OCF 9 - Tennis Action!

So we decided to pull drag our lighting gear one of the local tennis courts to play around.  Myron, Jason, and I showed up around 8pm to start setting up our lights.  For talent, Burgess and Judy were gracious enough to be models for us that night.  The nice part was that we had two courts all to ourselves in a fenced in area so we had some privacy and some security knowing all our gear was enclosed in one area.  We actually used both courts one to shoot, while we set-up on the other, and back and forth.  That is until someone came to play tennis...

Anyway, while doing some setup, I thought it'd be a good chance to get another OCF self portrait in.  I almost look like I can play, huh?  As far as strobist info:

-one SB24 camera left with 1/2 CTO gel

-one 580EXII camera right, bare flash

-Sun for a little back light, but was already set by the time we got everything set up

This was just a test shot for images we came up with later that evening:

OCF - Week 8 Ghetto High Speed Flash Photography - Behind the Scene

Now that I’ve had a couple days to digest what Myron, Jason, and I did this week I wanted to jot down a few things that came to mind.  Lessons learned:

-Preparation is KEY - I think we took about an hour to setup, maybe a little more.  Shot for probably 45 minutes to an hour, then took about 45 minutes to clean up.  In addition, we had talked about it a few times the week or two prior to wrap our heads around the idea and how best to capture the image.  We knew where we wanted all our lights, reflectors, and camera setup.  We had some minor adjustments, but that will almost always be the case.

-Having said that, I wished we improvised a little more.  Myron took some at different angles from different positions.  We gel’d some of the strobes in different colors.  If there’s an area I’d like to work on is being a little more creative with the materials and situation at hand.  Although, I'm pretty happy with the results, I always can't help but think we could've done more.

-On the technical side - Don’t get me wrong, I love my camera.  I think its a fantastic piece of photography machinery.  But here’s what happened when I shot with a shutter speed of 1/250th of a second.

See the black band at the bottom of the image?  What the heck???  For those of you wondering what that is, the shutter closed before the light could get in.  Myron’s D300 sync’d just fine at 1/250th.  I didn’t notice it while we were shooting(it was dark out). Although Pocket Wizards and other flash triggers say the max sync speed is 1/250, I think the 5DMk2 handles is better at 1/200.  As a side note, editoral photographer Zack Arias says he goes all the way down to 1/60th to make sure he doesn’t get any banding with his 5DMk2.  Sheesh...

Here are some other images from our high speed flash photography shoot:

Another good one shot by Myron

Shot of the setup.  You can barely seen them, but there at two black lightstands on either side of me with SB24's at 1/16th power on each.  We stuck some gobo's on them to prevent flare.  That bigh silver stand you see is "The Beast", Myron's avenger stand.  There's a make-shift boom with another SB-24 flash hanging off it for some hairlight.  Just in front of me is a large white reflector disc.  I was shining a flashlight on myself to assist with the focus in the dark.

Here we tried it while putting red gel's on the two side lights.

Now again, with all strobes with red gels.  Spookier, huh?  Almost sinister, huh?

We didn't like the all red gel look, so we tried putting a blue gel on the hairlight.  It's a different look.  This is where the hairlight starting giving out on us.

Quite literally, a shot from behind the scene.  Here you can more clearly see the two gobo'd strobes on either side and the reflector in front.

And since Myron's a Nikon user, I'm just putting this up because he's shooting with my 5DMk2.  Yes, I'm wearing a rain jacket and yes I'm wearing my snowboard pants for this.

Now what should we do next time???

OCF Day (I have no idea) - Ghetto High Speed Flash Photography – Take 1

First off, my apologies for being away for so long.  I just haven’t been as diligent with this project.  Trying to get back on track.  I have a list of excuses, but I’ll spare you from listening to me whine.

So, I was talking with my buddy Myron about different images we’d like to capture.  Partially inspired by a Chase Jarvis video(as seen HERE), I had an image I wanted to capture of splashing water on my face and freezing water droplets as they splashed on me and on their way to the ground.  Even though it was FREEZING this past Tuesday night, Myron, Jason, and I decided to just go for it.  Here’s what we did:

1. Timing - We waited ‘til after the sunset for the shoot, but setup our lights prior.  This way, we kept the ambient light to a bare minimum and freeze the action with our strobes.
2. Location – OUTSIDE.  Which was why we waited ‘til after the sun set.  Also, we wanted to keep the water outside.
3. Lighting – Myron picked up a HUGE Avenger (combi)stand which he attached a boom(it’s actually a reflector holder), superclamp, cold-shoe, and an SB-24(at 1/16^th power).  We used this for a hairlight directly overhead.  Two lightstands on either side(SB-24’s at 1/8^th power with a 35mm spread) of the subject(me) slightly behind pointed at the water(and for a little rim lighting).  We also used our own DIY gobo’s attached to prevent flaring into the camera.  And finally, to get just a hint of light in on my face we put a white diffuser panel in front.
4. Cameras settings  - Tripod mounted 5DMk2 with 70-200mm at ISO800, f/9 or 10-ish, 1/250.  D300 with 70-200mm.  5DMk2 with 17-40mm.

We started at 9pm and ended around 12:30am.  I lost track of how many takes we did, it was fun tho.  Ridiculously fun.  Towards the end we experimented with putting on some red and blue gels to see what kind of look we’d get.  But the batteries were giving out on us and we were getting tired, it was a school night after all.  Here’s my favorite one.  Pretty much straight out of camera with a little sharpening in Aperture:

(Photo taken by Myron) - See the full rez image HERE or its actually kinda cool lookin' on black HERE(Zoom in on the water droplets – I still squeal a little when I look at this).

I’ve never done anything like this before and this 3 hour exercise was fantastic.  Can’t wait to see what else we can do with this technique.  Lesson’s learned with a behind the scene images and video coming soon!

Special thanks to Myron Yeung and Jason Ku for bringing all this into reality.