Revenge of the Cheap Ring Flash Adapter.

I have been using a ring flash for the past few months. It makes for really dynamical images with saturated colors. I even use it to shoot flowers. The image on the left was taken with Profoto equipment: Ring Flash, two gridded strobe heads (one on each side), one behind the subject (Hey Luna!) and one large softbox close to camera left. However, a ring Flash, four strobes and a large softbox is quite an expensive set of equipment to own and will set you back a few grands.

So what if I only have $80 and buy one of the cheap Ring Flash Adapters that one can find on the web? They are pretty cool, you mount them on top of your Speedlite (I have the Canon 580X II), you hotshoe it on camera and you can even shoot TTL with it if you like. I have found mine on ebay (It's called "COCO"), but you can find one very similar here. Or you can buy the well known "Ray Flash" for about $200. The right image was shot with it and an optically slaved Alien Bee softbox at camera left.

The obvious, large difference is the power output. At the lowest power output of the power pack the Profoto Ring Flash still shoots at f20!; the Coco+Speedlite has a guide number of about 35 (i.e: at ISO100 you can shoot at f3.5 at 10 feet with the Speedlite at full power). The adapter only uses 1.5 stops of light compared to the naked Speedlite, not bad! So if you need depth of field
or need to shoot outdoors AND have the cash definitely go for the Profoto, but be prepared to temporarily blind your subject if you are not careful and go after that notorious "Ring Flash" look. (Note: the Ray Flash has an official GN of 45 with the same Speedlite, so it is a bit more efficient than the COCO).

The adapter allows for a slightly different look: I shot the image on the right at ISO 100, f2.8, wide angle and at 1/16 power for the Speedlite. I was at about 2 feet from the subject (Hey Lucianne!). This combination allows for two effects: a sharp light falloff and shallow dept of field. I think I dig it.

What's cooler than being cool? Ice cold.

I had to shoot clear glass and I wanted to make a dynamic image with a lot of punch. I am quite pleased with the outcome. So here is how I did it. First of all his is actually a composite of four different shots using the same glass, but each glass was shot in the same way. The background is a large light box lit with two Profoto heads.

The glass is lit with a top strip light softbox. The table top is is white, with a glass sheet on top. However, the glass comes off from the back edge of the table and that's were the highball glass sits. Makes sense? You get the cool reflection at the front, but the bottom of the glass is partially illuminated by the back light and the table edge, being transparent is barely visible and easily disguised with Photoshop.

The ice cubes ..they are plastic fakes, but look super cool and it'd be much harder to do the shot with real ice, as it would melt quickly and ... float. The drink in the glass is just water with some corn syrup, to give it the surface tension of say, vodka (this is an important detail, do not overlook this). The colored stuff is just diluted food dye. However, getting the cool patterns as the dye drops in the glass was not easy. I used a small syringe to drop the dye from a few inches above the glass. First I diluted the dye into water and that did not work. The dye would just form a layer at the top without actually mixing. Not cool. The trick was to dilute the dye not in water but in mostly pure corn syrup, which is much denser and heavier. Once dropped into the highball glass it'd sink creating a wake of cool ripples. Expose with the background almost a pure white (but not overblown) and the glasses a couple of stops darker. Minor Photoshop post processing, mostly retouching and increased the contrast in the shadows a tad.

Shot at ISO 100 f22, 1/125th, power pack with equal power for the background and the strip light, so about 800wsec total. The Profoto heads were great and having a fast recycle time crucial to get several images every time I dropped the dye. If you are doing this at home and have less power just open up a couple of stops and you should be fine.

Flowers. Add water.

Aren't flowers pretty? So the assignment was to shoot flowers "with hard light". As the key
I used a small Alien Bee strobe( +grid) to camera right just above camera and a cheapo Sunpack
to camera left, behind and below the flowers. A foam core board provides fill and the black background cover some of the light from the Sunpack. The Alien Bee gives the texture in the red flower and lights the drops at camera right. The Sunpak lights the yellow flower from behind.
There is also a little gobo just below the flowers at camera left. The water was just a simple plant sprayer that I was rather furiously pumping while taking shots. Getting the time right was the difficult bit. I am quite ahppy with the result; the cross lighting sculpts the stems and the general backlighting lights up the water drops against the dark background. Optional: I added a small negative temperature shift in Lightroom to make the water look bluer.

Now the important bit: How do I get the water drops sharp? Shutter speed is largely irrelevant as the max sync speed is 1/160th and the flash duration is shorter anyway..but how much shorter? I needed the flash "pulse" to be as short as possible. As a first attempt using the strobes at ~ 1/2 power and setting the camera at iso 100 and f16 produced streaks with each water drop. Not good.

The solution is to lower the power of each strobe, as that makes the light pulse shorter in duration. Less light = larger aperture...however, I wanted the depth of field to stay decent as we want the drops to appear sharp. A good compromise was to shoot at ISO400 and f11, lowering the AB power to 1/16th- and the Sunpak at 1/8th.

The final camera settings: ISO400, shutter speed 1/160th, f11, 52mm.

Overall shooting time: 45 mins. I like flowers.

Bright Shiny Things

The assignment calls for "soft tungsten lights", so I had been looking for an object that would have actually been easier to photograph using tungsten lights rather than strobes.








This is usually the case when the object is itself a light source that the strobes would overpower even when dialed down. So here it is: a Mac ThinAir in a Crumpler bag.

The light scheme starts super simple: a softbox over the bag (higher on camera side, almost touching the bag at the back) ), with the modeling light on. That gives the nice diffuse light on the cover of the ThinAir and the soft shadows. I then added a white LED light inside the bag to add a little more punch to the white light that comes from the keyboard. The computer is on so that the Apple logo is illuminated. The red bag adds a nice touch of color, but with the tungsten lights balance the computer looks yellowish and the bag has no punch....

The solution is to actually color balance on a grey card. That makes the alluminum a perfect gray and shifts the LED light to the blue: the red bag becomes more saturated and the keyboard now gives a cool "high tech" glow. The logos in the back are sligthly blurred, but that is a feature to
highlight the front corner and make the picture more 3D. There is ample space for text if it is needed. Shot at 100ISO, 50mm,5' exposure. Only minor blemishes retouches in postproduction.

Dear Richard, it's on.

I have been doing some research on Richard Avedon's work. It is obviously a different approach to the subject compared to others of his time (much colder and well a little predatory compared to the sympathetic one of say Irving Penn). But is it just about throwing in a perfectly white background (and having your subject stand up for an hour?) Not really, as his subjects are actually fairly low contrast (with the exception of the signature slightly overblown skin). I suspect burning and dodging only played a secondary role, and the "signature look" was actually a very distinctive light histogram distribution (in PS lingo) , that back in the day was achieved by using specific developing techniques. So I am doing some research....
This is a good way to (self) describe his work:
"I've worked out of a series of no's. No to exquisite light, no to apparent compositions, no to the seduction of poses or narrative. And all these no's force me to the "yes." I have a white background. I have the person I'm interested in and the thing that happens between us. "

This paragraph was taken from a comment by Jay Johnson on a photo forum.

Back in the 60's, 70's and 80's that NYC fashion guys were big into what everyone is calling the "Avedon look" including Avedon.

Most popular was shooting Tri-X overexposed (pushed to 1200 or more) with a #25 red filter. The models were made up with black lipstick and black nail polish. The film was processed in Dektol 1:3 or 1:4 at 70F for 4-5 minutes after a pre-soak.

This technique results in a porcelain looking skin and a soft but high contrast look that glows."

Will give it a try.

With a Little Help from my Friends.

This is a simple attempt at balancing
day light with a Q Flash and a softbox. I tried to be subtle, but the effect is quite evident. The flash was 1.5 yards from the model (hey Laurie!) at camera left pointed a bit down. Shot at 32mm 1/100th f 4.0 ISO 100. Flash power down to 1/8. Note to self: use longer focal length for better blurring of background+make flash less evident.

Joe Six Pack

How appropriate. This is a simple product shot done with a digital SLR. The camera is at 45deg.
3 strobes. two softboxes left and camera right with edges close to lens. One gridded flood pointing to the white background under the table level. First set with the Sekonic L-758dr light meter, and the 24-70 f2.8 Canon lens. I know, I upgraded.

Incident dome metering pointing at camera on the near corner of the box. Shutter speed 125th.

-1 all lights: f5.6 Each soft strobe: f4.0. Background f1.2 Shot at f4.5
-2 all lights : f16 Each soft strobe: f11. Background 2. Shot at f14.5

The background measure just shows that there is little spill to the front of the beer pack. The intensity at the background remains the same, it meters f32.5 for the second configuration , 1.5 stops above the midgray at the pack.

Note: the smaller aperture shot is colder by 300k. I corrected with Lightroom.

The whole exercise is about learning to control the depth of field and using minimal postproduction re adjusting. The fun part will be to compare with a 4x5 shot with tungsten lights that I have lined up. Stay Tuned....