AS LED panels and more of the generic (cheap) Sony camcorder batteries that work with them.  At some point I'd live to build a frame and make a free standing LED softbox that's about four feet by four feet and usable anywhere. I just need about eight or ten more panels...... I'll add them one at a time. I've already put them on the Christmas list for my family and friends.  Thinking about getting me something really nice of the holidays??????? I'm sure there's another Fotodiox 312AS out there with my name on it........

What do you guys have on your always ready short list? 











Great stocking stuffer for almost every photographer on your list, a good, solid 16 gb SDHC card for the price of 3 lattes: