One of the things I don’t really like about people in the park/forest pictures is that the subject (presumably the person) does not really stand out from the surrounding as much as I’d like. Perhaps it’s because I’m drawn to nature, but I find that branches and leaves, bushes and rocks often distract from the person in the picture.

Over the winter, I’ve learned how to use hotshoe flashes along with some light modifiers to bring light to a subject. I usually work hard to control the ambient, overpowering it so that I can work in studios with tungsten lights but not have to worry about colors casts when I’m using daylight-balanced flashes. If the flashes and the tungsten lightbulbs where the same brightness, then my photos would come out looking quite orange (with flash whitebalance).

So why not use the same principle in the woods. Overpower the ambient light and use flash to highlight my subject.

Yesterday I did my first shoot in the park to try to see how well I could pull this off. Here are a couple of example pictures from the shoot, showing the difference in lighting.

Here is a shot of Janine with some trees behind her. Daylight is filtering through trees to camera left and lighting her with broad lighting making for a fairly descent image.
Here Janine is being lit with two flashes, one to camera left diffused with a shoot-through umbrella and another flash behind her with a omni-bounce diffuser on it. The main light is about 2 stops over ambient. I find the forest now becomes a much more muted background and I like the way the backlight separates her from the surroundings more. I also like the 3:1 lighting ratio in the second shot more than the approximately 2:1 I was getting in the first shot.

Well, next up I’ll be trying to work with snoots and gobos and see if I can get the light even more controlled.

Janine, by the way, is a wonderful actress, model, stylist and girl Friday here in Toronto. Incredibly busy, she still finds time to work with new photographers that she considers interesting. She’s just fantastic to work with and has a great look – I hope we can work together again soon.

The jail is 145 years old. Decommissioned in 1977, it was the site of 34 hangings during the years that Canada allowed capital punishment (1908 through to I think the late 60s). Prisoners were housed in 3′ by 8′ cells that had no plumbing. Toward the end of it’s use, each of these tiny cells held as many as 3 inmates.

We got to enter the jail as part of a photography competition. Each photographer had one our in the building to take pictures. We needed to pay a $25 donation to get in, were asked to submit up to 5 photos and a print and the Don Jail gets full rights to the images. Hey, what a deal

I wanted to get something a little different than what others might try so I brought a flash along with my tripod and camera.

	The medial ward of the facility. I thought I would use a long exposure to catch me as I walk through the frame. At the end of my 5 second walk I turned just in time for a flash to light me up. The flash was placed in one of the cells, sitting on the floor and pointed up. Strobist info: a single SB-900 speedlight placed in a cell to camera right. I timed my walk so that I would stand for a moment beside the cell and the firing flash would light me up. Oh, I set the camera to rear (trailing) shutter curtain flash to do this. Triggered using FlashWaves.
	Many rooms had exposed pipe, but it was often rusted out with green, flaking paint on the walls. This room was relatively white and monochromatic which is why I decided to play. I wanted to add a bit of interest to the lighting so I light up the door with a flash to the side. Strobist info: a single SB-900 speedlight placed at camera left. The flash was on a tripod and set to wide angle. Triggered using FlashWaves.
	An unidentified room, this one had pillars separating it from the room next to it. I thought that blasting some light from the room off to the right would make for some interesting shadows. Strobist info: a single SB-900 speedlight placed on a tripod in the next room with the diffuser panel down for the widest spread. Triggered using FlashWaves.
	Death Row really struck me as a somber place, especially since prisoners did their final walk down this hall to the gallows (the open, iron door) for execution. Strobist info: a single SB-900 speedlight with a red gel placed on a tripod in the gallows at camera left, pointing out through the door. Triggered using FlashWaves.

It was great to see this old building and to be able to explore it with only 9 other photographers there at the same time as you. Being in death row and in the gallows, though, really had an impact on me and I had a really hard time sleeping over the next few nights.

Design

The D700 ergonomics are quite good – controls are easy to reach and pretty intuitive in function. It took a while to get a hang of the front and back dials as they operate in different directions from the K20D. I find the D700’s larger size (compared to the K20D) makes is pretty easy to use without a grip as I have pretty large hands. That said, I do need a grip for the D700 as most of my shots are in portrait orientation.

The K20D is miles ahead of the D700 with respect to the doors that cover the batter compartment, memory slot and cable plugs. The D700 is horrible all round, with a pull and flip door for the memory card, a flimsy door over the battery and some strange rubber door over the cable plugin area that keeps popping open on me. I wish the USB cable port was much better thought out on both systems, especially since I’ve been keen to shoot tethered. Somehow, a USB cable sticking out perpendicular to the camera and keeping a door unlatched just doesn’t seem ’safe’ nor sleek.

I found the menus on the K20D very usable. I’m slowly getting used to the Nikon menus but they seem a bit of a mess, by comparison.

Lenses

My three most oft used lenses are a ~50mm field of view, a ‘headshot’ lens like ~85mm/~120-135mm and the 70-200mm field of view.

On Pentax this was: FA 31mm ltd, FA 77mm ltd (and some DA* 55mm at the end) and the DA* 50-135mm.

On Nikon this is: 50mm f/1.4 G, 85mm f1.8 “D” and the Nikon 80-200mm f/2.8 “D” lens with tripod mount.

The shallow depth of field with my 50mm f/1.4 on the D700 is unmatched compared to my experience with Pentax. I thought the 31mm is a little sharper, but the Nikon 50mm has proven to be every bit as sharp (I can crop a headshot out of a 3/4 length photo, no problem). The 50mm and the 31mm both give great focusing, though the D700 body starts outpacing my K20D when the light gets really low (not just kinda dim, but really low). I like that the 50mm on Nikon is weather sealed – would have liked the same with my 31mm.

For headshots, the 77mm was fantastic in good light and horrible in low light. When in the studio and the ambient light dropped (ie, the sun set), the 77mm hunted like crazy – often taking 2-4 seconds to lock focus. Often it would fail to find focus. It frustrated me to no end. I picked up a DA* 55mm as soon as it became available hoping it would solve the issue. It did lock focus a lot more often, but still took about 1 1/2 to 3 seconds to lock on sometimes.

The 85mm on the D700 body is a completely different experience. Not as sharp as the 77mm, it still gives a good rendering and the lens/body combo focuses quickly and accurately. I think Nikon’s 85mm f/1.4 will be in my future, both sharper and faster to focus. I’ve found 85mm a little short for many portraits and might consider a 135mm f/2 DC.

The battle of the zooms is similar. The 50-135mm lens is just stellar. Nikon’s 80-200mm gives a very similar experience, just as sharp and creamy bokeh. Nikon’s lens is, of course, larger and heavier, but with a stubby lens hood that makes the two lenses about the same size when I’m out and about. The odd time that the 50-135mm hunts, though, it takes quite a while to racket through the entire range. The 80-200mm is much faster in that respect, and even has a focus limiter to help improve things. If you need to go from close focus to infinity, it’s noticeably better on the Nikon gear than on Pentax. But clearly you won’t be in that situation all the time…

SR vs VR/OS

One small point about OS in the lens vs shake reduction in the camera body… I’m quite shakey and had a Sigma 150-500mm for use with my D700 for the weekend. It was REALLY nice having the OS in the lens as it really helped me with my composition. With my K20D a long lens, I got a clear picture but it was often really hard to compose the image tightly because of my shake. I ended up firing 3-5 shots in continuous shooting mode to make sure I got the composition I wanted. With the Sigma OS, I could always get the composition I wanted on the first shot. I think that is why they are going to start releasing OS in their Pentax lenses – it’d be nice to have the option of which one to use.

Pentax and Nikon in the Same Photoshoot

A friend of mine and I shot for Wynn Fitness (one of two shoots for them) a few weeks back, me with a K20D/31mm and he with a D700/35-70mm f/2.8. My shots where sharper (ltd prime vs zoom), but his had more dynamic range to my eye. Other than that, shots looks quite similar between the two cameras. I shot at a slightly slower pace, but really didn’t miss any shots – even when it came to athletes jumping over balls – used prefocus, f/8 and got it every time. Because of baby oil and sweat, we did have some overexposure (1/2 to 1 1/2 stops on a few shots). The shots from the D700 seemed to ‘recover’ better in Lightroom – less of that artificial gray tone when you bump up the recovery slider.

Shooting Tethered

I really, REALLY tried to shoot tethered with my Pentax cameras. I tried with the K10D and had moderate success. It took a VERY long time for photos to transfer from the camera to the computer and I had to stay close to the computer at all time and press ‘enter’ after each photo because the software prompted you for a photo filename on saving. The K20D did much worse, I often shot ‘too fast’ and the software would crash. I’d have to kill the process via Task Manager and restart the software to continue. Pentax never did remove the ‘feature’ of having to confirm the filename when saving each photo.

I downloaded a trial of Camera Capture Pro 2 for Nikon and shot with it last weekend (part two to the Wynn Fitness photoshoot). Not only did it work seamlessly, it was really fast – photos would come from the camera, through Camera Capture Pro and load up into Lightroom via auto-import in about 6 seconds. I used two active USB cables so I had about 35′ of cable between the camera and my laptop. My client was able to look at photos as I took them and give me immediate feedback on what she liked and didn’t like. What a difference.

Conclusion

So, for me, Nikon gear gets me much better auto-focus in the studio when models are in motion (my main reason for going to a D700) and it’s faster to pull the camera up to your face and get a shot of something unexpected/interesting. I find a greater range of tones in images from the D700 and will love it when I finally get the 17-35mm f/2.8 (my DA 12-24mm was one of my fav lenses when on vacation but I REALLY would have liked a constant f/2.8 version of the lens). That said, my K20D served me really well 90% of the time and is really a fantastic camera for it’s price.

Click on the photos below to see a larger version.

For each picture, you’ll see an example of a portrait using a given light modifier. Inset in each picture is a 100% crop of the eye on the main-light side so you can observe the catch light that you get with the modifier.

The model is me. I used my new Nikon D700 camera, a Nikon 50mm f/1.4G lens along with Flashwaves wireless triggers and two Pentax AF540 flashes.

I tried to keep my camera settings at ISO200, f/8.0, 1/160th of a second shutter speed. A few times the modifier would be a half stop different than other modifiers. Since my camera was set for 1/3 stop adjustments (and I was too lazy to change it), I shot a couple of pictures at f/10 instead of f/9.5. I should have simply adjusted my ISO and kept my aperture consistent, but I’m too lazy to reshoot everything

I used a main light and a fill for this. The main light is 45 degrees to camera right and the fill is 45 degrees to camera left. The lighting ratio is 3:1 on all shots except the shoot-through umbrella where I think it was 2:1. Ya, I should have reshot that…

Finally, I left the whitebalance on ‘flash’ so that one can observe how different modifiers give a cast to the final image. In a real shoot, I tend to match up modifiers that give a similar cast and use a graycard to set a custom whitebalance.

This isn’t very scientific, but it should give you an idea of some your options if you want to explore light modifiers.

Bare Flash
Using your flash with no modifier creates a pretty harsh picture, with lots of contrast in areas where shadows fall. Note that it happens at a pretty small scale, too, so every little bump and crease will tend to show up a lot more.

The shadow falling on the curtain behind me is very hard edged. It’s very noticeable in the photo and many would think it distracting.

The catchlight is small and hard.

Finally, there is quite a bit of spill from the flash – the curtain far to the right of the photo is brightly lit. You can see the light starting to fall off a bit behind my head in the photo.

Shoot-through Umbrella
A shoot-through umbrella creates quite soft light. The umbrella used is 42″ and is able to create a fairly large lightsource. I picked it up used from Vistek for $20 after the salesman tried hard to convince me that hotshoe flashes were nowhere near powerful enough to use with a shoot-through umbrella. Gee, I guess this photo shouldn’t exist then…

Shadow transitions are less harsh so that lines and bumps are less noticeable, giving the skin a softer look. The shadows falling on my neck (from my high collared shirt) are much less obvious than with a bare flash.

The shadow falling on the curtain is very soft and feathered and does not really detract from the photo.

The catchlight is larger and has a softer edge. Though you can kind of make up a ghostly hint of the umbrella and it’s arms reflected in my eye.

Finally the spill is quite wild in this shot, even hitting the wall to camera left and helping to fill that side of my face.

Small Softbox
The softbox also creates very soft light. This particular softbox (a Photoflex Lightdome) is very small (18″ x 12″) but I wanted to see if even it could make a difference. I also didn’t have room in the kitchen to set up my 48″ x 36″ softbox Shadows are softer than a bare flash, but not as soft as the larger umbrella. The larger softbox makes for a softer light than the umbrella.

The shadow falling onto the curtain is fairly dark, but also quite feathered (soft) on the edge so it remains relatively undistracting.

The catchlight is fairly large (given the size of the modifier) and shows the modifier’s rectagular shape. It’s got fairly soft edges, though, so it’s quite pleasing. The larger softbox gives a larger, less distinct catchlight.

Finally the spill remains fairly crazy and uncontrolled.

Bounce Umbrella
If you want a fairly hard look to your pictures, but still want to keep them fairly refined, use a bounce umbrella. The shadows remain fairly dark, but with somewhat featured edges. My bounce umbrella was a cheap, used unit I picked up from someone in the neighborhood for $10. I think it’s supposed to be used with continuous light sources, but it works just great with my flashes.

The catchlight is also fairly large and soft, much like the shoot-through umbrella. Also light the shoot-through, you get a hint of the umbrella’s structure showing relfected in the eye (though it’s much less obvious).

Finally, it tends to control the spill a little better than diffusion modifiers.

Beauty Dish
The beauty dish I have is brand new and I’ve not used it in a shoot yet. That said, woah, I really like the look that I get from it. The shadows are deep, yet feathered. There is lots of spill and the light is a lot less harsh then with a bounce umbrella. I think it’s a good middle ground between a bounce umbrella and a shoot-through.

I ordered this from oeccamera on ebay – it was inexpensive and I simply drilled a hole in the mount area and fastened a 1/4″ lighting stand stud to it with a washer and nut.

The contrast is much more muted in this shot than the bounce umbrella shot. Notice how the piping on my shirt is more stuble with the beauty dish.

Finally, the catchlight is large and hard, it stands out nicely in the picture. I like it better than the catchlight from umbrellas as there is no hint of the umbrella structure reflected in the eye.

Snoot
Blam, I’m hit with a spotlight. I had to turn down the power on the flash a bit to maintain the correct exposure, this thing really concentrates the light. The shadows are really hard and the contrast really harsh, but if that’s what you need then a snoot will deliver it in spades (and using less power). While shadows cast from the subject are hard edged, the shadow around the circle of light cast by the snoot is a bit soft edged – interesting.

I ordered this from oeccamera on ebay at the same time that I ordered the beauty dish – it was nice to save on shipping Like the beauty dish, I drilled a hole in the mount area and fastened a 1/4″ lighting stand stud to it with a washer and nut. It now pops onto my light stands (with umbrella brackets) quickly and easily.

The catchlight with a snoot is really hard and well defined.

Snoot with 1/8″ Grid
The snoot actually came with a 1/8″ grid (honeycomb) attachment that is removable. With the grid on, the flash had to be set to the same power level as with the shoot-through umbrella and the softbox. The lighting is focused by distinctly shaped – with a bright center that fades outward. The shadow around the circle of light cast by the snoot/grid combo is even more feathered that that cast by the snoot alone. Shadows cast by the subject, though, remain hard edged.

The catchlight is very similar to that of the snoot.

1/4″ Speed Grid
A while ago I picked up a few modifiers from Honl Photo. Among them I picked up both grids (or honeycombs), a 1/4″ grid and a 1/8″ grid. The difference is simply the size of the ’straws’ that are packed inside the plastic housing. The 1/4″ grid creates a fairly large spotlight effect when used 6′ to 7′ away from the subject. The edges of the light are nicely feathered, both on the subject and the edges of the shadow against the background. The subject shadow remains hard.

The catchlight, like other hard light sources, is small and distinct.

1/8″ Speed Grid
The 1/8″ grid from Honl Photo creates a more focused spotlight effect when used 6′ to 7′ away from the subject. The edges of the light are very soft, both on the subject and the edges of the shadow against the background. The subject shadow remains hard. The light is a lot more focused, though, with much more noticable light falloff on the subject. If I was using a grid to light a human subject I’d use this 1/8″ – I find the noticeable falloff on the subject quite pleasing.

The catchlight is small and less distinct than either the snoot or 1/4″ grid.

So we got together one fine Wednesday with Pixie Makeup to shoot. I booked Megan Wong Studios which had just been renovated with some extra space to accommodate my ‘medium softbox’ (which is actually about 3′ deep or more).

Cassia did an AWESOME job on makeup, but it took longer than expected so we ended up with a lot less time to shoot. A few warmup shots of Kitty doing some nice posing and we were off to the races. I had bought some foil wrapped hearts that we played around with. I also gift-wrapped one of my lens boxes which has been used in a few shoots now. Finally, I bought a cake which both Kitty and Cassia dug into (quite literally).

I played around with quite a few closeups, but found that the 77mm didn’t really like to focus well on Kitty’s darker complexion. So I did most of the shoot with my 31mm and my 16-50mm zoom.

You can find a flash gallery of the best pictures from the shoot at:
http://www.photod.ca/Galleries/DarkShadeOfValentine/

–== Equipment ==–
I used my Pentax K20D camera to take all the pictures in the shoot. Most shots were taken with Pentax’s 31mm f/1.8. Full body shots were taken with the DA* 16-50mm f/2.8 and some headshots were taken with a Pentax 77mm f/1.8. I used two Pentax AF540 FGZ flashes set in manual mode for this shoot.

Lighting Diagram for the Shoot

A casting call when out on Model Mayhem and a model was chosen. Kevin had a different first choice, but c’est la vie.

Taca Hair was there doing the hair styling and I think he helped with makeup as well. Misako Hijiya did most of the makeup, Yoshimi Wada was in charge of wardrobe and styling.

Unfortunately, Candice was 3 hours late for the shoot, thinking it started at 1pm, not 10am. In the scramble to find someone to shoot with, Kevin got a hold of Rashel (his first choice of model for the event) and got her down to the studio as well.

You can find a flash gallery of my best pictures from the shoot at:
http://www.photod.ca/Galleries/Candice/
http://www.photod.ca/Galleries/Rashel/

Unfortunately, the shoot went a LOT longer than anticipated and I had to duck out shortly after Candice was ready. I got back only when Kevin and Rashel had already been shooting a long time. I got a bit of time with her, but not as much as I would have wanted.

–== Equipment ==–
I used my Pentax K20D camera to take all the pictures in the shoot. Most shots were taken with Pentax’s DA* 16-50mm f/2.8 lens, except the headshots which were taken with a Pentax 77mm f/1.8. I contributed two Pentax AF540 FGZ flashes set in manual mode to this shoot. We also used my bounce umbrellas (they bounce a lot of light) and my medium sized softbox.

–== Lighting ==–
We wanted to really blow out the background for these pictures so we bounced two AF540 flashes into silver umbrellas and put them very close to the background. We then used one AF540 as a main light and an AF360 as the fill (which, unfortunately, kept turning off and frustrating us).
The main light was in my medium softbox (48″ x 36″). The fill light was softened through a translucent umbrella.

My Pentax K20D camera was set to ISO 200, F6.7 and 1/90 of a second shutter speed.

Below is the lighting diagram.

So I book a day off work, we get together on December 29th, 2008 and shoot away. Turns out Jaime Lee Burton was there when I arrived and left some very cool Zombie Queen Designs apparel for Cassia to show off.

Cassia did her own makeup and did a brilliant job, as always. She also had some new, colored contacts for the shoot!

Taca Hair was there doing the stylin and with Cassia’s new locks (extensions), things came together brilliantly. We started off with curled extensions on either side and Cassia’s new dress.

We then mixed things up with Taca putting all the extensions on one side and Cassia donning the Zombie Queen clothing.

You can find a flash gallery of the best pictures from the shoot at:
http://www.photod.ca/Galleries/PixieLolita/

–== Equipment ==–
I used my Pentax K20D camera to take all the pictures in the shoot. Most shots were taken with Pentax’s DA* 16-50mm f/2.8 lens, except most of the headshots which were taken with a Pentax 77mm f/1.8. I used two Pentax AF540 FGZ flashes set in manual mode for this shoot.

–== Lighting ==–
I mixed up the lighting a bit for this shoot. Much of it was pretty safe with a main light to camera left and a fill right beside me on camera right. In the middle of the flash gallery you’ll see one landscape oriented headshot that I used a small (18″ x 12″) softbox for.
Safe Lighting Setup
The main light was 45 degrees to the model at camera right and set to 1/8th power. The fill was only on axis to the model at camera right and set to 1/16th power.
Both flashes were shot through a translucent umbrella.
‘Beauty’ Lighting Setup
I left the fill light were it was and move the flash from the main light into a small softbox. The softbox was immediately in front of me and about 7′ off the ground. I dialed the flash down to 1/32 power since it was so close to the model.

My Pentax K20D camera was set to ISO 400, F5.6 and 1/90 of a second shutter speed.

Below are diagrams of the two lighting setups.

I decided I would try to make my own stand. My requirements where that the stand had to be reasonably light, portable (ie, it would fit into a hockey bag when not in use) and be adjustable in size (both height and width).

I settled on PVC as a material for the stand because it was sturdy enough, easy to work with and you could get ends that allowed you to screw pieces together. I started with three 8 foot tubes of 1″ diameter PVC pipe and cut them into 2′-3′ lengths. Onto each small section I glued both a male and a female screw connector. Click on the small image below and you’ll see the ends better in the larger photo.

That’s a good start, with enough of these I can get both height and width outta this thing. Next, I need a way to create a crossbar for the stand. I decided to use curved pieces of PVC piping because a squared off corner would make it harder to slip the backdrop onto the crossbar (my backdrops all have a 3-4 inch pocket at the top so you can slip them onto a crossbar).

You’ll note that one curved section has a male screw on the long part and one curved section ends in a female screw. This is so the two long pieces can screw together making a rather narrow backdrop stand.

You’ll also note that the long, straight portion seems to ’slip’ over the smaller curved portion. The 8′ long PVC pipes actually have this flaring at one end of them – I just used those ends to attach to the curved sections and glued it all together.

Ah, now how am I going to keep all this upright? Well, it seemed obvious that the bottom of each side of the stand should be a T, and that the arms of the T should be fairly long, say 2′ each. If each arm is 2′ and you add the side of the T itself, you’ll have something over 4′ long – too long for the hockey bag. So I glued one arm into the T and left the other unglued. Turns out that the T connector is tight enough to hold the non-glued arm in place without much problem. The top of the T gets a female screw connetor and we are ready for assembly.

This is the stand assembled and standing. I used two straight sections on each side to get it about 6′ tall in total. The two curved sections are screwed directly together giving me something about 5 1/2′ wide. I usually stretch the backdrop a bit and secure it to the sides with A clamps (check your local dollar store). This helps keep the wrinkles from showing as much and also helps make the stand more stable if you go 7′ or taller with it.

Finally, I can’t recommend enough that you get yourself a cheap steam-iron if you plan to drag this around. Photoshopping out wrinkles is enough to make you loose your mind!

Note, I’ve since splurged and bought a couple of the cheapest 10′ tall lighting stands I could find. These now serve as the sides of the backdrop stand. I still use the curved PVC sections along with a few straight sections so I can get different widths.