Tag: Lighting

Monday Muscle Failure

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Muscles

This was quite the weekend!  Two of three bedrooms have been cleaned up, packaged, and taken to an off-site storage so we can “stage” the house.  Apparently staging a house is very important when selling.  It helps “define the space” for the prospective buyer.  Anyway, as a result of all the lifting, bending, pushing, pulling, hauling, and shoving (oh yeah, we packed some boxes too!), we are very much in a state of “muscle failure”.  For the more athletically inclined, you know what I am talking about.  For the rest, when you push your muscles to the brink of not being able to work, they quiver visibly, and that is called muscle failure.  Suffice to say, our normally light-hearted fare transitioned very quickly to a Whopper with fries and an ice cold beer afterwards.

Anyway, no glory shots from the new 40D to share…sorry.  Although I am stopping by the storage unit later on today, so will likely have the camera with me.  Whilst organizing that, I did notice a few “photo opportunities” (whenever I hear that phrase, I think of Ron White and a  bit he did – see reference link from the 4:30 mark to 6:00 mark) , so may have some better post material tomorrow or later on today.  Tomorrow will be another fun video too…so a little teaser there just to keep you interested.  Until then though, take a moment and stop over at ProPhotoLife.  They put out a great video on how to light tabletop stills wit just one light and mirrors as your other light sources.  Very cool – especially for the DIYer (I am going to go retrieve a mirror I was going to throw out in the move now!)

Happy shooting, watch those apertures, and we’ll see you tomorrow!

What’s This: Week 4

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Now in it’s last installment for the month of June, “What’s This?” has become the most popular subject for the blog. Gary correctly guessed that last week’s What’s This was a shower head, so props, kudos, and congrats to Gary! Let’s see if someone else can mount a challenge this week. Here we go (and no more hints)…this week’s What’s This is:

What's This? - Week 4

Good luck to everyone!  If the fun continues, I may be able to start offering prizes too (depends on whether any vendor would be interested in sponsoring the “What’s This Weekly”…so, Canon, Adobe, USRobotics, Apple, Microsoft, Joe’s Tire Shop…anyone interested? 🙂

Just kidding – this is all just for fun, so there’s not any prizes, just bragging rights, and hopefully a way to provide creative spark and motivation to look at things differently! 🙂

In the web news this week, just a couple things that may be of interest:

  • ProPhotoLife has another video out on studio product lighting – 10 minutes well spent!
  • TWIP does a video podcast on lighting a model in studio – also about 10 minutes…
  • Digital Photography School has a 6-tip session on reducing camera shake – about a 3 minute read if you include the comments
  • Tim’s Digital Darkroom via  a connection over at Hyperphocal has some very cool shots of a light bulb shattering (scroll down)…1-2 minutes depending on what else you may find of interest
  • Naturally, Hyperphocal gets a nod too, not only because of the great articles they have there, but also because I have the “Cleaning your Gear” posted as an article there from yesterday – stop over and read their other articles – the one for today on Inkjets versus Dye Sub printers was very educational for me!

Altogether, about 30 minutes of stuff, so if you have half an hour to spare – take some time and visit these resources as they all have some really good content.  In the meantime, feel free to share other links to resources in the comments (as well as guess at this week’s edition of What’s This”).  Happy shooting, watch those apertures, and we’ll see you back here on Thursday!

Tuesday Tech Talk: Canon ST-E2

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This week, the Tuesday Tip is more of a Tech Talk. I got an email from someone inquiring about the Canon ST-E2 asking about how to use it, and what it is compatible with. Taking a cue from this, I decided to make it a video tip from the MacbookPro,and set things up to give a basic primer on what the ST-E2 looks like, how it mounts to your camera, and how it triggers off-camera flashes electronically. Hopefully this will help demonstrate the purpose of the ST-E2 in a better light (bad pun, sorry)! Because it was recorded from the Mac this go around, there will not be a Flash-based version of the Tip this week.Sorry in advance for any that might prefer the Flash version.

One note on the video content: I said in the video that the ST-E2 supports the entire Speedlight flash family.While that is true, I did get the nomenclature wrong.As it turns out, the 400 series Speedlights are the 420 EX and the 430 EX, with the 500 series ones numbering at 550 EX and 580 EX.The ST-E2 will work with them all, albeit with some limitations on the earlier versions.For detailed specs, there is good information at Canon and the product sheet maintained by BH Photo.Those direct links are provided here for anyone who is interested.

So, that is the tip for this Tuesday: an ST-E2 Tech Talk.If anyone would like to see more gear in action, or has a question about how to use gear, feel free to email me or post in the comments section.Happy shooting, watch those apertures, and we will see you tomorrow!

Canon Product Sheet for the ST-E2

B and H Photo Product Sheet for the ST-E2

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Hot and Cold Lighting

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We all know that tungsten light is a warmer light (think regular light bulbs) and fluorescents and flash produce cooler lighting. While it makes sense, until I read an article by Peter Kolonia in Popular Photography, I have never thought of combining warm and cool light to produce different effects in a photograph. Since I’ve not tried this yet, I don’t have any sample pictures, but they should be viewable over at www.popphoto.com so stop over there to see samples in action.

Basically, the article says that by lighting your subject with one tone and the background with another, you can produce some really interesting results. For simplicity purposes, here’s a chart of what combinations produce what types of results:

Subject Light

Background Light

White Balance

Results

Tungsten lights (like a lamp)

Flash or cool window light

Tungsten

Electric Blue Background

Cool daylight or Flash

Tungsten lights (like a lamp)

Daylight

Orange Glow

Tungsten (like a lamp)

Tungsten (like a lamp)

Auto

White (or grey1)

All light

No light

Auto

Black

1For a high key (all white) effect on the background, throw more light on the background. The more light you direct to the background, the brighter the resulting background will be for your photos. Conversely, as background lights get dimmer, the background itself will be more of a gray.

Just a few reminders Peter gives us:

Use a large space so foreground light won’t spoil the background light

  • Experiment with exposure to get the right glow from the background (typically longer speeds thus necessitating a tripod)
  • Using an old-fashioned fluorescent light can result in the “grunge” look of cross-processed photos

Geographic Composition

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Jason Moore has an ongoing activity where photographers from different parts of the globe capture their perspective on various themes. I was invited to join this group of photographers a short time ago, and this is now my second contribution to the activity. It’s quite a bit of fun as it challenges you to think in new ways, and in participating you get a chance to see other perspectives and ideas. This is probably one of the most useful ways that you can challenge your creativity and to find new sources of inspiration.

Anyway, without further ado, the theme for the week ending Friday, June 13th 2008, was “Passing Down“. My shot is below, and I would encourage you to visit Jason’s blog to see the other visions for this theme. Thanks to Jason for administering this activity, and look for the next one near the end of the month!

Passing Down

Usual becomes unusual

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Lighting Objects

The tutorial for this Tuesday, you may notice is not your typical Photoshop tip, trick, or tutorial. I took things outside of the desktop and into the real world to show you examples of thinking outside the box when it comes to lighting. By now we are all familiar with Strobist, and the methods he uses to encourage people to think about lighting and how to do things in an economically friendly way.

Today, I wanted to take a moment to share with you a few lighting ideas I’ve had and some of the effects they’ve produced. None of these home-made products cost me more than 15 cents! Anyway, I’ll let the tutorial stand alone, but did want to include the show notes:

Tune in to Strobist for anything and everything lighting you ever wanted to read – David Hobby is the lighting guru of the blog world!

David was interviewed recently on Studio Lighting, so now I’ve listened to their podcast, and it’s definitely one to return to. These guys just sound like they’re a lot of fun.

And the shots… you saw the montage up top, but here’s the individual shots from my diffused snoot:

Horizontal View

Vertical View

Angled View

So, there’s just a few examples of how to generate creative lighting by looking at usual objects in unusual ways. Tune in to the podcast to see what other stuff I’ve come up with. Because it was recorded outside of the computer though, I only have the Quicktime version. I am still looking into a decent Flash converter so I can put that together with the “intro” and “out-tro” clips, so if anyone has suggestions for that, I am all ears there too. Anyway, to close out, I’d like to pose another question: What have you come up with in the way of uses? Any everyday objects become part of your photo gear? Share ’em in the comments section!

Noise, Lighting, and Links – Oh My!

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In lieu of a video tutorial today, I’ve recorded an audio podcast. The primary reason for this is because the tip I want to share involves a technique I don’t really have a good sample shot in my library to show you how to apply the technique. So…tune in to this special audio episode for Canon Blogger.

Show notes include information on:

  • I will have a new gallery of photos out on my photography gallery site tomorrow.
  • Selective Noise Reduction
  • A DIY Backlight (how to make your own)
  • Not one, but 2 videos on lighting gear from www.prophotolife.com
  • Jason Moore is off to France, with kudos on his way out from Photoshop User TV
  • Don’t forget to check out Jason’s Geographic Community Composition on Thursday of this week (the 15th)

Happy shooting and we’ll see you back here again tomorrow!

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