Weekly meet Friday

200th post!

The weather looks much better this Friday. We will meet at 12PM in the art barn. See you there!

From a long time ago

Both 1/250th and f6.3. Shot two flashes at full into an umbrella. The trees in the background are like claws.

Pocket Wizard FlexTT5 and RadioPopper JrX Range: How Far Do They Go?

Thinking about getting a set of wireless flash triggers/receivers/transceivers? Here are two to check out that have good reliability. Just how far do the latest Pocket Wizard (PW) FlexTT5 and RadioPopper (RP) JrX flash triggers go? About 650+ feet during our test on campus. The two different triggers were able to transmit to the same distance, approximately 660 feet! The receivers were connected via a 3.5mm cable to a Nikon SB-600 flash on a stand about 6 feet high. In between the transmitter and receiver were a few obstructions (trees) and the area was paved and surrounded by concrete buildings and a sky bridge (not sure if these would cause interference).

Normally the FlexTT5 would be mounted on the lightstand to a light, but in this test it was just hung from the light stand while the antennae was pointed up. ControlTL (Canon E-TTL) was not tested since we were using an SB-600.

The Pocket Wizard FlexTT5 units are rated at "30 to 1200 feet for basic triggering" (depending on flash, orientation, environment, etc.)
The RadioPopper JrX system is rated at "300 to 1750 feet depending on conditions and the environment."

Conclusion: They both perform as well for basic triggering. Which one yo should get depends on your needs and current system. If you want E-TTL, get the PW. If you want to save some money, get the RP.

Pocket Wizard Pros:
Works with Plus II units
Works with Canon E-TTL metering (Soon Nikon)
Customizable with new firmware updates

RadioPopper Pros:
Small
Cheaper at about half the price
Can seemingly be mounted in any orientation

I was standing to the north. Flash on the south end, pictured below.

Alex talking to me on the phone confirming the flash fired.

How much can one person carry?
How can you be sure your stands do not fall over and hurt someone?
Is someone watching over your equipment?

Camera convention in Grapevine

January 30 and 31, 2010
Grapevine Convention Center
1209 South Main Street, Grapevine, TX

Open to the public
Adults $5.00 admission
Children under 12 enter free with adult
Saturday 10am - 5pm and Sunday 10am - 3pm

http://www.donsphotoequipment.com/

I plan on going this Sunday for my 4th time. This time, I'm looking for a canon FD mount to use with my 7.5mm f5.6 lens, or maybe sell the lens to a vendor.

Meeting this Week 1/29

Weekly meet this week. It will be Friday, January 29 at 12:00PM. We will meet in the art barn as usual. Bring your ideas of where you'd like to shoot! ;)

Today's Meet

A large group today. It's good to have new people and the usual members. It looks like Friday's work the best. Too bad campus just isn't as busy on Friday.

Just a couple to share today. This is Sofia (Sophia?) who volunteered to pose for a few minutes right next to the Green Hall building.




Couple more here.

Off campus shoot planning

Let me know what you guys want for this semester. Leave a comment.

Meet up Friday afternoon

Our next meet up and photo shoot is Friday 12PM to 1:30PM. Anyone from UTD is welcome to join.

We will meet in the art barn.

What's left on campus for backdrops

Here, I have the formal three point lighting setup. 60 inch diffused key light on camera right. 43 inch umbrella fill light on camera left. Bare light above subject for hair light. The key was on 1/1 (full) power and the fill was on 1/4. The entire shoot was done at 1/250th, f8, and ISO 160.
I discovered during post process that f8, the aperture I used for the entire shoot, was causing the image to go dark; I bumped up the exposure a bit in Photoshop's raw viewer- a simple task as the software can batch adjust many images in real time. In photos prior to this image, the exposure was where I wanted it; what had additionally caused the photo to go dark was the increased distance between my key light and subject. In this particular image, the key light was about 4 feet away from the subject; before, I had the key at a very close 2 feet of distance. Note that the hair light did not accommodate the tree well so I left that light out.
Key light on camera left, still at full power. The reason I wanted to stick at f8 was because I wanted to darken up the ambient lighting. With the help of cloudy skies, the f8 and 1/250th combination can underexpose the ambient lighting just enough to bring out the lit subject more. Remember not to trust your LCD screen when checking for exposure, read and understand your histogram instead.

Entire shoot gallery.
I have mental notes on improving subject posing in all of these. Talk to me in person if you wish to learn more about the posing aspect.

Cameron and His Unicycle

I pulled 10 pictures from today. Here are a couple that I liked best. Cameron mentioned that he also does some fire spinning which I would love to see and shoot. Perhaps like the cover of Joe McNally's Book "Hot Shoe Diaries" The rest are here.

How are these times?

To take into consideration starting next week, I might change up the primary meet up time. Assuming that you want to use my lighting equipment, pick which of these being the best for you. I'm considering...

Mondays 12PM to 2PM,

Tuesdays 2:30PM to 3:30PM,

Thursdays 3PM to 4PM, or

Fridays 12PM to 1:30PM ... as meet up dates.

My choice will depend on everyone's availability for those times.
Now, there can be meet up times other than the ones listed here but more than likely I won't be able to attend those because these are my open times.

Reply in the comments or email me.

We'll still have meet up Tuesday this week.

meetup this week

Meetup this Tuesday at the art barn at 2:15pm, will last about an hour. Guests may come late or leave early as need be.
Wear warm clothes.

Indoor shoot

I passed around my camera to Alex and Nguyen so they could take some photos of our model.
Since those images were on my card, I uploaded them to my site- images are respectively theirs.
Alex's gallery

Nguyen's gallery

To the photographers: I did a raw to jpeg conversion with no modification. You can download each of your photos to your hard drives using the bar which hovers over your image.

Alex and Nguyen will share their photos from their cameras when they get the chance.
My tamron lens isn't so sharp it seems, even at 5.6; I'll leave that one at home next time.
Can you guys guess the setup? answer in the comments.


The art barn had some interesting artwork. Frank, if you are reading this, I'd like to give you the proper credit for your work which made a nice backdrop in our case. No profit is made from this shoot, or any of ours for the matter.

Photo Dump

my most recent photos:


one ZEUS™ Z2500BTH Bi-Tube Head w/ octobox camera right at -f5 power


ZEUS™ Z2500BTH Bi-Tube Head in large octobox @ f5.0 camera left, Z2500SH Standard Flash Head camera right in diffused beauty dish @f4.5


ZEUS™ Z2500BTH Bi-Tube Head in large octobox @ f5.0 camera left, Z2500SH Standard Flash Head camera right in diffused beauty dish @f4.5

Thursday at 1pm

Nguyen and I will be doing a photo shoot at the art barn. Anyone may join up.
214 718 2387

Take a look at this massive slide show for the many posing techniques being applied. These are the kinds of shots that sell. Remember you are not trying to impress yourself in the business, you must impress the customer. Examine which photos are in the 'in' and see which kinds of shots sell; it may be good looking to you, the artist, but it's ultimately the customer who will keep your business alive. I recommend comparing your own portfolios and searching up established professionals' portfolios to see where you are missing the mark.

Catching Up

Don't forget, next meet is this Wednesday at 1PM, Art Barn. It will be the last one of the semester.

The following are from two weeks ago.

Linda





Julie




Brandon

See you Wednesday!
ryan

Next meet on December 2nd

Take a breather this week.
Next meeting will be on Wednesday, December 2nd at 1PM in the Art Barn.
Time to get clothing for warmth and equipment handling, e.g. gloves

Have a good Thanksgiving!

Arboretum

Past and present members. Lighting setup by everybody else.

Arboretum Pictures

Here are a bunch of portraits from Saturday.