The Digital Photo Guy

A Little Light is Wonderful, Too Much is Yucky

On my Meetup site, we recently scheduled a shoot at Cruisin’ Grand, a summer weekly hot rod show on Grand Avenue. I like events like Cruisin’ Grand because it’s a fun, challenging opportunity to practice PJ skills. The crowds make it nearly impossible to make photos without lots of “extras” in the background. Because it starts late in the afternoon and closes after dark, it’s also an opportunity to practice making fast decisions with my flash.

The first two shots of a fire truck are with and without fill flash. Both shots are SOOC (straight out of camera) without any editing except resizing and compressing. Although my main focus was on the flag above the truck, the second shot with fill flash is better because the lighting is more balanced. However, notice how the flash turned the reflective lettering on the trucks white. These won’t win any awards for artistic merit but they clearly show the value of fill flash. The third photo demos use of the catchlight (kicker) panel on a Canon 580EX II. I pulled out the kicker and angled the light at 45°. That gave me enough light to fully light up the engine without harsh shadows. If your flash doesn’t have a kicker, you can do the same thing with a white business card rubber banded to the top of the flash.

You can see more “real” photos on my Meetup site.

The Absurdity of Burning Man

For those who have never heard of Burning Man, it’s an annual “counterculture experience of self expression and discovery” in the Nevada desert (read that as a drug and alcohol fueled orgy.) For those who have heard of Burning Man, here are some interesting thoughts to ponder.

For a “counterculture experience,” the organizers raked in over $15,000,000 dollars this year. That’s fifteen million US Dollars. So, for that kind of dough, what does one get from BM (an apt acronym?) You get the right to squat on a piece of BLM (Bureau of Land Management) property for a week with absolutely no amenities except porta-potties. You also have the right to buy (that’s right, BUY) water from the organizers. Everything else has to be hauled in by yourself.

You are NOT allowed to buy or sell anything other than what is offered by the organizers, after all, this IS a counterculture experience. The party line is that BM is a “gift economy” and everything is to be freely given without expectation of anything in return. Of course, this “gift economy” doesn’t apply to the organizers.

Now, don’t get me wrong. I have nothing against any entity establishing their own rules. After all, this is a capitalistic society. What amazes me is the number of dolts who actually pay to attend such an event. Included among these dolts are professional photographers who sign a contract that gives BM all rights to all their photos PLUS 10% of all revenue generated by the photograher. In other words, photographers are BM employees working on straight commission.

Here are some interesting reads on BM baloney:

Electronic Freedom Foundation, August 2009

Burning Hypocrisy, 2003

San Francisco Chronicle, August 2011

Fun with Flash

Most hobbyist photographers never take full advantage of all the bells and whistles in their fancy external flash, aka Canon Speedlite or Nikon Speedlight (I guess Nikon has a better spell checker!) Here are three things you might do with your flash.

A Canon 550EX and Canon 7D was used for all these photos but this can be done with most any modern digital camera and flash. Caveat: most advanced features are only available on dedicated flashes (made by the camera maker.)

Bounce the Light: If you’re just blasting light straight ahead, you may as well get closer and use the pop-up flash on your camera. Of course, with the greater power of an external flash, you might be able to get some really cool redeye effects. To soften the light and cast shadows that add depth, texture and character to your photos, bounce the light off a (low) ceiling or a handy wall. The bounce surface should be white to reduce odd color casts unless you’re into that look!

The flash in the first photo below was bounced off the 10 foot ceiling in my office while the second photo was with the 550EX pointed directly at the subject. Notice the harsh shadow directly behind the subject. Regardless of whether the subject is 6 inches or 6 feet tall, there will always be a harsh shadow. The bounced photo has a soft shadow that is less objectionable. If the subject is 6 ft tall, the shadow will be barely perceptible. For small subjects/objects, read on for a tip near the bottom.

2nd Curtain for Motion Effects: Many people have read or heard about 2nd curtain sync but haven’t quite figured out the purpose. In the default 1st curtain setting, the flash fires as soon as the shutter opens. This is usually of no consequence when the shutter speed is brief (<1/30 second) or the subject is static. However, if the shutter speed is >1/30 second, subject movement may show unnatural aberrations.

The first photo below shows a moving car captured with 1st curtain. The flash fired as soon as the shutter opened so the body of the car is to the left of the frame while the headlights extend forward as if the car was firing photon torpedoes. In the second photo, setting 2nd curtain caused the flash to fire just before the shutter closes. Now, the headlight trails are behind the car, a more natural image. These were handheld since the crowded sidewalk wasn’t conducive to deploying a tripod and I actually like the blurred lights. For a more traditional 2nd curtain image of automobile light trails, use a tripod and a stronger flash output.

Freeze Frames: This last photo is an example of Multi or stroboscopic flash where the flash is fired repeatedly at a set rate. In this photo, the Canon 550EX was set to fire at 4 times per second. The camera was set to 2 second shutter timer and the toy was released shortly after the timer was tripped. As the toy swung in front of the camera, the shutter opened for 1 second and the flash fired 4 times.

Now, remember in the first part where I described bounce? The small size of the subject showed a large, albeit soft, shadow. Here’s a previous Monday Morning Tip where I describe using Multi Mode to produce small product shots without a shadow.

Photography Classes at Palomar College

Did you know you can register for my Palomar College classes regardless of where you live? Even if you’re in Moosebreath, Montana, you can attend my classes via webinar. Check out Digital SLR for New dSLR Owners on Tuesday and Thursday, September 13 and15 from 7PM to 8:30PM Pacific Time or Photoshop Elements for Digital Photographers on Tue/Thu, Oct 11 and 13 at the same time. All you need is a PC or Mac, high-speed Internet and $59. Register today to get the most out of your digital photography.

Why Manual Flash is Sometimes Easier

This past weekend, I photographed Celestina, Pinup Model, Makeup Artist (MUA) and Hair Stylist. This was the third time I’ve photographed her and I should have the lighting down pat by now. Yet, I still managed to make rookie errors that ruined many images and will require a reshoot. BTW, notice the cool NBA blouse. That’s Natonal Bowling Association, not basketball.

First, the excuses. We only had two hours so I was rushed. Celestina was delayed getting there so now we only had 90 minutes. I tried two poses which required moving the backdrop and wasted more time. And, the biggie: I took a shortcut and let E-TTL handle the intricacies of a four-flash set-up. This isn’t to say E-TTL couldn’t have handled it but it takes a lot more smarts on my. I would have been better off manually setting each flash instead of letting E-TTL try to figure out what I wanted.

Here’s a finished photo of Celestina striking a pinup pose. I wanted a white background in the tradition of true pinups. The BG isn’t pure white as I wanted but it’s better than the original (after the jump.) My first thought was to mask Celestina and drop in a white BG. I immediately realized that was a dumb idea because of the fine hairs where I was backlighting her beautiful red hair. More

Why a Good Flash is a Good Investment

Which photo below resembles your photos on eBay or Craigslist? If you said the one on the left, not to worry, most online ad photos look like that.

The one on the right was taken with the same flash with the same camera on the same tripod at the same time. The difference is Multi Mode (Nikon – Stroboscopic.) You’ve seen photos where a gymnast is captured in multiple positions throughout a jump. The first photo is taken as the athlete leaps up, the second a moment later in mid-air, a third as he/she tucks into a spin and so on until the gymnast sticks the landing. The flash fires a series of bursts, each freezing the gymnast at a point in the tumble. That’s cool but not something many people do on a regular basis. However, Multi (Stroboscopic) is very useful for making photos like the right vase. More

Marvelous Model, Super Students, Fantastic Fun

The flash workshop yesterday was outstanding. Those who have taken my classes know I don’t normally take many photos during workshops because I spend my time teaching. Yesterday was the same except that, of the few photos I made to demonstrate fill flash, one actually came out well enough to display.

The first photo below is a typical snapshot with the subject wearing a hat outdoors. I hated asking Melanie (she’s a psychologist) to cover up her gorgeous hair with her husband’s cap but she was a good sport. The middle photo shows the first attempt at the “By Guess and By Golly” method of flash photography. There’s now a catchlight in her eyes but it’s still too dark.  The last image is after dialing in FEC (flash exposure compensation).

I overdid the last one a bit so the students could easily see the difference on the LCD. The first two are SOOC (straight out of camera) and the last one I added a bit of sharpening. I hope you agree that using fill to soften the shadows and add catchlights really made a dramatic difference.

The first hour was spent just learning what all the various modes and controls do on a Canon 580EX II Speedlite. It was time well spent as the students had very little flash experience. In fact, one had just bought the 580EX II and this was the first time she’d ever used it. We had several “teachable moments” such as when one 580EX II went “wonky” (a technical term) and wouldn’t come out of Manual Zoom mode. After playing with it for a few minutes, we discovered the “kicker” had come loose and the flash thought it was being bounced.

The next Flash in a Flash Workshop is January 2011. Stay tuned for details to master your flash.