This is my new Facebook “cover” photo. I should probably retire this as a subject, but I just cant quit you, Bear Muffler! I gelled a couple Canon 430s with Rosco gel “Canary Yellow” and put them around behind the car. I can’t find my radio transmitters at the moment so I used the ST-E2 — and since that’s IR, I needed line-of-sight to the flashes. Else, I could have hidden the lights behind the wheels. But, I didn’t mind the little sparkly lights on the ground in the end. This is actually seven different exposures. I imported them into Photoshop, “load files into stack”, “automatically align”, then set the blending mode on each layer to “Lighter Color.” The process takes about sixty seconds.

For the precise, the dimensions of the Facebook cover photo need to be 830 by 315 in pixels.

“It has been said that man is a rational animal. All my life I have been searching for evidence which could support this.”
-Bertrand Russell

Just got this film off eBay. I’m eager to investigate it.

I found these very old oil cans in the garage. The spirit of my Dad is strong with them.

Hey kids! Did Santa bring you a speedlite for Christmas? Maybe it was a LumoPro or something similar that doesn’t come with its own pouch? Well, don’t let your new flash go unprotected out there. Just swipe some leftover bubblewrap and your trusty roll of two-inch gaffer tape and make your own ghetto-luxe padded pouch!

What you’ll need?

1. 2″ gaffer tape
2. Bubble wrap
3. Your speedlite

 

Cut strips of bubblewrap. You can be a stickler and measure, or just keep your flash handy and eyeball it. You’ll want the front panel to be longer on the bottom (for the bottom of the pouch) and back panel to be longer on the top (for the flap.) Keep the smooth side of the bubblewrap on top since that will be the inside of the pouch. The tricky part is that last bit when you’re taping inside the pouch.

 

I made sure to keep the flash inside the bubblewrap womb to make sure I was never making it too tight. You can test the ingress/egress (sexy!) of the flash as you go along. From there it’s just a matter of taping it up as neatly or as gritty as you want. The beauty of gaffer tape is its “scultpability.” To help around the corners, take a square of gaff and rip it halfway, then make a corner from that. Again, you can be as tidy and exact as you wanna be. I’m from tha streetz, so I like mine a little rough. (Or, I’m just lazy.)

One other tip: If you’re testing your pouch to make sure it’s not too tight, make sure to test inserting the flash both ways as you go along. (Oh, behave!) The flash probably has a chubbier end so it might fit one way, but not the way you want it to.

For the top flap, if you have some adhesive Velcro ™ laying around, great! If not, you can make a strap by folding a piece of gaff in half, tape it on, and just slide the tongue of the flap in that. (Rowr!) Gaffer tape has some friction to it, so this works fine for me. (See first picture on top)

There you have it:  A quick and dirty padded pouch for your speedlite.  It doesn’t feel half bad next to my factory pouches. If you try this, or have better ideas, let me know. And if you dug this, Like us on Facebook!

 

I ordered a kit to build a sound trigger with variable delay from HiViz.com. It comes as a bag filled with loose electronic capacitors, resistors, and wires. Fun! But, I fired up the detailed instructions and got after it.

The instructions are very clear. But, the kit assumes you have an extra PC sync cord to cut up in order to connect it to your flash. I didn’t feel like snipping a ten dollar connector. Luckily, the LumoPro flash I have has a 1/8-inch miniphone jack. So I cut up one of the two hundred pairs of cheapo earbuds I have, just to get the plug. I wired it up and it didn’t work. So, I did some reading and discovered that stereo plugs never work well.

I’d always wanted an excuse to go to Electronic City and browse the aisles of geek heaven. A mono miniplug was a buck sixty. I also picked up a black plastic project box.

An hour later I was covered in black plastic shavings as I used a Dremel to cut a perfect hole in the black case that holds the piezoelectric listening device. But, the whole thing fits pretty well.

And, as you can almost see from the video, it works.

I will need to continue to tweak it. It triggers the flash on every sharp noise, so if I use it on a dropped item, the flash will fire on the drop, and every bounce. That probably won’t work — but there are ways in the electronics to mitigate that. But, the basic device is operational.

Stay tuned for more.

I’m very curious about the basics of photographic studio lighting. Strobist is God, as we all know. But, when he dropped the post a few weeks ago “A Walk Around the Monobloc, Pt. 1” I felt like he was holding back some of the fruit of knowledge. He told us about a monobloc, but I wanted to take a step back. What’s a monobloc? Are there different types of that sort of strobe? What about the “heads” I see on Craigslist all the time? How do they fit? I had a ton of questions I tried to get across in a comment on his blog, but I suffered a communication failure. I struggled to ask a good question.

Since then, I’ve wanted to research studio lights more, but I am really lazy didn’t know where to start. Happily, I just came across a post on Photo.net that hit the spot. It filled in all the starter gaps that I was missing from Strobie’s post.

Photo.net: An intro to studio lighting equipment

There’s a lot of great info here, but this is the bit I needed to know:

There are 2 basic types of studio flash -
Generator (England) also known as Pack & Head (USA) flash basically consists of a box that sits on the floor (or, with professional units too heavy to lift, sits on wheels) and
Monoblock (England) or Monolight (USA). Generator/Pack and head lights contain all their ‘works’ in the box, and a high-voltage cable connects the box to the actual flash head.

Got that? It’s easy, when you know the answer.

And, now please enjoy Metallica – “Hit the Lights”

I had a gig shooting my friends blues band in a sports bar in Oceanside. It was a dark corner without a stage and without any existing lighting. This was much different than any concert shooting I had done before, where stage crews set up expensive lights for the band that I can piggyback off of. This was a show with no existing light whatsoever. I had full freedom to use off-camera speedlights if I could find places to put them that didn’t get in the way. I placed a couple strategically and tried using RF-transmitters. (Calumet Litelinks) Big problem! The flashes fired very reliably, but I was unable to focus on anything in the darkness! Shooting active musicians is a focusing challenge in the best of times. This shaped up to be a disaster.

But, I had an idea: I switched to the Canon IR transmitter (ST-E2). Since it was indoors, this worked fairly reliably as well, plus had the huge — HUGE — bonus of having an auto-focus assist beam, which the Canon 5D lacks on its own. As I discovered, this is actually a very big deal. I had a little problem getting the AF-assist beam going, even after I enabled it in the camera settings. I resorted to erasing all camera settings to factory default, and then it worked. That was annoying.

Near the end of the night, I noticed the bass-player had moved off to the side near an alcove with a great backlight. I went over to him and exposed for the backlight, then placed a speedlight to add some fill on him. I chimped it three or four times to get the proper power on the fill, but on the very last shot, he looked up at me and smiled. I nailed one excellent shot. Seconds later, the whole show was over.

Three Lessons Learned for Lighting a Live Music Setup:

One: If you have the opportunity to set a backlight to color the back wall, you damn well should do it. I didn’t think of this until it was too late.

Two: In hindsight I was very intrusive setting up lights. Getting in the band’s face and doing a lot of flashing for shots that weren’t worth it. Had this been a more popular concert, I would have been a very unpopular guy. Since nobody was there, I was OK. I would be more selective if doing this again.

Three: If it’s too dark to focus, hope that IR triggers can work so you can leverage auto-focus on the ST-E2.

This was good experience for me and I’m sure these lessons will serve me well in the future.

Play this now: “Blinded By The Light” – Manfred Mann

I have some friends that love to take pics of stray shopping carts in compromising positions. I have other friends that chronicle the free sofas that pop up on our city streets. The curiosities of an urban civilization in decline make for morbid, yet wonderous, fascination. This is for all of them.

On a Friday, while driving in the afternoon, I saw this juxtaposition on the street and knew it had to be shot. I pulled over immediately, only to notice the street was one minute into No Parking designated time! Curses! So, I pulled away and went about my business of the day. The sight, though, lingered in the back of my mind. That night, I decided to go back and see if it was still there — only since it was midnight, I figured the light might not be optimal. But, in a spirit of adventure, I slung my lighting rig over my shoulder and headed out on foot.

I was afraid one or the other would be gone, but there they were just past midnight. Waiting for me. So I set up lighting right there, shooting on location! Two lightstands, two umbrellas, two 430EX flashes. I started firing away. ST-E2 on the Canon 5D with my ultrawide lens cranked to 12mm because there wasn’t much space on the sidewalk. Parked cars created a cage to restrict my vantage. People drove by, people walked by. Nobody appeared to give me a first glance, much less a second. Shooting flashes at 12:14 A.M. Of course, I realized. In Los Angeles, this was probably the first of five location sets they’ll see during their day. I need to remember that in the future.

I took a number of shots, moved the cart about a bit. Got something I was happy with in about five minutes of shooting. To me the shot is a paparazzi snap of a celebrity couple on the street after a party. The sofa is comfortably numb, the cart is buzzed, hyper, and in-your-face agitated.  I broke down my kit, slung it back over my shoulder and walked home.

That was fun.

Play track: “Takin’ It To The Streets” – The Doobie Brothers

Listen while you read: “Flashing Lights” – Kanye West

This story of Kanye vs. Paparazzi is burning up the wires! From the AP:

Airport police arrested [Kanye] West and his road manager, Don Crowley, who also serves as a bodyguard, on suspicion of felony vandalism shortly before 8 a.m., LAX spokesman Marshall Lowe said. He said early reports indicated that a camera valued at more than $10,000 was broken.

I was wondering what camera might be worth $10K — even a 1Ds MkIII with a 70-200 2.8 isn’t quite that much.  I checked the video on TMZ though, there was a lot of smashing going on. It looks like a video camera got smashed by the bodyguard and Kanye himself smashes not a camera, but a speedlight! Kanye trashed a  flash!

Nooooooo! Kanye West hates Strobists!

Side note: The very first time I went to Coachella with a press pass, Kanye was the very first artist I tried to photograph “professionally” — but I couldn’t find the entrance to the photo pit! Dumb rookie! I missed it.