Leslie's assignment post

Posting this for Leslie - Very nice! I especially like the highlight under the cigarette....

Today on Strobist

Did anyone else see Strobist today? Very cool tutorial on how to photograph a drop of water so I had to try it. My 580EX II in manual model 1/16 power, bouncing into a piece of white gator board. Camera set to 250sec/f16, tungsten white balance. 

This can become very addicting!

Flashing my Favorite, but Reluctant, Model

Here are two photographs of my granddaughter, Emily.

I figured that taking a picture of Emily in a window would be easy since I was basically just using the flash as fill. The Canon 580EX ii speedlite was hand held at arm's length off to camera left. My goal was to light Emily while keeping the background properly lit and realistic (I wasn't looking for a nice bokeh). I accepted that there would be sharp shadows.

Camera settings: 1/250th at f 9.0 and ISO 400. Flash triggered with the Canon STe2 transmitter.

It turned out to be harder to pull off than I anticipated. I couldn't place the flash close to the camera without creating an ugly reflection in the window. Holding it off to my left meant the side of the window nearest the flash was way too bright. I think that if I had had a light stand handy, placing the speedlite up close to the ceiling and pointing it down at Emily might have worked better.

This second picture was inspired by one of Joe's recent blogs (and his demo in SF). I wanted to take the photo looking into either early morning or late afternoon sun, but that wasn't possible. I settled for a bright spring day.

For this one I used two speedlites triggered by the STe2, each set to high speed sync. They were held on either side of my head and aimed directly at the subject. I experimented and found that 1/1600th and f 3.5 got me the best result at ISO 100. The sun's shadow was softened but was still visible but Emily was well lit.

For fun, below is one I took the week before using ISO 1600 to give me a high shutter speed in order to catch Emily jumping. The background looks fine but there is way too much contrast where the light hits Emily's body. For me, the flash approach yields a better result.



Hope everyone is well and taking lots and lots of pictures.

Virginia

May Assignment - Cactus Flower & Campfire

I was out camping in the Arizona Mountains over the Memorial Holiday weekend and used the opportunity to make a few images for my 'Kabobs' May Assignment.

The first images are of a cactus flower found on the shaded forest floor in the Arizona high country pines.

Below are two images of this flower made with a handheld camera and a remote flash mounted to camera right, from slightly above the flower.

The first image (below) is using a straight flash, making the image of the shaded flower look like it was shot in normal daylight.

The second image (below) I made with the flash filtered by a full cut of CTO gel to create the effect of early morning or late afternoon light, giving the image more of a warm color.

I also made an image of folks sitting aroung the campfire. I used a remote flash on camera left mounted about 5 feet above the ground, filtered with one and half CTO gel. The camera was handheld. The shutter speed was 1/2 second (at f8.0) to allow time to pick-up the natural glow of the campfire, the CTO gel'd flash added extra pop to light up the people and freeze any movement, without losing the effect of the fire glow on them.

To have taken the image without the gel'd flash, would have required slowing down the shutter speed even more, resulting in blurred movement of the people due to their movement and camera movement as well as turning the fire into a large blown-out light detracting from the natural ambiance of the flames. I would have liked to have spent more time with this image concept, but the flash going-off all the time would have detracted from the relaxed ambiance for everyone.

Well, I hope this is of interest to folks, and meets the spirit of our May assignment, and I welcome any suggestions and comments.

Equipment used: Canon 1Ds M3, Canon 70-200mm f2.8 IS Zoom (for flower), Canon 24-105mm f4 IS Zoom (campfire), Canon Speedlite 580 EXII, Canon Speedlite Transmitter ST-E2, RadioPopper PX Remote Trigger, Lumiquest FXtra Gel holder.

enjoy life,

David Gralian

http://www.davidgralian.com/

www.davidgralian.com/blog

May assignment

Well here's my post for the May assignment. My son was playing with his Wii so I grabbed the camera and started shooting.  I wanted to experiment with dragging the shutter with the direct light. I set my 580EX II on a light stand camera left, manual setting @ 1/128 power and zoomed to 105mm, it was tripped with PocketWizards. Camera was .5 sec f/5, ISO at 200 with a 10-17mm. The background light is a mix of a small table lamp and window light. Let me know what you think....

Thanks,

Fred

RadioPoppers are Poppin

I bought myself a set of 4 RadioPopper PX's (1 transmitter, 3 receivers) for my Canon Flash system. I've been putting them to use for all my off camera flash shooting and thought I'd give you a quicky review so far. I mounted the transmitter onto my Canon ST-2 and the receivers onto my Canon 580EX's. Gotta tell ya, I'm really liking these a whole bunch, I keep all the functionality of the Canon wireless flash system (e.g., High-speed sync, channels,groups, flash levels, .....) without worrying about maintaining line-of-sight between the ST-2 and the strobes. All of my work has been relatively close so far, but other reviews I've seen say these units are good out to beyond 100 feet. For this reason, I bought the RadioPoppers over the Pocket Wizard new MiniTT1™ and FlexTT5™ radio slave system just released for the Canon strobes, and so far, I haven't been disappointed. Only real negatives I can offer so far are the price (~$250 each) and the somewhat clunky mounting setup which seems to work fine so far, the positives significantly out weigh the negatives. Also for you Nikon shooters, the RadioPopper PX's are designed to work just the same, keeping the functionality of the strobe system. Well that's it for now, let you all know more later.
>>> David Gralian http://www.davidgralian.com/ and www.davidgralian.com/blog <<<

Simulating Early Morning Sun

Since reading the Hot Shoe Diaries, I have wanted to try out using a speed light to simulate very late afternoon or early morning sun and the distinctive shadows the light creates (see page 98 et seq.). I also wanted to capture something close to the finished product in the camera.

Having no models readily at hand, I decided to photograph a statue in Père Lachaise cemetery in early morning light while I was in Paris for the month of April. The cemetery doesn't open until 8 a.m. when the sun is already up. Fortunately, hills and the abundant trees and foliage filter out much of the light until later in the day.

This particular monument (the oldest Pleureuse (weeping woman) in the cemetery dates back to 1815) is ochre and naturally stands out among the marble and granite monuments.

It was after 9 a.m. when I reached it and found it lit by a few rays of sun filtering through the trees. (The brighter spots on the back of the statue are where the sunlight was hitting it.)

My husband stood off to camera right at a shallow angle to the statue, holding the flash gelled with a full CTO cut as high as he could. The Canon speed light was set to 105 mm, the highest setting available in the 540ex ii. I used ETTL and controlled the amount of light by adjusting the flash compensation feature in my 40D and moving the voice operated flash stand closer and father away (mobility was somewhat hampered by the tomb stones, many of which are crumbling and all of which are packed pretty close together). Alas, I don't remember the flash compensation admustment I used for this shot or how far away the flash was when I took this photo because I was making changes on the fly to get the amount of light I wanted.

Part way through the shoot, it occurred to me that changing the white balance from auto to tungsten might produce an interesting result. I had in mind Joe's photo of the woman bicyclist with the flowing waterfall behind her included in The Moment it Clicks, as well as other examples.

Which is how this photo came to be.

In post processing, I experimented with brightening the background and warming up the deep blue so the contrast between warm and cool was not so strong, but, in the end, I settled for goosing the warmth of the statue a bit and retaining the contrast between warm and cool. If I had used a stronger CTO cut, this adjustment might not have been necessary at all.

As I look at the finished product, I must say that it says "flash" to me more than it does natural light. I'm still not sure I don't like the more natural lighting better. Still, it was fun to do and I learned a lot.

C&C welcome.