Tag Archives: Honl

That portable studio

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So when I pack by bags to do a location shoot, like today’s executive headshots shoot, you saw in a recent post that I bring rather a lot.

And what do I use? How does it look when it’s all set up?

That setup process, which takes about 45-60 minutes including carrying it all from the car in stages, results in this:

This setup consists of:

  1. A grey backdrop. I like grey because you can make it any colour, from black to white.
  2. The main (“key”) light: a light stand with Bowens 400 Ws monolight in a softbox. This is fired by a Pocketwizard (just visible, top left)
  3. The fill light: a light stand with a Bowens 400 Ws monolight into an umbrella. This is fired by the slave cell.
  4. The background light: a mini  light stand with a 430EX Speedlite, with a  Honl speed strap and a Honl 1/2 CTB gel. This light is fired by a Pocketwizard, using a Flashzebra cable.
  5. The hair light: another a light stand with a 430EX Speedlite, with a  Honl speed strap and Honl snoot. This light is fired by a Pocketwizard, using a Flashzebra cable.
  6. A stool.
  7. The camera set to 1/100th sec, f/9, 100 ISO, and equipped with a PocketWizard to fire the other flashes.

It doesn’t look like all that much, but when you write it out, and then add the power cables, connection cables, bags, and so on, it’s quite a lot.

Fun with gels

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Tonight, I had some fun trying various new gels.

For those of you new to photography: a gel is a coloured material that you put in front of a flash to change the coour. You typically use these for background colours.

Usually I use a slight correction gel (1/2 CTO, 1/4 CTB, etc) to perhaps warm a background up a bit or to give a corporate shot that slight blue tint in the background. But tonight I thought I’d play with some great new colours.

My system for the test shots below was:

  • A key light to camera left, in a softbox on a Bowens 400 Ws monolight
  • A fill light to camera left, into an umbrella, using an Opus 250 Ws monolight
  • A Hair light, also into an Opus light, and snooted
  • A background light: a Canon 430 X flash with the various gels. I used the excellent Honl system: the speedstrap on the flash, plus gels conveniently Velcro’d on.

So for these gels I used some basic colours and the new Honl “Autumn” and “Hollywood” gel sets. Great colours. Here we go, and look how each gives you a very different shot:

[1] The new “Autumn” kit:

Egg Yolk Yellow:

Chocolate:

Rust:

Dark Salmon:

Medium Blue-Green:

[2] The new “Hollywood”-kit:

Follies Pink

Steel Green:

Rose Purple:

Smokey Pink:

Pale Lavender:

And for comparison, some basic primary colours: Red, Green, Blue and Yellow:

And finally, what it looked like with no background light, white background light, and “heavy frost” background light:

Note: When you play with gels, do not forget to set your white balance to “F;ash”, so your canera does not try to adjust the colour away.

Now to see these colours side by side, check them on one page: http://www.mvwphoto.com/gels/

Misc

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Backgrounds and sharpness and white balance: oh my!

I thought I would chat about some of the things that go through my mind when doing a portrait, like this one last night:

Questions like:

  • What camera and lens? In this case, the Canon 7D and a 50mm f/1.4 lens.
  • What settings? Well, manual at 100 ISO, 1/125th second, f/5.6 is my standard start point, as it was here.
  • What lighting setup? In this case, a standard two main lights (softbox main light on camera left, umbrella fill light on camera right) with a snooted hair light behind left, and a gridded gelled background light. Note that while the main lights were monolights, the background light was a small speedlite fired by a pocketwizard through a Flashzebra hotshoe cable.
  • What lighting ratio? In this case pretty flat, but usually more like a 3:1 key:fill ratio.
  • What body position? Usually angled, in this case toward the softbox.
  • What head position? In this case, straight on since the subject wanted it that way.
  • What colour background? In this case I used a blue-green gel from the new Honl Photo “Autumn” colour gel set.
  • What viewpoint? I carefully choose this by moving myself left and right, up and down, until the person looks best to me for the portrait wanted. If in doubt, I take multiple views and choose later.
  • What white balance? I set it to “Flash”, even when shooting RAW, just so I get OK views on the back of the camera.

That’s all there is to a quick snap like this, which took a few minutes – if that.

Tidyness is godliness.

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Flashzebra offers many handy strobe accessories. Together with my Honl accessories (such as the speedstraps, gels, snoot, grids and bounce cards) I have an outfit that is at the same time more professional, more convenient, and more portable.

I talked about the speedlite cables recently. My latest addition is these: small holders for Pocketwizards that allow you to tie them onto a light stand.

This means that your outfit looks more professional, and the antenna points up, but it also means that I no longer need to hang the PWs by the cable. This has always been annoying to me. Problem solved!

Detail view:

Easy: they screw onto the PW at the back and you tie them onto the light stand with a durable elastic. Much recommended.

You're in business

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I just read an article about a New Mexico-based photographer who was sued (and lost) for refusing to photograph a same-sex wedding. Something about her “belief system” (not sure how believing comes into taking photos, and not sure how systematic such beliefs are).

I hope it is needless to say that I will be more than happy to shoot anyone’s ceremonies and events, from conservative old-money weddings to leather fetish parties to same-sex ceremonies – hell, if people are having a good time I’d be delighted to photograph it:

But this case does raise an issue: when you go into business as a photographer, do realise that you are in business, and that ordinary business laws apply to you. Copyright, model releases, responsibility for damage, lawsuits such as the one above: all these are worthy of consideration.

So if you wish to do business as a photographer, my advice is to have

  • Good written agreements
  • Stated Dispute resolution policies
  • Model releases
  • Disclaimers
  • Stated policies, and so on.
  • And liability insurance.

Relatively small effort, and you never know when you may need them.

OK, I’ll shoot anything fun: after the break, a few more sample shots of that recent event, but first the legal Disclaimer: if you are likely to be offended by slight lack of clothing, do not proceed past this point.

Continue reading →

Pocketwoes

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Nah, I exaggerate. Pocketwizards (specifically, the non-TTL model, namely the Pocketwizard II Plus, of which I own five) are great. But I do want to draw attention to two issues to watch out for.

First: what am I doing. I am firing a Pocketwizard, as in my post a few days ago. Meaning I have this setup:

The camera contains a TTL flash, plus from the PC-contact (the X-contact) I am firing an additional flash, set to manual at low power.

I even have three brand-new Pocketwizard-to-hotshoe cables [link] from Flashzebra – recommended, both the equipment and the company. My order arrived promptly via US mail (as did the mounting brackets that you see under the PW – these allow neatly mounting the PWs onto lightstands). No UPS ripoff.

The Gel on the flash above is a Honl Photo blue gel, to add a splash of colour to a photo I was working on.

To my surprise, I have found this Pocketwizard setup to not always be reliable.

When I mount the PW onto the top of the camera hotshoe, no problem. But when I use the PC connector on the side of the camera, and a cable supplied with the Pocketwizard, no go sometimes. I can fire the camera or even press the local PW’s button, and I get intermittent remote flash firing.

I have so far narrowed the issue to the following three causes:

  1. Bad X-sync contact. I needed to use contact cleaner and squeeze the connector a bit to ensure good contact.
  2. Antennas need to be polarized equally (if the sender is vertical, ideally the receiver needs to be vertical as well).
  3. Maintaining the distance from the speedlite is a good idea: Speedlites can interfere.
  4. Radio signal: when I continuously press the sender’s test button, the receiver’s LED should stay on. Normally this happens. Even when I hold my hand by the sender’s antenna, the receiver normally stays solid. But when I attach a cable to the PW, even when it is dangling in mid air and not connected to the camera, it is much less reliable.

I mean this:

With that cable, whether connected to the camera or not, the sender seems to send out less power than without. This is not surprising: the wire probably affects radiated power and pattern. But it is good to be reminded this is a radio transmitter and radio is black magic (and I am a licensed radio ham, VA3MVW, so I have some appreciation of this).

The moral of this story: Watch out, the rock solid reliability of Pocketwizards, which I had always taken for granted, is not guaranteed. Especially when not using the hotshoe.

But by watching all factors above, I think I have it down to a reliable setup -and when I have issues at least I know what they are and how I can address them.

Update: see the post I wrote a few hours later about RF chokes

Add a splash

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I recommended recently that you might want to add a  splash of colour every now and then. So here’s an example.

Our Christmas “tree”, lit with just a bounce flash. The background is exposed properly (I used -1.3 stops exposure compensation in Av mode). But still: kinda bland, no?

So let’s add a dash of colour. A pocketwizard connected to the camera, and one behind the tree connected via a hotshoe cable to a 430EX flash. The flash was on manual at 1/16th power, and on the flash I had a Honl Photo speed strap with a Honl Bright Red gel conveniently velcro’d on. Now we’re talking!

If I had had more cables (I am awaiting a shipment of hotshoe cables…) I would have added a green one as well. But this is already much better thwanwhat I had before.

Oh and just to show what the flash alone would have done: if I disable the bounce flash, here’s what that same shot would look like:

Bit overly dramatic, but add some more light and it has potential!

Here’s the setup:

(Small note: I have, I must admit, found the X-sync to Pocketwizard contact unreliable and I am not entirely sure why: Maybe the connector itself? But the hotshoe contact is flawless.)

And finally. I wanted red and green, but had only one working flash I could drive with a pocketwizard.

Solution?

Which, after a bit of back and forth with manual exposure, flash compensation, and remote flash power, gives me this:

Or, if you prefer a brighter room, this:

You see how much fun playing with colour and light can be?

Movie night

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Yesterday night I and a few photographer friends watched David Honl’s two-DVD workshop combo, “Light”.

David Honl is a well-known LA-based international photographer whose blog you can see here. His DVD shows him using small flashes to do various professional shots, and he both shows and explains how he gets the excellent results he does.

Disclaimer: I am on David’s Round Table, together with Joe McNally, Lucas Gilman, Ken Cedeno, Cherie Steinberg Coté, and Gavin Blue. I am delighted to be on the Round Table because Dave’s small, light and convenient small flash modifiers have made my life easier, and I am inseparable from them.

Since the roundtable is not a paid position, I feel perfectly qualified to comment objectively on this DVD.

So, the details after the break:

Continue reading →

A softbox to the rescue

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LumiQuest_Softbox3

I have been playing with my new flash tools. I shoot things with three Canon 430EX Speedlites, driven by a 580EX speedlite on the camera. I use Honl Photo speedstraps, grids, snoots, and gels, and a Lumiquest softbox of the type pictured above.

But sometimes it is easier. The portrait on the right was of my friend and colleague Peter West an hour ago, on the Lakeshore Road in Oakville.

MVWS6680

I shot Peter with the 1Ds MkIII with 50mm f/1.4 lens, set to “P” mode for a change.

On the camera, the 580EX flash that was not actually contributing light (master flash disabled). In my left hand, fired by the 580 EX’s infrared remote control, a 430EX flash fitted with a Honl speedstrap, a Honl 1/4 CTO gel to warm the light, and the Lumiquest softbox (available from Henry’s; description here).

I used two stops negative exposure compensation (-2 stops). That makes the background sky nice and blue and it makes the unlit face of Peter’s face two stops darker than the lit part. That’s what you want.

It is easy and it is effective. By using these simple techniques, even your snapshots can be well-lit and dramatic.