Hummingbird Studio!

20090815-hummingbirdpanosetup, originally uploaded by craig.proulx.

I recently got the chance to setup and play with the hummingbird studio I have test out all summer. With the help of my father, we had a pivoting bracket madeup by a local metal shop. The beauty of the bracket is that it is fully adjustable! You can use it in many different ways, even as a macro light directly affixed to a camera body! I hate being stingy on info, but I don’t want to give away the details just yet, as he might decide to patten and market it in the near future! The studio itself is basically a bunch of speedlights (580ex, old 550’s, 540ez’s) setup in front of our muslim aka little piece of foamcore clamped to the side of a gazebo where there is a feeder setup. People think we are crazy for having over 12 flashes between the two of us, but surprisingly, you can find these perfectly older units that have been slightly used or sometimes even brand new for very cheap money. In most cases you don’t need to concern yourself with TTL because the best way to do a lot of this strobist stuff is on manual anyway. These older flashes, while they may not have the latest and greatest technology, can still act as slaves from masters such as 550’s or 580’s. We chose to use a 3 way sync cord, in comination with the wireless feature for this setup. As you can see, two of the flashes have battery packs, which are nothing more than 8 additional AA’s connected to the flash. It greatly increase the recycle time, and I swear by these things when doing weddings! For those of you wondering about the batteries themsleves, please note that I am relatively new to the rechargable battery world. However, I have been successfully using the duracell NI-MI AA’s and have no issues. You want to make sure you buy the pre-charged ones, though, because there are two different types of rechargables. One is a slow discharge and one is a fast discharge. In a nutshell, one type will stay charged for months at a time when not being used, while another type will only last a week or so before draining down. I found out the hard way, but luckily not on a paid job! The reason now for all those flashes is to freeze motion. I have to admit that I am not completely satisfied with my photos, but a lot is due to the fact that I believe I had some stray ambien light in the frame, that I failed to notice. These flashes have something that higher powered studio lights don’t…shorter flash durations! In fact, when I added an alien bee 800 to the background, the longer duration of the alien bee caused even more ghosting than I had without! When trying to freeze something like a hummingbird, the most important thing is flash duration. Keep all the power dialed down as much as possible. Even 1/128 power if you can! In this case, we wanted plenty of coverage to really bring out all angles and sides of the bird. Side lighting and backlighting, also provides separation from the background. The shutter only has to be set at your sync speed, and no faster! Some manual focus these shots, but I find the autofocus to work very well. Hummingbirds usually come into feed and then backoff a couple of inches from the feeder where they hover before going back in to feed. It is at this hover point where I will lock my focus and wait until they return to this postion before tripping the shutter. I must appologize for again not having the best example to show you, but I thought this was a fun experiement and now I know exactly where I want my improvements! Remember, you really need to watch any stray ambient light. Your exposure should be a nearly completely black frame without your flashes going off. Ambient light will cause ghosting. Set your shutter to near sync, and find an f stop that will kill this light. Position your lights, meter them, and wait! Below is my panorama of a hummingbird sequence. It is composed of 3 separate exposures. Next year, I will try and nail it in one. Don’t know if it’s possible but, I am sure gonna try!

Studio Problem Solving

Somtimes when working with lighting, we reach a wall.  This product shoot involving a watch is a perfect example.  I was shooting this watch for my stock/commercial portfolio.  I shot it on black plexi-glass to utilize the reflection of the watch as part of the composition.  A simple monolight in a softbox and some fill and black cards made up the ingredients for this recipe.  A canon EOS 40d on a tripod, with a 150mm lens completed it.  I finally got the right combination of highlights and shadows that I wanted by manipulating the two cards.  The black card I used the control the reflection of the softbox and other stray highlights that were hitting the highly reflective black plexiglass.  The white card gave me just enough fill. 

Now for the challenge.  This watch happens to glow in the dark.  I wanted to get a shot of nicely lit watch with the face glowing. 

Ok, so first I need to get the watch to glow.  I pulled out my favorite tool:  the multiple exposure!  I knew I already had the original shot in the bag, so I simply shut off my studio room lights, and shot the exact same composition and angle exposing for the glow in the dark faceplate.  Pretty simple.  Later I would just brush it in using layers in photoshop.

Now I realized I had another issue.  I am so glad I realized this at the time an not when I got in photoshop and had the whole set broken down already.  The issue at hand was the glare on the watch’s glass face I was getting from the camera angle I was at.  In my original shot, it wasn’t a big deal.  The glare was manageable and I feel it didn’t distract to much from the watch itself.  In the case of the glow in the dark watch, it really would have hindered the effect.  I knew if I changed the camera angle, relative to the watch, it would solve the problem, however it would not work well trying to merge the two copies in photoshop.  I could maybe move the light around and fix the glare, but then the face would not be lit like I wanted and most importantly the same way the first exposure was.  So what did I do?  Pulled out a circular polarizer, screwed it on the lens, and rotated it until most of the harshess in the glare was gone.  I could tell when to stop rotating, by watching the reflecting of the whole watch on the plexiglass disappear.  So in the glow in the dark image you see below, I used a total of 3 separate exposures to create a glare free, glow in the dark, studio shot of a watch.  I haven’t been doing a lot of landscape photos lately, but it is a good thing I had that polarizer in my bag.  It saved me a lot of time in photoshop in the end.

The Canon G10! More than just a “Point and Shoot!”

CanonG10test-web-0120, originally uploaded by craig.proulx.

I have always wanted to get a decent compact point and shoot camera to pack in my pocket for travel purposes. I was fortunate enough to recently get my hands on the new Canon Powershot G10 and decided what better way to break in the camera then to put it to one of my tests.

First, let me start by saying that the G10 is not your ordinary “point and shoot”. It is a 15 megapixel camera that can shoot RAW and comes with a hotshoe. I decided to shoot a simple, 3 light commercial type shot using a mountain bike. Using an off camera shoe cord mounted to the G10, I fired off a speedlight in a small softbox to my left down at ground level. The speedlight was set to master and using the Canon wireless system, I was able to control a gridded speedlight to my right for some fill light, plus fire off a strobe with double fluorescent color conversion gels behind the bike. I zoomed the flash to give some kick. I also used a piece of white foam core below the softbox to provide a little more fill. With all that in place, I must say the camera did a fine job! With the G10, I was able to shoot at ISO 80 to give me a fairly noise free image. Controlling the master flash (main light) was simple to do from the camera’s menu, as it gives you a fair amount of control over a 580EX.

Don’t mean to sound like a spokesperson for Canon, but if anyone out there wants a compact, point and shoot that has the ergonomics of a DSLR, I highly recommend the G10. Like most point and shoots, the lowest ISO’s are the greatest. Noise is definately there at 400 and above, but for a compact I can handle that. The resolution this camera I am impressed with also. I see no problem printing 8 X 10’s or even larger from the G10. All strobes fired using the Canon wireless system.

I should also add that I will be getting the underwater housing for this and maybe an underwater strobe as well in an effort to capture some marine life when I go to Aruba in December.  I don’t expect many keepers for the first few tries, but I am sure eventually I will get some.

–Craig