Debuting Today: Best Camera

Ed. Note: Today's post has nothing to do with flash. But if you are a photographer who uses an iPhone, I'm pretty sure you're gonna like it.

Hit the jump for more on Chase Jarvis' new app: "The Best Camera" ...
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As if continually bouncing from one advertising campaign to the next weren't enough, Seattle photographer Chase Jarvis and his folks also have been hard at work creating the sweetest iPhone app yet for photographers.

I have been watching that sneaky little bast guy cranking out all of those cool, artsy photos with his phone and wondering why the hell my phone wouldn't make photos like that. Turns out, he was playing with a juiced ball. (Well, plus he is a better photographer than I am.)

I got to play with it in Seattle this last weekend and it rocks. Long story short, it gives you creative control over your iPhone photos like never before, with lots of stackable filters that you can apply to your images right in the phone.

As if that is not enough, there is also instant, one-button sharing of your images with all of the popular social media platforms -- and a dedicated, real-time site which showcases a stream of all of the tweaked images as they swim up into the web.

Not a bad deal for three clams.

He's even created an art photography book just to show what is possible with an iPhone, the right software and way too many copies of the creativity gene.

My first reaction: Why didn't I think of that?

Congrats to Chase. Best Camera is a fantastic idea, beautifully executed. Full info at Chase's blog.

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Back in The Day...

We used to have to walk five miles to school and back. Barefoot. In the snow. Uphill. Both ways.

I'm just kidding -- we had shoes.

But while you are finishing up your Boot Camp shots (which, by the way, are due today) howzabout a little inspiration from back in the '80's, when we didn't have no hotshot digital cameras?

Take this pan shot of a Yamaha bike, for instance, the original of which is absolutely perfect despite the crappy video screen grab version seen above.

What if I told you this was done on an 8x10 view camera -- using just four small quartz lights -- and no Photoshop, either.

Hit the jump to watch it happen via two, ten-minute videos.
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Today: A Full, Dean Collins Shoot

I have said before and I will say again that there is no better source for learning how to create sophisticated light than by studying work of Dean Collins. Through the wide range of shoots on his Best of Dean Collins DVDs, he shows you example after example of how seemingly impossible lighting challenges can be broken down into a series of small, solvable problems.

Are you ever gonna be asked to shoot a speeding motorcycle with an 8x10 view camera without Photoshop? Not likely.

But the point is, this is just another problem that can be solved with a thorough understanding of the principles of lighting. And if you understand those principles, you can solve -- or reverse engineer -- just about anything you come across, with ease.

So, how do you perfectly pan a fast-moving bike with an eight-by-frickin'-ten view camera?

Simple: You don't, because the bike is not moving. In fact, the bike is the only thing in the frame that is staying completely still.

The beauty of watching problem-solving at high-end levels is that your challenges start to become ridiculously easy by comparison. Which is one reason I recommend his educational materials so strongly.

And today, a big 'thank you' to the folks at Software Cinema for porting one of the twenty shoots on the 'best of' DVDs to YouTube in its entirety.

Its 20 minutes long, and shows how Collins handles such problems as creating the illusion of speed where none exists, getting highlights on the dull, black tires and creating absolutely perfect specular highlights before Photoshop.

And, IMO, the best things about these types of shoots is not that they teach you how to solve a specific set of problems. It is that they make you realize that you can learn to light anything.

So, without further yakkin':





Part 2:




You can see more -- including another video of a more down-to-earth shoot, at Software Cinema: The Best of Dean Collins on Lighting.

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Night Shuttle

Florida-based photographer Jon. M. Fletcher took advantage of a recent shuttle launch to make a unique family portrait. Obviously, you only get one shot in a situation like this. But Jon had a few tricks up his sleeve to make his odds a little better.

Jon's walk-thru, inside.
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Sez Jon:

It was really a spur of the moment shoot. 

My wife (at right in photo) was online and noticed the shuttle was launching in about an hour. I stepped outside to see how the weather looked and saw a wonderfully clear sky. My daughter and I started looking for places to shoot in my neighborhood and thought of the pond because of the wide expanse of water (no trees to block the view and the possibility of a reflection). 

After slogging through some mud in the dark to get to a concrete bank overlooking the pond, I set up my 5d Mark II on a tripod and put two SB-800s on PocketWizards on camera right and left. When we saw the glow of the shuttle below the tree line, I took three 30 second exposures at f/8, ISO 800 (without the strobes firing) in immediate succession as the flame trail rose above the horizon. Then I put the camera on timer, turned the Pocket Wizard transmitter on, and ran to be with my family to expose an image of us and watch the last little blip of the shuttle disappear behind a bank of pines to the northeast.

I processed all the files in Lightroom and plopped them on top of eachother using a screen blending mode in PhotoShop. That's the workaround I use to do multiple exposures since most DSLRs (including the 5D) won't do them in-camera.

Family portraits are always the hardest for me, so I was overjoyed to get both the shuttle and my 'ohana in the same frame. As far as the shuttle coming up in exactly the right place, that was a gift. I knew it would come up somewhere in that vicinity, but when I saw it lining up the way it did, I had to stop and give thanks.

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Fletcher is a staff photographer for the Florida Times-Union. Like photographer Peter Yang, who cut his teeth shooting for the Austin American-Statesman, Fletcher is constantly working to expand the boundaries of newspaper photography.

Any staff PJ feeling constricted and beaten down by The Man need only look to Fletcher's portfolio for inspiration.

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World Debut: Hypernova Music Vid, Shot with Flash at 10 FPS

At 10 FPS, the burst rate of the Canon 1D Mk III takes on almost a Tim Burton-like quality when shown as a movie -- a technique any sports shooter has seen while scanning through multi-frame bursts in Photo Mechanic.

Iranian crunch band Hypernova and director Richard Patterson married the fast motor drive of the camera with the Profoto Pro-8a Air, the Uzi-inspired studio strobe which can keep up with just about anything out there. (Actually, they used a whole slew of Pro8a's. Must be nice.)

First the behind-the-scenes video above, which gives a little look into how they did it. Then hit the jump for the final product and some background on why in the world anyone would want to do this sort of thing in the first place.

[NOTE: The music video is very intense, and deals with themes of religious intolerance and torture. And while the ten-FPS strobed technique marries perfectly with the subject matter, you cubicle slaves might want to turn the sound down a little and/or wait till the office killjoy hits the coffee machine. ]
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The Result:



This is the first time this has been shown anywhere, which technically means that you are at a world premiere right now. And the whole thing kinda has a "Jacob's Ladder" feel to it, IMO. (Loved that movie.)

But why not just use a 5D Mk II and do it Laforet style?

Well for starters, you would need an insane amount of continuous light to push lumens that far into a scene. Using flash as a quasi-continuous light source lets you employ the same techniques to balance your flash with your ambient that we do for still photos. (The vid is, technically, 16,000 still photos.) That is something you could not do if all of the light sources were of the true, continuous variety.

Since you are turning the flash into essentially a continuous light source with the stop-motion technique, you end up with two kinds of "ambient" and a boatload of control between the two.

The flash generators are the same water-cooled, belt-fed machine guns that Annie used for the Profoto Anniversary shoot. Much more tech info on this whole process in available a special page at Profoto.

On a side note, I am digging that song, "Universal," in the BTS vid. I am a big Bloc Party fan, and I am definitely hearing some influence in there.

For more on the band and the director visit Hypernova on Myspace or Patterson's website.
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RELATED :: Annie Shoots Conny Dufgran ::

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Robert Seale: Life in the Fast Lane

Sports portrait specialist Robert Seale had four whole minutes to shoot this portrait of cycling deity Lance Armstrong in the basement of an Austin, TX bike shop.

Which begs the question: "What's he gonna do with all of that spare time when he finishes early?"

Why, shoot three more setups, of course.

Check out Robert's very RSS-worthy blog for the speed-lighting (heh) walk-thru, and lots of other cool stuff.

Top notch.


-30-

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Hot off the Presses: Strobist OCF Magnets

With apologies to the Obsessive Compulsive Foundation, the Oregon Country Fair, the Ohio Football Club and the Olympic Credit Fund (among many others) the Strobist "OCF" magnets are now available.

The OCF stands for Off Camera Flash. Yeah, it's a little Dan Brown-ish. But we thought a rather fitting three-letter airport code thingie, all things considered.

They are not for sale -- but there are several ways in which you can score one for free. Deets inside.
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The Plan

Earlier this summer, I was looking for a way to have a little fun with part of my budget. Long story short, I dropped a thousand bucks on just over 75 pounds worth of Euro-style "oval" magnets.

Main reasoning being, "Why not?"

Being long on impulse and short on detailed follow-through, the hard part would now be to figure out how to get them out to people.

Sweatshop Ben and Emily, Inc., serving as order fulfillment?

Nope. We can't even get them to clean their rooms.

SASE's coming to the house for the next year from all over the globe?

Um, no.

So I thought it much easier (and way more fun) to just give them away. I divided the lot into five sections and we are scattering them to the winds.


How to Get One

There are three ways to score one, and all are free. (And only one way requires a purchase of any kind.)

The easiest way -- and the way in which you have the best chance -- is to make any purchase from Midwest Photo Exchange. (While supplies last -- and I would not wait too long on this option.)

They have been an incredible supporter of the site and all that goes on here, so I wanted to say thanks to the people who support them.

MPEX has even created several new products specifically for the readers of this site. So the path of least magnetic resistance goes to those of you who are supporting them -- and, by extension, the site itself. And thanks, by the way.


[UPDATE: Getting reports that MPEX may be out, as of 10/5/09. Please call to check, if the mag is important to you!]


While supplies last (and they got a pile of them) type in OCF as a promotional code at checkout on any purchase. Check your list of items to make sure it took. It should be cryptically obvious.


Another Way

The second easiest way to get one for free is a cakewalk, if you happen to attend Photo Plus Expo this October in New York. They will be available -- but not visible -- in at least three booths. There will be a code word involved, 'cause we don't want these going to just anybody with a fridge or a car to accessorize, right?

More on that later, when we get closer to Photo Plus.


The Most Challenging Way


View Strobist OCF Magnet locations in a larger map

I (as well as a certain number of people on my behalf) am simply going to start leaving them in publicly accessible locations. Obviously, the Baltimore-Washington corridor is gonna get some love because that is home base for me. But I travel a fair bit too. In fact, I have two trips planned within the next two weeks, and I will be leaving a trail of litter magnets as I go.

There are people helping from around the country and the globe, too. So the magnets could show up literally anywhere. How will you know when a magnet has been placed somewhere in your area?

That's easy. I'll tweet it on Twitter -- specific location and all. And if whoever finds it first sends me an "@strobist" tweet, I also will let people know that it has been found. So if you want to get OCF updates make sure to follow @Strobist on Twitter.

It is free and easy, and there are a whole bunch of cool photog-types there worth following. More on that later.

My goal here is to really spread these things around the world and see what happens. I have some ideas, and this will be an ongoing project with some cool surprises.


One Last Thing

There are exactly 1,000 magnets (assuming we do not repeat it) to be dispersed about the entire planet. Which means that there is a pretty small chance you will ever see another one on someone else's car.

If you ever see one, please don't be a jerk and steal it. Seriously, that would be so counter to the whole thing.

But just to let them know you could have easily stolen it, turn it upside down. You keep the good karma and they get a little creeped out.

This should be lots of fun, depending on where we can get the magnets dispersed to. And for those of you who choose to support the site's sponsors as a way of getting yours, many thanks. You make this whole thing happen.

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On Assignment: Haloti Ngata

After a long summer, NFL Football finally lights up again this weekend. And one of my favorite players is Baltimore defensive tackle Haloti Ngata.

I got to photograph him as a rookie shortly before his first-ever start as a Raven in 2006. It was for a feature, and ran lead on A-1 the day he made his NFL debut. I had a few minutes to shoot him in full sun after a long practice, so I knew I would need to knock out the sun to build up some decent light.

My first thought upon seeing the 6'4", 345 behemoth:

"We're gonna need a bigger gobo …"
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One of my first instincts when shooting a daytime portrait in full sun is to get rid of the sun. And since I live in the northern hemisphere, the best place to find a large spot of shade is always on the north side of a building. The sky is full daylight, of course, so exposing for it (or a little down, as I did here) will give you a nice, dark subject on which to add light.

The light in this case was my well-worn White Lightning 600, which was forever my go-to light for overpowering sun. Still, it is not powerful enough to beat sun at any real distance, so I tend to work in close.

When working in close, you also do not have to use a huge modifier to get decent quality portrait light. For that reason I chose a beauty dish, which gave me the added advantage of being fairly resistant to the wind.


[TIP: When shooting a sequoia-sized NFL lineman, probably better not to refer to your light as a "beauty dish."]


Actually, no worries in Ngata's case. He was super nice to me even after a long practice. And those 300-lb+ lineman take a beating in the late summer heat.

Shooting lit in the sun is like what they do to Marines at boot camp: Knock 'em down, and build 'em back up. And putting your subject in shade gives you total control over the ratio between ambient-lit sky and strobe-lit subject.


The Game Plan

Get your subject in shade. Start at a 250th of a second o get your most flash-friendly aperture at which you can sync a full-pop flash. Then choose the aperture that gives you the best looking background.

Now, adjust the distance and/or power level on the flash until you have a properly exposed subject and you are good to go. It is a very quick process, and no flash meter is needed.


Study the Films

This is a very interesting photo for me to look back at, because it illustrates the lighting learning curve that has developed on the web in the last three years. In short, when I took this photo I loved it -- in large part because of the light.

Now, while I still like the photo, all I see is missed opportunities.

There are so many things I could have -- should have -- done that would have amped this photo. Even by adding just one SB-800 speedlight, which I am 100% sure I stupidly had sitting idle in my waist pack, I had a couple of cool options.

One, I could have simply stuck it on the hot shoe for a little on-axis fill. Without a background to catch the hard shadow, an on-camera flash can work great against off-camera light. Here's an example.

But even better, I could have just stuck the flash on the ground (camera right) just behind Ngata, aimed straight up, to throw some cool uplight into his massive arms. Start with the flash on full power, zoomed to 105mm to control spill and max out the lumens. Then quickly dial it down to where you want after one visual test.

And don't even get me started on two speedlights as kickers. You could combine the two add-ons above, or throw both flashes on the ground behind Ngata (one on each side). Each solution would have looked way better than the shot up top, and totally different from each other.


Flat Foreheads of the World, Unite!

It's like McNally says, you whack your forehead with your palm enough times while thinking of what you shoulda done, and it can get pretty flat.

But your lighting gets better.

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