DIY Snoot!

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So... I got a little lazy and didn't do an OCF weekly portrait this week.  Instead, for some reason my mind was preoccupied with snoots.  I was browsing around and it looks like the honl speed snoot retails for 29.99.  When I saw it, it was just a piece of fabric with velcro.  I wanted to buy one, but just couldn't justify the cost.

SO...  I went to the fabric store.  I came back with foot of canvas.  I wanted to get some sort of black fabric that was thick and could hold shape.  I ended up with canvas, but they didn't have black.  And instead of waiting or going to another store, I bought the darkest color they had which was a Navy Blue.  Add to that some sew on velcro and I spend a total of:

1 Foot Navy Blue Canvas = $1.86

1 packaage of sew on velcro = $3.49

Tax (9.25%) = $.50

Total Spent = $5.85

After almost 2 hours of careful measuring, cutting, pinning, and sewing.  This is what I ended up with.  I was pretty happy with it.  It fit nicely over the velcro speedstrap on any one of my strobes.

But does it work???  Only one way to find out!

GAH!!!  I was afraid the light would be tinted.  And as you can see, it's totally blue!  Not at all what I wanted.  But it wasn't unexpected.  It was good to make one though and the next time should be much quicker than 2 hours to complete one.  Gotta go find some black canvas.

Not bad for $5.85 worth of materials.  I save almost $25 from making this instead of purchasing one.  DIY FTW!

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OCF Week 7 - How YOU doin'???

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So this week is a little different in that I did not use any strobes as light sources.  I've always wanted to shoot by candle light so this week I thought I'd give it a shot.

A couple lessons learned off the top of my head.  It's super hard to shoot wide open at F/1.4.  This is one of maybe 3 or 4 images that were in focus.  But since there wasn't much light and I didn't want to use too high of an ISO.  Also, you can see the candles I used as a light source, but there were a couple other LED lights I used.  Different temperature lights actually made it tough to figure out what WB to use.  I wanted to see what would happen, and you can see the blue-ish light on my head and left shoulder.  I'm thinking about picking up some CTO gels to compensate for the WB differences.

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Week 6 - OCF - Ghetto Greenberg

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Was talking to my buddy Myron a while back about different lighting setups we wanted to try out and stuff.  One of the types of images we wanted to try out was a setup made popular by photographer Jill Greenberg.  She's done a portrait series on crying babies and another on animals.  A couple examples of her work are:

and

But her studio setup can be pretty complicated.  I think there are at least 7 light sources going on.  So its much more complicated than my little strobes setup.  But I decided to do what I could with what I had.

So here's my Jill Greenberg inspired self portrait:

What do you think?  I was going to drip some water from my eyes and nose, but decided that would get too messy.

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OCF Week 5 - Half Moon Bay - Outtakes

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Just wanted to share a couple of outtakes from last week's OCF self portrait before posting up this week's image.  After taking last week's image, we took some more just to make the most of driving out to the coast:

I was actually debating between the image I posted last week and this one.  I still like this one tho...  Which do you like better?

And just some silliness:

Hot, hot, hot!

Need to drag the shutter a little more here to get more ambient.

Sun is YUMMY!

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OCF Week 5 - Half Moon Bay

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I think this is the 5th OCF self portrait I've taken...  I can't remember, it's been so long between portraits.  Anyways, two in a row - pretty awesome.

So this time around, it was raining pretty hard and I was starting to think about different shots to try indoors.  But the weather cleared out and there were some clouds in the sky so I thought I'd make the most of it by driving over to Half Moon Bay to try and catch the sunset and snap some pics.  After arriving did I realize the clouds were long gone.  But we found a beach and setup for some quick shots.  The sun was so bright that I initially started popping my flash at full power.  But as the sun went down, flash was turned down to 1/2 power and eventually to 1/4 power.  So here I am watching the sun get swallowed by the ocean.:

Strobist, one bare flash only(SB-24) camera right at 1/2 power.  I got some rim light from... well, from the sun.

Special thanks to Jason for holding my busted light stand

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OCF - Outtakes

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So I had a whole mess of pictures from the last OCF session I had with Moi-Moi.  Using multiple strobes, a 70-200mm, and a dog in a self-portrait is actually pretty difficult.  Especially when trying to capture some barking/growling.

Strobes - I had the lighting set up and balanced the way I wanted, but my key light was firing at 1/2 power.  After a couple shots, the recycle time took WAY longer than the rate I was taking pictures.  I ended up with more pictures with my key light not firing than with it firing.  Here's one I think would've been a great image had everything worked:

Long lens - Aside from the lighting, I realized how difficult it is to take a self portrait with a long lens.  I was thinking about how this SF photographer (Dustin Diaz) frequently used a 200mm prime for his 365 self portrait project and now I appreciated his work that much more.  I think this would been the best shot of the night.... had it been in the frame.  Just missed, darn.

So, this was the original plan I had for this self-portrait session, but I didn't like it so much after I did it.  For those of you who know me, I've developed a recent obsession for Rubik's Cubes.  

Couple things I did not like about this.  The shadows in the lower part of the frame distracted my eye.  It's from a strobe I put down to light the background.  But since I didn't have another light stand, it was just sitting on the sofa that was there, but it was catching the back of the sofa and throwing that shadow up there.  I moved it, but couldn't get the same blown out background I kinda wanted.  Also, I dunno, I just didn't like the way the cube looked.  Maybe I need to snoot it or something.  I think I might try that at some point.

So in the end, it came down to the one I chose and another one.  I think  I chose the other one because our expressions were more matched.  But I still like them both:

Lessons learned - Balance lighting with strobes at lowest power you can keep them.  I knew that before, but I wanted to test out the new SB-24 I just bought(used).  That flash seems to be pretty solid, but I need to be carfeul if I ever crank it up to 1/2 power or more.  Need to find a way to better mark a spot for me(or any subject) to stand.  If you look at the last picture, you can see a little post it note I had on the wall. for where my center of focus was - Duh, need to have something that won't be in the frame...

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Week-errrr, I mean Month 4...

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So I know this whole “Weekly” Off Camera Flash project really hasn’t been consistent at all.  It’s more like whenever I make time to do it.  Anyway, I used three strobes on this one.  Why?  Because I can(I just picked up a used SB-24 and wanted to make sure it worked).   Originally, I just wanted to try some Rembrandt lighting, but it morphed a little.  The original vision was to capture an image of me thinking with my Rubik’s Cube.  But I grabbed my dog and made her sit with me while I tested the lighting and I just kept her with me for a Father-daughter portrait.  =)

The setup – SB24 @ ½ power shot through umbrella at camera left.  430ex shot at  1/32 camera right for some rim lighting.  580exII shot at 1/16 into wall for some overall separation and depth.


Edit - Forgot to mention in the setup a white cardboard reflector just below camera, angled up for some fill light

Me and my girl just thinking about life, love, and the hard boiled eggs in the kitchen for her nightly treat

Who's there!  We were barking at the door bell.  I tried to time the shot to get us both barking, but couldn't get in sync.  Another note, using the SB24 at 1/2 power doesn't recycle fast enough.  I wonder how quickly two SB24's at 1/4 power each would recycle?


Minor Edit - The yellow beanie is a gift from my grandmother.  Like it or not, I'm going to be taking more portraits with it.  =)


Hopefully, more soon...


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