WPPI - Part 2 of 4 - Highlights and Shadows

Part 2 of 4 WPPI Post covers the cool new things coming out or that were new to me... and the kinds of things that I believe need to be left in the past or buried in the Nevada desert... (feel free to disagree with me in the comments, these are just my opinions!)

Highlights:

New Pocketwizards!

New FlexTT5 Transceiver

New MiniTT1 Transmitter

Pocketwizard launched a new line of their radio triggers this past week, and I can't wait to get my hands on them! I currently use Pocketwizard PWII's which are great, but have some limitations, especially in your level of control when it comes to adjusting the power of your flashes remotely. With the PWII system, I have to physically walk over to a flash and manually dial down the power I want out of it, then walk back to where I was and check to make sure it's giving me the level of lighting I want now. The other downside of the old system is that due to the very minute delay in the camera sending a signal out to the transmitter and to the receiver, it is near impossible to use a shutterspeed faster than 1/320 of a second and still have the entire image show the flash. With the new Pocketwizards that have now been announced, I can not only adjust the power of my flashes remotely, they now have a sort of ESP, allowing the flashes to fire when I want them to! You can plug the new models into your computer and actually adjust in nanoseconds, when you want your flashes to fire in relation to when your shutter release is pressed! This allows for faster shutter speeds, meaning you can actually dial down the ambient exposure much more easily. Don't want the Sun to be overpowering your flash burst? No problem! These new models will allow you to set your shutter now all the way up to 1/500 with full flash coverage and up to 1/8000 with the right type of flash and settings! Right now they just have Canon compatible models available, but as soon as the Nikon versions are released, you can bet I'll have a set on order!

New Lasolite Triflash bracket

New bracket (image taken from strobist.blogspot.com)

Another flash related accessory that caught my eye was this new tri-bracket from Lasolite. They aren't shipping quite yet, and they're a little pricy (the rep told me about $75) but imagine being able to throw three hotshoe flashes behind an umbrella or a softbox. You can get a ton of power in a very portable package with one of these, I'm probably going to wait for another company to make something similar though, I don't think I need one of these that badly to go blowing $75 on a piece of plastic. Especially when I can use gaffers tape to hold three flashes together if I need to for less than $1's worth of tape. What's funny about this, is I thought I had seen one of these before so I didn't think much of it at first, but then I realized that the last time I'd seen someone (Joe McNally) use so many flashes in an umbrella, it was MacGyver style!

Lasolite Trigrip (not sure if this is new, or just never saw it before)

I'd never seen these before, not exactly sure if they're new, but they really caught my eye when passing by Bogen's booth. They are a great portable diffusion/reflector system that collapses up into a little round sleeve that could fit in any bag. What makes these really unique though is the triangular shape and rubber grip that allows you to easily hold onto them or even prop them up against something. I have a circular reflector and skrim, but never use it because I don't want to hire an assistant just to hold diffusers. Maybe when I start shooting $100,000 weddings, I might hire a "diffusing assistant". Just kidding!

Nik Software Plugins for Aperture and Photoshop

Nik Software is VERY cool... control points are UH-MAZE-ZING!

I've played around with Capture NX (Nikon's RAW processing application) and wasn't a fan of it, but loved the concept of control points. What this is, is a really intelligent system that allows me to select a sky or a dress or a face and it can intelligently figure out where the object starts and ends. From there it allows me to adjust that specific area of an image without having to jump over into Photoshop or another standalone application. I never realized until I happened across the Nik Software booth that they partnered with Nikon in creating the U-point technology, and discovered they are now offering a great package for Apeture that includes the whole suite of plugins! I had been using Aperture since it's launch up until late last year, when I decided to tryout Lightroom and never bothered going through Aperture for my editing anymore. Now that Nik has a great offer as a plugin for Aperture, I just might start using it again...we shall see.

Shadows:

This is probably where I'll get a couple people to disagree or flat out hate what I'm about to say. Foam posing props (fake brick walls, foam columns to lean against, ect.) and painted muslin backdrops with unicorns or Greek columns belong in Sears or Walmart and/or 1992! I'm not saying you shouldn't use muslin/canvas/whatever backgrounds or that studio shooting is outdated, or that props are evil, but what I am saying is that I believe that professional photographers who do portraits using these types of tools should try to step it up and/or modernize their studios (try to differentiate from the bargin basement photography that Sears does). Backgrounds are critical for a lot of headshot and some portrait work, especially for corporate headshots, and for young children's portraits props are very useful in getting kids to sit still or stay in one place. The issue I have with the vendors (by my count there were AT LEAST 12 different backdrop vendors and 3 or more ugly foam prop vendors) at WPPI selling those types of studio accessories, was that they were trying to push stuff that looked like it came off a 2nd-rate TV show back in the late 80's or early 90's when everyone's hair was feathered and Tears for Fears was still selling out concert arenas. There are new technologies that now allow photographers to use whatever they want as a background (check out Virtual Backgrounds, very cool concept), by either optically or digitally inserting the background the way you want without spending hundreds upon hundreds of bucks on different colors of muslin to get different looks. There are real brick walls everywhere that don't look (and feel) like cardboard. I beg those out there that use those types of tools to look for alternatives that help you grow your business and separate yourself from the outdated competition.

I'm not necessarily recommending their product (still kind of complicated) but VERY cool idea...

Another thing that will probably get some people to disagree with me on is outsourcing of editing. There were quite a few companies (I saw at least 5) that are offering to take your digital files and then edit your images for you. Sounds like a real time saver, but in my opinion, in a digital age, what defines a photographer's style is not only the images he or she shoots through a lens, but also the way those images are edited and processed. I can understand doing outsourcing of photo editing for event or corporate photography where clean, sharp images with minimal artistic flare is what the client usually wants (depending on the type of client of course), but for weddings and portraits, I feel that outsourcing your editing is like buying tickets for a cruise and giving them to some stranger, it takes the fun out of it and you really don't get as much emotionally from the final results. There are times when some photographers might get overbooked and need to ask someone to help out with retouching on a couple select images, but I feel that's different, because the original photographer will already have done their basic edits that bring out their style in their work. Just a quick rant... sorry if it offends. Not trying to step on toes, just trying to give my opinion.

WPPI - Part 3 of 4 - Night Photoshoot

Bob Davis (go check out his site, great stuff!) organized a photo shoot of three models (locals) and a young couple (WPPI attendees) at night with a large group of us to walk around and get what photos we could while squeezing in with each other to get what we could. I hung out with Katie (who had the most gorgeous blue eyes!) for most of the shoot and wanted to share some of my favorite images from that night.

This is a shot I got while "borrowing" Asim's 200 f/2 lens while he was trying to get his camera working properly again...I really want this lens...but I think I'd have to sell an organ to get one!

I nabbed this shot while standing up on a railing because I couldn't squeeze in between the other photogs, I'm glad I climbed up there

Another "climb up on the railing shot"...

A roaring bus driving by whipping her hair about just screamed to have a little more motion thrown in...

With this one I played a bit around with a new plugin I'm evaluating. I wanted to bring her eyes out a bit and tint them just a tad green (to contrast the now B/W leaves), while pushing all the other color information into oblivion.

This is just a quick shot of how many people we had at the shoot!

To those who are confused about why I've posted part 3 before parts 1 and 2, I started editing some of Katie's images tonight (I'm still on Vegas time!!!) and I just kept going and wanted to post them tonight...I'll finish up Part 1 tomorrow, LOL!

WPPI Teaser

Not ready to launch the full blogpost yet, but for those who have been interested in getting a taste of the week, here's a dozen or so images from the tradeshow floor! Full post (or several) up later this week. (photos of relatively empty booths were taken before the show opened Monday morning...I slipped in past the guards to get a pre-show preview!)

I had NO idea that Joe McNally was in this shot until I got home and started looking through my images! I didn't even realize he was at the show until two days later when I saw him hanging out at the Nikon booth again!

More to come soon, check back later this week!

iPhlip: Flip Mino HD

Man these past few weeks have been busy, this time of year is always crazy and I'm always running around trying to get everything I need done in the inadequate amount of time I have to do it in...but anyways, I figured I'd fill you all in on a new toy I picked up called the Flip Mino HD. I'm going to come right out and say it, if you don't already own a video camera and you have kids or are recording important family stuff, don't buy a Flip, get a real camcorder first! I bought the Flip HD because I've was given a Flip Mino (non-HD) to test out for about a week or so to use earlier this year and found it pretty fun to have around, since Apple still doesn't allow me to record video with my iPhone. When the HD version came out I decided to give it a go, but low and behold a couple other similar products came out around the same time so I wanted to give them all a go to see which I liked better. I decided to really test out the Kodak Zi6 and the Flip Mino HD when it came down to it as most of the other similar products just didn't seem to be built all that well. I originally intended to go out and shoot video specifically for this review using both my FX1 and the Flip for a side by side comparison, but I've been just been too busy for that, so what I've decided to do instead is throw up a compilation of various video clips in varied lighting conditions to run the gamet of the situations you might find yourself recording video in. I originally was procrastinating on getting this up online because I originally thought I'd have to edit it all in Final Cut (a awesome app, but a pain to get quick clips edited), but I just got iLife 09, and the new iMovie was able to handle the footage just fine. I threw some clips together, didn't spend a whole lot of time on this, but wanted you to get a broad range of lighting examples... so you'll see that the Flip wouldn't be ideal for spelunking! I didn't use iMovie's stabilization feature, so you'll see a little shake due to the small size and light weight of the Flip. I'm fairly steady, but this video could still make you sea-sick, you've been warned! (just kidding)

(the end of the video alludes to an upcoming blog post...check back very soon)

The Kodak Zi6 has some nice features, such as removable/expandable memory (the Flip has a permanent 4GB built-in...no upgrading later) and the double edged sword of AA batteries...I say this because if you're out camping or just out with friends and your battery kicks out, you need to go find a computer to charge up the Flip, whereas you can just toss in a couple AA's from your local Walmart or convenience store. This however makes the Zi6 a bit larger and heavier, and ultimately I wanted something that was smaller (the Flip is about 1/2" smaller in every dimension) that I would be more likely to take everywhere I go. There are two other aspects of the Zi6 that made me want to keep it too, better contrast in the video as well as a larger LCD screen. The Flip has a 1.5" display, definitely not good for showing to more than 1-2 people at a time, the 2.4" display on the Kodak isn't huge but is definitely nicer for group viewing. The other primary trade-off between the two is the lenses. The Kodak has a slightly slower lens (f/2.8 vs f/2.4) so the Flip performs better in low light (Flip claims down to 1.4 lux) although the Kodak can focus much more closely, all the way down to two inches in macro mode (~28 inches in normal viewing), where the Flip has a fixed focus of about 5 feet (1.5 meters).

As you can probably tell from the above videos, this is not something you would want to record an episode of Lost on, nor would I recommend it for important family events like birthday parties, weddings, family reunions, kid's sports, ect. I would, however, recommend it (or the Zi6) for use as a backup device to always have with you even when you're not expecting to need to record something, it quick to turn on, dead-easy to use and small enough to carry everywhere. It also makes a fantastic gift for kids and teens who want to upload video onto Youtube and share with their friends. The Flip I think will become like the gateway drug for young kids who want to get into video but don't have parents that want to risk buying a $600 camcorder that gets used once or twice and spends the next 4 years collecting dust in the closet. Both products come with really simple software that allows you to do some basic editing (although I find Flip's software far more stable and faster) and do a direct upload to Youtube or Myspace. You'll notice that I've uploaded my videos to Vimeo for this test, and that is because Vimeo supports better image quality so you can get a better feel of the actual results out of these cameras.

What this also means, is now that I don't have to take out and setup all my HD Sony production gear to record things like this (wireless mics, tripods, firewire cables, ect.), I might actually start integrating some video clips into this blog, just maybe though...LOL! BTW, check out Armin's review... he was quicker to write a review than I was :(