Oarsmen out on the river on a Wednesday afternoon. The coach is being shadowed by a photographer shooting for the school magazine. But wait – an even more familiar scene presents itself – at least to me. Arentchajustsickofit – as they say in Private Eye – pointless activation of the catchlight card (see the 2 lines on Page 19  relating to this in the 580EX MKII  the manual). This is sadly a very familiar scene.

Firstly if you are going to use your flash aim it at your subject or at least reflect in onto your subject by bouncing flash off a wall or ceiling. Secondly do you think the photographer has deliberately set out to create catchlights in the coaches eyes or as I suspect (based on having taught hundreds of people flash)  do you think he is using the catchlight as some kind of bouncing object to project some “softer” light forward?

First off light is made softer by being brought closer and bigger relative to the subject. Second – try this – turn on a  hose pipe and hold the pipe so that it’s pointing vertically upwards. Next hold a piece of flat card along the side of the hose and projecting forwards of the end of the pipe say 3 inches. How much water is diverted forward from the stream – none? Right – thats why catchlights are not bouncecards. Funny how so many people can get that wrong. Come and do a small flash one to one tutorial with Speedlighters and we can set you straight!

Apologies for the image quality – a snatched iPhone frame

By contrast Motley Crue only allowed shooting from the lighting desk – way back and even then you had to sign a contract and even then you had to sign away your copyright. Did I shoot Motley Crue – nope.  However 12,000 other people did in HD on their iPhone. Seems a bit crued to me.  Off to shoot banking portraits for some sanity now.

I thought I would share a couple of the Apps I have been using which take disposable photography to the edge of being desirable treasure. The fist App is Instagram which takes 1:1 ratio pictures and allows you to instantly apply preset filters – the lack of choice over these is a positive bonus as it means you can make a choice quickly and easily. Once you have applied your filter and border you are able to share the image and save a copy to your Camera Roll.

The sharing side of Instagram enables you to share with the world – as you publish the image you tag it with likely search terms or terms which you can share with your friends to build a group – it works like Twitter in that you start the share with a hash tag i.e. #landscape #seaside etc. The other side to the sharing enables you to send an email link to a web based version of your image to anyone in your contact list so handy for sharing with granny on the fly whilst out with the kids – no more having to download and email those images just tick her email address on the share page and she’ll get a link to a geotagged image. Don’t do this to the boss whilst out playing hooky this Christmas by the way as it has the ability to include a very precise Googlemap link to where you took the image. The Instagram feed seems to be heavily moderated which makes it a great one for the kids

The second App I am loving is Touchnote which takes any images from your Camera Roll and prints it as a postcard. You type in the text, tick the recipient from your address book and £1.39 later they print and mail it the same day. Works really well. The only downside is that they only take standard 5×7 crops so not great with Instagram images although you can re-crop these in the Touchnote App.

The third App is Diptic which enables you to create multi image layouts in one image. It is insanely easy to use and uses drag & drop and finger swipes to place, reposition and resize images – a great little App.

Finally the most wonderful editing App which is seriously powerful is Snapseed from photographic editing heavyweight Nik Software. Its wonderfully intuitive and has some really useful effects. Its on the pricey side for Apps at £2.60 odd but its very powerful and worth every penny. I love the “Drama” and new “Tilt & Shift” filters – this one of my assistant in the lift has had a drama filter applied (de-saturation and contrast combo).

Far from worrying about the release of the Canon 5D MK III I now have my eyes firmly on the Apple Rumours website for the update to the iPhone 4s. Brilliant images, easy to share and edit.

 So to the pit – 25 photographers jostling with two 3D film crews, one seated on mobile rig on a 3 ft wide dolly rail. The pit  at Wembley is 5ft below the stage and Alter Bridge have massive bins along the front so angles were tight, space was tight and the opportunity for conflict immense. However when the band were on stage there was a surprising cohesion between all of the photographers and amazingly sharp elbows were not required. I think this was down to 2 reasons – most photographers respect other photographers as its a lonely furrow we plow  but secondly I think the presence of so many 3D cameras relegated the static image a poor second tier. Maybe it was just me but I got the feeling tonight was not the night of the concert shot.

Having said that I was there to shoot images and shoot some I did. Quite a few others I spoke to were shooting Manual which struck me as strange given the vast range of lighting changes – I prefer to shoot a mixture on Av and Tv – last night I shot mainly Av at f2.8 because we were a way back from the talent so depth of field was never going to be an issue. However the downside of this is that you tend to get fast shutter speeds and you start to lose the ambient light – ie well lit talent but black background. No flash here remember so its just as well to keep half an eye on your shutter speed.

There were the usual conversations about ISO in the pre-gig nervy photographers chat as we waited for showtime. Since meeting Philip Bloom of Canon DSLR Video fame I have been sold on the idea of native Canon ISO of 160/320/640/1250 but the jury is still out on that for me. The idea being that these levels of ISO are native to the Canon 5D MKII owing to the maths behind the ISO conversion but in testing I have not seen a great deal of difference. What was apparent was the predominance of Canon gear  last night with the 5D MKII/70-200 f2.8 being the combo of choice.

Great gig and looking forward to the DVD but I suspect that will be the end for me and Alter Bridge – they go the way of Hootie and Counting Crows – upwards and out of my concert  life. More images here

]]> http://speedlighters.com/concert-photography-at-wembley-arena/feed/ 0 http://speedlighters.com/concert-photography-at-wembley-arena/ http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Speedlighters/~3/8JJEL_ClzDE/ http://speedlighters.com/how-to-photograph-fireworks/#comments Tue, 15 Nov 2011 11:45:26 +0000 Admin http://speedlighters.com/?p=1637 How do you shoot fireworks displays? A common question at this time of year and the answer is both simpler than you think and complicated at the same time. Simpler because if you understand the exposure triangle and ISO/Shutter Speed/Aperture then its obvious – complicated because its pretty counter intuitive if you don’t know your exposure triangle.

Firstly if you have an on-camera flash you need to disable it – no need for it and in any event fireworks are pretty bright and will provide quite a bit of “ambient” light for buildings etc. Next mount your camera on a tripod and ideally have some way of triggering the shutter remotely – I use my Pocket Wizards but every camera manufacturer will make an proprietary release system.

Set you camera to B for Bulb – in this mode the shutter will stay open for as long as you are pressing the trigger. If you do not have a B setting use Manual and select a long exposure initially say 20 seconds (if you use the cover up method below) and say 4 seconds if not. Set the camera to a low ISO -  two reasons for this – firstly fireworks are bright  and long exposures with high ISO produce lots of noise; secondly if you have illuminated buildings in the frame you want to restrict the light so that those areas of the frame don’t burn out. I shoot at Canon “native” ISO of 160. Set your focus to manual and manually set the focus to Infinity on the lens – if you have an image stabilized lens don’t forget to turn it off whilst on the tripod. Set the aperture to say f8 and you are good to go.

Open the shutter up just as you the see the first of the big rockets go up and after it has exploded and faded cover the lens with a hat or black card to close the light down. Keeping the shutter open remove the hat just before the next rocket explodes – effectively we are painting with light a la Stobist here. When you think you have enough action on the sensor release the shutter and check the image – adjust to taste. The idea is that we catch lots of big exposions in the air on one image which actually took place over a 30 second period.

The image above is a good example – see the red tail light on the bottom – notice how they are broken into  three trails? See there are three explosions in the sky? – so three exposures in one shutter opening thereby reducing the burnout on the building which is already brightly lit. Each exposure is separated by covering the lens up and shutting the light out. One other point notice – in the top image the building is lit up somewhat even though there are no spots and the fireworks are on the back side of the building – this comes from my assistant (or in this case tonight Fiancee recruited for the purpose) manually firing a 580EXII Speedlite repeatedly across the face of the building over the 30 second exposure – again painting with light.

So if you understand the exposure triangle simple – if not go read Understanding Exposure by Bryan Peterson and get to grips with it – from this base of knowledge everything else will follow. Happy Firework Photography.

]]> http://speedlighters.com/how-to-photograph-fireworks/feed/ 0 http://speedlighters.com/how-to-photograph-fireworks/ http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Speedlighters/~3/NUkS-mVEUUQ/ http://speedlighters.com/remembrance-day/#comments Fri, 11 Nov 2011 16:09:11 +0000 Admin http://speedlighters.com/?p=1617 Today is Remembrance Day and ex-servicemen and supporters seem to be everywhere raising money for a fantastic cause. I came across two “old” soldiers manning their stand in the Savacenter at Calcot, Berkshire – Ray Povey and his wife Jill.

Ray is an old veteran of the Royal Air Force having seen active service in Cyprus in the 50′s.  The lobby of the Savacenter is a pretty inhospitable place and it certainly seemed a somewhat incongruous location for such a noble cause.

I was on my way back to the office from a shoot so fortunately had my gear with me – simple enough a single light shot through a umbrella 1/60th second at f5.6. I thought Ray had a wonderful face and as it turned out there was a wonderful man behind it!

Thanks to Sainsbuy’s and Savacenter for letting me take the images. And thanks Ray and Jill for getting out there and fundraising.

The toolbox was made by four of the craftsmen in the workshop and was exquisite. It will be mounted on Terences study wall although as a sprightly octogenarian I wouldn’t be surprised to see some of the tools coming out into the workshop over time.

The shots above and below were taken in the workshop lit by two 580EX MKII’s shot through white umbrellas aimed crossways across the front of the toolbox.

Both shots were taken with my Canon 50mm f1.2 which has lain unused in my bag for way too long. I am having a day next week of freestyle shooting with only this lens to get back to basics somewhat. The temptation though is to shoot everything at f1.2 of course but from a framing point of view its a great exercise. Its a very natural view of the world – I spend way to much time compressing my world into a 70-200.

I am putting together a blog piece regarding shooting The Tree Table which I have shot for Benchmark on a couple of occasions. The post will cover how you set up a studio with not hire costs, obscene amounts of arctic white paper and gaffer tape to shoot an 11.5m wide table which everyone told me was virtually undoable – just goes to show that sometimes we photographers need to trust our own judgements a little more often and ask for opinions a little less!

Happy Birthday Sir Terence.

You can see more information on the background to the table on the Benchmark blog or even better go see it today or tomorrow at Design Junction in London. Whilst you are there check out Beau McClellen’s unbelievable interactive LED chandelier which is utterly amazing. Picture from the show below.

First image 3/10th sec at f10 and second  1/60th sec f3.5 with some on camera fill flash at ISO 640

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The shoot started at 8.00am in London and I started by setting up for the big pukled back shot of the table. Preparations were slightly thrown when I was told that Sir Terence Conran was coming to the stad at 9.00am for a portrait (more on this anon) so whilst setting up to shoot an 11.5m table I also had to bear in mind that I was going to have to break off for a portrait.

So the table is sat against a wall as part of the Design Junction exhibition in London; the ceilings are black/grey concrete and high with no reflective capacity and there are people swarming around accessing different parts of the exhibition in a mad attempt to get it ready for the press at 3.00pm. The strategy is to get as much of the ambient light (spots overhead) into the shot as possible to warm it up and bring out the grain of the wood as much as one can an 11.5m wide shot. My strategy was to fire 6  of  my Speedlites and one Quantum T5d at the white wall opposite and bounce some diffused light into the table. I left one Speedlite shot through an umbrella at the shooting end of the table to punch out some of the shadow under that end of the table.

This image  is 1/15th at f9 with some Photoshop to clone a bit of the wall over on the left hand side.  I also did some detail shots as well involving multiple lighting set ups which I will put up tomorrow but overall this is a pretty impressive dining table – even more impressive would be the size of the wallet to buy a room big enough to put it in. Money isnt everything – I know that to be true otherwise you and I would be photographers would we?

I hadn’t realized I had amassed so many Speedlites – they are all 580 EX’s with three MK2′s  and three MK 1′s.  I have been buying the the MK2′s off eBay for about £180. If you are after an excellent flash but dont have £400 for the MK2 its a fabulous alternative – in fact only a few month ago it was THE flash.

Here they all are on the table in slave mode – pretty! Finally thanks to DreaMaTrix AKA Paul for the photo of me from Saturday – its not often I like pics of me but this one is close to being acceptable – nearly – thanks Paul.