Saturday, February 27, 2010

Strobes+Wall Jumps = Fantastic Photos!

Recently I went out with a few friends to help them learn how to use their own cameras. I should of taken more photo's but I was on a roll giving some great information on how to take flash photo's like I do. Today's models was our cars, but I thought that was not as interesting as taking photos of people. Here are some of my shots of the good, bad, and some experimentation.

1/60 f3.5 ISO100 580ex in 60" Umbrella ETTL

1/60 f3.5 ISO100 580ex in 60" Umbrella ETTL

1/60 f3.5 ISO100 580ex in 60" Umbrella ETTL

1/60 f3.5 ISO100 580ex in 60" Umbrella ETTL

Out of all these photos only two were of cars for my friends engine and my own. This was taken using one 580ex in a 60" at 1/8th power  with my camera right under the umbrella. This gave me as much soft light I could of achieved  with an umbrella.

 1/60 f5.6 ISO400

1/60 f5.6 ISO400

Suddenly my friend Arlin decided to do some jump shots. Instead of the usual stand then jump when you give the cue, we did ACTION running shots! To try these, we use all three flashes I had. One 580ex at 1/16 aimed at the pillar, one sb-28 camera left at 1/8th power to the side of Arlin, and one sb-28 camera right at Arlins face. Not bad for a quick shot before I had to go to work!

 
1/60 f5.6 ISO400

 
1/60 f5.6 ISO400


Hope you all like the attempt! Stay tuned! 

Friday, February 26, 2010

My Desktop Studio = Neat Portrait Pictures?

After some tinkering with my new rig, yes it is! Actually it is a no brainier, but some might fail to realize what other uses their gear, or rigs could do for them other than the intended purpose it was created. In the last entry I showcased my new set up for product photography, and after having a meeting with my client for the Flashing Panda product shoot, trying new set ups, I almost got burnt out and wanted to quit this deal! Honestly, the deal with product photography is to have consistent photos, but with many different products it is hard to attain and me not being an editor it is hard to get it all done on camera without doing much post processing that I dislike! (yuck!!!)

After some tinkering, I came up with some neat photo techniques to take products of large items! Also I have been getting better backgrounds! But still needs more tweaking and I must share this progress of this sword because it by far was the most difficult to photograph!

1/50 f8 ISO250 Flash power 1/8:1/4

But really the breakthrough in taking pictures of large objects wasn't the reason of this post, it is portraits! My system, If you kick out the table, and let the paper hang is good enough for close up portraits of anything! Here is the rig raised to about 6 feet to give me a nice white backdrop! 


After setting this up all my stress just melted away and I had fun once again taking photo's of myself and got ideas for future works. It honestly works really well. Here is a quick dirty picture of my ugly mug after 3 hours strait of figuring out new product photography methods.

 
1/60 f4.5 ISO200 Flash 1/8:1/4

As you can see, it isn't the best picture, it wont win any awards, but it is a start of what can be very interesting for future clients that want these kind of pictures! Recently I got the chance to work with a really hyperactive dog my friend recently adopted for her daughter! This was really quick and dirty since she came to show me last min, and wanted me to just take a picture to have some first memories of the new puppy!

1/80 f4.5 ISO 400 Flash 1:16:1/16
Note: ISO is 400 due to flash being so low and I didn't want to waste time setting the flash settings, instead raised ISO from 200 to 400 to get the right exposure.

This was a really fun experience to have! Having this paper is so wonderful to use because it really gets you focused on anything that isn't white. This background can also be different colors of gray to black, depending on how far the background is from the subject, another +1 to the usefulness of white stemless paper. Make a rig yourself guys! Its very nice tool to pull off some great shots!

Stay tuned for more updates!

The New Tabletop Studio!

Well allot of time has been going to a new client Dan Odulo that contracted me to do product photography for his small business called Flashing Panda that sell the most neatest LED products for practical and festive events!. Now this is not common to me. Most of the stuff I do again is random, out in the field, not something that is to be uniform and consistent like product photography. That by far is the hardest thing about doing product shots, it is hard to make it a consistent shots to present to the client, but as a photographer, I do what I can!

To do product photography the simpliest way to get it done is to use a Light Box or a Light Tent. This give you really consistent results. However being a strobist, my set up is using hot shoe bassed flashes! VERY difficult to work with. The easiest most pain free way to do this is a Light Table with big soft boxes using constant light sources ligh a lamp. This way, if you have a tripod, you aim the lights on the product on top of the table, and light up the bottom of your product under the table, place your camera on a tripod, set up the setting and like an assembly line you churn out one after another of product photos. AMAZING ISNT IT?! Not in my case. I am still honeing my technique but so far the shots are turning out quite neet so far so I must show you my progress!


Remember this picture in the teaser entry to these mass blogs? It this is some of the pieces that I used to make a new rig to do product photography! What is new is some clamps, and a backdrop bar! I did not go for the retail bars you find in photography stores because, c'mon, I'm a starving college student! I must pinch pennies where I can most of the time! Instead I went to my local HomeDepot and purchased a 10 foot piece of galvanized pipe! Now I could use the whole darn thing, but most of this strobe work is for small LED tools and novelty items, so I cut it down to 5ft and purchased a 4 foot roll of white stemless paper to slip over it! Affixed onto my light stands with two Bogen Super clamps onto my 11ft Bogen 3337 light stands, I not have a backdrop! Teamed up with my Manfrotto Nano stands, Nikon Speedlights,60" umbrellas for soft light, and Cybersyncs, I now have a capable desktop studio!


Looks spiffy huh? Its really simple for now. After setting it up, I took a picture of my Canon 580ex to see what it was capable of. Now when you look at this picture, the background could be a little bit brighter or even blown out but that will be next in my series of photographs!

 
1/50 f5.6 ISO400

This shot could be done with much lower ISO, but I had to start somewhere, and I personally didn't want to start will full power pops from my flashes. So far the quality from my 7D is good enough. Some pixel peepers will beg to differ, but in the end the shot is good enough for web use. The strobes are set at 45 degree angles to the left and right of the item looking down. You can easily aim your lights if you are using an umbrella on your units because you can use the shaft as a pointer to aim the light source. If you use soft boxes, just aim it at your product, take a test shot and see what is the result and modify till you are satisfied to start the assembly line of product photography. Shots I believe were taken at 1/8th power from the Nikon SB-28's. Next will be to shoot them at 1/2 power and lower the ISO for final shots.

More updates on my product table will come soon! Stay tunned everyone! If you have any question leave a comment!

Mass Blog Posts Again!!!

I think this is going to be the habit of me for the next couple of entries, mass blogs..... I have been caught up with so much stuff I just cant kick myself to get into the habit of blogging every day! Or at least every day I do try out some photo's because it is so much fun I should share with you all!


Today, I will share a new set up I did to make some neat photos! Stay tuned everyone!

Sunday, February 21, 2010

Coffee Store Photo Shoot!!!!

Yep that is right, a photo session inside a darn coffee shop! A Robert Adams first! This day I felt the urge to go out and use my darn camera gear and boy is it great to use my camera again! Today I found myself in Los Gatos, a great small town to go to a cake shop, get a pastry, and go to the local coffee roaster for a a dink to fuel PHOTOGRAPHY!

I went with a friend Margaret, a fellow classmate of mine that is artistic and has a interest in Photography and I chose to show her whats up about what I do so she could try out my style crafting a photo! We chose to sit in a corner where there was a long bench, cramped table space, and a scarce amount of chairs in a corner of a store...Not the best location but I didn't let that stop me!

 
Clamped to the bench on the wall. Later hand held!

Here is the first set up. since I was on a bench, I noticed its construction was thin enough for me to clamp to it! I rigged up a super clap, umbrella bracket set up, and threw on my 43" umbrella with a 580exII. Just quickly setting it up, I surprised Margaret taking a quick and dirty photo. Most of she shots are just messing with flash exposure compensation. That is an auto feature provided with the TTL systems on cameras.

 
1/60 f5.6 ISO100

She found the difference in light amazing! I selectivity chose not to expose the background as much to show the effect on her with my umbrella. To give her an idea of what it look like if i balanced out my flash  I opened up to f2.8 and raised my ISO to 400 to allow it to quickly expose the background.


 
1/80 f2.8 ISO400

Next I  took of the rig from the bench and slight hand held the flash for the next few shots just to see what it was like to have show and tell about what goes on.


 
 

These next shots were just taking something as simple as a table, and if you have a clamp and a bracket you can pull off really neat looking lighting dynamics to your shots. I clamped my light about two feet away from me on the table to give me off camera lighting from the other side of my camera. Here is a pic of what that looked like.

  

Before the pink gel you see in the picture was added I took a shot to see what effect direct flash had on my friend. It was pretty fascinating the outcome! The next photo was taken with the pink gel added to alter skin tone for the fun of it!


 
 Next I stopped using my 580 in wireless TTL, because that didn't really give me control over my photo. So I took another clamp out, and put it on the bench again,switching to my two Nikon Sb's with triggers. Here I can tell you the powers that that is 1/32 power.

Test @ 1/50 f5.6 ISO200 PERFECT!!

1/50 f5.6 ISO200
Tuning my transmitter over to Margaret, I ran her though how to get a good exposure of me using my lights angled at my face. I gave her a Circular polarizer to cut down on reflections.

One strobe on. 1/15 f8 ISO1600

Two strobes on. 1/15 f8 ISO1600

Told to cut down on the ISO!! I thought it was 100... 1/15 f8 ISO100 Now were are getting there! Just need to open the aperture more.
 Good exposure! 1/15 f5.6 ISO100

Now to pose. (I thought the first was too serious) 1/15 f5.6 ISO100

Geled the left strobe to mimick the gloomy outside weather. Its like an aquarium! 1/15 f5.6 ISO100

So this was a great mini session how to use flash! Great shot. Again I personally set up the lights to just do a headshot of my face. Exposing the background was user preference, but its pleasing to me with the shutter at 1/15. The flash guns were set at 1/32 power since they were so close. Aperture was set at 5.6 in the end but could of been smaller! The reason is because of the polarizer filter to expose though the window that can eat 1 stop of light. 

Stay tuned for next entry!

Friday, February 19, 2010

My First Online Gallery!

Hey all! I started myself a Zenfolio to show and allow themselves or other to buy and have a copy of their photo! I think its a great start! Explination of how I did some of these shots are going to come later!


Thursday, February 18, 2010

Wow another long period of no posts! But im still here!


The month of February has posed to be a very, odd month for me. Classes are funky, job is a roller coaster, and photography has almost flat lined. Well, if you compare to how many posts that is, but NO!! I have been taking quite a bit of photos some for now are just private that is all, I dont have much material to post that is public! But sifting though my memory card I do have pictures when I went to SF. They are not strobist pictures, but the show the capabilities of what lens's I have being the Tokina 16-50mm f2.8 and the 50-135mm  f2.8. These are my workhorses for now and are proving to be quite good lenses from my older 28-135mm f3.5-5.6! Where these pictures were taken was at the San Fransisco Golden Gate Park. I was trying to see how good the focus is for long distance shots since most of my shots so far are up close! Check out my ability capture the scenery, capture detail, and isolate subjects!

DeyYoung Museum 1/320 f5.6 at ISO 100

 
Perfect for Black History Month 1/1000 f2.8 at ISO200

Flowers isolated and shot at 1/2500 f2.8 at ISO 100

 
 Check out the detail! 1/500 f5.6 at ISO 100


The buildings in the tea garden as I left shot at 1/400 f2.8 ISO100

Some bike photos will be comming up soon to show my work with action!

Saturday, February 13, 2010

Oh No!!!! I Broke my 60" Westcott! Wait...I CAN FIX THIS!!!

This actually did not happen just now, but actually two days ago on Thursday February 11th at the BAC gathering. What I remember from Zack Arias, the 60" inch wescott can collect a bunch of air and you might just be able to "sail to China on one of these", and it almost did with my $480 580exII on it! Ha, just playing, it was on the stand by itself and I had it on my camera for some panning strobist shots. Anyway, just a small breeze of 5mph took it down. Seriously if you dont have an idea how large it is, think of a dome the height 5 food kid up in the air and almost 2 feet deep. Yea, big. Sadly it fell on its side and busted 2 ribs and 2 supports to the 60" Wectcott umbrella!



Feeling sad, I got creative to save my umbrella investment with zip ties, tape, and a pair of chopsticks! YES, that is right, chopsticks. If you ever have an umbrella fall down to it's doom and smashes a side, really all an umbrella is made of are aluminum ribs connected to a shaft with fabric stretched over it. To fix a tear in the fabric just stitch it up with some white thread, but if you break a rib, you have to splint it! My splint of choice was a wooden chopstick set I took from a Chinese fast food store. taping the cracked rib to the chopstick i finished it off with some zip ties to make sure it was stable. Check it out!

Friday, February 12, 2010

Gels to Make Your Photos More Colorful


Some things that allot of photographers neglect is gels. Its a simple piece of plastic that can have a dramatic effect to your photos. They can be something subtle as using orange gels on a sunny day to simulate the suns rays, or green to match the interior lights of an office, or bold reds, blues, yellows and anything else you can think of! Allot of gels one can buy are from Rosco to jazz up the lights that come out of your flash.

What I have done is purchased the pre-cut Strobist packs that you can get from B&H and the Cinegel kits since they were out of the swatch packs for photographers and this one is designed for the theater industry. To make them easier to work with i extended them with duct tape and put Velcro ends to make things much easier to work with. Also mark them up to know what is what so you know the effect that will happen since some gels in the dark look the same. A great time saving trick to splash some colors into your shots!


Here is a example of my hallway with my two SB-28's in a cross lighting situation with a dark green gel and magenta gel. CRAZY EFFECTS!!!

 

To help you with your imagination here is another picture. Here is a lame mug shot of myself with a two tone personality!

BAC Monthly Wingstop Meet!

Well yesterday was the BAC Monthly Wingstop meet. It was supposed to be held on the first Thursday of February, but due to weather we rescheduled the date a week later. Today was a great day for pics, besides, the wind, and the cold, or maybe it wasn't a good day at all.... But my pictures were GREAT! Today I was playing around with my lights with no gels using everything from my 60" Westcott umbrellas to my smaller 35" umbrellas, using all my speedlights, and just placing them ANYWHERE!!
 

Some highlights I took some pics of my buddy Richie acting as he is larger than life in this picture. I used a 60" umbrella as a key at I think 1/4th power from a 580exII from camera left while a 35" umbrella had a SB-28DX at 1/8th power as some fill on the right. Camera was set at ISO 200, 1/60 shutter, and f8 to control the flash for a decent exposure of Richie.You can see that the 580 is a little hot, but I liked this picture so much I had to show it as my beginning use of my umbrellas for portraits. I look forward to taking a bunch more!

Photoshop? Gimp? Just Download From the Camera and Post?

This is a hard thing for me to post, since I admit I dont have Photoshop. OHHH MYYY is it a drag.... To make great photos you need it, no if's, and's, or but's about it! Yea there are allot of software out there, even free ones like Gimp that you can use to edit photos, but Adobe has done a swell job at making photoshop so if film guys need darkrooms to make their pictures great, we digital folk need the Photoshop to make the magic happen!

Personally I will get a copy of it soon in about a few weeks. Along with Lightroom since that is the work flow that I have been getting used to. Batch editing from sharpening, color and saturation, even sharpening can be accomplished in Lightroom. Where Photoshop comes into play is if you want to really fine tune your photos. There is allot you can do with just Photoshop and Bridge, but for me to do my craft is to really use Lightroom for its user friendliness.

So what do I use now? Gimp. Its free, and it has the basic things to make a picture pretty. Download it, and play around with it, you seriously can get allot done with gimp for free than thinking you need the legitimate photoshop to pull things off.

Just a tip to new photographers, if you camera can shoot in RAW, do so. If you don't you are missing out on allot of fine touches you can do to your photograph. If you shoot JPEG, and have been for years and don't see the need, the simplest way I can break it down is that you are editing a photo after the fact it was created. With RAW, it theoretically has not been developed, so you have autonomy over the end result. How you know if you have this feature? Its a picture size option, or a button. If you still can't find it, consult your manual and if it cant tell you squat well maybe you dont have it and should consider getting one that does! Well worth the extra dollars to make great pictures!

Here is a clip of something REALLY cool you can do to your photo's in photoshop if you ever consider it. This is one out of hundreds of things you can do to your photographs.

Wow! Another Huge Break!

Well It has been a while everyone but don’t worry! I am still here! There has just been mucky weather here in San Jose California, and I haven’t been brining my camera out much. I know what I should do is keep it wherever, but with classes that I take up and the topsy turby things I also do to keep myself busy doesn’t leave me much time to lug around my large camera! Maybe this would be a good thing to get a G11 as my everyday camera? HA! If I score a bunch of money maybe I will! 

As for future posts Ill be showing you guys some more works with my lights! I so love them and I want MORE! Yes, MORE LIGHT! I need it so badly. And bigger umbrellas, softbox, and a proper bag! Yea us photographers need allot of gear to pull of some ideas that go in out heads.  It really is a drag when you dont have what you want to do the shots you want....

So its been 6 days, so 6 posts? Maybe not so much but I’ll make some posts of my recent works to show what is going on! Stay tuned people!

Saturday, February 6, 2010

First Shots With the New Gear



Well I said I would post up some of my strobist work soon and so here it is! This was super fun! I tired out allot of my new gear and man did I have a blast taking pictures of my buddy Pa Cheng on his Fixie! We decided to meet at the Milpitas auto gatherings and give myself a crash course learning my gear!

The shot was pretty simple using one light, one stand, my radio triggers and some CTO gel to make things look clean. Ill get into what gels are in a later post. Using my Bogen 3336 stand and my 580exII I set the rig having it mostly to my cameras right side up high about 8 feet with the flash angled down. This then rains down orange light to light up Pa. This day was really windy and I didn't dare use an umbrella so that is why the 3336 stand was used because Pa came pretty close a few times to the stand and if he were to just tap it, chances it probably still stand.

I had this stuff down to a science that day. I played around at 1/4 power on my flash to start and threw it at f4 to see the exposure and thing were very bight! I closed up to f5.6 and it was perfect at ISO 200. Shutter speed was set at 1/60 to try and pull some light from the back. Sadly though batteries were dying fast since I used them the night before so I had to change some things with my settings. To keep the same exposure, all i did was take my flash, and reduced the power to 1/8 and then kicked up the ISO to 400 keeping the aperture the same since that controls my flash exposure. So reducing the flash by 1 stop of light, and kick the iso up 1 stop of light balanced out my exposure again and allowed me to keep shooting quicker getting some cool moments.

Check it out!


More light-stands! Wait...More?


Yea, yea, yea, there is more light stands that I purchased, and for good reason. Again people who are thinking about doing this kind of craft you got to admit to take photos like (wait I have not even given examples on my blog! I gotta fix that...) this you must buy the tools to pull it off. Sure you can hold off, stop your progression and use what you got and see how far you can get, and that perfectly fine! But to get my shots down I need certain gear to get what I have in my head, down onto a camera, to my computer, and to my clients. Also having the right gear in your bag and rolling with it is better than getting gear that limits you and you just have to hold back on your ideas. I normally say too much of anything is never good, but for photography of my style, barely there.


Anyway on to the new stands! They are compact guys to go into a backpack I am making. It allows me to go anywhere quickly and efficiently rather than bringing a trunk full of stuff! I trust allot of my equipment on Manfrotto/Old Bogen gear because they are solid stuff. The stands this time are two newer Manfrotto Nano Stands. They are 20 inches folded up and extend up to 7 feet. With a few compact 43" umbrellas, I have a great portable kit to play around with. They are also very light and that can be a good or a bad thing. If you are carrying them on your back, its a perk, but if you want it to be stable? Not such a good idea unless you are indoors and there are little things to get in your way.
More updates later tonight!