A Good Place to Get Gear, and Why:

Midwest Photo is a mid-sized photo gear retailer located in Ohio.They have expressed a strong desire to cater to the type of photographers who tend to read this site, and typically bend over backwards to keep the various pieces of small-flash lighting gear (and associated items) in stock. Given the challenges of dealing with the various suppliers, this is a more daunting task than you might think.MPEX also ships internationally, which is very important for readers who do not have a good gear resource in their home country.Sometimes thay can get...

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Where to Get Your Gear - And Why:

Midwest Photo is a mid-sized photo gear retailer located in Ohio.They have demonstrated a strong desire to cater to the type of photographers who tend to read this site, and typically bend over backwards to keep the various pieces of small-flash lighting gear (and associated items) in stock. Given the challenges of dealing with the various suppliers, this is a more daunting task than you might think.MPEX also ships internationally, which is very important for readers who do not have a good gear resource in their home country.I have found them to...

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Flash, or No Flash?

Got this tip via e-mail from Micheal C., who interned at Patuxent back when I was a staffer there. He has now been at the WashTimes so long I feel positively ancient.He sent me this link to a post from "Night Photography by Andy Frazer." It is a great comparison of two photos, one taken without flash, and one with. Can you tell which is which?Happy Halloween, all. Get those punkin's in if you want a shot at the book...(Thanks, Mik...

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Looking Into Business Models for the Emerging Pro

Given the level of interest in the various posts about the business of photography, I am going to be setting up a holding pen in the archives for business-related stories. (As soon as I can grab a few spare minutes, anyway.)In the mean time, I would love to hear how you guys are using the web as a vehicle for digital photography commerce.We have done...

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Assignment: Shoot Your Jack O' Lantern

Local PJ-in-Training Patrick Smith of Towson University posted a photo tonight which got me thinking.The result? A quickie photo assignment that will be a good, small-scale lighting exercise. Patrick used a strobe inside his pumpkin, but that's too easy for you guys. Much better to balance three, completely different light sources - two continuous...

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DIY Safe Voltage Circuit

For the soldering iron wielding tech-heads among you:Flickr user and Strobist reader Crantastic has posted a link to a DIY circuit schematic to protect your camera from high voltage flashes on the Strobist Flickr group. For more information about keeping your digital camera safe from vintage strobes read Dont Fry Your Camera.By Mike...

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Pocket Wizards and the World Series

Baseball season once again comes to a close. But as the St. Louis Cardinals win The Series last night, at least one Strobist reader was ogling the photo gear along with the game.This morning, he asked the following on the Strobist Flicker group discussion board:"I'm not a baseball fan, but while channel surfing by the World Series I noticed a group...

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Reader Photo of the Week

This week's standout photo is by Strobist reader David Higginbotham who photographed his friend's brand new kid on his bed using a $7 piece of cloth as a backdrop.David used a Nikon D1x and a 50mm 1.8 lens. For light, he used a Vivitar 285 flash fired into a Westcott Apollo softbox on camera left.He says he is hooked on finding cheap pieces of fabric...

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Full Review: Best Business Practices for Photographers

UPDATE: Harrington has just released the second edition of Best Business Practices for Photographers. And at 523 pages, it has nearly half again more information than does the first edition. In addition to being the standard photo business book of this generation, it has evolved to include a significant amount of timely new information.Added to the...

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Lighting Boot Camp: Continued

Are you in Lighting Boot Camp withdrawal?The Strobist main-site version was a one-time, summertime affair. While it attracted a wide variety of participants, it was also very time intensive for one person to run. And there are many projects in the works at this point for this site that force me to choose where to deploy my time resources.(Unless one...

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So, Think You're a Hot Shot?

Are you crankin' those new off-camera flash skills?Yes you are, by the looks of the stuff in the Strobist Flickr pool.Strobist reader Pieter Pieterse sure is. That's his firey match photo - click on it for more info.Starting Friday, and hopefully continuing each week, I'll be looking for a reader photo to showcase. I'll look through the last week's...

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Luke, I'm Your Flasher...

Want a ready-made fall model for your growing lighting skills? Shoot your kid(s) in their Halloween costume. That's exactly what Strobist reader Resuggan did while playing with one, small flash.He put it to camera right on 1/8 power manual, stuck a red gel on it and triggered it with a PC cord. The kicker that pulled off the idea was to use a time...

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Pop-up warm-up

In the new Photo Tips column on Arizona Highways Magazine Richard Maack, Photography Editor describes superglueing a little 1/4 CTO (Color Temperature Orange) gel to the pop up flash on his Canon 20D warm the light.By Mike...

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Fourth and Long? Drop Back and Punt with a Plant.

A couple of weeks ago I was shooting a restaurant review of a joint that specializes in cuisine from the Dominican Republic. It has, well, homey decor. Which suits the cuisine just fine, of course. But I just could not make the room translate into a photo with enough impact to carry a food review. I was trying to say "tropical," but all I kept getting...

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I Can Finally Exhale.

Just got word that the data on my dead only mostly dead, burnt-smelling Powerbook is safe and backed up on a local network. The computer itself is going to Apple. Apparently, only Apple has the special sledgehammers needed to fix it.Thanks for all of the advice, prayers, chants, spells and well-wishes...

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DIY Collapsible Softbox

Strobist reader EMarc has posted a tutorial on how to make a DIY, collapsible softbox out of an inexpensive bug shield. You can get the bug shields at any kitchen store.This is a very cool use of a scrounged household item, IMO. But if you happen to find yourself at a picnic with EMarc, skip his carrot and raisin salad.Those might not be raisi...

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Free and So Easy: DIY Grid Spots for Your Flash

This is so cool. I would love to take credit for this idea, but the props go to Strobist reader Gut Mann, who posted a note in the Flickr Strobist threads a ways back.It sat on my list of (about 20,000) things to do until I saw a piece of thick, corrugated cardboard yesterday. Making these little grid spots really could not be easier. (Heck, the top...

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DSLRBlog Reviews eBay remotes

Chris Garrett, over at DSLRBlog.com, has gotten a set of "eBay remotes" and is blogging about his experiences with them.If you are considering buying them, you might consider using Chris as your guinea pig.There's also a long discussion thread about them on the Flickr Strobist discussion board, if you want to know more than anyone should ever want...

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Bits and Pieces, Oct. 13, 2006

An Untimely DeathMy laptop is dead. Burnt up. Not Dell-burnt-up, but any time you smell "burnt" coming from the inside of your laptop, it cannot be good.I don't even wanna think about what I have had (hopefully, still have) on the hard drive. The first 5,000 or so frames from my time lapse multimedia project on a maple tree in fall were there. I shot some more early this morning, just in case the project still lives.If you want to know how tied I am to my hopefully-not-former Powerbook, my wife refers to it as "The Mistress." That's an exagerration....

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So, You Wanna Turn Pro...

If you are like many of Strobist's readers, you are still an amateur. But you've gotten just enough knowledge and skills to be dangerous and you are entertaining the occasional thought about turning pro.Well, I have some bad news and some good news.The bad news is that if you just "kinda sorta" want to be a professional shooter you will never make...

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To Gerard G.:

Thanks much for your generous donation to the site. I tried to write to you to say thanks, but the address connected to Paypal bounced back to me.Glad to be of help, and more important, congrats on getting the catalog sho...

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Flickr Strobist Group Nears 2,000th Member

The Flickr group with it's photo pool and discussion board has been growing by leaps and bounds recently.We are getting many new photos from a wide range of photographers every single day. You want to see what kind of detail good light can elicit? Click on that top photo for the larger size.This constant flow of lit stuff is fantastic to watch. I...

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October Issue of PDN Kicks Butt

If you are a pro (or thinking of turning pro) you really should be reading Photo District News.We get it at the office, and everything on my "to do" list gets bumped down a notch in favor of a quick read when it arrives.The October 2006 issue is even better than most, featuring a section on four shooters who designed their own gear to help them make...

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On Assignment: Medical Illustrator

I am home sick today. Which means that I only have one assignment - an afternoon sports portrait.So I am taking advantage of my nose-running, house-bound status to catch up on some admin. I'm burning assignment CD's, gathering mileage/receipts, backing up the hard drive, etc.While backing up my hard drive, I came across some old photos from my pre-Baltimore...

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Dark Grey: The New Black?

OK, folks. I have gone through and made some changes to the footer nav bars, which were stupidly hard-coded in to every single one of the (300+) posts.Yikes.Long story short, I now have the ability to alter the color scheme of the site without a ton of additional effort.Over the past few months, I have received a small number of e-mails from people who found light grey text on a black background very difficult to read. Does the new scheme (a dark grey background) help any? My preference is to not swap to a white background, as a darker one gives...

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The Hot List, September 2006

What follows is a brief look at the most popular items Strobist readers ordered from Amazon last month.Regarding number nine, one can only wonder if "Yeah, I read Strobist" is starting to used as pick-up line. Just keep 'em work-safe in the Flickr pool, and what happens in the garage stays in the garage...In order, the September Hot List:1. 25 Pack of 9in. Ball Bungee Cords2. Kingston 512 MB Secure SD Card3. Matters of Light & Depth4. Secrets of Lighting on Location: A Photographer's Guide to Professional Lighting Techniques5. Art of RAW Conversion:...

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Easy DIY Lighting Diagrams

Over at FredMiranda.com, Kevin Kertz has created a little "unfinished" Photoshop PSD file that can be used to easily create a professional-looking lighting diagram. I'd be using it here, except Kevin would prefer it be used for personal purposes only. But if you, personally, are a personal kind of person, you can use it to demonstrate your lighting...

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If You Like, Spread the Luv.

Wanna know a little secret?Many of the "ads" that pop up on my site aren't ads at all. They are image links. Case in point: That link to MediaStorm on the right sidebar.Why would I do this? Because one of the cool things about having your own blog - and if you don't have one yet, you really should try out the medium - is that I can point people to...

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