Shot with natural light coming in the window.

This was also the first actual shoot I’ve done with the Nikon D3x. As compared with the D3 (a fine camera in its own right), the images I’m getting from this camera are simply stunning; the detail is amazing (24.5MP), and the contrast and color qualities, while hard to describe, are by far the best of any Nikon camera I’ve used. The files (at base ISO) are amazingly noise-free - you really have to see them to believe it. And all that combined with the handling characteristics of the D3, makes for an excellent combination for fashion shooting either in studio or on location…much more convenient, IMHO, than medium format rigs, if the 75MB (8 bit) or 150MB (16 bit) files are sufficient.

Model Melissa, makeup by Heathyrre.

Right now I’m using the following:

• Elinchrom RX600’s (amazon link)
• Elinchrom Ranger RX Speed AS (battery systems) (link)
• Elinchrom BX400’s (link)

These address all of the shortcomings I complained about in my previous post; the accessory mount is solid, they have a switchable ready-beep and won’t fire when partially charged, they have digital controls, and I’ve found the shot-to-shot consistency to be rock-solid.

At first, I hated the accessory mount…but then I realized it was the speedrings I was using that I hated. I have some Photoflex speedrings, and they don’t have a rotation-locking mechanism (short of getting out a screwdriver and tightening them up); so in some cases it’s hard to tell if the speedring is completely locked onto the strobe mount. I’ve had softboxes fall right off the strobe because of this. 

Then I discovered other rings; for example, the ones that come with Elinchrom’s own softboxes. These have a much more secure (and easy to adjust) anti-rotation mechanisms, so it’s quite clear when the mount is locked in. Seriously - it’s like night and day.

I thought it might be fun to show some shots of how the plate-breaking part of all this actually went. :-)

I shot the plates in a studio; the setup looked something like this:

The plate was suspended from two A-clamps, which were hanging from a overhead bar, going diagonally across the set. There’s a black v-flat behind the plate, and also one to the left (in the direction of impact); the former to provide a near-black background, and the latter to stop the pieces of the plate from flying too far around the studio.

For lighting, I used two Nikon SB-800s; one on a stand you can see on the left, peeking over the black flat, and then another over to camera right. Both were positioned to mimic the direction and ratio of the lighting used for the model, already shot in a kitchen. I used pocket wizards for triggering them. I shot a single frame per plate, using a Nikon D3.

This shot shows the detail of how the plate was hit:

My assistant used the flat head of a hammer to strike the plate, and had his arm covered with a black towel.

There were laser and sound triggers available, but I started out clicking the shutter manually. The whole process turned out to be highly addictive (can’t tell you how much fun it is to break plates like this!), so I never ended up stopping to set up an automatic trigger. In retrospect, I probably should have, but in the end I ended up with a shot I could use. Out of the 14 plates, I missed one completely, and the rest you can see below (click for larger):

I had a total of 14 plates; 10 fairly heavy dinner plates from a restaurant supply house (top 3 rows in pic below), and 4 cheap Correlle plates from Walmart (bottom rows). As you can see, they broke in very different ways.

The Correlle plates took me off guard - both because I happened to catch two shots where the plate has just shattered but still in the shape of a plate, and also because of how violently they shatter. The mess in the studio was pretty well contained at first, but once we got to these last 4 plates, we had little shards of plate everywhere!

All the shots were at 70mm (to match perspective with the shot of the model), at f/11. It was even one of those rare moments when I used a protective filter on my lens, hoping to protect it from flying pieces of plate. :-)

Anyway, hope this is interesting for some folks!

(note - some of you reading this via RSS may have seen this post before the referenced photo was posted…sorry about that, Wordpress user error. :-)

I’m planning on a follow-up post in the next few days with a behind the scenes look at the making of this shot.

Model Andrea, styling by Anita.

Reuters: Pictures of the year 2008

David Griffin: Photography connects us with the world

This is totally cool…photographs actually “printed” on grass. Story at Creative Review.

[via Boing Boing]

For those who were not aware…older versions of Lightroom on the Mac had a nasty trait of waiting for the entire auto-import folder to be unchanged for 3-5 seconds before it would actually import anything new. If you tend to shoot quickly (say, one shot every 2 seconds), this effectively made it not start importing until you stop shooting - which needless to say, made things just a little bit north of useless. Lightroom for Windows did not have the same problem.

In the example I have in mind, this was a shoot for a model’s portfolio. In these cases, I usually make final selections myself, rather than showing the client hundreds of images to choose from.

First, get some sleep. Really! If I just did a shoot today, if at all possible I try to wait until tomorrow to start the selection process. What I’ve found is if I start culling photos immediately, I’ll eliminate some of them based on things I remember from the shoot (oh, I discovered that hair light was a third of a stop too hot, better delete these), rather than evaluating them based on their merits. Be rested and fresh.

Next, I’ll go through all of the photos from the shoot (I currently use Adobe Photoshop Lightroom for this, and I used to do the same thing with Bridge), and assign one star to any photo that has any aesthetic value whatsoever. This eliminates shots where eyes are closed, they’re unintentionally out of focus, strobes didn’t fire, etc. Also exclude any photos that are technically ok, but you just don’t see yourself using for whatever reason. On the example shoot I’m looking at as I write this, I had 315 total photos, and 195 of them get one star.

One key point - don’t delete all of the 0-star photos at this point! If they’re black frames or something, sure, delete them…but don’t delete anything just because you didn’t intend it or don’t like it. You never know what you might think about it tomorrow. Or 3 months from now. Or a year from now.

So now we’re looking at the 195 photos that got one star. I now go through these, and either leave them alone, or upgrade them to 2 stars. A photo gets 2 stars if it’s really a potential candidate for the client. Be hard on yourself here; you’ve got 195 photos that could work - but which ones really deliver?

Now I’m down to 80 photos with 2 stars. Now I go through them again, upgrading some of them to 3 stars. The criteria I use here is “is there any chance I’d consider this for my (or someone else’s) portfolio?” In this example, 40 got 3 stars.

One more time - I go through and upgrade some to 4 stars. By now I know the photos pretty well - and I’m choosing the final photos I’m going to retouch and deliver. I’ve got maybe 5 or so per look to choose from, and I’m narrowing each down to the one hero shot…in this case, we’re down to the 6 shots I’m going to use.

What about 5 stars? I rarely use the full 5-star rating; when I do, it’s a shot that I know for sure I’m going to put into my own portfolio.

There are a lot of caveats to this process; for example, if I need a sequence of photos that form a story, I’ll keep that in mind as I’m choosing photos, to make sure I’m selecting not only the best stand-alone photos but the best photos that will work together. This adds another layer of complexity, as you’re thinking not only about your photos, but page layouts and such as well.

One more example - for this shoot, there were:

922 total photos
340 1-star selects
159 2-star selects
34 3-star selects
9 4-star selects, used in the final sequence

So what about colors, and other flags? I use colors along the way to mark shots for something out-of-band; for example, if I want to mark some shots to send to the hair stylist (because perhaps they focus on the hair, useful for her but perhaps not part of the final set of images), I might mark those with a specific color as I go.

So anyway, there’s one example of a process for selecting images. I don’t do it this way every time; sometimes I send out the 1+ star images for client selection, for example on a recent commercial shoot with tons of variations of group shots with some different moods and emphasis…and if I were doing (say) a catalog shoot, I’d do things pretty differently. But at least this gives you a rough idea of a place to start!