Photographic ADHD. Why I light everything I shoot in a different way than the last time.

Noellia with Ring Light.

On monday I shot eight portraits outside. It was fun because it was challenging. There was a brisk wind and some gusts. The client really wanted the images to be outside and we already had rescheduled due to weather so we went for it. I discussed the packing in a post over the weekend but to review I used a medium (3x4ft.) soft box with an Elinchrom Ranger RX AS powered flash head. I set up the gear and positioned the camera so I could include out of focus trees in the background, behind the subjects. The main light came from the right. On the other side I needed to block the direct sun but when I put up a solid, opaque 4x4 foot flag the wind kept pushing the frame over. The stands didn't go anywhere. I was using high rise C-stands that each weigh about 25 pounds and I draped sixty pounds of sandbags over the "turtle base" of each C-stand (C-stand is short for Century Stand, a standard of movie sets the world over...and much more durable and stable than most photographic oriented light stands). 

I solved the issue of the windblown frame by replacing the opaque and sail like flag with net material instead. I use a two stop net and a one stop net to drop the sunlight down into irrelevance but the secret is that the nets let wind come through so they don't act as "sail-like" and they stay in position. 

At any rate, that was the lighting configuration for the day. Big ass electronic flash through a traditional soft box with some light cutters and the aid of a neutral density filter. 

Yesterday I found myself on another location. I was in a medical practice making portraits for the practice's website. We set up to do 12 people but this time I used four fluorescent light banks instead of flash. I wanted to create a look and feel similar to a ring light which pushes down unflattering skin details and lines. I used one of the fixtures on the background, one over the subject's head, just above camera and one each on the sides. Totally different than I usually light stuff but it gave me just the right look for images that will be attached to a dermatology practice! The fixtures are the Fotodiox Day-Flo-Pro models. I find them to be easy to color balance, provide good output and to be reliable. (and cheap). Since they are heavier than electronic flash heads I did bring along bigger light stands and a sand bag for each. I used diffusion right on the lights which made for smaller sources that I usually shoot but the three different fixtures used together gave me a nice, soft images which will stand up to some contrast boost after quick retouch.

Two days, two shoots and two totally different lighting set ups along with very different lighting tools. What next?  Well, I had a portrait of an attorney on the schedule for this morning so after I unpacked the gear yesterday evening and ingested all the files from the medical practice shoot I started mulling over how I would shoot the next day. What lights and what modifiers?

I decided to go with one of my favorite looks and use a 6x6 foot diffuser over to one side. But what to light it with? I went for two K5600 Lighting 200 watt HMIs. One was the open face and the other a fresnel unit that they call an Alpha. The light was perfect and the multiple fixtures let me move the lights a bit further back from the rear surface of the diffusion to elongate the fall off a bit more. 

I used a white bounce modifier to the opposite side and finished the whole thing off with a Fiilex P360 LED light fixture as a background light. Both the LED and the HMIs color matched perfectly and since they were all daylight balanced I didn't have to worry about ambient light leaking in the windows of my studio and causing a color cast. 

Funny that the Elinchrom electronic flash mono lights that seem to be a type of standard working tool of photographers everywhere were not even on my radar. 

Why all the different lights? Why all the different looks? 

I guess I should confess that I get bored easily and using different lights makes every shoot more interesting to me. It's just my prejudice but I think shooting things the same way, with the same tools, over and over again is just mind numbing. The theories of lighting are the same no matter which tools you end up reaching for. You aren't really creating new paradigms of lighting but you are taking advantage of the various strengths each tool conveys.

I had to use flash on Monday in order to compete with the ambient sunlight. I wanted to use the fluorescents on Tues. because they could be used in close, in multiples and not drive the room temperature up. They were the perfect tools to create a ring light effect with tight control. And I used the HMIs today because they make me feel as though I am on a movie set and I can see every little change I make to the lighting as I'm shooting. Couple HMIs with EVFs and you may have the single best combination for shooting portraits in the studio. So it's not just boredom, there is some method in my madness. 

I'll go so far as to say using the same tools every day, over and over again is akin to making a uniform product. That puts the whole photographic endeavor into the realm of being strictly for the money. The desire to play with all the tools means to me that I'm still engaged in the actual creation of photographs, separate from the commerce side, and that keeps me interested, engaged and constantly learning. You can do it either way. But to my mind it doesn't make sense to be a photographer if you aren't a little scared and excited every time you walk in the door to start a project. 

Stay tuned as I finally circle back for a revised review of the new LED panel.

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Thank you!

I seem destined to learn the same photographic lessons over and over again. And subsequently forget them.

Taken and enormous number of years ago 

with a Canon TX and an ancient 

Vivitar 135mm f2.8 lens. 

I owned one light at the time.....

I had another re-satori exercise happen to me this week. By that I mean I re-learned something that I already knew but the knowledge of which had been pushed down by my rampant consumerism. I've been very busy lately and that usually means there's a higher than usual cash flow which, sadly, generally means an increase in overall gear lust. 

I was about to embark on yet another wonderful and well paying job and I headed to my favorite consumer electronics "candy shop", Precision Camera, to buy a needed three stop neutral density filter. Of course, while I was there I just had to take a look at the used equipment (which seems to be flying into their door quickly and in bulk). Knowing I was in the middle of a lukewarm flirtation with Nikon gear my sales associate put two interesting, low mileage, cameras on the counter in front of me. One was a Nikon D800 and the other a Nikon D610. Both were in amazing shape and both were priced at almost half their original selling prices. Overwhelming temptation! I had the store put one on hold for me while I sorted out my feelings overnight. 

That's one part of the universe speaking to me through gear. But here's the other half....

I was asked by Craftsy.com and a website called, Pixoto, to judge a portrait photography contest. All I had to do was pick the grand prize winner and to write  short few paragraphs about why I had selected the winner. I looked through about 5,000 images over the course of a day or two. One image kept jumping out at me, over and over again. It was well seen. It wasn't processed to death. The expression of the subject was perfect and riveting. I went through the exercise of narrowing down images into a folder of selects but every time I opened the computer up and started looking again the same image drew me in. It was an easy choice. And writing the "whys" of selection helped me understand (again) what was important in a portrait.

So here we mix the two events....

Once the judging was done I went back to my weightier problem: trying to convince myself that a D610 or D800 full frame camera with a spiffy-ass sensor would hugely improve my portraits or, conversely, talking myself out of spending yet more money on yet another placebo camera.

Since the portrait of the contest winner was fresh in my mind I decided to go back to the site and see what marvelous camera and what spectacular (certainly German) lens had be used to channel that image into existence. I did. I went back and looked at the camera info (and I'm a bit ashamed that with my age and experience that I would still do that). Well, the universe seems to enjoy balancing stuff.

The camera used was an EOS 600D. In U.S. parlance that's a Canon Rebel T3i. And the focal length is listed as a 90mm which I assume is the actual focal length on a zoom. Not a prime (although he could have used a 90mm tilt/shift....). So, here I am thinking this is a wonderful image: http://www.pixoto.com/images-photography/babies-and-children/child-portraits/raphael-5592685093060608 and I have to also understand that it was done with mundane tools and a total regards for, or an appreciation of, the subject. Not the camera.

Yes, yes, I abandoned any thought of getting the new camera(s). It's amazing in this situation just how quickly the universe came back around to correct my thinking.

Now....I am packing for another daylong portrait shooting assignment/adventure and I noticed that a certain big name fashion shooter does a really nice job with Broncolor strobes. Maybe I should look at picking up a set of those lights. It might really help my work.   Right. Not.

To bring it all the way around I love the image I posted of Belinda at the top of this blog post. I did it back in the late 1970's with a camera that only had shutter speeds to 1/500th, sync'd at 1/60th and had a creaky, used lens on the front. I owned one particularly nasty Novatron electronic flash and a photographic umbrella that I found in the trash behind an old studio in downtown (don't ask!). But I love everything about that portrait. Could it be that our skills become inversely proportional to our abilities to buy gear? I'm beginning to think so....

Took a little break after lunch to walk around Austin in a different direction. Today was all about color.

I was reading some stuff online about the upcoming Samsung NX1 and it motivated me to grab the NX30 and the 85mm 1.4 and just stroll. Well, a stroll and a raspberry vegan donut at Whole Foods. Gee, what a bargain, they are only $10.  (kidding.)

Have I mentioned how much I like composing in a square format?

Shot with K5600 Lighting Joker and Alpha 200 watt HMI fixtures. Nikon D7100. 85mm 1.8G lens.

A snap for today.

 Shop Window Layers.

Back in the groove. Just a progress report for Thurs. November 6th 2014.

Denver Street Art. 

Pentax K-01

Finishing up big jobs always takes me by surprise. I shot for four days last week and ended up with about 4500 images. When the shooting is all over and the cameras are tucked into their mink lined enclosures and locked away in the vault it also seems shocking to me that I have to change gears and get cranking on post production. So, on monday I started making Lightroom galleries by day and event. I do them that way because it seems to help clients find the images they want quicker. 

The first step is to make a quick look through all the images I am about to import and throw away as many as I can. Near duplicates, blinks, inappropriate scratching (which never really happens with my clients) and bad composition gets trash canned before I hit "import" so I don't fill up my hard drives quite as quickly. 

I spent all day monday crunching images. The GTech drives kept me warm and the i7 processor and full complement of RAM kept things moving along at pace. By mid day tuesday I had the images in folders and inside an overall folder and ready to deliver to the client. I seem to buy 32 gig memory sticks the way some people buy coffee these days. Way too often. But I burned 25 gigabytes of large, minimally compressed Jpeg files onto two different sticks and delivered them to the client. One stick for my direct client and one for her boss. Not having to share memory sticks is part of providing customer service, right? 

With that job delivered and the paperwork done it was time to get back to my happy routine. The schedule up until Tues. precluded swim practice, the absence of which makes me really----prickly. But man oh man! A week out of the water takes its toll. I attended the Executive workout on Tues. and this morning. We call it the Executive workout because it is from 8:30 am to 9:30 am and it seems that most swimmers in that time slot don't really have a pressing need to go into work...at least they are in no rush..

We knocked out 3200+ yards in each of the workouts and it felt like swimming uphill for me. You lose conditioning quicker than you think at my advanced age. Still, 3200 yards in an hour is good work.

I also had time for the first time since last Weds. to sit down and have coffee after the workout and to read the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal. Wow, a lot happened while I had my nose pressed against the LCD of a camera.... I tend to forget that the world marches on.

Yesterday evening the USPS mailman delivered the Fotodiox 508AS LED light from Amazon. The package was double boxed and the exterior of the outer box looked like it had been handled by surgeons every step of the way. Not even a microscopic box dent. I am charging the two, chubby batteries now and will start playing around and testing the light this afternoon. I will tell you that I am very happy with the product's presentation. It comes with a padded case, padded dividers, straps to hold the batteries and chargers, etc. The unit comes with barn doors and a diffuser panel for the front of the light. It also comes with both a double battery smart charger and a separate AC adapter. Nice. 

I turned it on and it works! Yay. 

We got our first cold spell and lots of great rain that started Tues. night. I love it. The Studio Dog hates it. She doesn't mind the cold at all but she is very mistrustful of rain in general and thundery rain in particular. 

I think it's about time I grabbed a camera from the stack and headed out the door to make some images just for me... later.

Really anxiously anticipating the arrival of the Samsung NX-1. The initial specs and good reviews from a photographer who is already shooting it may be what ultimately has kept me from buy a full framer.

As many here know it takes me a while to warm up to some things and I am an "early adopter" of others. For instance, it took me nearly two years to be civil with the Olympus OMD EM-5 but I bought one of the very first EVF enabled Olympus interchangeable lens cameras to hit Texas (the EP-2 with VF-2). I embraced the EVF in the Sony a77 even quicker. But I've been a slow study with the various cameras that Samsung has sent my way. I've always been happy enough with the actual imaging but the operational aspects of both the Samsung Galaxy NX and the NX30 left me wanting something more.

I mentioned in an earlier blog today that I had occasion to compare files from two different cameras on the same shoot recently. We shot the initial images back in early September and the client involved just made their final selections a few days ago. This morning I opened a raw image from a Nikon D7100 and a raw image from the Samsung NX 30, both outfitted with 85mm lenses, and I compared them. They were of the same person in the same lighting and in the same location. A pretty convincing test I thought.

The caveat with any test like this is in the use of two different lenses. The Samsung had their 85mm 1.4 while the Nikon sported their very well reviewed 85mm 1.8G series lens. I won't bore you with the long winded discussion but suffice it to say that I was notably more impressed with the Samsung file version even though, by all measures, the Nikon should have been technically better. I went back and looked at a number of other cross samples from the same shoot and it nearly every instance the image from the much cheaper NX30 was----better. A subjective analysis but true to my vision.

After I finished doing the post processing which consisted of smoothing some skin and taking care of some wispy black hair against a light blue background I started reviewing what I knew about the newest camera from Samsung. The NX1.  If what I am hearing from the company and from one of the photographers shooting that camera bears out in the final, delivered product it may represent exactly what I want in a camera. Dear camera gods, please help them get it right.

The imaging sensor should be one of the best in its APS-C class in that it's an all new, BSI technology sensor which means more space for chubbier, happier pixels. With 28 megapixels and no AA filter it should be within striking distance of the resolution of the Nikon D810 but at less than half the price.

Stop and think about it for a second. 28 million pixels on a low noise chip in a $1499 camera. But the amazing thing is that it will shoot at 15 frames per second with full AF instead of the 6 frames per second of the 810. I'm still trying to wrap my brain around that kind of throughput.

While I think that's pretty cool, gee whiz technology I'm rarely worried about the shooting speed of a camera as much as I am concerning about the usability of a camera. In that regard the NX30 wasn't bad it was just a bit slow and a bit rough. The EVF is okay but needed more resolution and much better contrast. That's supposed to be fixed in the NX1. Not just fixed but "best in class."  The other handling issues were all about interface responsiveness. The switch from LCD panel to EVF was too slow and subject to uncertainty if there was a high amount of ambient light. In the first iteration the time from button push to menu implementation was too slow.  And the camera was too light to feel like a precision tool.

If the viewfinder is great and the imaging quality of the sensor lives up to the initial fanfare I think it will be a camera that clouds the issue of full frame versus EVF for me. While most people seem to think that full frame is better no matter what I'm not really on that team. Fast, good glass makes up for the difference in out of focus backgrounds and fast focus fall off. The advantage on the other side of the coin is that there are probably more professional situations where it's more important to get what you need in focus than have the out of focus effect. And APS-C as well as m4:3 both do better in that regard.

Here's my hope for the NX1. A wonderful, glamorous and transparent EVF. A wonderfully done sensor with a heaping helping of dynamic range and low noise up to ISO 3200. (By that I mean that shooting at 3200 should look about like shooting at ISO 800). And fast camera response to the controls and the menus. If they get that right I'll be happy to use the camera to make enormous numbers of great portraits with the 85mm 1.4 lens I already have and love. It has always seemed like a brilliant lens looking for a compatible camera. I'll know in a week or two if that's how the story turns out. I'm not ready to be a total photo snob and only buy from long established vendors. Sometimes a bit of disruption helps move innovation while providing curious users with fun tools.

I am a little surprised that I am anticipating this one to a greater degree than most cameras. I guess the bigger the promise the greater the interest.

And, of course, I am sure our loyal VSL readers can hardly wait for me to wring out the video and see how it performs....  (a tiny bit of sarcasm..).

Won't it be funny if after their few false starts Samsung creates a camera that leapfrogs over the leaders? Well, not to surprising since they already get how important the EVF is going forward....