Pascal Photography Studio

My photography studio, garage or workshop…

My house is reasonably big but in all honesty, I have no space for a permanent photography studio. Ideally, you will need a 5 by 5 or 6 meter area, that is 30 square metres, who has that spare?

So, I temporarily convert my garage into a photography studio, it is 6.5 by 6.5 wrapped with cupboards all around but it still leaves me with plenty space to work and it’s cheap. One thing I had to do was to add wall plugs all around and dedicate a trip switch. Try sharing a 15 amp trip switch with 900 Watts of big flashes, power trips no flash goes off… You get the picture.

So what will you need to transform your garage into a functional studio?

1. A backdrop fame, they not too expansive (cheaper than a studio).
2. Various backdrops, I use black (my favourite by far), white and green Chroma key, I can change them in minutes should I need to, mine are in light cloth so they are easy to store and carry.
3. Strobes and stands, I use 3 x 300 watts, I do not see the need to go above that I barely go above minimum.
4. Some soft boxes, I personally like the Octagonal ones, I have 120cm one and that works for me (I also have a rectangular and square one).
5. A couple of reflectors, a medium round and a really large (2×1 meter) 5 in 1 should do.
6. A fan, the more the power the better, to blow hair for fashion type shoots.
7. Dense Foam Mats, these are interlocking soft tiles that you can lay, so if your subject wants to lay down, it’s not a problem. Besides, garage floors tend to be a little hard and cold and if you are like me you kneel down often, the mats are welcomed.
8. A sturdy tripod
9. A bar stool or similar for Head an shoulders portraits, trust me on that, it makes life easy.

There is 2 more items, for one a camera (preferably an SLR) and a trigger for the flashes, that is where things get a little interesting. There are 3 ways one can go about this:

• TTL (Though the lens), this is done using you camera flashes, usually the one on the camera is a master and does not emit light, unless your camera can act as a controller like the Canon EOS 7D or you have a controller unit but they rather expensive. This uses infrared and in a studio environment works well. The pro part is that the camera will decide on the required flash output for you. And you will be able to control it too via the flash compensation. The bad is that little strobes are not that powerful and you are going to go though a lot of AA batteries.
• Having big strobes (since most come with a light sensor trigger) triggered by the camera’s flash, do not laugh it works, but controlling to light is a tad difficult, I have tried, it becomes too complicated. If you do that set you on camera flash to minimum and in manual, all it does is trigger the other ones, you do not want to over power them.
• Radio remotes, in my honest opinion this is the best, because it works inside and outside.

So the results?

I still look ugly and stupid, but I really wanted to show you some results and could not find a model, actually the model didn’t pitch but hey who is counting?

Notice that there are no reflection on my glasses? Well, I was playing around and then it came to me, put the darn edge soft box at the beginning of my face, so I only catch the fall off. I don’t know if I like it because the catch light is off.

And there you are, that is how I do it. The pain is to assemble and disassemble it every time you need it…

Any thoughts?

Uploading photographs to Facebook – Step by step using a browser.

Today I am going to take time off photography and talk a bit about sharing your photos, this is really for beginners but are we not all beginners at something?

There are some issues you should consider before uploading any images to any online services, one of these is the licence and copyrights of the service. In the instance of Facebook, you are giving them a lot of rights by uploading any images to it. Please read the Facebook Statement of Rights and Responsibilities carefully before you upload any images to it. Particularly section 2, which states (last updated on April 22, 2010):

You grant us a non-exclusive, transferable, sub-licensable, royalty-free, worldwide license to use any IP content that you post on or in connection with Facebook ("IP License").

Now that we have the legalities of of the way, here are a few tips before you upload any images to any social sites:

1. Resize your images to a maximum of 600 pixels on the long side.
2. Compress them to at least 70% and save them in JPG format
3. Make sure you save them in a separate folder that you can easily find again (I called mine Facebook) and do not overwrite your original photo.

Now, here is how to upload images to Facebook, for cross operating system compatibility’s sake I will be using Mozilla Firefox as my browser, though this should not matter.

First, to create an album go to your profile and click on Photos ad the following screen will appear:

Fill it in and click on Create album, this will bring you to this screen:

If you click “Select photos” the process can be lengthy and not very friendly, I advise using the Java Uploader. You will need the Java plugin to do this so allow it to download. Click “Install Missing plug-ins…” on the right top corner of your browser. Should you encounter a problem you may acquire the Java plug-in here: http://www.java.com/en/download/inc/windows_new_xpi.jsp

Once Java is installed you will get the obligatory “waiting for…” screen

But it is well worth the pain.

Now you can select and rotate your images at will before uploading them as shown bellow.

When you ready to upload, click Upload and you will get this screen

Followed by “Upload Successful!, click OK

Facebook will then redirect you to the Edit Album Screen, edit your caption here.

Then click “Publish Now” and you are done, you have successfully created an album.

There are many more function feel free to explore.

Living with a Canon EOS 7D – Part 3 – In the field, Wildlife Photography.

Finally, I was able to take my Canon EOS 7D into the field, I mean by that into the bush, how did it fair though?

Let me be honest up front, so there are no misunderstanding, after 6 months of using the camera I am still learning how to get it right. I may know how to, technically and theoretically, take a photograph but this machine is still partially a mystery to me. A mystery mostly because yours truly is off the “auto mode” and into some serious photography. Besides “auto mode” does not give me what I want, just what I expect and that is not good enough.

A tip for you, when you go into the bush choose you lens carefully, chances are you will not be able to change it as it will make you loose the moment. So, what lens are suitable in the bush for wildlife? You can look at this previous article I wrote, Choosing a lens to suit wildlife photography and Living with a Canon 100-400mm f/4.5-5.6 IS L lens in the wild, but it gets more complicated than this. Consider light, are you going out in the day or twilight? In full day light a 100-400mm f/4.5-5.6 will do fine, in twilight you would be better off with a 70-200mm f/2.8 as the reach would be limited anyways. Fine so the next question is what about flash or high ISO to compensate? Flash, forget about it, it’s unlikely to help because of the distance we are talking about. As for high ISO, in the case of the Canon EOS 7D up to 12800 which I never used, it does help and the noise control of the Canon EOS 7D makes it all worth it. At ISO 6400, you have noise but less then my Canon EOS 400D at ISO 1600, besides there are wonderful tools to reduce grain/noise, check out Adobe Lightroom 3 Beta 2 for example.

So what have I learned about taking photos of wildlife with the Canon EOS 7D ?

1. Set it to aperture priority, AV Mode. Then again I only shoot in this mode, it gives you control over the depth of field.
2. Set the ISO to Auto, surprise surprise, yes and leave it that way, it will avoid profane language when you set it to 6400 and forget that you did, I found that the camera it very good at choosing the right ISO setting.
3. Set the focus to AF Point Expansion, it will give you a little more control over the focus point then Single Point AF, just in case the subject moves.
4. Set it to spot or centre weighted average metering, I find it gives me a better result overall
5. Set to AI focus, again for flexibility (double tap the trigger and it acts as AI Servo) although AI Servo would work too but it may start hunting.
6. Set it to High or Low Speed Continuous, though for fast moving subjects High Speed Continuous shooting is advisable.
7. Have a high capacity CF card 8GB and above, trust me.

Oddly enough, I never shoot wildlife in RAW, simply because in RAW I can only shoot 6 frames (less then a second) in High Speed Continuous shooting  before the camera slows down, in JPG this rises to a cool 70 (10 seconds).

Please note that none of the photos below have been modified except for the resizing required for the web.

Here is a sequence of Impala chasing Impala shot with the Canon EOS 7D in relative low light (twilight) with the settings above, set at f/4.5 using the Canon 100-400mm f/4.5-5.6 IS L lens, the camera chose ISO 1600.

This photo of Rhinoceroses was shot after sundown with a Canon EF 70-200mm f/2.8 L USM at f/2.8 at 1/4 sec and ISO 6400, it was on a tripod. You will notice noise but remember it was dark to the point where I could only see shadows.

In daylight the Canon EOS 7D paired with the Canon 100-400mm f/4.5-5.6 IS L lens give this result.

in brief, The Camera is very good and well suited for wildlife photography, if paired with the right lens.