Lighten that Load

Good Wednesday from Prospect.

Set-up including living light stand

So here I am proposing on location headshots. You know, the one's that don't hurt. 

Well for the most part they only hurt me, lugging way too much gear for seamless shots. 

It usually takes me three trips and a car load when doing a larger shoot.

But I want a kit for those quicker runs. You know less time setting up and more with my client.

I finally decided to trim this big kit down. If I can walk out of here with one bag of stands/modifiers, one box of lighting and one camera bag with bodies/lens I'll be happy.

Well I think I've done it. Even tested it with my main digital bodies so I can handle what I need when I need it.

List is now 3 stands, 2 light booms, 2 reflector/diffusers (for white, grey, black backgrounds, 1 60" umbrella/softbox, 2-3 speedlights (1 main, 1 background, 1 hair-light when needed) , 3 pocket wizards (may make that 4), 1 light meter, assorted cables, batteries and 1 stool. Camera plus lenses (depending on the shoot).

One thing to bear in mind this is a "headshot" kit. Not a full body set. That would require an existing wall or available background.

Canon 5D markII, 85mm f1.4. ISO100, f9, 1/125th

I've included a couple of test shots to verify my lighting set-up, plus a look at the set-up.

Enjoy Derek

Fuji XPro-1 35mm f1.4. ISO200, 1/125, f5.6

Calibrate Your Gear

Good Saturday from Prospect.

Today I'm going a little geeky. I'd like to share a little calibration exercise every photographer should do wether you are shooting film or digital. It's about knowing your gear.

A fitting layout for these guys. Remember them?

Recently I decided to put film back into my work flow, if for no other reason than self gratification.

Film has and always will have it's place. I'm not getting into all the reasons here in this post. It's been argued to death and this is purely a personal decision on my part to increase the quality of my work and make me a better photographer and designer.

To quote Zack Arias, I just want to suck-less every day.

Shooting film is about taking your time not shooting away and hoping you get a good shot. I will be the first to admit I fell into that digital trap early on and learned my lesson quickly. The trick to getting your work right starts with knowing your gear and planning your out comes.

The exercise before you is about aperture, shutter speed and multiple lenses in your kit, no matter what you shoot with.

Fortunately I have some great glass but every piece can have it's own little nuances that change the resulting final image. It's important to know what that is.

Here I'm setting up some interesting subjects in studio (a controlled environment) to judge those variances.

By taking the time to set-up (including using a proper light meter) a test environment like this we can judge on a common ground (good basis so to speak). 

I use Sekonic 398 and 358s depending if I'm inside or out. Although we have built in meters I have never truly trusted reflective variation in camera. I don't care what light is bouncing off a subject, I want to know what is lighting my subject. Incident meters do that. In camera meters don't, never have and never will.

Shot of my set-up

Anyway, as I said, I need to know what my gear does so I simply set-up and shoot adjusting aperture and shutter to simply see what the camera does compared to what my meters say. Then process the film and compare with the results I have for my digital gear. I've done this before with my digital gear but it was time to do it again, with everything.

My basic set-up was with two strobes. Main at 1/4 power (what you set your camera to) and the second at 1/8 power for fill (one stop difference f8 for main and f5.6 for fill). I usually shoot this way in studio or on location depending on the goal. Sometimes two umbrellas, sometimes, as you can see here, a softbox and an umbrella. Sometimes I go just for the one light (undetermined modifier) with an open strobe on the seamless to blow it out (one stop brighter).

The set-up is something that always changes and grows depending on the desired result. This one is my basic 45s so I know what it does.

This set-up let me start at my ISO, which is 100 (using Provia F100 in the Hassy and Velvia in the EOS 1V 35mm), sync at 1/200th and fstop at 8.0 shooting 1/3 increments to determine which suits my taste and accuracy on exposure. I chose 1/200 to kill the ambient and it's the fastest my Canon will sync, the Hassy goes to 1/500th but I want them as close as possible.

I've posted the digital resulting image, tweaked , to show what I've used to set the calibration, and a shot of my set-up in this post. I slowed my sync/shutter speed down to show you the overall set-up. 

Note: the test image contains all of what I want to test. Bright whites, deep blacks, shin tone, wood tone with grain, my calibration fan and background texture with primaries. I'll get everything from exposure, depth of field to detail and colour accuracy from this set-up. I don't need to pixel peep this to death, just understand the basic differences between my gear so I can compensate for it on set.

Another view with the shutter speed slowed down to let the ambient light in to show the set-up a bit better

You can make up what ever interests you just include the basics of what you shoot day to day.

Once I get the processed film back and can scan them I'll share those results.

Next post is about Letting your work breath (on Tuesday).

Enjoy. Derek

Re-establishing the basics and moving

Good Wednesday from Prospect. 

Today I'm going to throw a hint at my recent projects. I'm also going to show a little how to.

Canon 5D mrkII, 85mm f1.8  at f8, 125sec 100 ISO

I've recently been following a photographer by the name of Zack Arias out of Atlanta Georgia. Great photographer. 

I probably follow him, not so much for his work, although I'm a fan, but because of his attitude to the business and his open attitude to share. He's been sharing his "One Light" philosophy with all of us. Thanks Zack!

Many photographers know this is a tough business to make a living. You gotta love it or forget it.

Personally I'm somewhat fortunate in that I have a background in the printing business and studied design and photography in college. 

I am able to put two hats on to feed myself but as the gear I use to create images matures I find myself forging ahead with shooting more and more. 

With the gear becoming mature, meaning you can rely on it, I can start forgetting about the gear and mega pixels and concentrate on what matters, getting the picture. 

Now it's back to basics for me. I went off on a tangent and forgot about getting the usable shot right away. Kinda blaming some of it on inferior gear I was using, but not all of it. I'm re-establishing composition and light in my head. Instead of cursing because the camera didn't fire because it was too slow to focus. Now I just set up and shoot, sort of. Well close enough in comparison to the hoops I had to jump through.

It's been said over and over, It's not the gear that makes the shot. Well to an extent thats true. It's just how much work you need to do after the shot to get it up to snuff. Instead of saying, "I'll just fix it in photoshop" why not just shoot it right. 

Well some cameras aren't up to that task (learned that the hard way). Between not being able to see the full frame you are composing to the camera over riding your set-up to awful noise at low light and failure to fire due to slow focus, it was becoming a burden to shoot and my confidence was failing. I mean could I honestly rely on myself to get the frame I was after. You don't get second chances when the moment is gone.

Anyway I started writing this blog and went off on a rant I don't need to get into so I'm deleting that part and carrying on with something positive, my new work.

The reason I started this blog was two fold. I wanted to share a "One Light" set-up on seamless with you and let you know I will be moving to my new site, Blog and all, to derekmasonphotography.com. It will be all fresh and new in about a week. Gotta finalize a few new images going up.

I won't abandon this one since I like the connection through Google, but I will be showing off my focused, professional work through the new one It will be more of an add on showcase while this one will be as it has been. Life in Nova Scotia, my own editorials so to speak.

Comments on both will be much appreciated to help me see what people like most. Don't worry, I'll add a link back to here from there.

For this post, here's an example of what one light, and a couple of reflectors, can do for an image.

This was on site for some corporate portraiture I did on the weekend. (In the board room with a 9 foot ceiling)

My set-up was one strobe set on a boom with a 48 in soft-box above the subject blowing slightly past so to throw some light on the white seamless, one 36" round reflector to lower stage right, for chin fill, and one 42 x 72 inch reflector to back stage left for soft back light. I also turn that big reflector around to shield a second strobe when going full white on the seamless, it doubles as a v flat or cutter to keep the second light out of the cameras frame and kill light flare (though that would be a "two light" shot wouldn't it?).

Here I had her lean slightly forward over a desk, we used as a prop, to get that spot light look on her eyes
Canon 5D mrkII, 85mm f1.8  at f8, 125sec 100 ISO

Once the shots are finalized and delivered I'll share some of those results. In the meantime, this is my wife who I dragged along as assistant. My daughter has taken up the challenge of assisting but had a minor medical procedure that stopped her from coming along. You may have seen her in my "Doin' it Seamless" blog a while back.

Enjoy, Derek.

Doin' it SEAMLESS

Good Friday from Prospect.

Ready for the ad

Well here I am back in the studio for a bit. And I wanted to share some seamless with you. I mean shooting with seamless backgrounds.

A little bit of fun before some serious work. We were setting up the next days early morning shoot. I always like to spend the time to prepare so my clients aren't waiting around while I set-up. When I do, I tend to grab a family member to model for me so I have a live set. 

This time it was my daughter. I told her to have some fun with it (as you can see she did, she loves making faces) and I'll direct as we go. 

In this blog you'll see some of the layout as I'm working it in and some of the final results after tweaking the positions. You'll even see a quick one with her holding the reflector to see if that's what I want.

Canon 5DmkII, 70-200 f2.8

These set ups usually only take about 15 minutes, after the gear is assembled, but I used this to try out a new lens I just picked up. The Canon 85mm f/1.8. Great detail but you have to watch the light flare from the background (I haven't received the lens hood yet, that's another story). It always adds headache in post production, which by the way is why I switched to Canon. I was just tired of spending so much time in post with the old Pentax gear. Great results, too much work.

The 5D mkII, and the new glass, cut that to 10 percent. Now I can spend more time on composition and get it done without all nighters.

Everything shot with Canon 5D mk II, Canon 85 mm f/1.8 (awesome lens) or Canon 70-200 f2.8 and Opus strobes, 36 x 48 softbox and one bare bulb with reflector for the back ground blow out. with Pocket Wizard III's. The third light source is actually a big reflector to get that fill light from the bottom.

These are all shot on white. What I like about using white is light control allows for white to black backgrounds and everything in between (almost).

Sometimes simple is better and in these cases that's absolutely true.

I'll post a few samples of the next days shoot once we're finished with the project.

Enjoy, Derek

Great b&w head shot 5D mkII, 85mm f1.8

Here you can see the basic set-up, at least as we were getting in position

Yes she likes making faces
Straight out of the camera, we're good to go
5D mkII 70-200 f2.8

Stomping it out!  5DmkII, 85mmf1.8