Behind The Scenes

Behind The Scenes Behind the scenes at a shoot in my studio, ... eh... I mean, spare bedroom.  This shoot was for an upcoming blog post which should be posted in the next few days.

This is the first time I shot tethered to my laptop using Lightroom 3's built in tethering feature. It was useful to see a large image on screen but it takes a while to download the files. But another advantage is that the images are already on the computer and it was very fast to import the temporary catalog I was using for the shoot into my main catalog.  Way quicker than uploading via USB anyway.

Holga Dog

Holga photo of a dog (Chocolate Labrador Retriever) This photo of my dog, Sassy, was an experiment in using a Holga plastic camera and an off camera flash (Strobist style). The flash is camera upper right and is shot through a white umbrella and there is a silver reflector camera left to bounce some light back. I was using a Holga 120N which has a hot shoe and the flash was triggered remotely using an Elinchrom Universal Skyport radio trigger. The film stock was Fomapan 100.

What you see here is a crop of the actual negative. I compensated for the viewfinder alignment by composing the dog slightly to the left in the frame but the field of view was just too large and I got a lot more of the surroundings in the photo than I had intended.

Also noticeable is that I am off with the focus. Yes, I know the Holga is supposed to be soft but next time I think I will measure the distance and focus appropriately.

I developed the Fomapan in Kodak HC-110 dilution H. Unfortunately, my negatives were extremely dusty. What you see here has been cleaned up in Lightroom but the dust is baked into the emulsion so next time I will need to do more for dust control. I don't normally have this problem so I wonder is there something especially soft about the Fomapan emulsion.

Scanning the negatives was not straight forward this time. Because the images are very low key, I couldn't use the auto-everything exposure mode and had to tweak each scan manually.

Overall, the experiment was an interesting one. I'll post a few more images from the shoot once I get time to play with the negatives. Next time, I'd like to try the Holga off camera flash with a human subject but the people I know are not as easy to bribe with treats than Sassy is.

By the way, you can see the digital test shots that I took to check the light here .

Photo Shoot Practice - Olympus 35 RC

Photograph of an Olympus 35 RC 35mm rangefinder camera Today I decided to take some shots of my Olympus 35 RC, a compact fixed lens rangefinder from the 1970s.

To take these shots, I was using a very basic "Strobist" set up with a Canon Speedlite 430 EX flash mounted on a stand firing through an umbrella camera left. I also used some white foam core on the right to reflect back some fill. The flash was fired remotely using an Elinchrom EL Skyport Universal radio trigger.

The camera I used was my trusty Canon 40D with a 24 to 70mm L f/2.8 lens. I metered using a Sekonic L-308s Flashmate meter.

Photographing an Olympus 35 RC 35 rangefinder camera

I am still learning flash photography so came upon a few problems. One of those can be seen in this following shot.

A photograph of an Olympus 35 RC Rangefinder 35mm camera

Reflected in the lens is the clear outline of the umbrella. I would have preferred for this to not be so obvious. I tried playing with angles and also with the set up you see below but I wasn't happy with the results. In this set up I am firing the flash through the diffuser part of a Photoflex multi-disk but the reflection was still too noticeable.  Still a lot for me to learn for sure.

Trying to solve a reflection problem

Olympus 35 RC 35mm rangefinder camera

For all of the shots I set the camera on manual mode with the shutter speed set at 1/60.  There was daylight coming in from an open door camera right and also through a window behind the subject so I wanted to use some of the ambient light.

Most of the shots were shot using an aperture of either f/8 or f/11 except the photograph above which was shot at f/5.6. I found with apertures less than that the depth of field wasn't as pleasing to me.  The flash was used in manual mode and the power was set from 1/2 to 1/8 depending on what aperture I was using or the distance of the flash from the subject.

The gear used during my Olympus 35 RC photo shoot

The photograph above shows most of the gear I used today. At the top is an Interfit light stand and Wescott shoot through umbrella. On the next row is a Manfrotto 498RC2 ball head. Next to that is my Canon Speedlite 430 EX flash with a hot shoe to PC adapter connected to the Elinchrom El-Skyport receiver below. Next to the flash is the Canon 40D with the 24 to 70mm L f/2.8 lens and next to that is the flash meter, a Sekonic L-308s.

Below the 40D, is the matching Elinchom trasmitter and some no-name light stand adapter. At the bottom is a Manfrotto 190XPROB Pro Aluminum Tripod.

As I said I am still learning this type of photography so there is a long way to go before I will be truly happy with my images. But it is always a good idea to shoot as often as possible and learn from the experience each time.

Below are the rest of the "keepers" from today.

Close up of the top of an Olympus 35 RC

Close up of the top of an Olympus 35 RC

Olympus 35 RC detail shot