Experimentation in the Studio

When I have some free time, and there is local model available, it’s great to spend a few hours in the Studio, just messing about with different lighting affects, brollies, soft boxes, snoots, barn-doors, naked bulbs and even coloured gels.

The other weekend I had some free time so it was off to a local studio to play.

I tried to replicated different lighting effects, from simple portrait setups, the famous page 3 setup (boring) to more adventurous techniques.

The one we had the most fun with, was trying to replicate the iTunes advert.

A white background heavily lit, but no lighting on the model. She then repeatedly jumped in the air, and I tripped the shutter. We got a number of great poses, and the background being a nice clean white, was then easy to photoshop a more colourful iTunes inspired background onto.

Swimming

With everything that’s been going on over the last month, the Gym and our fitness in general had taken a back seat.

Well after an exhausting days Christmas shopping at the weekend we visited our local Gym. Instead of hitting the weight machines, for a change we spent an hour leisurely swimming, and we both really enjoyed it.

We really must do it more often.

The cold sets in

Generally the weather has been fairly mild but finally the thermal underwear came out today for the ride to work.

The deciding factor was the ride home on Friday night. The temperature gauge on the bike never climbed above 0’C.

I encountered one icy corner on that trip but nothing to bad, but the cold now is definitely starting to bite.

I am still wearing summer gloves but with silk liners. I hope to make it to January before the winter gloves and winter necker come out.

Snapseed – iPad App of the Year

One of my faviorate iPad Apps has won Apple’s iPad App of the Year.

Its a tremendously useful photo editing application, but one of the key reasons I purchased it was that it can deal with RAW files.

On all the photographic trips I have undertaken this year, I have left the laptop at home and just taken the iPad.  I can backup my photos to it, and using Snapseed tryout some editing ideas.

A great app and well worth it, if your a digital camera shooter and have an iPad.

See Scott Kelby’s website for more details.

Heres a few Photographs I edited with Snapseed on the iPad.

 

Metering for Landscapes Part II

When shooting Landscapes on Small Format, I expect my technique is similar to most SLR users.

Modern Digital SLR’s have great dynamic range and we snap away generally trusting in our modern matrix metering.

A quick glance at my histogram is usually enough to see if my exposure is in the ball park. I tend to follow the digital mantra ‘Expose to the Right’, but I try not to over expose or clip.

Unlike film, digital at the extremes of the black and white points is a cliff face. There is nothing below 0 and nothing after 255 in our binary capture world.

I know the recovery slider in Adobe camera RAW and Lightroom can bring back a surprising amount of detail, but this is detail held in your capture, your not really recovering anything.

When my exposure looks bad it’s here I either reach for the Exposure Compensation Button (I usually shoot in Aperture Priority). In really tricky situations I use my camera’s spot meter.

If the dynamic range of the subject exceeds my camera’s dynamic range, then I generally bracket my exposures. Once back home I then resort to HDR or digital blending, sometimes both. Products like Photomatix Pro and of course Photoshop make HDR very easy now.

Getting it right in Camera is always the holy grail, to this you have to resort to careful metering.

Sekonic L 758 Light Meter

If using my medium format camera, then this would be with my handheld spot meter. I actually start with an incident meter reading first, this usually puts me in the ball park. With the meter in its incident mode, you place it in the same light as the subject you want to photography, and point the metering dome at your camera and take your reading.

I usually have my meter set to EV readings. My Hasselblad has markings for EV and an EV lock, so I can set the exposure then adjust my aperture and the shutter speed will automatically change to maintain my set EV reading.

This incident reading is my starting point. I then try to determine the dynamic range of the scene. First of all I try to find the brightest part in the scene, once found I set this in the memory of my meter. I then try to find the darkest part of the scene. Once again this gets set in the memory of my meter. I then hit the averaging button and note the average. This is usually close to the incident reading if the dynamic range is now too high.

With the meter in averaging mode, you can then meter around the scene with the spot meter, and it will display the how many EV’s above or below the average that part of the scene is. You can then ensure the important parts of the scene is exposed correctly and will maintain detail in your photograph.

With my meter, it has a clever trick in averaging mode. It displays a graph at the bottom showing your lowest and highest reading, together with the average. Now that is not the clever part, the clever part is that I can upload from my computer custom Dynamic profiles for different cameras, films, and for each iso. So on the meter you can select your camera or film and the meter will show if your exceeding the dynamic range available, and you can then adjust your exposure as needed.

If you are exceeding the dynamic range then the choice is to allow what you want to go back/white. With your meter you can easily determine what that will be and make an informed choice.

Often at this point I will often bring out the filters. A one to two stop gray graduated filter usually drops the dynamic range by enough to resolve your issues.

Metering for Landscapes Part I

In many respects I am quite old fashioned in my photography. I believe in using the right tool for the job.

Though I also believe any camera you have with you can produce a master piece.

When it comes to Landscapes the bigger your film or digital sensor the better, though one should also remember that depth of field reduces as sensor/film size increases.

So while I have taken great Landscape images with my iPhone, I feel my best work has been done with Medium Format or Large Format.

Surprisingly I feel this has less to do with image quality and more to do with thinking more about the shot.

Having to set up my tripod, camera, choose the right back, lens, filters, and then spend time time metering the scene to work out the dynamic range and exposure really focuses the mind and makes one concentrate on a great composition.

I’ll talk about the basics of metering in my next post.

Fine Food – Veg, Meat and Do it Yourself

The Brown Family is a very food centric bunch.  Its the one area where taste and ethics leads over price.

We love our food, but our meals were a little too meat centric.  While we grow our own herbs, and would like to grow our own veg, its something we have not got round to yet.

Good quality vegetables are not expensive, and in order to make us eat more, we have recently started to get a veg box from a local farmer.  A good selection of organic vegetables including some strange ones that we had never heard of, now has us reaching for the cook books to find new exciting ways to prepare them.

This now means at least once a week we have a meat free day, and we really look forward to it.

We try to buy ethically raised meat and eggs, and while it costs more, it can mean you eat fine meat less often but appreciate it more.

People today are very disconnected from there food.  People don’t want to know that chicken or steak there tucking into was once a real living animal.  All they want is food that is quick and cheap.  If people want to eat meat they should realise what is involved.

Preparing you own, meat or fish is one way of connecting with your food more.  How many people are willing to prepare and gut a fish, or bird?

Well with this being game season, there were lots of Pheasants going free, so this last week we have had a brace of Pheasants hanging in the garage.  Preparing and gutting a fish is pretty easy and something I have no problem with, but this would be the first time I had prepared a Pheasant.

Caroline was on plucking duties, which was harder then you might think.  Only once she had finished did mum Brown suggest we should have briefly soaked the bird to make the plucking easier and less messy.

Gutting was my job.  First job was to remove the feet, wing tips and head.  Then removing the neck.  Here you discover how greedy your bird has been, in this case the crop was stuffed full with corn, which all had to be cleaned out.  Then the hard part which is the bit people have trouble with.  Cutting out and clearing the body cavity. This just takes care and a willingness to get your hands in there to separate the guts from the main part of the carcass.

Once the body cavity is clear, your Pheasant now looks like it could have come from a Supermarket.

Then it was a knob of butter, fresh carrots, turnips, in the pot on the hob, then after a few minutes in with the pair of Pheasants, and a glass of water, or wine if you have it.  Then own with the lid and in the oven.  Cook for about 40 minutes, then remove the lid for another 20 minutes, and you have a lovely tasty pot roast.

Sony A55 Firmware Update V2

This week I finally got round to updating the software in the Sony A55 (Don’t worry I am still a Nikon User).

Sony EVIL Hybrid SLR

Its a simple executable you run while your computer is connected to the camera via USB. There is a Windows version and a OS X version for Apple Macintosh’s.

There was one slight hiccup. The Mac version is 32 bit only and will not work if you have the 64 bit kernel. I run OS X Lion on my MacBook Pro and the software would not run.

This was easily fixed via a quick reboot while holding down the 3 & 2 keys on the keyboard. This forces the computer to restart with a 32 bit kernel, and then the software would run.

Sony A55 Panoramic

The update went smoothly but once it had finished the Camera would not operate. Removing the battery and then putting it back fixed this and we were operational again.

For more details check out the Photography Blog.

November’s Photo of the Month – Film

Last month’s Photo of the Month, is unusual in one respect, it was taken with film.

It was not the shot I was after, the conditions were not right, but I still thought it was worth a record shot.

This is a low quality scan of the original slide, but it gives you a basic idea of what the real image is like.

There are lots of arguments over what is better, film or digital, and many get caught up in the technology race and the race for more megapixels.

What people seem to forget is that for the majority of people, who have no intention of producing prints larger then A4, then 6mb is all you need.

The other point is that film and digital are not the same and are difficult to compare, they act differently at the extremes of light and dark. To a lesser degree it’s like arguing between Oil Paintings and Watercolour Paintings.

If your producing an image for a job then you tend to use the quickest, easiest and most cost affective method.

An Estate Agent wanting a picture of a house to help sell it, is not going to use Paint or Pencil, but may have 100 years ago, technology moves forward. Today it’s likely to be a digital compact.

If the image is personal or ‘art’, then use what you most enjoy or is most suitable for the effect you want to achieve. Pencil, watercolour, oil, chalk, charcoal; film in all its different sizes, colour, black & white, negative or slide; Digital, whether a cheap camera phone or a hundred thousand pound digital scanning back on large format.

Digital is not better, it’s different.

Shoot/Draw/Paint More, Enjoy and lets not argue over what is ‘best.

Now where is my iPhone, that sunset is stunning.