1 day, many looks, loads of fun!

This past Saturday I scheduled a full day of shooting for my Lighting Notebook project and realized just how much you can get done on adrenaline, caffeine, and a slice of pizza. We hit 4 different locations and knocked out about 13 different setups using different lighting for each one. Here are a few samples from the day. 

The first shoot was such fun with cute little Kiauna eating her way through the candy store - much to the chagrin of her parents, who hoped she would take a nap soon after we were done. Hah.  I used the RayFlash ringlight mounted on my SB800 and a 10.5mm fisheye for this fun perspective. All the images were processed with my Lightroom Vintage Delish presets and Dashboard tools for Photoshop.

At a local Thai restaurant, Typhoon (very delicious, by the way :-) we setup some romantic, lounge-esque images using the beautiful long curtains that separated the dining areas. For this, a single dive light (500 lumens) was placed behind the couple to silhouette them.

This image was made using Doug Gordon's Torch Light directly overhead and the dive light behind her with a warm StickyFilter over it. I love the TorchLight for it's soft, yet focused beam pattern and the StickyFilters are a quick way to balance the color temperature of a light or add a different mood.

The dive light shot through a slotted dividing wall on her back and the TorchLight for the mainlight on her face. I was able to dial the TorchLight down precisely to match the existing room lighting with its variable brightness control.

Here I used a Lensbaby Composer and the F4 aperture. I bounced two Nikon SB800 speedlights in to the white wall on the left. I triggered them with the new Pocket Wizard FlexTT5. I placed a third SB900 on another PocketWizard behind and to the right to create the nice separation light.

It was a crazy day getting all these, and more, set ups done, but it happened because of my great team of assistants and shooting partner, Benjamin Edwards. Why solo create when you can collaborate! 

The first big step

If you want to see behind the scenes of a fun and somewhat complicated photo shoot, I'll have some photos and video later this week from the underwater pregnancy shoot we are doing tonight. It is one of the sessions that will be included in the new book I'm writing, The Lighting Notebook, published by Wiley and to be released this summer. The book is all about location lighting, and will detail all the equipment, setups, and behind the scenes information to make my 20 years of varied experiences with lighting part of your own repertoire too. The book will be easy to understand, clearly cross-referenced, and full of cool and varied lighting tricks - most of which can be achieved with minimal or inexpensive equipment. We'll also be creating videos of every session and I'll post some of them here on my blog. 

Tonight's session is actually one of the more complicated of the planned sessions as it obviously requires much more equipment and planning to photograph underwater. My lovely pregnant mom-to-be model also started having contractions last week, which fortunately have stopped. I'm just hoping the shoot doesn't stress her back in to early labor! 

I'll also be doing some shots from directly above the water, with my camera on a boom arm, and I'll use OnOne Software's super cool Camera Remote DSLR iPhone app to see through and control my camera from poolside.

Stay tuned!

About 20% of the stuff we'll need for the shoot tonight. 

iPhone's new built-in HDR, gimmick or groovy?

What are the best uses for the newly added camera HDR feature for iPhones? Apple just released a free update to their OS4 software that adds in-camera HDR to the latest devices. HDR, or High Dynamic Range, is a process of combining multiple exposures to achieve a single, highly detailed image. There has been third-party software available via the app store to do HDR, but never has it been quite this easy. There is simply an additional button on your camera screen to turn HDR on or off. By default, when you take an HDR image, the phone saves both an original, non-HDR version and the composite HDR version automatically. You can quickly review both images after taking them to see which you prefer. 

Here's my take on it. It's great. If you know what HDR is actually for...capturing details in extreme highlight and shadow areas of high contrast scenes - details that would normally be lost in a normal, single exposure, then you'll immediately see the benefit and quality difference the new HDR tool provides. HDR is not for every image. A well lit scene, with relatively low contrast, will not pose any challenge for a single exposure. Using HDR may make it appear flatter in contrast (when in reality, under histogram inspection, you'll see a very full white-to-black contrast range). 

Where HDR is great (and where it's intended to be used) is in extreme contrast scenes where your important detail is going to be either blown out in the highlights or obscured and noisy in the shadows. As you'll see in my quick examples and experiment, even if you used desktop software to try to rescue your normal exposure - essentially opening up the shadows and bringing down highlights, in an attempt to match the HDR image, the results will not even be close. The adjusted image cannot touch an HDR image for highlight detail and overall color accuracy and saturation in challenged areas.

I took a walk at lunch today. It is a beautiful, bright sunny day, perfect for HDR play. Let's take a look!

Notice the shadow side of the barn and the brightly lit grass. Click the image to see it larger.Wow! Look at the detail and color in the beams of light. Click the image to see it larger.Look at the sunlit grass in the back. Much more detail is preserved.Lots of preserved detail in the HDR version here. Click the image to see it larger.One of the limits of HDR is when you have moving subjects. Since the camera takes 3 shots sequentially, the subject has to be relatively still or ghosting will appear, as shown.More shadow information and detailsOnce detail is gone, it's gone. No amount of adjustment in software later can recover the lost information, detail, and color.This last pair of images illustrates how even if you took the time to download your images, work them in iPhoto, Lightroom, or Photoshop, you would not be able to "fix" the original image to achieve the level of detail and color accuracy that an HDR image provides. On the other hand, by doing some minor adjustments to global contrast on your HDR image, you'll be rewarded with snappy images that preserve tons of detail from bright highlights to deep shadow.

For creating highly detailed images in camera, with minimal fuss, the new HDR feature is a welcome new tool. Oh, and it's free :-)

Beautiful, easy, inexpensive lighting setup.

Yesterday I posted one of the lighting techniques we created during our "Lighting in a Day" personal project that Benjamin Edwards and I did. That was a popular post, so I thought I'd share another image from the day. This time, it's indoors. We asked a local furniture store if we could use the upstairs showroom to shoot in. They happily obliged! By the way, Furnish is the coolest furniture store in Bend, OR! (You can order online too) We love shopping there and the owners are incredibly knowledgeable, helpful, and genuine. I always suggest to photographers who don't know where to shoot - just ask! I've gained access to some amazing locations simply by taking a chance and asking. You can do it too! 

Our goal here was to use the minimal amount of equipment - stuff that most any photographer, new or experienced, should probably own. The only thing out of the ordinary was my Nikon 85mm f2.8 PC (Perspective Control) lens. It's made primarily for commercial tabletop photography and architectural work, but also gives a killer look for portraits! Ben got a little drool on my lens - nothing a little lens cloth couldn't get out though. Ooh, by the way, I think Ben's having a baby this morning! Congratulations Ben & Lauren!

OK, back to business. The equipment we used was: 

• Nikon 85mm f2.8 PC lens

• Nikon SB900 & SB800 flash units

• 4 ch Flash Trigger from Scott Robert

• 2-Light frames with diffusion and reflector fabric

• Sticky Filters

• Light stands

Photographers don't often realize how much than can actually do with their camera makers portable flash units (Nikon SB900). They are relatively powerful and you always have them with you. The main thing you need, however, is a simple way to trigger them wirelessly. There are many wireless systems on the market. I use the Tamrac Micro Sync mainly for my studio flash units, but to trigger your on-camera type flash units, it's easier to have something with a hotshoe mount. I just got these new gadgets from Scott Robert at a recent workshop we both taught at. They are very affordable and super easy to use! The kit comes with a transmitter for the camera and 3 separate coded receivers - so you could control 3 flash units. I'd like to see a couple improvements in the system - like the battery doors that keep sliding open (easily fixed with gaffers tape :-) and they seem to go in to "sleep" mode in between setups so you have to manually trigger them once via the button on the receiver or your first shot will be sans light. Not that big a deal once you get used to it. It's also not TTL compatible, but that's not what it's intended for. Overall, it's one of the best deals around for a wireless trigger system. 

The light frames are one of my most treasured and used photographic accessories. I can create beautiful window-like light or soft, yet dramatic, light like you see in this image. I use them for babies, kids, families, groups, small products, even cars (by grouping several together). I've used these for nearly 20 years as a pro photographer and it's, to me, one of the most indispensable tools we can have. I have these older PVC frames that are no longer made, but the newer aluminum style frames are a bit heavier and much more stable in the wind! (which is one of my main complaints with the light PVC models). This kit here has the essential diffusion fabric as well as reflection white and some snappier gold and silver. I'd probably add in a second frame so that you can use the diffusion and reflector together as we did here. This is one of the most versatile lighting tools you can have. Really.

I love my Sticky Filters, and here we applied the warm tungsten filter to the back light to, well, warm it up! These are primarily used to balance your flash to any existing light temperature - for example, if you want to use fill-flash while shooting indoors under tungsten light. However, they are great to just add color accents to your scene.

So, here's the shot and the setup. I tweaked the PC lens to throw her feet out of focus. By the way, if spending $1800 on a PC lens is not in your budget, you can get a similar - even more unique look - from a Lensbaby. I use this much more often than the PC lens and it's only $270. We do offer them on our Kubota Image Tools store if you want more info.

The exposure was F2.8 at 1/125 and ISO 200. The single Nikon SB900 was fired through the diffusion. Note that we kept it relatively close, about 3-4 ft., to create more dramatic light and falloff to the floor. If we were to pull the flash further back, lighting more of the back of the scrim, then we'd have softer, more even light from head to toe. Make sure to check the zoom of the flash as that will affect how much of the scrim it covers. We set it here to about 75mm. If it's too wide, you'll cover more of the scrim (giving you softer light) but it may also spill on to the background - so you'd need to flag it off a bit.

We added a groovy chair, a lovely model, and fired away!

I'll post more of the other images and information on the project after my presentation at Skip's Summer School next week, where I'm including all of the images as part of my talk on "The Power of the Project".

What's a surefire way to get people to look at your photos?

All your burning photography questions (well, maybe not all) answered by Scott Bourne and I on his podcast. I was honored to be his guest again for this episode #34 and it was a hoot! We discussed a bunch of hot topics submitted from his listeners and revealed a few things we didn't know about each other too. It was fun, check it out. Scott is an amazing photographer, with a collection of images that will blow your mind. My family had dinner with him last night and my sons almost made a game of trying to find some kind of animal that Scott hadn't photographed!

Hear the podcast in a mini player here: http://bit.ly/aHUP7l