camera

How To Use Panlight To Remotely Redirect Your Off-Camera Flash

December 19, 2014 by Seshu | Editor & Publisher

If you are a photographer who use off-camera flashes to photograph weddings or portraits, you are my kind of people. You like to create punchy images that separates your subjects from their backgrounds and make them truly stand out. Am I right?

The Problem

But we all experience a well-known scenario.

There you are, ready to make some sweet images of a wedding couple dancing the night away at their reception.

Your assistant or VALS (voice-activated light stand) is away in the Bahamas. You need to move that off-camera light down and out by about 32 degrees because your clients are losing themselves to the music and have moved from where you thought they would be to this new spot, near Uncle Bob and Aunt Maddy.

But you are about 30 feet away from the couple and the off-camera light you set up with a PocketWizard or a RadioPopper is another 10 feet away from them, making it near impossible for you to move like Spiderman to adjust the light angle and or direction. You are SOL.

Frustrating, right? I know your pain. I have felt it. Often.

The Solution

Thankfully, there is a new solution coming and it's called Panlight. I spoke with Mike Garrard, its inventor a few weeks back. As a Kickstarter campaign, it has already surpassed the goal he set. With only about 18 hours to go before the end of the campaign, this is the time to jump in and order one of these units. I am doing it myself because this is a tool that will come in handy if you are a wedding or a portrait photographer.

Now imagine you impressing the heck out of your clients by being able to adjust that off-camera flash remotely, from where you are standing. Can you feel that pain melt away? Your assistant could be sipping drinks on a beach for all you care, but you will be making bank with all the great images you will be creating for your clients. Sorry, but VALS may indeed become dinosaurs if you begin to use the Panlight. Plus, you won't have to jump around and get in Uncle Bob or Aunt Maddy's grid, like you used to. And, if those two had cameras anyway, you can wish them the best of luck as you go from one amazing lighting scenario to the next. Who wins? You do.

The Win

Yes, it can be that simple. Skip on out of this blog and check out Panlight now on Kickstarter or on the Panlight website, to learn more. But remember, once the Kickstarter campaign ends, prices will go up.

A special thanks to Kate McElwee, a Boston-based wedding photographer who introduced me to Mike Garrard of Panlight. And yes, she is backing this campaign as well.

How A 6 ft. 5 in. Photographer Blends In At Weddings

September 7, 2014 by Andrew Hind

I am 6'5” tall, weigh around 16 stones and have size 12 feet. When I want to use it I have a voice like a fog horn, I'm naturally fairly clumsy and I have been told that I have a certain “presence” – in a good way I think! I therefore take it as a huge compliment when my wedding clients remark that they hardly noticed me taking photographs at their wedding, that I was discreet and, as one wrote to me “I don't understand how someone so tall can be so unobtrusive!”

My natural photographic inclination is as a photojournalist so blending into the crowd is of paramount importance. I don't want to influence events unfolding in front of me and the less my clients and wedding guests notice that I am there the more natural and telling my photographs can be. I want to observe and record, my presence has to be one of neutrality.

Consider How You Look And Sound!

It's important that, like any animal trying not to draw attention to itself, that you are camouflaged. I'm not suggesting that you go to a wedding in full army gear but rather that you blend in with the surroundings! Wear what everyone else will be wearing in a slightly low key way. Here in the UK most men would wear a suit, shirt and tie to a wedding. I therefore wear a shirt and tie (no jacket as I get too hot) and suit style trousers, but I always tend to wear rather subdued colours. I have some hideously garishly coloured ties for example but they are simply going to draw attention to me so I just wear plain dark colours. Blend in and then tone it down!

Shoes are also really important. Not so much how they look but how they sound, they really need to be completely silent so that you can walk quietly around a church during the ceremony for example without drawing attention to yourself with clicking heels and endless squeaking!

On the subject of noise, it's also imperative that you switch your phone to silent for the whole day. There's no point in trying to be a ninja photojournalist with a constantly blaring phone in your pocket!

Go Anti Flash Gear

There's nothing screams “photographer” more than a huge DSLR with a massive gleaming white 70-200mm lens stuck on the front. At the very least using a smaller body and smaller, possibly prime lenses, is considerably less intrusive. The new generation of mirrorless cameras are also considerably less intimidating and quieter as well.

Even if you are still using a DSLR switch off the focus beeps, put it into silent or quiet mode and consider black taping over the logos so that it looks much more low key. Even the straps you use carry a subconscious message, large hand or belt straps are much more conspicuous than the basic neck straps that are generally provided. They may be a little less comfortable but they are far less conspicuous.

However, the most obvious thing to avoid is using flash. Nothing makes the photographer more obvious than a firing flash and using natural light wherever possible is an absolute must. There are very few situations where a modern DSLR, used with a reasonably high ISO setting and a fast prime lens, can't cope.

Super Stealth Body Language

The photographer's physical demeanour is of paramount importance and probably most important of all is that you look happy, alert and relaxed. I am aware that when I am concentrating I often frown and this sends completely the wrong message to people around me – I consciously try to keep a more pleasant expression on my face and this does have a noticeable effect on how people perceive you. Having a silent frowning photographer taking your picture is much more stressful than being photographed by a happy, confident looking one who displays open body language and this will often show in the pictures.

However, despite needing to look happy and confident in your work it can be a good idea to actually try to avoid eye contact and looking intently at people for too long. Remember, as a photojournalist, you are trying your utmost not to influence the scene before you so drawing attention to yourself by smiling and making eye contact with your subject can be detrimental to the authenticity of the final image. That's not to say you can't be friendly and often a subject will realise they have been photographed after the moment has passed as you take the camera from your eye and at this point it can be nice to smile and possibly say a thank you.

Avoiding actually looking at your subject is hard but can be an effective way of ensuring that they do not react to you. Try approaching them whilst looking intently at something beyond them or to the side of them so that it seems as though your interest lies elsewhere whilst all the time keeping a watch for the decisive moment through the corner of your eye. Using wide angle lenses can be extremely helpful in such situations as they allow you to have a subject in the frame whilst it looks as though you are not pointing the camera directly at them.

Another way to make your presence less felt is to keep circulating around the wedding party. Try to be “everywhere but nowhere” at the same time. Not only does this have less impact on people it also increases the chances of you being in the right place at the right time to photograph important developments and action. You should be constantly looking for images and positioning is vitally important – often it can be possible to be observing two or three possible scenarios from a distance without influencing any of them before decisively moving closer to one of them at the vital moment to photograph.

The “floating about” technique isn't always appropriate however and sometimes it can be just a case of seeing the potential in a scene and waiting for something to unfold and happen. Again, during this waiting game, it's important that your presence doesn't influence the scene and often waiting crouched down, standing casually, leaning on a wall or even sitting can make you much less noticeable. Other times, I will stand waiting to take the picture looking through the viewfinder of the camera and not moving – this is pretty obvious to anyone the other side of the lens but, after a certain amount of time, assuming that you haven't moved, you just become part of the surroundings and life carries on fairly much as normal around you.

Down Time

All of this incognito photography can become quite taxing after a while and it is vitally important that you have regular breaks and down time. Obviously there are times during a wedding day when you need to constantly on the go but, at a typical reception for example, it isn't necessary to be constantly photographing and having regular breaks will help keep you alert and also will mean that there are times when, from the guests point of view, you are completely absent. A break can be as brief as just heading back to my camera bag in the corner, having a quick drink and checking the timing schedule or can be a slightly more prolonged. On longer breaks I am careful to leave the main part of the wedding and to get away from the guests – this helps me to clear my brain a little and again means that I am intruding on the wedding as little as possible as well. I am always happy to chat to people if they approach me but I don't see it as part of my role as a documentary photographer to socialise with guests, at least not until I have finished work for the day, the camera is back in the bag and I am having a well deserved drink before heading home.

Whilst maintaining some of the tactics above it is also really important to balance this with your emotional involvement and empathy for the people you are working with. You are an outsider who has been given the privilege of recording a very personal, emotional and often private event and, as such, it is the photographer's duty to be as respectful and unobtrusive as possible. With the correct balance of unobtrusive behaviour and emotional empathy it becomes possible for the photographer to record the day with authenticity and integrity and produce images that will resonate for the people in them in a genuine and meaningful way. This is a hard balance to achieve but, when combined with technical mastery is the key to producing the very best photojournalistic photography.

Will You Switch To Medium Format Cameras?

January 8, 2013 by Doug Levy

Doug Levy is a photographer based in Ayer, MA. He shoots weddings and portraits. Check out his blog. Check out Doug’s first guest blog post about second shooting weddings. Doug will be teaching classes about his lighting techniques and the business of photography at Inspire Photo Seminars. Follow him on Twitter.

When wedding season starts to slow down, I start to look for interesting projects to shoot during the slower time of year. One thing I’d wondered about for years was the holy grail of cameras, medium format digital. Now, I should preface this with the fact that I’ve never shot medium format anything, let alone digital. My first “real” camera was a Nikon D70s in 2006 and I’ve shot exactly one roll of film since then, on my wife’s old plastic 35mm Nikon, and that took me six months to finish.

One portrait I’d had rolling around in my head for a while was to take a few minutes to introduce myself to Bob, owner of B&J Cycles, a Harley Davidson repair shop on my street. I thought a photo of Bob would be the perfect opportunity to test out a medium format system, so I called Derrick Brown at Imagelink to see if I might be able to rent a camera and back for a few days. I’ve been using Derrick’s calibration software for years, and we have a mutual friend, but despite his being just down the road, I’d never had the chance to meet him in person until recently.

When I called Derrick up he immediately invited me over to his studio, where we spent a couple hours discussing the options in the current medium format digital world, and ended with him offering to loan me a Hasselblad H2 and Phase One P25 back for a weekend. I suspect he knew I wasn’t going to be shelling out $20k+ anytime soon for a new IQ system, but that the used price of a P25 ($5,000-$6,000) was something I could probably pull off.

And it’s true, with a few months of careful budgeting, I probably could have afforded to pick up a used P25 system, and I even spent a few hours one afternoon looking around on eBay to gauge the market.

But here’s what I didn’t expect. While there were a lot of things to like about the H2 and P25 combo (1/800 flash sync, a gorgeous gigantic viewfinder, autofocus that was better than I’d expected, true 16-bit color), the back was beyond unusable to judge color, focus or exposure unless you shot tethered. It really makes you appreciate how far camera and LCD technology has come in a short time.

As 95 percent of the work I do is on location, and about 90 percent of that takes place in situations where tethering is either impractical or outright impossible, shooting the P25 was essentially equivalent to shooting film. By that I mean that you don’t know what you have until you’re back at your desk reviewing the files.

Now that doesn’t mean I had a horrible weekend with the camera, far from it in fact. I shot a couple hundred photos with it, and it’s an absolute joy to use. The ergonomics are well thought out and I managed its hefty weight quite well. The larger finder made manual focus fine tuning a breeze and the Hasselblad HC 80mm lens Derrick loaned me ranks up there with Nikon’s 200mm F/2 as the sharpest I’ve ever used. And when you do make it back to the computer, the files at ISO 50 and 100 are stunning in their depth and clarity.

This was probably an unfair comparison, to pit a camera that was at the top of the line in 2004 against my daily driver, the Nikon D4, but as someone who makes my living with my camera, I had to ask myself if my wedding and corporate clients would really see the difference between the cameras, and the answer to that is a resounding: “not a chance.”

That’s not to say that when Powerball hit half a billion dollars the week after I returned the camera that I wasn’t already building a brand new Phase system in my head (because I was), but until the current backs with their gorgeous iPhone-like screens drop into the sub-$10k used market, I’ll stick with my 35mm Nikon system.

So, will you give medium format its due? Do you work in medium format now? Chime in with a comment below. Thank you!

Photography Education Sucks!

January 3, 2013 by Michael Howard

Today's guest post is by Michael Howard, a photographer in Nashville, Tennessee. In addition to being a photographer, he is a visionary. He founded Musea, for photographers. He has also created the Musea Gatherings and produces a podcast where he interviews inspirational photographers.

Ok not ALL photography education sucks, but most of it does and that’s why I created the Musea Gatherings, to give photographic artists better education opportunities.

I’ve been a working photographer in the wedding/portrait industry for the last 10 years and I have lived through the digital boom, the textured images, the obsession with off-camera lighting at sunset, the Fong Dong, Trash The Dress sessions, Photoshop actions, Spray and Pray, pee yellow skies, WPPI, Rock Stars and the rise of wedding blogs.

Through it all, I sat back rather quietly, but I kept saying to myself, ‘Is this the best we can do as an industry?’ My answer is ‘Hell No!’ We can do much better, and I believe there is a ground swell of photographers craving something with more honesty and respect for the craft.

When I look back over the previous decade of education for wedding and portrait photographers, I see a lot of sizzle, but no substance. I see an obsession with the surface of things rather than deep, nourishing content. Sometimes you hear people say things like, ‘Running a photography business is 80% about business and 20% about making quality images.’ Sadly, there is some truth to that, but I blame ourselves more than our clients. Many photographers were taught that you just need to buy this awesome, radtacular action set to make your crappy photo look like a piece of ‘art’. Camera makers keep making it easier and easier to shoot in low light, so you don’t even have to think about that anymore. Just ‘Spray and Pray’ and throw some sexy film presets on there, and your clients will never know the difference. To all of this I say, ‘BULLSHIT!’

It doesn’t have to be like this, but this is why being a wedding and portrait photographer is often seen as the low rung on the ladder. A lot of it is very amateur and there is no respect for the history of photography, nor the craft of imaging making. The generation of photographers who has risen since the advent of digital imaging has been bombarded by vultures looking to make a quick buck off their naivete´. They have been pressured by camera companies to jump on the hamster wheel of gear acquisition. They have created this feeling that photographers need to upgrade camera bodies every 6-12 months. On top of that, we have been slapped around by new software and the idea of ‘Oh, I’ll fix that in post.’ All of these marketing tactics by camera and software creators have hindered great image making, not improved it. Today, there are more images than ever, but I don’t believe the ratio of masterful images has increased. I merely think the bar has been lowered for what’s ‘Awesome!’ and what’s not. The idea of ‘that’ll do’ rules the day and it’s hurting all of us.

Most education events are centered around the idea of more. You need more lenses, more off-camera lighting, more film-like presets, a sexier camera bag, more product offerings and more light modifiers. The big photo conventions need more attendees that don’t know anything, so they can sell more gear, gimmicks and magic bullets to them. Otherwise, they wouldn’t stay in business. The unfortunate thing is many of us have believed this lie at one point or another. We thought we could buy our way into being better photographers. We’ve said things like, ‘Oh if I just had that L lens, then I’d really be kicking some ass!’ So we go and buy that lens and realize our pictures didn’t improve at all, they are merely clearer pictures of our unchanged vision. When we buy that item that promises to be a shortcut to better images, we’ve actually hindered our growth by relying on another crutch the industry threw our way. Photographic vision isn’t found in the gear you buy, it’s found in your beliefs about the world and in hours of shooting.

All of this lead me to create the Musea Gatherings, which are centered around the idea of rethinking photography education. It’s time that we raise the bar instead of lower it. We should be taught by people that hold themselves to a higher standard and don’t have some fancy new toy to sell us, especially ones that look like Tupperware.

The Gatherings are about embracing the concept of ‘less is more.’ It calls out the lie that you need more stuff, when what you really need is less stuff. You need to edit your life, your career, your business and your portfolio much tighter. You need to cut all the dead weight, and the teachers at the Gatherings will help you do that.

We live in a world where we can do whatever we want. There are no rules, but the reality is that creativity isn’t fostered by freedom. Creativity is born out of limitations. It’s staying within a box, a set of parameters and coming up with as many solutions as possible. The content that will be taught at the Gatherings are designed to give you a set of mental parameters that you need to improve your work and business. You won’t be sold any magic bullets or snake oil, but you will be given some proven guidelines that will point you in the right direction and you’re assumptions will be challenged. We will shake you up, but also give you a tool box to improve your work and business.

Hopefully, you can come to one of the Gatherings this year to help create a better industry that is rooted in the history of the medium and holds all photographers to a higher standard of working. Even if you can’t make it to a Gathering this year, I urge you to improve your photography by educating yourself on the deep things of art and stay away from the empty promises of more gear and software. The next decade of wedding and portrait photography can be the best the world has ever seen, and I want Musea to play an important role in helping us get there!

Why Calibrating Your Camera’s Lenses Is A Must For All Photographers

June 19, 2012 by Wes Kauffman

Wes Kauffman is the President and Lead Technician at Perfect Image Camera, an independent camera repair center located in Lancaster, PA. Perfect Image has been providing professional camera repair service to the amateur, advanced amateur and professional photographic community for over 30 years.

“There are only two guarantees in life, Death and Taxes.” – Ben Franklin

I could not disagree more with the above statement. There are three guaranteed things in life. Death, taxes, and the fact that 90% of the lenses you buy will not focus properly on your camera. As a camera repair technician I am continuously hearing photographers complain about soft images. Either their lenses used to be sharp and now are not, or they just never performed up to their expectations. The truth is they are right, their lenses are not sharp, no matter how expensive, how new, or how well they take care of their lenses. Taking a camera and lens off the shelf, putting them together and getting perfectly sharp images is just not likely.

The reason is simple. Manufacturing relies on producing a high quality product, not a perfect product. Could Canon and Nikon produce perfectly matched cameras and lenses? Yes, but none of us could afford them. So in order to keep cost down they manufacture equipment to fall within “Allowable Tolerances”. In other words if a lens back focuses just a little, or a camera front focuses a tiny bit that is ok, because the amount of time and money it would take to get things perfect is just not worth it.

So, what’s a photographer to do? Thankfully the answer is really quite simple, Micro-Adjust (for the Canon lover), and AF Fine Tune (for all you Nikonians out there). Essentially what the manufacturers have come up with is a software solution. The process goes like this. We take a camera and lens that are having front or back focus issues, test them on an AF adjustment tool, enter the correct adjustment into the camera and voila we have a camera and lens combo that focus correctly. Now in real life it takes a little more work than that, but you get the idea. In my opinion the most practical and well thought out feature in newer DSLR’s is the AF Calibration feature. Very few technical advances have had such a profound impact on image quality as this one tool.

Now I’m going to be honest with you. Calibrating your camera is something you can do yourself, some of my customers do, and some of my customers try. The truth is a qualified repair tech can do it faster, and probably more accurately. They will have the correct tools and more importantly the experience. You also need to keep in mind that not all camera models have the AF Calibration feature built in. Here is a list of current cameras that can be calibrated.

Canon and Nikon

Sometimes calibration is not the answer to focus issues you might be having. Often times, (especially in Canon lenses) the USM (ultrasonic motor) unit in the lenses can go bad. If you have a Canon USM lens and the focus “seeks” (goes in and out without locking focus), or is very erratic (i.e. will back focus one moment and front focus the next) you need a repair not just a calibration. Nikon lenses don’t have the problem as frequently, but it still does occur. I always check a lens for these problems before I even begin the calibration process. If your lens does need repair please keep in mind that once the repair is complete it should still be calibrated with your camera.

So to wrap things up, your images are soft, guaranteed! Well 90% guaranteed anyway. Thankfully there is a solution and I can help you with it. Check out my website www.perfectimagerepair.com or click here to order your calibration service today.

Perfect Image is committed to being the solution to all your camera repair or professional sensor cleaning needs. Use the following code: “tiffinbox” and receive a $5 discount off of calibration or sensor cleaning from Perfect Image Camera.