Two posts back, I mentioned Eye-Fi as a possible solution for digital photographers who have a “wait problem.”

It is inevitable, we get so used to the immediate nature of digital photography.

I’m sure I’m not alone.

As soon as we are done taking pictures, we’d like for those images to get to our computers ready to edit by the time we sit down.

Not everyone using a digital camera wants to edit their pictures.

Some may just want to shoot, upload to an online sharing website.

And there is absolutely nothing wrong with that.

So the needs of  casual hobbyist and professionals are very different. Depending on which animal you are, here’s how I think the Eye-Fi card might work for you.

The social butterfly who just wants to share

Buy any of the Eye-Fi cards if you are in no particular hurry and can wait till you get home to get your pictures online.

Since you won’t be able to set up or configure the Eye-Fi card without a computer, just count on getting your images uploaded when you get home.

If you’re a Mac user with a MobileMe account, you can configure the card to automatically upload to your account and or upload to your computer as well. The default location that Eye-Fi Center sends your images is UsersHome>Pictures>Eye-Fi>folder by month(it creates the last 2 folders automatically).

If you shoot short video clips, the path is similar. Your clips are saved at Users Home>Movies>Eye-Fi (folder by month>

The Advanced Hobbyist or Pro

If you can afford it,  I recommend the high end card which allows you to connect via “Ad hoc”.

That just means you must plan to  have your computer with you.

You will set up an Ad hoc network ( temporary) so your Eye-Fi card can transfer files to your hard drive even when you can’t access the internet.

Once on your computer, you can upload when you have internet access at your leisure.

At this point, the company only makes Secure Digital cards with this capability.

I would love to see a Compact Flash card version since my “work” cameras don’t use SD cards.

I say this because you can’t make the card work without first setting up the name of the Hot-spot, the username and password.

In practical terms during travels, we don’t always know these things before hand.

Furthermore, Eye-Fi Center requires you to physically be in the vicinity of the network you want to connect.

DO NOT LOSE the card reader (shown in the picture above) and keep that with your computer/laptop.

You need this special card reader whenever you want to change any settings for the card whether it is to enable access to another Wi-Fi hotspot, add or remove uploading to an online sharing website like Flickr or just changing where the images are going to be stored on your hard drive.

And one other very important thing, the Eye-Fi SD card does not mount in “regular” card readers.

Once you’ve committed your images to the Eye-Fi SD card, the only way to transfer your images is wirelessly i.e. through either your “ad hoc” network, your home network or that special USB reader.

So the sure-fire-no-frills solution then is to buy the more expensive cards which allow Ad-hoc connection and HAVE your computer with you all the time.

When the company finally makes available a Compact Flash card version, it will definitely give professionals a cheaper alternative to those OEM wireless transmitters by Canon or Nikon (Canon WFT-E4A $900 for 5DMark2)

For now, there may be workarounds as suggested by Jim Legins Jr, a frequent visitor to this blog. Jim has reported success using a generic Secure Digital to Compact Flash card adapter.

Eye-Fi folks were kind enough to comment that there is a possibility of data corruption if adapters are used. All I can say is test and re-test?

A Final note

A plentiful supply of batteries for image transfer is very important.  (Camera must be on to throughout the process, expect a drain of battery power if your card is big)

According to their website certain models of cameras can be enabled to stay powered on till data transfer is complete.

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Dino in HDR—While inside San Diego Natural History Museum,  I bracketed as I captured about 7 images to create this totally unrealistic image using Photomatix Pro. See the scene captured normally by my Canon 40D with 17-35 f2.8 L lens. ISO 400 f6.3 shutter speed between 1/10 sec and 0.3 seconds.

It’s nice to get away for a few days especially when it’s an easy 2 hour drive to San Diego.

You can always count on the numerous museums at Balboa Park to have exhibits that provide hours of amusement.

Actually, with so many other museums to choose from, it’s actually tough to decide.

We opted for the San Diego Natural History Museum.

“Dinosaurs” and “All That Glitters” are currently on exhibit.

Low noise at ISO 400–The image on the right shows the reverse angle of the HDR image. Taken with  the Canon Powershot G11, the lack of noise is quite impressive if you consider it was taken at ISO 400 with a Point-and-Shoot camera. Hand held at 1/6 sec @f5.

Included with the price of admission is the movie “Dinosaurs Alive! 3D.”

The 20-minute long 3D film was educational but I wasn’t blown away.

A compelling storyline is what draws me in, not the special effects. It’s probably the reason I didn’t go see “Avatar”.

Eyeing the bric-a-brac “Balboa Park Carousel Egg”—-This is as close as my wife will come to owning this, but we won’t tell her, okay?  It was too bad the value of the items on exhibit were not disclosed. ISO 100 1/13 sec @ f2.8  hand held braced against the glass enclosure. See this music box from a different angle.

“All That Glitters” is probably a hit with the ladies especially those who go gaga over glittering rocks or expensive bric-a-brac. Here’s the description of the item:

This bejewelled, enamel egg holds a miniature replica of the beloved  carousel in Balboa Park. Each hand-carved animal depicts one of the actual 56 that revolve on the real carousel. The egg took 10 years to create–and yes, it plays music. By J Grahl Designs, circa 2007. Diamond, ruby, gold, platinum, silver, mother-of-pearl, glass, stainless steel, wood. Courtesy of Jim Grahl and Dr. Barry Marfleet.

Photo Gear

I tried to keep things simple this trip. I had the Canon G11, a little table top tripod, Canon 40D with my 17-35 f2.8L lens, my 430EX Speedlight and my Cybersync radio slave.

Since I didn’t want to draw too much attention to my presence with a camera, I made sure I shot with available light.

Because the items were behind glass, reflections were everywhere. I waited for folks with darker clothing to come by to help shield those reflections from view whenever possible.

Though I didn’t see signs that prohibited photography, I was certain that tripods were not going to be welcome. It’s sometimes best to be “low-key” and not draw attention to yourself and save yourself the hassles.

Try HDR

For those of you unfamiliar with HDR, High Dynamic Range–it’s all the rage in digital photography.

I’m making available in low resolution the images I started out with to create the picture titled “Dino in HDR”.

For the sake of expediency, I’ve down sampled (fancy way of saying they’ve been scaled down) them and put them in a zipped folder. Get them here.

I am also including a link to the software PhotoMatix Pro which I used. It’s a free trial, so why not mess around with it?

You might be intimidated by all those dialog boxes. Just mess with the sliders till you have an image you like.

The best part of this exercise is: you don’t even have to leave the comfort of your home to try this since I’m providing the starting images.

The procedure is quite simple.

• Take a series of pictures of preferably an inanimate object using a tripod
• Without moving your camera or changing your composition, bracket your exposures
• Set your aperture to something small so you have good depth-of-field
• Underexpose by 3 or 4 stops to what the meter recommends
• Overexpose by 3 or 4 stops
• You’ll end up with 7 exposures depending on whether you chose 3 or 4 stops of over and under exposure
• Download and install the trial version of Photomatix Pro.
• Launch it, then choose Open and navigate to those 7 images. Choose generate HDR.
• Keeping things simple, choose Tone Mapping then look at the very bottom of that long dialog box under Presets, choose “Grunge”

I don’t use it much in my work but I’m sure if a client requests it, I can fake it.

The “All that Glitters” exhibit was impressive. Too bad, they didn’t list the value of their exhibits.

Would have been nice to know what an appraiser’s idea of an expensive jewel is.

For the quintessential narcissist– The articulating LCD on my Powershot G11 was turned around to face me while I snapped this self-portrait of my students Hank and Jacqui on a recent field trip. Shutter speed was kind of low, that’s why the image isn’t exactly very sharp.

This isn’t a prediction.

Eventually everyone will be able to take a decent picture and no, their lives won’t have to depend on it either.

I say this with utmost sincerity and with as straight-a-face as I can muster.

We’re almost there, you know.

Had too much to drink? No problem, image stabilization to the rescue.

Too dark? The flash automatically kicks in.

Red-eye from the flash? Enable red eye reduction.

Red eye from too many drinks? Sorry, there is no on-camera solution for your character flaws but your friends can document your drunken stupor and do an online intervention on Facebook. Pay someone who knows Photoshop.

Can’t decide what to focus on? If you’re standing in a meadow in Yosemite, you can choose the icon with the hills on your camera.

If there are people, face detection is built into lots of Point-and-Shoot cameras.

Standing at the Grand Canyon but don’t have a wide angle lens? Photo stitch to the rescue.

Can’t remember where you took a picture? Hooray for geotagging. Sorry the G11 doesn’t have this yet.

Of the features I mentioned, the one which caught my attention the first time I heard it was face detection.

I should be embarrassed to admit this here. But what the heck.  For some reason I kept thinking it was face recognition.

You know for photographers who took such bad pictures of people they needed help so their subjects could be recognizable?

Well, what can I say? English is not my first language. I was thinking of a whole different animal, wasn’t I?

So it turns out my Canon G11 has this handy-dandy face detection feature as well.

Face Detection, by the way, is not 100% foolproof.

If your subject is extremely vain, insists on being photographed only in profile for their “best side” to hide a facial feature, this feature will drive you nuts.

When you press the shutter button, nothing happens.

The shutter will not fire if the sensor doesn’t see both eyes.

You can tell yours truly has been spending quality time in front of a mirror, camera on a tripod and whispering to himself, “Yeah.. work the camera,” “Who loves you?” can’t you?

What I’d like to see is a feature which you can activate on demand when you simply don’t want to take a picture of someone but they are persistent to the point of being pest.

Wouldn’t it be great if you could customize your LCD monitor to display any  message?

Error: Subject too homely
Step back or use a wide angle setting.

Error: Insufficient bioluminescence (substitute with big fancy big word of your choice)
Tell subject to come back tomorrow at noon.

Now it’s your turn. Go ahead, suggest some possible messages you’d like your camera’s LCD to display.

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36 exposures only–You’ve got to make them all count, right? It’s been at least 12 years maybe more since I loaded my Nikon F3.

I can’t picture myself loading film into a camera, finding inspiration and going out to capture images worthy of printing in a traditional darkroom these days.

The convenience and immediacy of digital photography has a way of doing that.

I’m actually getting worse. Now, not only am I lazy, I’m also impatient.

Finding my card reader, taking the memory card out of my camera is even too taking too long.

Previously, if seeing my pictures almost instantly after I take them was sufficient, now I want them to appear on my computer as well.

I dare say I’m not alone. Well, am I?

So someone saw my need and they came up a solution.

Well, I won’t quite say it’s a solution yet, but it’s close.

I don’t recall exactly when I first came across Eye-Fi–a special Secure Digital memory card which can be set up to wirelessly transfer your images to your computer via your home network.

Until recently when I bought othe Powershot G11, all my cameras used Compact Flash cards, so I wasn’t able to try this product.

Endless number of exposures?–The Eye-Fi folks claim you may never need another card ever again. Well, I wouldn’t say that exactly. I’ll explain more in my next post. What the manufacturers mean is if you’re the average user who shoots and goes home in between shoots to connect to your home WiFi network, then your images will download to your computer assuming you force your camera to stay on until all the files are transfered.

Some companies are very good at telling you exactly what you’re buying on their website while others can use some help. Eye-Fi‘s website is an example of this.

But how hard is it to put up a chart for comparison of their various products?

In a chart form, they could list the models, specs and capabilities so that you can see at a glance what you’re getting.

Instead you have to pore through lots of copy with lots of technical data to further confuse you. Stay tuned and I’ll tell you if this product is worthy of your hard-earned money.

As with most tech products, a certain degree of sophistication or technical knowhow on the part of the consumer is needed. So if you are considering splurging on this Eye-Fi card, expect some degree of tweaking.

For now just read through a review of Eye-Fi written by my friend Daniel Luck, from our Mugsie, our local Mac users group.

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Before you can get predictable results from your camera, you have to figure out its limitations.

So I brought my new Canon Powershot G11 to an indoor gym where I play badminton on Sunday mornings.

The exposure meter in most cameras today are extremely reliable.

Besides, with the instant LCD monitor feedback and number of exposures limited only by the number of memory cards you have, how can you not get a good picture?

In this indoor situation, my hunch was the camera would be severely tested under the sodium vapor lighting. I was correct.

Does that mean I should return the G11 for a refund?

It only proves that a camera is only as good as the programming if you shoot on a program or automatic mode.

It is up to the user to figure out how and when to over-ride and work around its programming limitations.

Automatic White Balance is a setting that many folks don’t ever change. It is reliable the majority of the time but every so often, like in the examples below, it is totally worthless.

Auto White Balance fails!–Sodium vapor lighting inside the gym is so flattering, isn’t it? My buddy Anil shot this at ISO 800 1/30 sec @ f2.8. Photo by Anil Punjabi

Flash to the rescue?–Even with flash, the G11 failed miserably to correct for the strong color cast of the sodium vapor lighting inside the gym when left at the default Auto White Balance. Photo by Anil Punjabi. See now the picture he took using my

Custom White Balance setting.

I passed the camera to a friend who owned the same line of camera previously without giving him any directions other than “Knock yourself out.”

I was glad my buddy Anil felt comfortable enough to over-ride my settings and use the camera his way.

Using the default Auto White Balance setting, notice how jaundiced my friend Lesly and Armstrong who also goes by “Raya” look.

In the 2nd picture, according to the metadata, the flash kicked in on Auto. I can only assume Anil didn’t like the color and forced the flash to fire. A slight improvement by the camera to be sure, but you can tell the tiny built-in flash isn’t going to make our subjects look healthier.

In any situation, no matter what kind of camera you use, you should try to match the color temperatures of light sources especially if you are changing the White Balance to the presets like Incandescent, Florescent, Cloudy, Daylight or Shadow side of a building. That makes color adjustment easier in post production.

When you’re shopping for a Point-and-Shoot camera, look for a camera that lets you do a Custom White Balance if possible. That option will at least give you a fighting chance to get a good skin tone right out of the camera.

When shooting indoors under fluorescent lighting, if you set the White Balance on your camera to Florescent and you want to use some flash to fill, you need to use a green florescent filter over your flash as well.

So my G11 performed poorly in this situation, but that doesn’t mean I’m disappointed.

What is important is the camera has an option where I perform a Custom White Balance to work around this.

Like its big brother counterparts, the digital SLRs, the G11 lets you shoot something white in the same lighting condition then allows you tell the camera to use that particular frame to set White so that all the other colors will fall into place.

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Think back to your 1st film camera.

You had to figure out how to load the camera, take a light reading, change the ISO to match your film speed, set it on one of the automatic modes,  then click the shutter.

Then when you ran out of film, you had to reload.

With a digital camera, it’s not that different.

So you need to know how to:

Power on

If the LCD monitor has no readout, then it means either there is no battery or there is no more power in the battery.

Look around the camera body for a battery compartment.

They tend to be accessible via some groove which you will open with the help of your fingernail.

With digital cameras, you can’t ever have too many spare batteries because without power, you’re up the proverbial creek. Proprietary batteries cost more, but tend to hold a longer charge.

Next press the Playback button (the icon is usually a triangle pointing to the right). If there is a memory card, you should see a preview of the last image recorded. No image preview can mean there is no memory card or there was no image on the memory card.

Load the memory card

Currently the most common types are memory cards are Secure Digital and Compact Flash. These cards are designed to go in the slot only one way. If you’re forcing the card, you’re doing something wrong and will surely damage the tiny pins inside the camera body.

I’ve actually known people who don’t know that they are supposed to reuse these memory cards. They just keep buying more when their camera says there is no more room. Those folks are also the ones who are afraid of the computer.

Change the exposure settings

These three settings, ISO, aperture and shutter speed, I group together because they are all relate to Exposure. Changing the ISO always affects the other 2. Knowing why and when to change the ISO, the sensitivity of the light gathering sensor in the camera body, is very important.

Over-riding the camera’s automatic mode

Knowing how to over-ride the camera’s automatic modes is important. Depending on the complexity of your camera, there are 3:

White Balance–deals with the color temperature that is dominant in a scene you are trying to photograph. Often confused with exposure especially when extreme under-exposure results in color shifts in a scene.

Autofocus–there are times when insufficient contrast or low light levels won’t let the lens focus. yes, even auto-focus has a threshold of light it needs to work. But most people don’t realize that they can manually focus the lens by turning off auto-focus, a switch on the lens.

Auto exposure–camera meters try to render every scene you point your lens for an average 18% percent grey. If you’ve ever wondered why your pictures of a full moon’s surface is devoid of details, this is why. The dominant black of the sky tells the camera there is insufficient light, so it opens up the aperture or lowers the shutter speed to let in more light to make the black sky 18% grey. As a result the moon is over-exposed and there is no highlight detail.

At its most basic, most cameras perform this when you half-depress the shutter button. When set to Program mode , or the so-called “idiot-proof” mode,  most cameras perform 3 functions.

1. Take a meter reading and sets the aperture and shutter speed
2. Acquire focus
3. Determine and set the White Balance for the scene.

So the half-depressing the shutter button and pausing step is extremely important. If you don’t do that, or if you don’t pause long enough, you’re not giving your camera a chance to compute all those 3 settings.

Format the card or erase the images

Before you do this step, make sure you have downloaded those images on to a computer for longer term storage. I also recommend using a card reader instead of connecting your camera directly to your computer.

Data transfer when interrupted by a drained camera battery can cause you to lose or get a corrupted file.

Formatting the memory card deletes the images more permanently than just erasing. I do that every 5 or 10 times after erasing the card. Some downloading software offers to erase the card after it’s done. I always choose “no” and I always format with the camera.

This step is hidden away in the menu for good reason. Most people keep their compact cameras in their pockets. Camera manufacturers don’t want an unlucky combinations of buttons being pushed to trigger an accidental erasure of formatting of your memory card.

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It’s back—The articulating LCD monitor is back on the Powershot G series cameras. This time it’s twice the size of what it was on the G3.

As you read the title of this post, you must be thinking. Gee…this camera has been out a while and I’m only now writing about it?

I tend to buy equipment as the need arises.

It’s really a shame to blow $500 on a Point-and-Shoot camera when I have multiple bodies of digital SLR.

But there are times when a dSLR is overkill or not welcome.

My new Powershot G11 is complicated.

And it’s  not because of its price tag.

It’s complicated because there is very little real estate on its body.

Whenever a camera is this small, there just isn’t enough room for a lot of dials, buttons and knobs.

Sure, they can cram all those on the body, but what ends up happening is this: the user will accidentally push a button when they don’t mean to.

So instead of instant access to say changing the shutter speed, ISO or White Balance, you now have to dig through the layers of Menus.

The bad—With limited real estate on such a compact body, something has to give. In this case, if you have your camera on a tripod as I have in the picture, you can’t access the battery and the memory card compartment without first taking the camera off. It’s a minor inconvenience but not a deal breaker.

If that’s not complicated enough, the manufacturer is assuming the user knows the names or understands what each term like “Compression,” “White Balance,”  ”Color Space” means. If you don’t know what those mean, how can you know what to change?

So whenever a feature that is often used or changed gets buried away under multiple layers, it’s a bad design.

I still don’t  understand why there is a “print” button on the camera body.

How many people do you know print directly from their digital camera?

As experienced as I am, I would never assume a picture is going to be ready to be printed based on what I see on that tiny 3″ LCD monitor on the back of my camera.

Ink is too expensive for one thing. And even if I had the capability to check on the focus by the zooming in to maximum magnification, I can’t be sure of the color.

Only sure way is to open the image in Photoshop, view it at 100% magnification or some other color managed editing software on a calibrated monitor I’m familiar with.

Looks like my trusty Canon Powershot G3 has died. I’m quite bummed naturally.

It was a very handy camera and very capable once I figured out its limitations.

Sure it wasn’t as fast to focus and shoot, but once I understood how it acquired focus, I knew how to get the best results from this camera under most circumstances.

It can be the difference between getting a picture or not getting one .

Since cameras don’t last forever and you can always count on the newer models to be faster, with less digital noise and bigger file sizes, I’m not devastated. My Powershot G3 has served me well.

Too bad I can’t hand it down to my kids.

Its replacement will probably be the Canon Powershot G11 for about the same price around US $500. (no memory cards)

Pros and Cons

I loved the Powershot G3 because it used compact flash cards.

Need I say why? My digital SLR bodies use compact flash cards.

Looks like I now have to buy Secure Digital cards if I move up to the G11.

Even before the Powershot G3 died, I was tempted to get the same line of Canon Powershot camera but I held out.

I loved the articulating LCD screen you can turn to face forward. This feature allows users to easily do self-portraits.

But for reasons unknown Canon removed that articulating LCD screen in G5, G7, G9 and G10 models.

That articulating LCD screen is back on the latest G11 and just in time.

The other reason I loved the G3 was, it used the same batteries as my digital SLR bodies.

Upgrading does has its downsides.

It’s useful to weigh the pros and cons and research carefully so you are not surprised.

The Powershot G11 uses a Secure Digital card and a different proprietary battery.

Yes, that means yet a different charger.

My closet which is already chock full of all kinds of chargers is crying “uncle.”

Everything I’ve read tells me the 10 Megapixel G11 will be a great improvement.

Robbery or 211–One strange robbery attempt. The exact circumstances of this robbery that was in progress eludes me now. But in getting to breaking news like this, it’s a lot of luck naturally. On something like this picture shot on film, you have 36 exposures unlike hundreds on a digital camera today. Necessary even today is the presence of mind to check how many exposures you have left when you know something important is about to unfold before you.

Professional ambulance chaser and breaking news junkie are the 2 phrases that come to mind as I look back at my career at the newspaper.

And to my fewer  and fewer buddies  and classmates who also majored in Photojournalism still in the business, I salute you all for your “staying power” and your “longevity” in the field.

This post is not meant to be derogatory in any way.

I say it with ambivalence:

It was a blessing as well as a curse.

A Blessing

With the exception of portraits, newspaper photography allows for very little manipulation, so most things had to be shot in camera.

With  digital photography and the super-charged competitive nature of the business, more than one news photographer has gotten into deep doo-doo for lapses in judgement.

Be sure to read to the end of this post for two examples: one before and after the arrival of digital photography.

Here are 2 few lessons I am thankful  to have learned:

Camera handling

I can thank news photography for making me adept at camera handling and working quickly under almost any situation to get pictures.

There is no better way of knowing your gear than to use it day-in and day-out.

With that familiarity, most photojournalist can guess the exposure for most situations within one f-stop. No, I’m not bragging.

That comes from years of exposing miles and miles of film before digital cameras.

Remaining calm under pressure

And when it comes to handling pressure, there is no better training ground.

Many events captured by news photographers are breaking news situations which are spontaneous. Some of these events, brush fires and law enforcement-related activities like robberies will happen daily.

You don’t get to say “Can you stop a second? Can you do that over? I wasn’t ready.”

Even when the event is “staged” and the media is invited to cover them like in Sports, there is no do-over.

Pick the wrong moment to change lenses or re-load your camera and all you have is a war story of a great shot which got away.

Speaking of pressure. I recall being drafted to photograph the visiting board of directors for the newspaper towards the end of my days there.

My supervisor at the time was so worried that he came out to watch me work. And he actually moved my lights without telling or asking me. He felt he had to do something even if it was just messing with my lights.

A Curse

Standards for pictures in newspapers are often unrealistically high especially when you consider how brief a duration the public sees these pictures.

Work with  no shelf-life

It may be a fantastic picture to grace the cover of A-1 but in a week or even just a few days later, how many people remember it?

In the immediacy of the internet age, what’s new and fresh is now reduced to hours.

As soon as an image is off the homepage, it is hopefully archived somewhere easy to find. If it isn’t, good luck locating it.

It’s no surprise the burnout rate of journalist is so high. If it wasn’t high before, it surely is today.

When you read of Pulitzer Prize-winning photographers losing their jobs  because of downsizing, it can’t be good for our democracy.

You have to start and wonder who loses out in this situation.

And it goes without saying since we seldom can have our cake and eat it, the long hours and low wages are the other obvious cons about this career.

Earlier I mentioned 2 instances where news photographers ran afoul of their ethics.

Interestingly one instance was before digital photography and the other was after the arrival of digital photography

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Graduating High School Senior–Samantha Some of you might recognize Samantha who modeled for my students when I taught my Small Flash Lighting workshop a few weeks back. She’s got such a pretty face and great skin, it’s hard not to get a good picture of her. I kept things simple for the most part. I used one Speedlite and a silver reflector for this picture.

One of the most invaluable skills I acquired while at the newspaper was learning  to assess my lighting options on scene quickly.

Most of time it meant I would use what’s already at the scene. This approach means you have 2 light sources:

• what you bring (your small portable flash units) and
• what available light there is

So, in those instances I had to also figure out the color temperature of the available light.

If  that sounds technical, just relax.

With the digital cameras all you need is to take a picture and see how skin tones are rendered and adjust for them.

What I mean by adjust is, if you’re shooting in a room lit by florescent lights, then you need to slap a florescent green filter on your flash.

You have to match the color temperature of your light sources or else you’ll be kicking yourself when you sit in front of the computer.

When you’re choosing a location, after security and safety, your next concerns should be lighting.

Unless you plan on bringing your entire arsenal of gear, you should think of locations that have light.

Not lots and lots of light, but places with very directional light.

The pictures  of Samantha were setup in a hallway which had a doorway leading out to the roof.

The open doorway on the right is providing me with the hair light in this instance.

Canon 40D camera set at 1/400 sec @ f2 ISO 400.

My main light was the Speedlite 550EX, set on Manual @ 1/64th power bounced into either a silver or gold reflector on the left to give me f2.

The light from the doorway on the right metered between f2.8 and f4.

One Light Setup

As with most things in photography and art in general, I can’t say a certain type of lighting is wrong or right.

It only matters if my subjects like the picture I make of them.

Here are 2 examples of using just one light.

Ted was lit by a single light/flash placed about 10 ‘clock on the left behind my subject Ted.

If you look at the setup, you will see that there is no reflector or any fill at all resulting in a low-key portrait.

I like how this emphasizes the masculine face. Again, to me what matters is that Ted likes his portrait.

For this portrait of a member of the Macintosh Users group which I belong to, I used a variation of the same one-light set up.

The only difference, if you study the setup, is I added a reflector. There was no light modifier attached to my flash.

There was a white board that was on wheels at the senior center when I did this demo, so I just pushed this into place next to my subject.

If you look closely at his glasses you will see the tell-tale reflection.

Your biggest hurdle with this sort of lighting is figuring out how to prevent the light from behind the subject from entering the front of your lens.

If that happens, your image will look terrible because of the loss of contrast and you will also get flare.

Yes, there are lots of folks who love that look, that’s why there’s a Filter within Photoshop called “Lens Flare”  for that.

I see that applied indiscriminately because it’s so cool– even when there is obviously no backlighting.

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