No photo! Sorry bout that.
I'm on the second leg of a multi-day assignment for a law firm that has offices in cities around Texas. We started on Thurs. shooting portraits and interior architecture in Austin. Last night I loaded up the Honda Element (photo car) with a full complement of gear minus cameras (I won't leave them in the car overnight even in our relatively safe neighborhood because I never want to tempt fate.....). This morning Belinda and I met our friends at Sweetish Hill Bakery, as we always do on Sunday mornings, for coffee and pastries. Then around noon I kissed Belinda goodbye and headed on the first leg of today's travel: Right up Mopac Expressway to the north Austin Costco to buy yet another small, portable USB hard drive. This time the one on sale was a 320 gig HP drive. It's sleek, it's black....it's cheap.
I always do double back ups when I'm out shooting on the road. I've got a little case full of DVD's and my laptop as well. It's easier if I put a copy of all the raw files on the new hard drive, that way, when I get back home I can plug it into the flamethrowing Mac of universal supremacy and get to work on the raw files.
I picked up a sandwich at the bakery so I put the car on autopilot and didn't stop until I got to Kilgore, Texas. This is north east Texas and the highway "features" a series of small towns with speed limit signs sprinkled behind generous tree boughs and state troopers sprinkled just a little further on.....
When traveling the back roads the gold standard for bathrooms and now coffee is McDonald's. Say what you will about corporate food, they actually have a latte that's at least as good as Starbuck's (and more consistent, shop to shop) and their bathrooms are always clean. I asked the young and very clueless girl behind the counter if they could make a decaf latte and she stared into space for a few seconds and then said, "I don't think so but we can put a flavor in it." Serves me right for trying to weenie out and drink decaf when I already had quite a good caf-buzz going on. Just to the edge of anxiety but not quite.
After Kilgore ( home of the Rangerettes who were immortalized by Elliott Erwitt in the 1970's ) I decided I was smarter than everyone else. Much to my disadvantage ( hubris always comes at a price). The office manager of the Austin branch of the firm I am shooting for told me several times= "There are no hotels in Daingerfield, Texas. Of course (and having never been there myself) I blew right through Longview, Texas in the Element and drove the thirty extra miles to Dangerfield. Guess what? There are no hotels in Daingerfield. What do you know? Counted myself dim as I turned the ultra high performance beast around and headed back to Longview.
No Ritz Carlton's or Four Seasons in Longview but that's okay because after last year I'm not taking any chances with expenses or cash flow. So, how do you choose between the Fairfield Inn, The Wingate by Wyndham, The Comfort Inn Suites and the La Quinta? I chose the Wingate because it had the most lighting in the parking lot and the price was okay. What part of training to be a professional photographer covered which hotels to stay in? For that matter I didn't see seven hours of straight thru driving in the job description either. At least the room is big and the wi-fi and breakfast is included.
Tomorrow I'll be down for breakfast at 6 am, hit the road by 6:30 am and be in Daingerfield again by 7:30 for some exterior shots. We're planning to wrap by 5 pm and I'll be in Texarkana for the next shoot by 7:00 pm. We're shooting for four days this week and we wrap in Dallas on Thurs. then it's a straight shot back down from Dallas ( four and a half hours if no one flips an SUV on IH35 in the rain this time....) to Austin.
I'm using the Elinchrom system as my main lighting. Using a 60 inch Photek Softlighter as a main light and a circular reflector for fill. Another head in a small softbox, at low power on the background. I'm also doing an environmental portrait of each person. In Austin we were blessed with a big window and perfect, soft light from the cloudy day. I hope I find something similar tomorrow.
Finally, I'm recharging the batteries for everything out of habit. I feel kind of dumb. I didn't bring anything new to read and I am a read-aholic. Guess I'll either read the hotel directory or I'll grab my already dog-eared copy of Lighting Equipment for Digital Photographers out of the car and re-read it for the fifth time........
Nighty-night.
4.17.2010
Kirk's Top Ten List of Great Lighting Gear.
I photograph lots of different subjects and most of them require lighting that's designed to work best for a specific situation. Fast and furious PR and event documentation? Anything that can't be done with available light probably gets lit with a battery powered flash. Shallow DOF portraits in controlled environments? Usually big silks and hot lights. Portraits in red hot Austin sunlight? Gotta be battery pack driven flashes. Big studio shots? You can pretty much count on a couple of electronic flash packs and an assortment of heads. I have a reputation of being fickle about gear. I buy new cameras regularly.
I finally broke down and asked a psychiatrist friend who knows me very well, why I seem to churn through cameras like a stock broker through my SEP. He had an interesting take. His interpretation was that methodical engineer types run the numbers and shop carefully. They check all the boxes after establishing rational parameters. Then they use the gear over and over again in precisely the same way. This ensures predictable results. On the other hand, the very nature of being an artist is to master a tool and a style, followed by the evolution to the next style and set of parameters. The next step. In photography, for better or worse, we are wedded to our tools. They shape our vision. A new tool means a change in vision, a shift in point of view= A new way of looking at things. This sounds right to me. And it's not a judgment thing. It may be why artists master more ways of looking at things but die starving in trailer parks. The constant search and evolution will never equal the production line for productivity and ongoing profitability.
But for the most part the artist doesn't care. To do the same thing over and over again would be the death of the artist's soul and he might as well give up and do something entirely different than walk the same circular path over and over again.
So this guy has multiple degrees in the science of the mind and I'm ready to believe him. While I churn through cameras in an endless search for the next step I am not nearly so fickle about lights. I tend to buy them and use them for a long, long time. And maybe that's because I can change the shape, quality and the texture of the lights at my will. That being said, I do want to play with high quality gear because I don't want to become wedded to the necessity of maintenance. Fixing stuff sucks. It should just work.
Cameras are critical but somewhat interchangeable. Lights are the bedrock of our craft.
Without any further inspection into my weathered psyche I'd like to talk about ten pieces of equipment that I love and would not like to create without, even if I change cameras as often as most people change their underwear.
In no particular order:
1. When I'm shooting a large set or scene in full sun and I need my light to match or overpower the sun's pervasive power I reach for my favorite big battery light, the Elinchrom RX AS
pack with attendant flash head. It's a highly efficient system with a big ass battery that cranks out 1100 watt seconds 250 times in a row before moaning and groaning. If you need to put a light in a softbox and go outside to shoot, this is the light that makes the slow sync speeds in most cameras worthwhile.
Check it out here:
I finally broke down and asked a psychiatrist friend who knows me very well, why I seem to churn through cameras like a stock broker through my SEP. He had an interesting take. His interpretation was that methodical engineer types run the numbers and shop carefully. They check all the boxes after establishing rational parameters. Then they use the gear over and over again in precisely the same way. This ensures predictable results. On the other hand, the very nature of being an artist is to master a tool and a style, followed by the evolution to the next style and set of parameters. The next step. In photography, for better or worse, we are wedded to our tools. They shape our vision. A new tool means a change in vision, a shift in point of view= A new way of looking at things. This sounds right to me. And it's not a judgment thing. It may be why artists master more ways of looking at things but die starving in trailer parks. The constant search and evolution will never equal the production line for productivity and ongoing profitability.
But for the most part the artist doesn't care. To do the same thing over and over again would be the death of the artist's soul and he might as well give up and do something entirely different than walk the same circular path over and over again.
So this guy has multiple degrees in the science of the mind and I'm ready to believe him. While I churn through cameras in an endless search for the next step I am not nearly so fickle about lights. I tend to buy them and use them for a long, long time. And maybe that's because I can change the shape, quality and the texture of the lights at my will. That being said, I do want to play with high quality gear because I don't want to become wedded to the necessity of maintenance. Fixing stuff sucks. It should just work.
Cameras are critical but somewhat interchangeable. Lights are the bedrock of our craft.
Without any further inspection into my weathered psyche I'd like to talk about ten pieces of equipment that I love and would not like to create without, even if I change cameras as often as most people change their underwear.
In no particular order:
1. When I'm shooting a large set or scene in full sun and I need my light to match or overpower the sun's pervasive power I reach for my favorite big battery light, the Elinchrom RX AS
pack with attendant flash head. It's a highly efficient system with a big ass battery that cranks out 1100 watt seconds 250 times in a row before moaning and groaning. If you need to put a light in a softbox and go outside to shoot, this is the light that makes the slow sync speeds in most cameras worthwhile.Check it out here:
2. When I'm moving quickly outside, without the benefit of an assistant (happens more and more these days in the times of "no budget") I grab the Profoto 600b battery powered flash system with it's cute, black flash head. It's half the weight of the Elincrhom, takes only one head, has a smaller battery but......it's totally reliable and I can easily carry it in a backpack. At "only" 600 watt seconds, I might have to use the flash and softbox combination a bit closer than I would with the Elinchrom but I can still get the job done. Newsflash for anyone who already owns one: Profoto just came out with a Lithium battery version and the batteries are backwardly compatible. Cuts down on the weight, adds additional flashes per charge and cuts the recycle times. If I could only own one flash I'd have tough time deciding between the two.
Check it out here:
3. When I need a smaller flash I turn to the Metz line. I've owned Canon, Nikon, Olympus and Vivitar flashes but for my money the little 48 afi flashes are the best price/performance ratio light on the market. I bought one for my Olympus stuff and have been impressed by the performance. It's not the top of the line. Those are too big. This is the next size down. It still takes four double "a's" and since it is slightly less powerful it actually recycles quicker. The quality of the light is great and, at $229 they are a bargain compared to the manufacturer's flashes. I also use an older 54 MZ3 in a totally manual configuration (without a dedicated shoe, only the standard middle pin shoe.) it works great in both automatic and power ratio settings. TTL is mostly overrated. Works okay if you have time to chimp every shot but if you get your chops down and learn to gauge distances then manual is hands down more reliable.
Check out this version for Canon users:
4. If you shoot portraits you're going to need to soften the light coming from your flash. There are thousands of products on the market to do this but the physics are basic. The bigger the total square inches of light emitting or reflecting surface area the softer the light will be. You can spend over a thousand dollars on an Octabank, hundreds of dollars on softboxes of countless configurations or you can just get over it all and get the most cost effective and beautiful light source out there, the Photek 60 inch Softlighter Two umbrella. It's basically just a well made 60 inch umbrella with a white translucent "sock" that fits over the front of the umbrella and flash head to make the whole thing a combination softbox/umbrella. It's much quicker to set up and will only cost you around $80. Talking attention to detail: Two different shaft sizes to interface with various flash heads. If you have European lights like the Profoto or the Elinchrome you'll want/need the thinner shaft. Super good bargain/must have. I keep two in the bag in case on overly zealous assistant destroys one.
Here's a peek:
5. If you do this for any amount of time you'll find that some of the photographers from the 1950's and 1960's had a lot of stuff figured out that vanished from the scene and would be missed if people really knew what they were doing. You're pretty smart so you probably realize that getting people posed correctly for portraits is tough and it would be nice, for a seated portrait, if the subject had somewhere to rest their arms or elbows. In the old days every photographer who did nice portraits had a posing table. Very sensible. It anchors subjects in place and make the shoot more comfortable for them. Get one. Make sure it's solid.
6. If you are going to put someone at a table it just makes sense to put them on a stool that can be adjusted. Everyone should be able to sit with their feet on the ground. Or maybe one foot on the ground and the other on an apple crate. A pneumatic stool is just the ticket. Mine comes from one of the background companies like Denny and is solid and comfortable. I think just about any good, adjustable stool should work. This one looks good:
7. My lighting life would be empty and sad if I couldn't use my big scrim. A big scrim is just a translucent fabric on a frame. It diffuses the light. And the bigger the better, within reason. You still have to be able to both afford and transport the thing. That's why I like collapsibles like the inexpensive one from PhotoFlex. It's 74 by 74 inches, folders down to half that length for packing and has very few parts to break. You'll need some adjustable clamps to hook the panel up to a couple light stands but I'll let you research those.......
Sorry, couldn't find an illustration.......
8. When I work in the studio I really love to listen to music. Not loud. Just in the background. It's calming and helps everyone focus on the job at hand. I've had stuff hooked up to my computer before but I didn't like that solution. I wanted something for my workspace that sounds great but doesn't take up too much space. Believe me, I've been through a lot of systems over the years. Got tired of powered subwoofers and all the arcane digital stuff. I finally settled on a Tivoli Stereo Radio system and a 120 gig iPod. Who would need anything more. If you are a rap enthusiast you'll probably want something that will play louder........
I swear by this radio. It sounds absolutely wonderful. I bought one in the middle of the great depression of 2009 when the price actually dropped to $139.95. But back then you could also get a brand new Panasonic L1 with the Leica zoom for around $650........
Everything was on sale then. Damn, should have bought a factory.
9. If you work in the studio just skip the light stands and buy a C-stand (Century Stand) from Matthews or Manfrotto. Super heavy duty and the arm does double duty as a small, strong light boom. You can get them in black or in Chrome. I've got both. I like the look of the black one and in the studio you don't have as many problems with reflections back into the photo. But the chrome ones are nice working in the Texas sun as they don't absorb heat the same way......you choose.
10. Finally, who can get any work done without Foamcore? This stuff is just essential. It's the gold standard as a reflector or light blocker and it's the only thing on my list that costs about what morning coffee for me and an assistant costs. I keep all the scraps. The small pieces are great for still life set ups. The large chunks as portrait reflectors and the full sheets, taped together, as 4 foot by 6 foot "V" panels. Great stuff to bounce a light into.
We cover this kind of stuff in the new book. If you are interested in lighting, especially in different ways than you have in the past, it might be a handy resource. I worked hard on the book. It's pretty darn good.
I'd love to hear some feedback from people who've read the book. This is one I'll likely want to revise every few years to update new products and new techniques. It's a world of constant change.
Heading to east Texas tomorrow to photograph some really nice attorneys. I'm thinking about all this stuff while I'm packing up the Honda Element......
4.16.2010
Zero to 60 in one week. Camera craziness is part of the bargain.
It's like a dragon woke up and started breathing fire. It's been a busy week. I've shot theater and video and portraits and interior architecture and I'm booked up with an out-of-town shoot all next week. I'm leaving on Sunday, around lunch time and won't be back until late in the week. Got my magazine lifestyle shot done and sent out just in time.
Book # four, my book about all kinds of lighting equipment for digital photographers
is selling well on Amazon.com and has already gotten its first five star review. Thank you Park Street. The book is a sleeper. It starts out with a little history of lighting and works its way up to the fun stuff. I've gotten some really nice feedback from trusted readers and I love the reproduction quality of the images inside. I'm taking a break from writing books for the next few quarters to focus like a laser on my core love, photography. I"m really getting back into the thrill of shooting portraits. Loving available light as long as it's available from my box full of lights......
Things are getting a little strange around the studio since my physicist friend, Dr. Charlie Martini, invented a new electronic device which aids people in their enjoyment of photography. We've been working on a device which, when miniaturized, would allow us to casually slap it on the side of an art buyer's forehead and it would program them to like the style of work that I show in my portfolio. It didn't work out so well and several art buyers are talking about litigation. I don't know why they would get so worked up about a few little second degree burns and some (hopefully) temporary amnesia, but we learned a good lesson-----ASK PERMISSION BEFORE ATTEMPTING CASUAL MIND CONTROL.
With these lessons learned we have adapted the device to serve as a verbal to visual translator. Now I don't even have to take images. I can describe them in various levels of detail and our Imaginizer 2020 will create visual images in the minds of the subjects who wear the devices. So far, my verbal descriptions have been described as boring and mundane but I'm buying a thesaurus and I have high hope. When it works right the subjects stop looking at me as subject #3210z is in the mind-o-graph above and they just get quiet, like this:
It worries Dr. Charlie Martini but I am optimistic. We haven't lost one in a while.....
On another note, the Austin Photo Expo is drawing near. It's the weekend of the 14th-15th of May, here in Austin. I'll be giving a presentation, sponsored by Olympus, three times on each of the two days. I'll be showing images from a wide range of cameras and a lot of video from the EPL and the EP-2 cameras with a zany assortment of lenses. I'm working on a title but I think I've just about settled on: The New Generation of Swiss Army Knife Cameras. And why you should care. All six talks are free. I'd love to see some of my local friends show up and heckle. There is one guy I can always count on......you know who you are.
I've been shooting up a storm for the folks at Zachary Scott Theater (tried to sell them a box full of Imaginizer 2020's but they wouldn't go for it....). This is a studio shot will an Olympus camera and the old 40-150 mm lens. So far they've made some 30 inch by 40 inch posters from the files but nothing bigger. Looks great at lifesize though. It's a classic lighting set up meant to reference the work I did in last year's season brochure. We start with a big, 6 by 6 foot scrim over the the left of the camera and a small reflector to the other side. The gray background is about 20 feet behind and there is a small softbox on a Profoto flash head aimed at a spot just behind Jaston. The big scrim has it's own Profoto head, married up to a Magnum reflector. As usual, I'm locked down on a tripod.
In addition to the above shot we just finished two days of shooting for a play entitled, Call it Courage and another day for their Season lead-off, Our Town. Lots of photons being captured by lots of different cameras....
Love the people at Zach Scott Theater because sometimes they let me do wacky stuff like this. Not to mention that no one batted an eye this week when I did one of the dress rehearsals with this combination of cameras:
EP-2 with a 60mm 1.5 Pen Film lens and an EPL-1 with a Panasonic 20mm pancake lens. Amazingly, using the "shimmer method" I could actually focus quickly and accurately with the small electronic view finder.
This one was shot under pretty low light at ISO 800 with the EPL and the Panasonic 20mm. I think it works...
This one is from the EP2 and the 60mm 1.5. I think I hit focus on a moving target with a manually focused lens at a fixed aperture pretty well. All metering is manual.
I'll be hitting the road on Sunday. I've got a bunch to say about the new hybrid video/still cameras so I expect I'll write some more tomorrow and then try a couple while on the road.
Hope everyone is happy and healthy. Think positive thoughts and maybe they'll come true.
is selling well on Amazon.com and has already gotten its first five star review. Thank you Park Street. The book is a sleeper. It starts out with a little history of lighting and works its way up to the fun stuff. I've gotten some really nice feedback from trusted readers and I love the reproduction quality of the images inside. I'm taking a break from writing books for the next few quarters to focus like a laser on my core love, photography. I"m really getting back into the thrill of shooting portraits. Loving available light as long as it's available from my box full of lights......
With these lessons learned we have adapted the device to serve as a verbal to visual translator. Now I don't even have to take images. I can describe them in various levels of detail and our Imaginizer 2020 will create visual images in the minds of the subjects who wear the devices. So far, my verbal descriptions have been described as boring and mundane but I'm buying a thesaurus and I have high hope. When it works right the subjects stop looking at me as subject #3210z is in the mind-o-graph above and they just get quiet, like this:
On another note, the Austin Photo Expo is drawing near. It's the weekend of the 14th-15th of May, here in Austin. I'll be giving a presentation, sponsored by Olympus, three times on each of the two days. I'll be showing images from a wide range of cameras and a lot of video from the EPL and the EP-2 cameras with a zany assortment of lenses. I'm working on a title but I think I've just about settled on: The New Generation of Swiss Army Knife Cameras. And why you should care. All six talks are free. I'd love to see some of my local friends show up and heckle. There is one guy I can always count on......you know who you are.
In addition to the above shot we just finished two days of shooting for a play entitled, Call it Courage and another day for their Season lead-off, Our Town. Lots of photons being captured by lots of different cameras....
EP-2 with a 60mm 1.5 Pen Film lens and an EPL-1 with a Panasonic 20mm pancake lens. Amazingly, using the "shimmer method" I could actually focus quickly and accurately with the small electronic view finder.
I'll be hitting the road on Sunday. I've got a bunch to say about the new hybrid video/still cameras so I expect I'll write some more tomorrow and then try a couple while on the road.
Hope everyone is happy and healthy. Think positive thoughts and maybe they'll come true.
4.12.2010
It's the little things that make life so interesting.......
I don't know if you routinely photograph anything that small but they are tiny enough that a sneeze sends them flying and a piece of dust looks like a boulder on the landscape of the die. To get the kind of magnification you'll need you'll want to have a bellows to stick in front of your camera and you'll want to use a fairly short focal length lens that's computed for high magnification. Maybe a 12.5mm Photar or a 25mm Zuiko lens made specially for magnifications that start at five times lifesize.
Many nasty things happen when you go above 5x lifesize. First, the finder gets really, really dark. The image gets really hard to focus. Wide open on an f4 lens the depth of field becomes the width of a human hair. If you stop down you are immediately confronted with sharpness robbing diffraction. You must be exactly planar from the sensor plane to the lens plane to the subject plane or you will never achieve sharp focus over the whole object. We're talking fractional degrees of angle here.
Finally, the chip die is actually a dull finished piece of silicon. The bright colors on these samples and on samples you've doubtless seen elsewhere is the painstaking end product of moving lights around at different angles and different altitudes until your get a reflection of a layer and the refraction of the reflection creates a dominant color. Shorter way of saying that: You gotta move the main light all over the place till you get a blast of color. But it's never the same color twice.
There are hundreds of ways to get sabotaged. Could be dust in the air, could be an alignment just a tiny bit out of whack. You can spend hours tracking it down. But what the heck, the fun is in the challenge.
In the old days the dies were giant. Some where half an inch by half an inch. Easy as pie. We routinely shot that stuff with 4x5 sheet film. But every 18 months the chip dies get smaller and smaller. At this point it's no longer feasible to put a standard macro lens like a Nikon or Canon 50 because the lens is too long to achieve the magnification you need on the available bellows.
In a few more 18 month generations this kind of documentation will probably need to be done on low mag industrial microscopes with oculars for camera attachment. Right now, if you can do this reliably you'll be in demand. Not as glamorous as shooting lingerie models but I'm going to be these kind of assignments actually pay better.
Here's two more:
Next post. Why some people (me) change cameras a lot. Conjecture from a famous psychiatrist.
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