3 of My (current) Favourite Things

For fellow photogs out there, here are 3 things I'm digging lately:

• Dropbox (www.dropbox.com) Being able to upload files by syncing a drive on the computer is awesome, and probably the best way I've found so far to deliver images online. You can share folders using a unique email link for each folder, and your recipient can download them, saves heaps of time.
• Billings 3 (www.marketcircle.com/billings) I've just started using the program Billings for all my accounting, and so far I've found it to be AMAZING. You can use a timer for tasks to accurately track your work in progress, enter activity slips for each client, then raise a bill when you want to. The reports module ties everything all together, and if that wasn't enough, you can sync it with your iPhone for when you are on location. So much easier and more relative for creatives than MYOB. HIGHLY RECOMMENDED. I got mine from the Apple store for $69AUD!
• My custom made lighting case. I used a Stanley "Fat Max" giant toolbox, removed the inside molded compartments, lined it with molded foam and now have a watertight case to house 3 strobe heads, all the cables and attachments. It's key lockable, and my foam lining ensures nothing moves out of place and can be flipped upside down without disturbing anything. I've attached some iPhone pics, check it out.

Canon EF 20mm 2.8

Got a new lens recently. I found that with a lot of my lifestyle work I use wide angles a lot, and wanted one that was fast (wide aperture).
To that end I wound up getting a Canon EF 20mm 2.8 USM from my friends at Camerasdirect.com.au. I gotta say it's exactly what I wanted, in fact I don't know why more people don't have it.
We all hear about the 50mm 1.4 or 50mm 1.8, and they definitely are lenses you can't do without, but I'm gonna go out on a limb here and buck the trend and say if there was a fire, I'd take my 20mm over the 50mm. It suits my style better.
Don't forget too that on a crop sensor 20mm becomes 32mm which is a really good walk around lens.
Anyway to try it out I grabbed the camera this afternoon when my wife Heidi and I walked our dog Gordy along the beachfront where we live in Currumbin on the Gold Coast of Australia.

Things, I like about it:

• Weight feels good, not too heavy but not too light, build quality seems excellent.

• USM focus which I need, not everyone needs it but I find that in commercial work with moving subjects I have fewer throwaways with a lens that can focus fast, I'm willing to pay for it.
• Price seems pretty good, not the cheapest of lenses but for a good quality lens I found it acceptable.
• Image quality seems real good to me, maybe I just got a good copy, but I'm happy with it, comparable with the 50mm 1.4.

Things I don't like

• No Lens Hood! CANON WHEN ARE YOU GOING TO TAKE THAT STICK OUT OF YOUR ASS AND GIVE A PLASTIC LENS HOOD WITH EVERY LENS? EVERYONE ELSE DOES, NIKON, SIGMA TOKINA EVERYONE!! I REFUSE TO PAY $80 FOR A PLASTIC HOOD AND WILL BUY MY HOODS OFF EBAY TILL YOU DO. SURE MY "L" SERIES LENSES CAME WITH THEM FOR FREE BUT THIS IS NOT ENOUGH!!! WE WANT LENS HOODS ON ALL LENSES IMMEDIATELY!!
  
• Vignetting, Purple fringing, contrast and saturation performance seem a little weak for the price, but these can all be fixed in post so I'm OK with it.

Overall, I'm glad I got it.

Overpowering the Sun

Someone recently wrote to me and asked me how this photo was taken, and whether Photoshop was used to achieve the dramatic effect.

Now, although some processing was done in Lightroom. The effect does not come about by processing at all. The dramatic tones are a result of the flash essentially overpowering the light from the sun.

This photo was taken for US eyewear manufacturer Kaenon Polarized who sponsor Australian Paddleboard Champion Jamie Mitchell. Jamie lives up the street from me and this was shot around the corner from where we both live just before sunset.

To give the shot the effect you see, I stopped down the aperture to about F9, which due to the time of day really underexposed the ambient light and essentially made the shot too way too dark. Then, to compensate, I used a speedlight held by a voice activated lightstand (Jamie’s girlfriend Jocelyn) and fired it at the model to bring him back into correct exposure. I put a stofen diffuser on the speedlight to soften it.

What makes the image “pop” is the rimlight on Jamie’s side nearest to the sun which seperates him from the background and really brings him out.

You can overpower the sun at pretty much any time of the day, although to do so at midday you would need a lot more light than one speedlight can offer. Doing it when there is less ambient light is much easier if your lighting equipment is limited.

One final note, last week Jamie went on and won the 57 kilometer Molokai to Oahu paddleboard race in Hawaii for the 8th consecutive time, putting him in among an elite group of atheletes who have dominated at the highest levels of there respsective sports. Congratulations Jamie!

I launched my website this week, check it out here

The Power of One

All it takes is one light. An advertising client of mine asked me into his home to take some family portraits. The family was classic and the short session was a lot of fun.
Getting down to one lightsource really makes you get back to basics and replicates what we normally get in nature, after all, there is only one sun. For this shoot I used a 43 inch shoot through to the right and a reflector on the left to bounce some light back.

Finding the Sweet Spot

In 1775 American revolutionary Patrick Henry once said “Give me critically sharp focus or give me death”. Ok, I in fact made that up, he didn’t say that at all, but had he been a photographer he would have. I am now able to tag this article with “American Revolution” thereby increasing the hits! Shameless I know.

In all seriousness though, with all that post processing can do for photos, one of the fundamental things that it cannot do is focus. If you are in the business of taking photos for print or publication, you might have experienced having a wonderful photo rejected due to “soft” focus. Now, this is not to say that great photos are always perfectly in focus, in fact some final edits are actually produced soft as an effect. However, having photos critically sharp in camera increases the ratio of how many keepers you will have and reduce throwaways.

Now there are a number of factors that go into having a photo critically sharp, and I’m just gonna touch on one of them today….aperture or F stop value. I am also not gonna bore you with charts with numbers on them, you can search for those on the internet specific for whatever lens you use.

I want to talk about the “sweet spot” that every lens has, similar to a tennis racket. The sweet spot is when the amount of light let in by the aperture setting optimizes the focus of the image. Typically this sweet spot occurs a couple stops above the maximum aperture setting of your lens. So if your lens begins at lets say, F4, your sweet spot will likely start around 5.6.

A common misconception is that buying a fast lens (i.e. 1.4) enables you to get critically sharp images at the maximum aperture. In reality a faster lens brings the sweet spot into a higher aperture value, so the sweet spot on a Canon 50 1.4 may start at F2. (Although you’d be surprised at how small the focal range is at F2, close to the size of a postage stamp)

Finding that “sweet spot” on your lens is a really good step in beginning to take control of the environment that you shoot in. If you know that you are going to get the best results at F 5.6 at ISO 100, then you can go about arranging your shoot in order to allow you to shoot at this setting, it forces you to consider things like perhaps additional lighting in a form of strobes etc.

So get out there, find the range that is your lenses sweet spot, and see if it turns you from taking photos into making photos.

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