Bit and Pieces, 11/12/2006

• Inside Commercial Photo

If you want to peek inside the pages of the $300-per-year Commercial Photo magazine, there are three pages up on Flickr. In addition to the picture at left, you can click here or here to see a couple of other setups.

I am seriously thinking about subscribing. Life's too short, not to take an occasional flyer, ya know?




• Why Can't I Have This Much Free Time

Our own Christopher the Photographer channels a little late-night Duane Michaels with his 4am 1-8 series. Follow the link to see it as a slideshow on Flickr.

I would like to congratulate Christopher on making it all the way through eight whole photos without the inclusion of a single beautiful woman. I'm pretty sure that's a first for him.


• eBay Remotes: The Magnum Opus Review

Strobist Flickr group member Gisle Hannemyr has posted the "eBay remotes" review to end all reviews. If you are considering buying them, you'll want to read it.

(Thanks for that info, Gisle!)

• Out of Town Sunday and Monday

Me and The Missus are hitting the road for an anniversary weekend getaway - without the curtain climbers. Got a great deal on Priceline for Sunday night at the Westin Embassy Row in Washington DC, and we are touring Capitol Hill on Segways (woo hoo!) for four hours on Sunday.

The laptop - or as The Missus refers to it, "The Mistress" - is not invited. So I will neither be answering e-mails nor moderating comments for the next two days.

If you post anything, it will pop up late Monday afternoon.

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Low-End Theory: One-Gallon Modifier

Flickrite Muzzlehatch has constructed a diffusing reflector (or is that a reflecting diffuser?) from a winshield washer fluid bottle for his macro work. A complete how-to photo set is here. It looks to me like this would work well off-camera, perhaps at the end of a monopod.
By Mike H.

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TGIF -POTW!

OK. First of all, sadly TGIF does not mean jack to me, as I work on Saturdays.

But in the fall, Saturday means college football, and I will be shooting the Maryland vs Miami game. So I am not complaining. At least until 2nd quarter, when the daylight goes away.

But Friday also means reader photo spotlight on Strobist, and today's Picture of the Week was shot on assignment by Patrick Smith, who is a student photographer for Towson University's paper, The Towerlight.

Take a look at Patrick's photos (scroll past the election pix) and tell me if you would not be happy to be getting sports features like this from your PJ student photographer if you were the Towerlight's editor.

Why, yes. You would be happy.

Patrick is cranking some serious sports portraits for a college puke. He is way ahead of much of his student competition, for whom lighting means only studios, big flashes and lots of unanswered questions.

If I could impress just one thing on all of you college PJ students out there, it would be to distance yourself from the rest of the young herd by learning this stuff ASAP. You have so many years to just get better and better at it.

And as for the overall quality and quantity of the pool photos this week: Wow.

This is what I'm talkin' about.

You guys rock.

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More on Commercial Photo Magazine

Thanks to Alert Reader EssPea, who posted a link in the comments section for Google's on-the-fly translation of the Commercial Photo website, we can all read the nuances of Far Eastern lighting in plain old English.

Sort of.

The bots are decent, but they won't win this year's Booker Prize. Here's a typical line of English generated by the translator:

"... Recently, the occasion where the work is photographed, three keywords, “sizzle” “eros” “grotesque” float in the head. The person seeks [eroteishizumu], scratches the desire to tastiness in the sizzle impression and is built. And the desire, although being grotesque, is fascinate. ..."

I dunno about you, but I've always wanted to scratch the desire to tastiness in the sizzle impression.

So, if you'd like to "scratch your own desire to tastiness," by all means, scratch away.

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Pssst. Wanna Buy a Used SB?

Lord knows where he finds this stuff, but MPEX has come across a big pile of used Nikon SB speedlights. Did I tell you this guy knows what we like, or what?

I counted 18 as of Wednesday night. If you are looking for one, they range from $65 for SB-24's to $169 for the SB-28's as of this writing. To get to them, just click through to the Strobist section and scroll down.

(Oh, and if you happen to be burdened by too many Nikon SB's hanging around, they'll be glad to make you an offer. Heh, heh.)

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A Japanese Strobist Magazine?

Alert Reader "Bjorke" writes the following in the comments section of DIY Lighting Diagrams:

Have you ever seen the Japanese magazine COMMERCIAL PHOTO from Genkosha? Every issue covers the local advertising scene along with TV commercials and had detailed coverage of ad and other lighting setups, complete with such drawings (and snaps of the set).

I admit it's hard to get here in the states, I always pick up a copy whenever I'm over there. Sometimes Kinokuniya and other J-vendors have it in the U.S.

Well folks, you know I had to check this one out.

I mean, a magazine about lighting setups? That pushes the definition of niche almost to the point of fetish. Honestly, who in the world would devote an entire publication to droning on and on about lighti...

Oh, yeah. Right. Sorry.

So I looked into it.

Sure enough, there it is on Amazon. Only $300 a year. Amazon says they are printing it in dual Japanese/English, but others say only Japanese. Wish I knew for sure. That'd be a bummer if the only mag in the world that featured lighting setups was only in Japanese.

Not ready to spend $300 on a foreign lighting mag, you skinflint? Well, you can check out the website, gratis, here.

Or, the Google translator bot will serve the whole thing up for you in stunted english. But where's the challenge in that?

If any of you guys are familiar with this publication, I would love to hear more about it.

Should I spring for the $300?

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News: Midwest Photo Exchange to Partner With Strobist.com

Strobist.com is very pleased to announce a brand new partnership with Midwest Photo Exchange (MPEX), the Columbus, Ohio photo retailer.

What does this mean for you guys? Lots, actually.

First of all, MPEX has come through for us again and again when other retailers were not able to stock items such as the double-fold umbrellas and compact, 5-section stands. Why? Because MPEX is big enough to make it happen and small enough to care about a rag-tag, far-flung group of small-flash enthusiasts like us.

When everyone else was out of stock, Moishe Appelbaum, (who runs MPEX - that's him above) was able to work magic worthy of Max Klinger from M.A.S.H. to keep the hard-to-find goodies in stock.

In the last few months, he has been quietly scouring the globe to find the cool little pieces of gear that let us do things for a fraction of the price (and weight) of the Big Studio Light donkeys out there. Moishe has made it his business to learn about the gear we need and collect it under one roof.

MPEX's website may not have the sophistication of the big New York shops, but he offers what they can't - personal service and a commitment to building long-term, personal relationships with photographers. Clicking on the MPEX ads will automatically land you onto an MPEX search that shows several pages of Strobist-related gear.

Wanna know how to make your flash adapt to take a PC cord? email 'em and ask. (Be sure to add their e-mail address to your address book, so their answer will not be diverted to your spam folder.)

As for pricing, Moishe works very hard to match the largest NYC photo houses, but with a couple of bonuses. First, the service is more akin to your neighborhood photo hangout. And second, MPEX is very reasonable on shipping - especially to the international folks when compared to the NYC international shipping rates.

I have listened hard to the international readers who are not able to find many of the items that we frequently discuss on the site, and so has MPEX. The further you live from the center of the photo universe, the more you are gonna appreciate these guys.

A few months ago I had a wonderful phone conversation with an AP shooter from Columbus that gave me a full description of Midwest Photo Exchange's Columbus store. It's exactly the kind of place I spent countless hours hanging out in when I was a greenhorn. It smells like a photo store. It has bargain bins. It has wooden floors worn by the countless shufflings photographers' feet over the years.

Says the local shooter:

It's the kind of place where you walk in and they know your name. You ask for something and they say, "You know where that is - get a ladder and grab it off the shelf."

These guys know photo. Their mission is to build strong, lifelong relationships with photogs while they are sill in school.

Which is exactly what they want to do with us.

No, there's not a ton of money to be made with $20 double-fold umbrellas. But many of you guys are getting to be good shooters. Really good, actually. There are many current and future pro's among you, and MPEX would love a chance to earn your business. And, besides, not everyone lives within shouting distance of a great, person-to-person photo store.

Well, now you do.

These guys are straight shooters. They are fair. They are reasonable, And we matter to them. More than we matter to anyone else, I dare say.

If you value the information you get from the site, all I ask is that you give them the opportunity to earn your business.

You support them, they support me and I support you. Simple as that.

You get a great photo resource and they keep Strobist free for every serial flasher on the planet.

Questions? Comments? Rants?

Read what others are saying and/or talk about it here.


Main Site: Midwest Photo Exchange
Strobist at MPEX: Click Here
Via E-mail: E-mail MPEX
Phone: (614) 261-1264

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