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February 10, 2010
My pick for this week’s image in the Alive for 365 project, is this previously posted image of Manhattan being engulfed in a rain storm. This grand view of Manhattan across the Hudson river, was from the top floor of the Jersey Hyatt. A quiet moment while waiting for a bride to arrive …
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February 9, 2010
balancing flash and ambient exposure
This topic – balancing flash and ambient exposure – seems to one that many newer photographers struggle with. The big hurdle seems to be the basic starting point – how do you decide on the exposure for each?
I’d like to explore this topic a bit with this post. The trigger for this was a question that someone emailed me regarding an image in my book on flash photography. Instead of answering the question directly, I thought that a wider answer might be more illuminating. We’re still on that perpetual quest for more aha! moments. So let’s see where we head with this. (I’ll come back to the specific question and answer at the end of this.)
But why do we even want to add flash to a subject when the available light is soft?
The answer is that with flash we can control the direction and quality of light, and create a more dynamic image.
We don’t necessarily just use flash to avoid camera shake and / or poor exposure in low light. We use flash to create better light on our subject. We can ‘clean up’ the light that falls on our subject. Or to create more dynamic and interesting light. It’s about control. We decide. So where do we start?
The simplest approach for me, when I work in fairly flat and even ambient light, is to under-expose the ambient light by a certain amount. Then we add flash for correct exposure. So how much do we under-expose the ambient light by? Well, it depends. Usually a stop is good. Two stops can also work. If you’ve seen some of the images in fashion and music magazines where the subject is in a pool of light .. yet, the sunlit cityscape is darker, then that is because the photographer under-exposed the ambient light by 2-3 stops. Even in bright sunlight. So we have some leeway. That should ease some of the anxiety.
Under-exposing the ambient light by a stop, and then adding flash … is but one scenario, and one recipe. This approach won’t apply to every possible situation you might encounter .. but it’s a good starting point in grasping that Big Question – where do we even start in balancing flash and ambient light?
Let’s start of with an example where the previous method wouldn’t work:
settings: 1/125 @ f3.5 @ 800 ISO
lighting: Q-flash T5D-R, in TTL mode diffused by medium softbox to the right
(A speedlight in the softbox would’ve worked just as well here.)
Here’s the image without flash, just so we have a reference ..
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Filed under: exposure metering, flash photography, general photography, lighting, models — Tags: exposure metering, flash photography, flash photography technique, flash photography tips, lighting tutorial, off-camera lighting for portraits, photographic lighting — Neil vN @ 6:38 pm
February 7, 2010
review: Nikon 70-200mm f2.8 AF-S VR II
I’ve been very happy with the older 70-200mm f2.8 VR telephoto zoom. Even even though the edges are softer than the center, it never bothered me. With weddings, I am mostly only interested in the center portions of the image being super-crisp. Similarly, the vignetting didn’t bother me. I usually add more vignetting in post-processing anyway.
Still, I ordered the new Nikon 70-200mm f2.8 AF-S VR II (B&H), and received it on Friday.
It’s beautiful!
Doing a few test shots around the house, and was immediately impressed. It is sharp! I like sharp. Every thing about this lens is good news. Focusing is faster, and flare is very well controlled. There has been considerable debate about the shortening of focal length with this lens as you focus closer and closer. Yet, I would never have noticed it if I hadn’t been told about it. For my work, a total non-issue.
One of the features of this new lens, is that it has even more aggressive vibration reduction / stabilization. So even though I do take my shutter speeds low at times, my advice is always that if you want sharp images, the first thing you need to do is make your shutter speed much faster. Now, I’ve never been one to really be able to hold my camera steady without careful control or with steadying myself against a wall. So for me, vibration reduction is an essential feature on long lenses .. especially since I don’t work with a tripod for the style of photography I do.
At a wedding on Saturday, where I was the second shooter for a friend, I was able to see how the VR worked during an actual photo shoot. During the ceremony I took photos of the guests sitting in the dark temple. How dark? 1/6 th @ f2.8 @ 2000 ISO kinda dark …
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February 4, 2010
This striking photograph was taken by Stephanie Zettl, who as our guest blogger this time, tells us more about how this image came to be …
Can you identify what inspires you and your work?
by Stephanie Zettl
Inspiration should not be confined to one thing. The more we study and experience art, music, and films the more material we have to enhance the style and impact of our photography.
My most recent magazine cover was based on my love for music. The different musical genres influenced the style of the dress, hair and makeup of the shoot.
The cover photo is my homage to Herman Leonard – a photographer famous for his photos of jazz musicians – and all those wonderful jazz movies of the 1940s and 50s. I wanted my model to take the role of a Jazz Diva singing in a lounge. In order to emulate this look, I knew that I would be shooting in black and white, my lighting would have the look of strong directional stage light, and a little grain or “noise” would not be a bad thing.
That being said, this was still a fashion shoot and I wanted the main light on my model to still have a beauty light aspect to it and show off the dress and styling in a flattering way.
The stage that we were working on was equipped with four spot lights that could be slightly directed to illuminate the stage and the musicians. Because the dark lounge also had some wall sconces that I wanted to make sure showed in the photo, I had to make sure my metering took them into account. I think they add to the mood of the photo and give a sense of space.
I brought my Profoto lighting kit, but found that because of the light levels for the existing lights, I could just use the modeling lights to balance with the other lights. They effectively became “hot lights” or constant source lights instead of strobes. Though there are some disadvantages, I actually like working with hot lights when possible because what you see is what you get when directing and shaping your lighting. (Video lights, like the Lowel ID light, are also considered constant light sources and you can find several of Neil’s articles on the use of video light for photography.)
I had one light in a soft box to camera right on the model to provide soft frontal beauty light. There was a second light without a diffuser placed behind the trumpet player to provide separation from the background and rim light on my subjects. It also helped to further enhance that feeling of being on stage.
To give the intimate feel of a lounge setting I shot through the piano player to frame my model. The final shot was made at 1/60 sec, f2.8 at 1000 ISO.
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these affiliate links to order equipment & other goodies. Thank you!
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February 3, 2010
My entry this week for the Alive for 365 project is this enigmatic landscape.
While on a hike in Magoebaskloof in South Africa (Dec ’89), I wanted to portray some of the eeriness of walking through the misty forest that morning. I remember it being very quiet. I kept looking for *something* to photograph .. something that I could focus my attention on. But there wasn’t anything specific. Just the trees and the sloping mountainside fading away into nothing as your gaze wandered further. Then I realized that that is exactly what I wanted to encapsulate in a photograph.
So instead of trying to find a specific “thing” or a specific part of the landscape, or geometry or pattern or composition … this was just how it was … stark trees in the mist. Nothing else.
This is why this particular image appeals to me. I felt that this simple lateral movement in my mindset, got me closer to photographing the essential aspect of this particular landscape.
In finishing the image for the Alive for 365 site, I simplified the original image slightly …
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February 2, 2010
I’m constantly amazed when I check my webstats and see this site referred to and discussed on the photography forums across the world. It’s also hugely flattering and humbling that photographers across the world have offered to do translations of various pages on this site. Currently there are translations into Chinese, Italian, French, Romanian, Polish and German.
The translations so far have mostly been published on other sites. However, I would like a more coherent structure to all the various translations. What I intend is to run parallel blogs, all with the same layout and structure. Due to the nature of any blog, the order of the blog posts will be very different between all the others.
Here is the German translation of the Tangents blog posts and articles. Thank you to Michael Krause who did the work here!
I still need to improve the actual look of the blog. At the moment it is just the bare bones structure. But the material is there. I’ll finesse the look of the blogs in the next few weeks. In fact, if a reader of this blog is well versed with the Thesis wordpress theme, let me know. I could use the help.
I have the frameworks ready for the Russian blog, and a Spanish blog, as well as one for the intended Dutch translation. I’ll make them active once the material has been collated properly and posted.
All translations of the Tangents blog will in future be directly available from the front page.
The current translations spread across various sites will be gradually copied to the new blogs, and I would like all future translations to be posted there to keep it all coherent and organized.
With this new system, the brunt of the work won’t necessarily fall on the shoulders of just one person. There can be a number of people working on any particular blog, translating different posts and articles. To enable this, I can create Editor accounts for those who are doing the translations, so that they can edit the material directly on the different translation blogs. Contact me if you’re interested in helping.
I look forward to working with everyone in expanding this. Thank you!
If you find these articles interesting and of value, then you can help by using
these affiliate links to order equipment & other goodies. Thank you!
Stay informed of new articles via the monthly newsletter.
Also join us on the Tangents forum for further discussions.
Filed under: news — Neil vN @ 6:38 pm
February 1, 2010
about this Mac thing ..
Until recently, I’ve been a PC user. I didn’t have much interest in using a Mac, although I dearly loooove my iPhone and iPod. I also have a high appreciation for Apple’s minimalist design and aesthetics. Macs do look very cool.
Yet I didn’t feel the need or desire for a Mac. PCs run fast. It’s a stable platform with a wide choice of programs. On top of that, there were some things which put me off the Mac. The thing I found most annoying was the fanboyism of the Mac enthusiasts. Any problem you’d encounter on a PC, you’d get a gloating chorus of, ”just use a Mac.” Equally aggravating was the assertion that Macs are sooo intuitive. You know what? If Macs were so intuitive you wouldn’t have to explain their operation to me, would you?
I was a happy PC user, until the middle of last year. Then without prior intention, I decided to get a fully kitted 17″ MacBook Pro Notebook Computer, with 8 Gb RAM.
Initially I was a little under-whelmed with the Mac experience, but then a few things fell into place for me in terms of software and hardware options … and then I switched my main computer that I work on (ie the laptop), over to the MacBook Pro. Suddenly it all made sense!
All of this will be old news to Mac lovers. When I was gushing about my new setup to a friend of mine last week, she just laughed, “Where have you been all this time?”.
The things that fell into place for me had a big impact on my post-production workflow and efficiency, and I’d like to share some of my observations and new experience …
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