Vivian Maier exhibition in New York

One of the most interesting stories unfolding in photography in recent years, was the accidental discovery of an incredible body of work by an unknown photographer, Vivian Maier. Incredible in terms of quality and the sheer volume of photographs. If you’re not familiar with the backstory  -  in 2007, John Maloof, a real estate agent in Chicago, who was working on a project documenting the one neighborhood in Chicago, discovered and bought a vast collection of negatives and prints of a completely unknown photographer, Vivian Maier.

What makes this story so interesting, is that Vivian Maier had an eye for street photography on par with the great names in photography. Then there is the fortunate twist to the story, in that the images and negatives landed up in the hands of someone like John Maloof who realized what a treasure he had stumbled upon and took care of this legacy with the attention it needed.

I don’t want to recount more of this, since the story is well documented on other sites:
Wikipedia  |  Vivian Maier – website  |  Vivian Maier – bio 
(Of course, a Google search will show you even more.)

This past Friday, Dec 15th, the Vivian Maier exhibition opened up in New York, and I was pretty excited that I was able to attend. It’s always a special event to be able to leisurely look at photographs at an exhibition. (Need I even tell this to fellow photography enthusiasts?)

If you live in the New York area, be sure to check it out.
The exhibition will run until January 28th at the Howard Greenberg Gallery.

If you find these articles interesting and of value, then you can help by using
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photo session with the Fuji X100 – camera review

First of all, for those who haven’t heard of the Fuji X100 (B&H) yet, it is a beautiful retro-looking rangefinder-mimicking 12 megapixel digital point & shoot camera (with a fixed 35mm equivalent f2.0 lens), that gives remarkable image quality. That about sums it up.

For all those reasons, quite a buzz developed around this camera. Quite unlike anything since … oh, the Leica X1. Or the Olympus Pen EP-2. Or the Sony NEX-5. There was greater excitement building up around the Fuji X100 though than other cameras, specifically for its looks initially. And then when news hit about the incredible image quality, the excitement and interest became more substantial. It’s a hot item right now, and for good reason. But more about the details and specs of this camera later on.

The reason why I bought this camera – well, the way I justify it to myself even though I have several Nikon D3 bodies and a Canon 5D mk II – is that I wanted a Day Off Camera.

My usual day working as a photographer, is where I’m slinging heavy cameras around and running myself ragged. Or else, a working day is where I slump in front of the computer. Because of all that, I’ve felt this need to take a day off during the week. On this mid-week “weekend” day, I would just like to roam around New York with a camera and take photos, and have lunch and relax. But the camera shouldn’t be a heavy Nikon D3 with a zoom lens. That would just be too much physical effort again. (As it is, I have tendonitis in my right elbow from not carefully handling the big cameras with a 70-200mm f2.8 lens.)

So for a while now, I’ve been looking for a light-weight, top quality camera. My Day Off Camera. With the Fuji X100 (B&H), I finally felt I might have it. A stylish camera that is fun to play with, and gives great images.

Before I even got to photograph a wedding with the Fuji X100, I had a brilliant idea for a review of this camera. I wanted to do a photo shoot with Anelisa. Now the twist here is that I wanted it to be a play on the idea that this camera is ideal for surreptitious street photography.

The styling of the Fuji X100 is like the classic rangefinder cameras which were the tools of the trade of the street photographers. However, I live in New Jersey. This land of suburbia and shopping malls isn’t exactly the kind of place where you can roam around the streets on foot with a camera, snagging images which are wonderful slices of life. Besides, street photography is tough. You have to pound the city pavements for months on end, looking for those interstitial moments where everything in the frame intersects just perfectly. It is long hard work building up a portfolio of street photography that doesn’t just consist of random boring snaps of stuff and people.

The brilliant idea was to test the Fuji X100 out as this inconspicuous and innocent looking, yet very professionally capable camera … by photographing Anelisa in a shopping mall in New Jersey. Doing this photo shoot without being noticed by the security guards and getting kicked out, would need some non-chalant moves by the photographer and model … and a camera that doesn’t draw attention. If you pulled out a big DSLR with a telephoto zoom and started to direct the model, it will surely be only a minute before security guards accost you and ask you for your permit and proof of insurance. Life in America.

Anyway, as I said, the idea behind the shoot was a tongue-in-cheek reference to this camera being this surreptitious street photographer’s camera. But in a New Jersey shopping mall. I know, I know, it’s not the same. But, just go along with the idea …

[update: on June 26, 2011, Fuji announced a major firmware update for the Fuji X100.
Some of the changes in ver 1.10 will affect some of my initial observations in this review, especially my criticism of how the X100 (under firmware 1.0) would retain the ISO setting per mode, instead of retaining an overall ISO setting. This has now been fixed! So please take note that some of the comments about the camera's menu and behavior might have been affected since the time of the original review's posting. Instead of continually updating the review with every firmware update in the future, I'm going to let this review stand as it originally appeared.]

With this review of the Fuji X100, I again wanted compare the straight out of the camera (sooc) images with JPGs generated from an edited RAW file.  In Bridge / ACR, I created a default for the Fuji X100 RAW files which bumps up the saturation and contrast more than the zeroed defaults of ACR / Bridge. With this review, I will note with each image whether it is the sooc JPG, or is a JPG generated from the RAW file which I had adjusted.

Walking in from the parking lot, I noticed this interesting pattern against the exterior wall, and posed Anelisa there.

Now, the Fuji X100 has a fixed focal length lens which is the equivalent of a 35mm f2 lens. This wide focal length needs some consideration when composing a photograph. You can’t control your background by compressing it like  you can with a telephoto zoom. You have a specific angle of view, and you need to frame your subject with a certain economy of composition still in mind. You don’t want to include any extraneous distractions within the frame. This is harder work with a wide-angle lens than it is with a telephoto lens.

1/750 @ f2 @ 800 ISO; Auto WB
Aperture Priority, with +0.33 exposure compensation
image – sooc JPG

1/450 @ f2 @ 1600 ISO; Auto WB
image – RAW file, where I evened the image a bit more.
I somehow found it more difficult keeping this camera level than I do my larger Nikon D3 cameras. There is an Electronic Level / Virtual Horizon display in the Fuji X100, but I find it a distracting element in the viewfinder since there is a lag with the Virtual Horizon line.  (More about the EVF and OVF later on in this review.)

The pull-back shot to show the location:

Shooting inside the shopping mall, I was on the lookout for simple backgrounds. The light also had to be even, and there had to be enough light to give me a hand-holdable image at not much more than 800 ISO.

1/320 @ f2 @ 800 ISO; Auto WB
Aperture Priority, with +0.33 exposure compensation
image – RAW file processed in Bridge / ACR; with the image cropped a little.

Here is the sooc image, to show how I had missed the exact framing I was after. This was something I learned subsequently – that I need to look at the Electronic Viewfinder (EVF) display if I wanted exact framing. While the Optical Viewfinder (OVF) does show framing guidelines, but it isn’t as exact as the EVF.

The pull-back shot to show the location:

This large green expanse of a wall outside the Anthropologie store looked like it had potential. We had to work with, or work around the spotlights in the ceiling there, to make sure we don’t get uneven light on our model.

1/100 @ f4 @ 1600 ISO; Auto WB
Aperture Priority, with +0.33 exposure compensation
image – sooc JPG

For the sequence of images here, I kept my camera settings to the same, but I prefer the image generated from the RAW file, where I bump up the contrast and saturation, (as well as bring up the exposure a touch). I also changed the WB to bring in a warmer skin tone.

With this last image, I cropped the photograph from the original framing, to exclude some visual clutter.

Lunch at Johnny Rockets …

1/140 @ f2 @ 800 ISO; Incandescent WB
Aperture Priority, with +0.66 exposure compensation
image – slight retouching of the RAW image to add a touch more contrast.

What impressed me here was the gentle bokeh of the Fuji X100′s lens. Wide-angle lenses tend to have a harder bokeh .. but the background looks soft. The out of focus areas in the front exhibits some of that harshness. (But that’s how it works … if the bokeh of the background is soft, the foreground will be harsh. And vice versa.) Clicking on the photograph will bring up a larger image.

So the little lens is sharp, and has pleasant bokeh. Nice!

As a side-note here: I directed and posed Anelisa here so that the light fell evenly on her face, and didn’t leave darker shadows under her eyes.

Goofball!

1/110 @ f2 @ 800 ISO; Auto WB
Aperture Priority, with -0.33 exposure compensation (because of the darker tones)
image at the top – sooc JPG;
image below – slight crop, and finessing of the WB via the RAW file.

Outside the Abercrombie & Fitch store, with their customary black blinds.  The strong leading lines here drew me because it would make for such a strong compositional element.

1/150 @ f2 @ 800 ISO; Auto WB
Aperture Priority, with -0.33 exposure compensation (because of the darker tones)
image at the top – sooc JPG;
image below – slight crop, and finessing of the WB and exposure via the RAW file.

This photograph has appeared here before, with the discussion on exposure metering.

1/125 @ f2 @ 800 ISO; Auto WB
Manual exposure mode. (The only way to deal with that strong back-lighting, in-camera.)
image – JPG converted from the RAW file, which was edited for WB; vertical corrected.

The wider shot showing the area where we were shooting. For more details about this specific photograph, follow the link about exposure metering techniques.

The lens flares more easily than I am used to with my Nikon lenses. However, flare like this is easily corrected in post-processing.

1/125 @ f5.6 @ 800 ISO; Auto WB
Manual exposure mode, to overcome the strong back-lighting.
image at the top – sooc JPG;
image below – slight crop; and finessing of the WB and exposure of the RAW file.

1/125 @ f2.8 @ 1250 ISO; Auto WB
Manual Exposure mode
image at the top – sooc JPG;
image below – finessing of the WB and exposure via the RAW file.

Working in this niche at the one elevator, I was able to get two images that worked:

1/60 @ f2.8 @ 1250 ISO; Auto WB
Manual Exposure mode
image  - finessing of the WB and exposure and contrast via the RAW file.

1/60 @ f2.8 @ 1250 ISO; Auto WB
Manual Exposure mode
image  - finessing of the WB and exposure and contrast via the RAW file.
I also cloned out two push-button panels that I found distracting.

This last image is softer than I would’ve liked. You won’t be able to discern it from the web-size (and sharpened) image, but the full-rez file is softer than I’d like. The reason – my shutter speed was too slow for how I was working.

Overall assessment of the Fuji X100 during this photo session:

This is a fun little camera!

I do feel I have to adapt much of my way of seeing because of being limited to just the one focal length. So while I miss certain opportunities, it has made me re-learn a few things about visualizing what my angle of view is, and how close I need to be to my subject for a certain framing. In that respect, working with this camera was a trip back to the basics of photography.

I’m very happy with the images I got during this shoot, of which these dozen or so images are a selection.

Obviously, we couldn’t have Anelisa jumping and dancing – the slow shutter speeds (due to the low light, and lack of flash) worked against us. This would also have run counter against the very idea of this being a quiet nearly-unobserved photo shoot.

The camera is very light. I barely feel it on my shoulder, and it certainly doesn’t strain the wrists and hands.

While the Fuji cameras are legendary for great skin tones, I turned to the RAW file most of the times here. The mixed lighting in the shopping mall wasn’t the easiest challenge. The SOOC images look fine, but I do feel I did better in slightly touching up the RAW files in post.

As shown with examples in the two related articles:
- initial impression: Fuji X100
- review: Fuji X100 – photographing a wedding
the high-ISO noise is superbly handled. It wasn’t an issue at all to push up the ISO rating. I don’t have any 100% views of the noise as they appear, but the two linked articles do.

Specification and technical description of the Fuji X100:

More about the Fuji X100:
I don’t want to run through the full specification sheet. This is already available elsewhere, such as Fuji’s X100 site, and DP Review. So if details about the EXR Processor interests you, head on over there.

The things that I would need to know, are:
- the camera is capable of producing remarkably sharp and detailed images,
- build quality is solid and inspires confidence (and more than a touch of pride in this gem of a camera)
- it really isn’t heavy,
- the controls glide effortlessly and speaks of quality.

And you know what? I like my cameras and equipment to look stylish. I know that many photographers will trot out that worn-out cliche that they don’t care what the camera looks like, and that it is just a tool, and so on. Sure. But can’t we also indulge in cameras that look stylish and sexy? I’ll take it.

The one thing that is mentioned all the time with regards to the Fuji X100, is its hybrid viewfinder. The description doesn’t necessarily sound all that exciting, but what it does, is allow you to either look at your scene via the Electronic Viewfinder (EVF), or the Optical Viewfinder (OVF).

The Optical Viewfinder is sheer genius. Everyone I’ve shown the camera to, and have held it up to their eye, have responded with surprise. The optical viewfinder with the information overlay, just looks stunning. Crisp and clear. And all the info is there. Even the focused distance with the appropriate depth-of-field scale for your chosen aperture. Just beautiful.

This image from the Fuji X100 website, will give you an idea:

Shutter speed, aperture, ISO and exposure mode. Exposure metering and the histogram (which doesn’t work in Manual exposure mode unfortunately). A whole bunch of information laid over .. and yet not looking cluttered.

Now, in bright sunlight, you may not be able to distinguish this. What I’ve found though, is if I cover the eyepiece with my finger, I can see all the necessary info … even if I momentarily can’t see the scene. A quick-fix bit of help while shooting.

The Optical Viewfinder also shows the parallax correction as you focus closer. It really looks remarkable.

With a press of the button on the back of the camera, the display will either appear permanently on the back LCD, or permanently in the viewfinder … or best of all, flip between the outside LCD and the in-camera display – depending on whether you have your eye to the camera or not.

Then, in addition to the optical viewfinder (OVF), there is also the Electronic Viewfinder (EVF). As mentioned earlier, this will give you the exact framing. However, since it is an electronic display, there is some lag between what you see and your subject’s actual movements. The switch on the front of the camera is simple enough to use to engage either the OVF or the EVF.

As mentioned earlier, there is a potentially useful Electronic Level / Virtual Horizon display in both the EVF and OVF modes.

For bright light, the camera has a built-in Neutral Density filter to help in getting to wider apertures in bright light.

As mentioned in the review: photographing a wedding with the Fuji X100, the auto-focus performance of the Fuji X100 is okay. Fairly fast, but not impressive. And doesn’t quite match DSLR speed with auto-focusing. What I also found, is that the camera tended to grab the background if the background was brighter than my subject. Working close to my subject especially, the camera was prone to mis-focusing and grabbing some element of the background or some other part of my subject. The Fuji X100 does need a more careful approach with focusing than I am used to with the Nikon D3. (This shouldn’t be a surprise though. They are entirely different beasts.)

There are a number of features I didn’t check out, such as the Motion Panorama Mode, as well as the 720p Video Mode (24 frames/second). For me, the Fuji X100 is primarily for stills, but it’s nice to know there are further interesting options.

What does all add up to? A camera that is fun to use.

But there are a few quirks.

[update: on June 26, 2011, Fuji announced a major firmware update for the Fuji X100.
Some of the changes in ver 1.10 will affect some of my initial observations in this review, especially my criticism of how the X100 (under firmware 1.0) would retain the ISO setting per mode, instead of retaining an overall ISO setting. This has now been fixed! So please take note that some of the comments about the camera's menu and behavior might have been affected since the time of the original review's posting. Instead of continually updating the review with every firmware update in the future, I'm going to let this review stand as it originally appeared.]

Quirks of the Fuji X100:

There are a few quirks that the Fuji X100 has, that can be frustrating. Or just confusing. There are firmware updates which are rumored to fix a few of these, so we’ll have to keep an eye out.

- the one thing that drove me nuts during the wedding I photographed with the Fuji X100, was that it reverted to previously held ISO settings when changing exposure modes. (This is one of the things which will apparently be fixed with an upcoming firmware update. That it would be so easy to change between Exposure Modes, but then have to have to use several button pushes to get to your desired ISO again, makes no sense.

- the battery can be inserted the wrong way around! Even though there is a rounded corner on the battery, the battery chamber is square, so you can quite easily drop the battery in the wrong way. Then you have a dead camera, leaving you to think you have a faulty battery. (Yes, I did go through this embarrassing event.)

- the live histogram in the viewfinder is genius too. Except it is static during Manual Exposure mode. It would have been even more helpful in Manual exposure mode so that you could use the histogram to determine and fix your exposure.

- the Fn button can be programmed to do a number of things, but in the end it makes most sense to use it as the dedicated ISO button. Which means you have to delve into the menu to access the Neutral Density filter.

- to enable the ND filter, you have to dig into the menu. I feel this is one of those features which should be a push of a button away.

- because of the design of the X100′s shutter & lens, you can’t access certain shutter speed and aperture combinations. For example, you can’t use a wide aperture at a high shutter speed. The shutter speed is displayed in red in the viewfinder should you go outside the range that the camera’s shutter & lens design is capable of.

Final overview:

The camera is a delight in terms of its build and physical look and design.

The lens is superb as well, despite a tendency to flare easily with back-lighting.

Image quality is surprisingly good. I would say unexpectedly good. Check the review: Fuji X100 at a wedding where there is a full-res file shot at 6400 ISO.

The only downside is the menu system and some firmware / software quirks which affects its behaviour.

My final summary: Fuji really created a camera here capable of professional quality images, in a compact body. It’s a camera that is (mostly) a delight to use, and I can see how this specific camera will get a huge and loyal fanbase.

related articles:
- initial impression: Fuji X100
- review: Fuji X100 – photographing a wedding

The Fuji X100 and accessories can be ordered from B&H through this affiliate link.

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.

how to carry your camera over your shoulder

An interesting comment came up in the article on choice of lenses for wedding photography. The observation was that the photographer, Lou, felt like he was the proverbial bull in a china shop when he carried two cameras over his shoulder. With the lenses protruding on either side, it was tough going through doorways without knocking something.

There are numerous camera strap solutions available on the market – rapid straps and holster systems. Most of them work well. I still like the old-fashioned camera strap on the camera. One thing I should mention here is that I really got to like the way the Canon bodies work. Attaching the strap to the bottom of the camera makes absolute sense. Then the camera dangles vertically, and it is easy to swipe the camera to the side under your elbow when it hangs from your shoulder.

I liked this so much that I got the Camadapter place to attach to the bottom of my Nikon bodies. This allows my Nikon cameras also to dangle vertically from my shoulder. Perfect. If I had to choose from scratch again, I’d probably settle for the Kirk plate (B&H). This too has a place for the camera strap to loop around, at the bottom of the camera. Perfect.

Now, it might not be immediately obvious when you pick the camera up and hoist it over your shoulder, but there are two ways to sling the camera …

You can have the lens dangling outwards, catching on everything, and knocking stuff over, and smacking little kids that run around … or you can turn the camera around, and tuck it behind your body under your elbow. Out of the way. Simple, and less of a hazard to people around you … and less of a danger to your own equipment.

If you find these articles interesting and of value, then you can help by using
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Last year this time, Stephanie Zettl, a more-than-occasional guest on Tangents, wrote an article with instructions on how to turn your D-SLR into a digital pinhole camera. The article was quite successful in that Gizmodo USA, Japan and Australia referenced the article! Well, Stephane is back with a follow-up article.

Stephanie is one of the top wedding photographers in St Louis, MO

digital pinhole photography day

by Stephanie Zettl

I know what you were thinking. You were worried that we would forget World Pinhole Photography Day. But fear not!

For those of you that want to put it on your calendar, World Pinhole Photography Day is the last Sunday of April. It will take place on April 29th in 2012.

I converted my expensive state-of-the-art Nikon D700 into a primitive pinhole camera last year by putting a hole in a camera body cap. I wrote about the process here. It’s a relatively easy and fun process that gives you a chance to create something out of the ordinary.

When I shared the photo of the pear on Facebook, I received quite a few comments about how sharp the image appeared. Most pinhole camera photos are not sharp. Part of the reason I think this looks so sharp is the contrast between the dark background and the pear. But it does have that characteristically “fuzzy” pinhole look.

It should be noted that the smaller the pinhole the greater the sharpness. The more perfectly round the pinhole – the less diffraction there is. (Diffraction causes a less sharp image.)

It is interesting to note that with a pinhole camera you’re basically shooting at f200 (yes, I mean f200. Most of our lenses don’t go above f22.)

This means that the depth of field is basically infinite. But it does not mean that there is no optical blurring. The image blurring that you see is caused by irregularities in the aperture (pinhole), the aperture (pinhole) size, the distance from the aperture to the image plane, and the wavelength(s) of the light source.

Originally I made several holes and chose the one that I thought looked the most perfectly round. Though I might try to make another one some day, part of the charm of a pinhole camera is the fuzziness. While I love my really sharp professional lenses, the fact that I did this without a lens at all makes up for the lack of sharpness.

by Stephanie Zettl

If you find these articles interesting and of value, then you can help by using
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New to flash photography?  Where to even start …

In preparing the material for the just-completed webinar, Don’t Fear Your Flash, I had given some thought to where I should start with the material. Flash photography on one level is so simple once you “get it” … but from the outside, it can look intimidating and complex. I feel that flash photography is one of those subjects which start to make sense once you grasp a bunch-of-things simultaneously. But how to explain it all at once so that it makes sense?

So I wondered about where exactly I should start the material for the webinar. What should I start a seminar with when I have a 90 minute time limit? Camera settings? Aperture, ISO and shutter speed settings? Manual flash vs TTL flash? Metering for flash and ambient light?

During a test run with the Clickin Moms team who had arranged and hosted the webinar, I had to check voice levels, and was told to say something. I just started riffing on the idea of starting the webinar … and as I said, “where do we even start?” to the imagined audience, it hit me .. that’s exactly what we need to do. We just have to start. We just have to take those first photos!

We can spend too much time caught up in first trying to understand all the technical aspects and all the nuances of lighting. We can be too intimidated by all that to actually use a flash … when all we need to do as a start, is to actually start using the flash!

Take a photo.
Adjust to taste.
Take the photo again and check.

It’s that simple.

Learning the rest will come with time. But we can’t wait for complete understanding before venturing out. It will only hinder us from growing as photographers if we don’t get out there and shoot. Avoiding something because it is perceived as being difficult, will just hold us back.

There will be time still to get to grips with all the aspects of flash photography and lighting. But we have to start somewhere, and we have to start now! Right here.

And it is from this position that I kicked off the webinar, in the hope that this simple instruction – just start taking photographs! – will empower anyone who has just started to use a flash, or may have been too intimidated to actually use a flash.

The two images above were shot during the practical demonstration. They’re not art, nor artistic. In a sense the image on the right which has the better, cleaner light, is just a snapshot. But the light looks just great! And that is the entire point here.

The flash photography method here was very simple:

1. We under-exposed the available light to a certain extent.

My settings weren’t specific. I just needed the ambient exposure on her to be under. My settings were 1/250 @ f4.5 @ 500 ISO. Middle of the road settings. I did this on purpose, because I wanted to show everyone that the settings here were attainable by everyone with a camera and a speedlight. We don’t need those f1.4 optics or fast zooms yet. But we do need a speedlight which allows us to bounce the flash off the wall and ceiling behind us.

So the settings didn’t matter all that much. We just needed to under-expose our subject to an extent. Someone standing next to me would’ve chosen different settings, and it would’ve worked too. But we have to be realistic … we’re not going to be able to bounce flash at f11 or such small apertures.

2. We need correct exposure from our flash.

The simplest for now, is to rely on TTL flash. Allow the technology to help you get correct flash exposure. And if the camera under- or over-exposes, then nudge it in the right direction with the flash exposure button. Make the decision and take a little bit of control. It’s still not scary.

3. We need soft, flattering light from our flash.

Direct on-camera flash will give us harsh shadows and unflattering results. We need soft, flattering light. By turning the flash’s head around and bouncing the flash off the wall and ceiling behind you, you just created a much larger light source. This will give you softer, more diffuse light that looks so much better.

Here is the comparison between hard direct on-camera flash, and the bounce flash with softer light:

don’t fear your flash

The idea that I wanted to push through here is that it is very simple – and very accessible – to get such quality of light with your on-camera flash.

From this point on, we can continue to learn more about flash photography and lighting over time. But we can at the very least, take cool photos right now with great light from our flash. Then it is up to us to find those essential moments, and finesse our composition. But the flash part is an easy start. We can have fun with our photography now, and not let our flash stress us out.

It’s an easy place to start from, and it’s a great start.

further articles:

- how to bounce your flash
- which flashgun should I get?
- balancing flash and ambient exposure
- flash photography essentials
- video clip – using the black foamie thing

and of course, there is the index to all the articles on flash photography.

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.

on-location headshots that work (w/ Meagan Lee)

This image is from the recent photo session with Meagan Lee, getting headshots for her portfolio. While this specific photograph is perhaps not useable as a headshot, I loved the way the wind whipped her hair around.

An uncomplicated portrait made stronger with a few things working in its favor:
- effective off-camera lighting via a softbox,
- a complimentary but non-intrusive background,
- strong diagonal lines created by Meagan’s pose.

With that, this photograph again shows a simple and effective method for great portraits on-location:

Look for an interesting or neutral background, and then separate your subject from the background.

I used a 70-200mm f2.8 zoom lens here, set to f3.2  This wide aperture will help blur the background. More than that, the 70-200mm lens was zoomed to 200mm. With this, I purposely zoom to the maximum focal length, and then step back (or forward) until the shot is framed like I want it. If I had simply zoomed to frame the shot, then a shorter focal length would’ve had the background appear more distinct. So the method here relies on zooming to the max focal length, and then moving yourself until the shot is framed the way you need it to be.

It is imperative to look at the edges of the frame inside your camera. It may sound superfluous stating this, but I’ve met newer photographers that had difficulty looking at the entire frame inside the viewfinder, and then composing the shot. Perhaps it is something that really needs practice?  But you really have to look at what you are including in the frame, as much as what you’re excluding from the frame.

My camera settings here were: 1/200 @ f3.2 @ 400 ISO … TTL flash, at -1.3 FEC

Lighting was via an off-camera speedlight in a softbox, held up with a monopod.

Instead of an entirely neutral / bland background such as one of the buildings in this spot in Manhattan, I wanted something with a hint of color. Actually, I wanted a more dramatic shot of Meagan Lee against the steps of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, but we were told to move along. So we looked around for something else … and this street vendor’s cart worked well, adding that splash of color. Here is the pull-back shot of the entire scene.

Without flash, and at the same camera settings:

The flash in a softbox really made the portrait pop, giving directional light that is soft.

related articles:
- flash photography essentials
- effective on-location portraits (model: Anelisa)
- review: Lastolite Ezybox (model: Jess B)

equipment used:
Nikon D3;   Nikon 70-200mm f2.8 AF-S II (B&H)
Nikon SB-900 (B&H); Nikon SD-9 battery pack (B&H)
Lastolite Hot Shoe EZYBOX Softbox Kit (24″x24″) (B&H)
PocketWizard FlexTT5 transceiver (B&H)

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!

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Also join us on the Tangents forum for further discussions.

The previous post about metering modes was all set to be part of the on-going theme where I look at search engine queries, answering a selection of 10 questions more specifically. But then it expanded into something longer than just a quick reply. Same with today’s post. It was going to be a short explanation, but then expanded into something which is probably better as a stand-alone post. The question was stated in an interesting way:

do natural light photographers always use fill flash?

The question curiously implies that you might not find natural light which is perfect. However, as photographers, that is something we’re constantly searching for: perfect light. It is out there, somewhere. So, resisting the temptation to just answer with a cheeky “no”, let’s consider an example of when you would not want or need fill-flash.

The thing with natural light, is that you have to look at it. You have to look at the direction of light. And see whether it gives you the quality of light that you need …

‘Quality’ here could mean a number of things, depending on what we need. Quality could mean how even the light is. As opposed to splotchy dappled light. Quality could mean the color balance. It really comes down to whether the natural light / ambient light is exactly what would make the photograph work.

With this photograph above, I was working with this couple under a high awning outside a train station. No light from directly above. Just light coming in from an angle to the side. Great. I then purposely posed Jessica so that the light comes in over her shoulder and lights up her face. Clean open light on her.

The approach here is a technique which can consistently be used. It is very much the same idea as described in the post on direction of light and choice of background.

I want to emphasize here that I didn’t just have the couple stand in a random spot. If they were half turned away from the light coming in from the side, then the light on her face might have been uneven, and her eyes might’ve been too shaded. The pose here is quite specific in regards to the direction of the available light. With that, we just didn’t need to augment the available light with flash. The light was perfect. But we had to control it.

Controlling the light here was much more easily done by directing how the couple was angled towards the light. Simpler than adding reflectors and softboxes and such.  Or alternately, moving the sun and clouds around. You have to work within your capabilities. ; )

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which metering mode to use -
Matrix / Evaluative, or Center-weighted, or Spot-metering?

I noticed that search engine query come up in my web-stats – ‘which metering mode for outdoor photos’. So it might be a good idea to answer it specifically. Which metering mode should you use for outdoor photography?  Or for that matter any kind of photography?

My approach is quite simple: Since I’m using manual exposure mode nearly exclusively, no matter which route I take to get to a specific shutter speed / aperture / ISO combination … I would be getting the exact same exposure regardless of which metering mode was used.

In this way, the metering technique is the essential factor, not the metering mode …

As mentioned on the page on metering techniques ..

For me, exposure metering has become an iterative process of:
- checking my camera’s meter,
- checking the histogram
- and blinking highlights display,
- checking the image on the LCD, (although this isn’t an accurate assessment of exposure),
- experience.

There is no fixed recipe in approaching metering in all kinds of situations. It’s a mix-n-match of different techniques – all used to make sure I get optimum exposure for my images.

With that iterative method, it doesn’t really matter which metering mode was used – I end up at the same place – the same aperture / shutter speed / ISO combination.

So which metering mode do I actually use ? I mostly keep the camera set to matrix /evaluative metering, but I occasionally switch to spot metering. When I do use spot metering, I am specific about the tonality of the area which I am metering off. That is a very important consideration when you use spot-metering.

That’s the process in a nutshell, but let’s consider this in terms of an actual photograph:

With this image, shot at 1/125 @ f8 @ 800 ISO, I metered off the large area in front of me. I held my camera horizontally, and zero’d my meter. I did make sure that I had more or less equal amounts of darker and brighter areas. I then zero’d my needle. Quite simple. Metering like this, is in effect the same as metering off an equivalent neutral tone, as described on this linked page.

I deliberately didn’t include the brighter areas as the top. Let’s compare this photo with another that has a slightly different composition:

While it is useful to break a scene up into various zones when we analyze exposure, such as this …

… I feel it is essential to also see that we have two broad areas of lighting here. The shadowed areas to the front of the image, and the sunlit area in the back. With the traditional approach to the Zone System and Black & White printing, we’d try to get everything to register in the final print. We’d want detail in the shadow areas, and still retain detail in the sunlit areas. Carefully working with the Zone System’s entire process, we’d be able to do that.

However, with a single digital exposure (and not going to HDR technique), we have to make our minds up here which region we want to expose correctly for. With a single in-camera exposure, we can’t expose correctly for both the shadow areas AND the sunlit areas. Even then, within those two differently lit areas, we will have brighter tones and darker tones. So it really becomes easier for us to get to correct exposure if we decide which of those areas is the most important, and expose for that.

And that is what I did here – expose correctly for the areas in shade.

I could have spot-metered off darker tones and brighter tones and averaged them out. But I chose a simpler method – find a neutral tone, or point my camera at an area which contains equal amounts of the various tonal values, and zero my camera’s meter. Dark and medium and lighter tones. By pointing my camera at those, I get an average. It worked.

I could’ve used Center-Weighted metering, or just Matrix / Evaluative. Or I could’ve spot-metered off a neutral tone. It doesn’t really matter in the end. As long as I got to 1/125 @ f8 @ 800 ISO.

I want to highlight this important point again – you can’t simply point your camera at a scene and zero your needle. You first need to decide what you want to expose correctly for, even if it is just a general area. In the example of the photo of this taxi, the general area was the shaded area. I had to exclude the sunlit areas from my exposure metering … and my final composition.

All of which is the long way of saying – the metering technique is more important than the specific metering mode.

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!

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aperture and depth of field

A question that came up in the forum recently was whether an 70-200mm f4 zoom would give you the same kind of look that an f2.8 zoom would.

For me, the f2.8 aperture is essential, especially with a telephoto zoom. For the same scenario, it gives me a higher shutter speed than the f4 zoom. Or I can use a lower ISO. More importantly, since I often bounce flash in large areas, the f2.8 aperture gives me more chance of successfully bouncing my flash than an f4 aperture would.

But what does the change in depth-of-field look like?

Keeping in mind that the how much the background appears to be blurred, depends on a few things:
– the chosen aperture. The wider the aperture, the shallower the depth-of-field will be, giving a more blurry the background. (This is the main factor that affects how much the background will be blurred.)
– how far your subject is from the background,
– your chosen focal length.
– The bokeh of the lens will also affect whether the background appears more blurred, or less. (Note that bokeh and shallow depth-of-field are not the same thing.)

The change in depth-of-field is incremental. If you had to look at a photograph showing amazingly thin depth-of-field, you wouldn’t be able to tell just from the photograph alone, whether f2 was used or f2.8 … but a side-by-side comparison will reveal the answer. An individual image won’t. However, it will be obvious when an image was shot at f 8 or f11 (on a 200mm lens for example), compared to either f2 or f2.8 … we should be able to recognize that a shallow depth-of-field was not used on the f8 or f11 image.

There are hordes of examples of how depth-of-field changes with aperture. But I thought it might be interesting to see with an overlay of images, just how much the depth-of-field appears to change …

Jessica and I braved the cold today to do a simple sequence of images with the zoom set to 200mm, and used at a variety of apertures. I used a tripod to keep the framing exact, and Jessica tried to keep as still as possible. The background is a clump of trees about 20 meters behind us. The lens used in this example is the Nikon 70-200mm f2.8 VR II (B&H).

Ideally, there should be a bunch of these comparative sequences done at different focal lengths and different distances between subject and background.

But just this one example should clearly show how the depth-of-field changes … and that while the change between (for example), f2.8 and f4 is distinct, it might not be enough reason to warrant the purchase of a more expensive lens. But that is up to personal choice and budget.

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Kate – a photo shoot in New York

Kate is from Ukraine and has a deep fascination for New York. As a present, Kate’s sister flew both of them out for a vacation here … and had me photograph Kate around New York yesterday. The idea was to get a mixture of portraits of Kate and some photos of Kate in obvious New York locales.

We started off in the Meat-Packing district because I wanted a photogenic spot that wasn’t too crowded during a weekday (in winter), so we could have an easy start to the photo session. Since Kate might not have been experienced with photo shoots, I thought this would be the gentlest start. From there we wandered around a few other chosen spots.

Shooting on my own, I brought along a 70-200mm f2.8 and a 24-70mm f2.8 and two speedlights. Even though this winter’s day was slightly overcast, giving us soft light, I still didn’t want to rely entirely on just the available light …

I brought along my latest purchase: the Lastolite Ezybox speed-lite 8.6″ (B&H) which is a compact softbox. Just 8.6″ square, it folds up small enough to fit inside my Crumpler shoulder bag, along with the 2nd lens and speedlight. At times I held this aloft in my left-hand, and sometimes I had Kate’s sister hold the softbox up high. Having the off-camera flash helped immensely a few times. And having it diffused, even in such a small softbox, created a more pleasing light than hard direct flash. So with this softbox in my bag, I felt ready for the shoot.

Here is one of the photographs where Kate’s sister held the speedlight and small softbox up for me.

It looks pretty good I think for such a small softbox. The starting image here was this one, where I forgot to set my on-camera flash to Master (to control the Slaved speedlite), and it gave direct flash. Since I had the flash pointed forward and towards the Slave speedlite, the spread of light is uneven.

You can see the area to the left is overlit by direct flash. There is also the very noticable side-ways shadow behind Kate. A slight oversight giving amateurish results. A quick check of my preview and I realized my mistake, and switched my on-camera flash to Master. (I have its output disabled, so only the Slave flash adds light to the scene.)

With these shoots, I obviously want to get new images and not just re-tread the same shots. I need to balance this though with the desire for a consistent style, which is why clients hire me – they like what they see on my websites and galleries and blogs. But it still needs to be fresh and original images .. within that style.

There will be those photographs which appear familiar, but then I am also constantly on the look-out for new spots and interesting ways the light may have changed in familiar places. Having shot in the Meat-Packing District often, I know where to start off to kick-start a photo session. Instead of scrabbling around looking for something entirely new, we start in a familiar place to get the rhythm of the shoot going.

This image was in the same place where I photographed Catherine, a workshop model, before. I knew the light would work there. So this was a ‘safe’ shot for me at the start of the photo session. Similarly with the next photo of Kate, we were close to a spot where I have photographed another workshop model, Anelisa, before. I knew the direction of light would work in my favor.

These two images, as well as the image right at the top, was shot with available light only. Not even on-camera fill-flash. But the choice isn’t random … as described in that first linked article, direction and quality of light is an important consideration.

Another few image with only available light being used.

A few photos around well-known New York City landmarks:

Here I handheld the Lastolite 8.6″ Ezybox (B&H) in my left hand.
Slightly clumsy, especially if you’re used to the zoom, but the light looks good.

For the next two images, Kate’s sister held the softbox up for me. But instead of wirelessly triggering the speedlight, I used the a TTL cord. (In this case the Nikon SC-29 TTL off-camera shoe cord.)

Here I noticed a patch of light, as sunlight reflected off a building. It gave a warm-colored hot spot … perfect to highlight Kate against the out-of-focus background.

And finally, the distinctive stairway in Times Square. (Available light only.)

Two days later I met up with Kate and her sister again. We had run out of time on the Thursday shoot, and I felt we had missed out on giving Kate a photo of herself against the Manhattan skyline – a quintessential photo. So we went to Brooklyn for a quick follow-up session. I used an off-camera speedlight in the Lastolite 24×24 Ezybox softbox to get great lighting on Kate and have her pop in the image. With the grey weather and stark skyline, she stood out anyway. But the lighting helped.

That beaming smile says everything.

With this overview of this photo session, I wanted to show that even though there is a distinctive style, it helps to mix things up a bit in terms of the lighting. And then look for new and interesting places and light. Different techniques and ideas to all help a photo session flow.

Related links:
– tips on posing people
– direction of light and choice of background
– effective on-location portraits

Equipment used during this photo session:
Nikon D3;   Nikon 24-70mm f2.8 AF-S (B&H);  
Nikon 70-200mm f2.8 AF-S II (B&H);  
Nikon SB-900 (B&H); Nikon SD-9 battery pack (B&H)
Lastolite Ezybox speed-lite 8.6″ (B&H)

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.