Category: Accessories

Lighting a White Background

photography studio
The advantage to this background is it will never tear - By Missvain

For portraits, it’s not unusual for photographers to employ a white background. After getting their Canon 5D MK II, it’s inevitably one of the first one or two backgrounds most photographers purchase.

You might think it’s easy to light a white background, or wonder if you need to light it at all. You will need to light it and it may be harder than you imagine. Once your subject gets four to six feet from the background, the light from the key falls off in a hurry. At six feet there can be a whole stop difference between your subject and the background. At a stop under the background is not going to be white, it’s going to be a flat gray “vampire background” that sucks the life right out of your portrait.

Situations like these are why incident light meters and flash slaves were made. You’ll want a softbox or umbrella on each side, positioned four to five feet off each side of your background, usually off camera behind the subject. Use a flag or white panel to keep the background flash from highlighting and outlining your subject. That will not be a pleasing look.

Adjust your flash power until the background is a stop lighter than your subject. That will give you that nice pure white glow without blowing back on your subject. In the video Gavin Hoey suggests two stops, but in my experience one is enough unless you have a lot of flaws and wrinkles in the background you’re trying to hide.

Take your light meter and check the back of the subject, just to make sure you’re not getting highlight from the background. The meter check behind the subject should not be any higher than in front. If it is, move the lights or your subject farther away.

Archiving Your Film Legacy

Plustek scanner
The Plustek 7600 Ai - by Plustek

If you’re like a lot of photographers who have been in the business a while, you probably have a box of old slides somewhere.  If you’re like me, you have cases and cases of old slides, negatives and prints stacked in a warehouse.

Maybe it’s time to move your old film and transparency legacy into the digital world.  There are some options for doing it yourself, or sending them off to someone to do it for you.

You can send them to a place like Larsen Digital where it will generally run $0.25 to $0.35 to have them done for you.  If you’re like me, you’d have to sell your car to pay that tab.

Doing it yourself means getting a slide scanner.  There are two ways to go: Cheap or spend some money to get a decent scanner.

I tried a Pacific Image scanner with limited success.  It’s adequate but painfully slow.  The specs say 25-90 seconds per slide, depending on resolution, but mine seemed to take forever.

Like with many things in photography, you get what you pay for.  A better option for me is the Plustek OpticFilm 7600 Ai.  It’s only marginally faster, but it’s doing a 4-pass scan and averaging the values.  The scans look fantastic as it’s using 48 bit color depth.

old nuke at Hanford
A scan of a slide I took at the Hanford Reservation in Washington State

The software that comes with the Plustek does an excellent job of dirt and scratch removal, which is fortunate because I can’t seem to work up the energy to make a couple passes with a static brush before putting them on the scanner.

Essential Lighting Tools – Light Panels

Photoflex light panel kit
A Photoflex light panel kit - by Photoflex

I’m always skeptical of people calling themselves “natural light photographers” because what I hear in my head is “too cheap to rent a studio”.  That’s until they start pulling out bag after bag of light panels and reflectors.

To me that’s natural light only in the sense you’re utilizing the hydrogen ion key light positioned 93 million miles from subject.  Otherwise, it’s the best of both worlds when it comes to lighting.

Light panels are handy in many situations and are light enough to pack around without feeling like a pack mule.

In the old days if I needed to soften sunlight coming through an office window it would involve a roll of fabric and some gaffer tape.  That still works, but these days a couple light panels will do the job without the tape and are useful in more situations.

If you’re doing a shoot at the beach and it’s going to be past 9 am, you’ll likely be needing light panels and a reflector.

Remember, when shooting at the beach, it can help a lot to cut some old tennis balls to fit over the feet of your panel, tripod and reflector stands.  You’ll also need some bags to make sandbags to weigh down the base if the wind picks up.

For those of you with the time and talent to make them yourself, light panels are an easy weekend DIY project.  PVC is cheap and you can always use an inexpensive shower curtain and a bag of clamps to hold it in place.  The only reason I like the aluminum frames better is PVC can get brittle over time and if you clamp down on the grip jaw you can break it.

For more information on using light panels:

http://samys.webphotoschool.biz/Diffusing_Sunlight_with_Backyard_Portraits/index.html

New Panasonic Mirrorless Lenses

Panasonic announced two new electric power zoom lenses to match up with its Lumix camera line launched in August.  The lenses, in the premium X brand series, are billed as the first interchangeable power zoom lenses.  The Lumix G X PZ 45-175mm f/4-5.6 and the Lumix G X Vario PZ 14-42mm f/3.5-5.6 are specifically made for the Lumix G Micro Four Thirds System standard.  Here’s our comparison of the two lenses: Lumix PZ 45-175 vs Lumix PZ 14-42.
If your just thinking about a mirorless camera you can view our Lumix DMC-G3 Review and GH2Review, and if you haven’t decided on Panasonic you should also take a look at our Sony Nex5 vs Panasonic G3 roundup to see the differences to the Sony offering.
Both lenses feature Panasonic’s Nano Surface Coating, rumored to be similar to the Nikkor coating, that cuts down on ghosting and flair.
Panasonic Power Zoom
The Vario PX 14-42mm f/3.5-5.6 retractable power zoom - photo Panasonic

The Vario PX 14-42mm f/3.5-5.6 is a retractable power zoom lens, making it a very compact addition to Panasonic’s line of  mirrorless micro four thirds cameras that weighs in at just 95 grams.  Internally it boasts 9 lenses in 8 groups for excellent clarity and reduced distortion through the entire zoom range.

Also included is Panasonic’s Power Optical Image Stabilization with a new type of gyro sensor, newly integrated with the power zoom technology to suppress large, slow movements.  Coupled with that hand held motion is dampened by the MEGA Optical Image Stabilization.

The lenses Light Speed focus system is driven by the AF stepping motor linked with the camera’s AF system cuts down the lag time by as much as 40 percent.

The Vario PZ 45-175mm f/4-5.6 zoom has the same nano coating as its smaller sibling in the line and boasts 14 elements in 10 groups that moves throughout the zoom range without changing the overall length.  A neat trick for a zoom lens.

The weight is a thrifty 210 grams and the lens is only 3.5 inches (90mm) from the tip of the lens to the base side of the lens mount.

power zoom lens
The Vario PZ 45.175mm f/4-5.6 zoom - photo by Panasonic

The Vario PZ 45-175mm supports the same internal gyro sensor as the wider zoom and a seven-blade internal aperture.

Listed as around $450 for the 45-175mm and $349 for the 14-42mm.  Not available in all locations this week.

Take Control of Time

shooting a time lapse
Sunsets are prime time lapse subjects - by Brynn

One of the more fascinating exercises in photography is shooting a time lapse.  To be able to  compress hours worth of activity into just a few seconds.  It never fails that you’ll see an event in a different light, you’ll notice things you can’t see at normal speed.

Shooting time lapse is a fairly straightforward process.

 

You’ll need:

  • A camera with a built-in interval timer or that accepts a third party timer
  • A very large storage card or the ability to change cards in the middle of shooting
  • A spare battery or plug-in power
  • A sturdy tripod
  • A video editing system with the ability to import a series of images as video

Doing The Calculations

First, decide the frame rate of your video timeline. I use 24 frames per second as my standard because it fits with my video time lines, which are either 24 or 30 fps.  The math works like this for 24p:

Length of event:  3 hours
Desired length of final video segment:  90 seconds
Number of frames needed for final video segment:  90 x 24 = 2,160

3 hours is 10,800 seconds.

To compress 10,800 seconds into 2,160 frames that means 1 frame every 5 seconds (10,800/2160).

Each actual minute of real time will be 0.5 seconds of video.  One frame every five seconds should yield a nice, smooth motion in the final video, perfect for clouds, sunrises and smooth continuous motion.

If the shot has a lot of moving pieces, like people and cars moving around, you may want to raise the frame rate for more continuity in the final product.  Otherwise you have cars suddenly appearing and disappearing in the video instead of driving through.

Set up

  • Pick your subject and find a good location for your camera (on a tripod) that will not be disturbed by anyone
  • Set your camera to take JPG pictures to save space
  • Set your camera to manual mode
  • Turn off auto-focus
  • Turn off auto white balance
  • Take a test shot and adjust your cameras settings to your liking
  • Wait

Once you are done you will need to use a movie making program like Quicktime Pro to put together your video.
Good luck and happy shooting!