Focus On Ottawa

World renowned photographer Chase Jarvis says “The best camera is the one you have with you.”

My camera was in the shop for repairs, and I saw this flower. I could have kept walking past it, resigning to the fact that I didn’t have my good SLR camera with me. But instead I took this picture with my phone (iphone). And I think it turned out pretty good.

Most people have cameras on their phones, which means most people always have a camera with them. So if you see something interesting and you don’t happen to have your SLR with you, don’t give up. You could have a top end super camera, but if you come across something rare and extraordinary, the best camera isn’t your top end camera, it’s the one you have with you.

Lens compression is a peculiar effect that occurs when you change the focal length of the lens.

There are two effects of changing your focal length (either by zooming in and out with your telephoto, and/or changing to a different lens size on your SLR camera).

The first effect is the potential distortion of your subject at a small focal length, such as at 16mm, or a flattering perspective at a larger focal length (such as at 200mm).

The second effect is the relative size of background objects in relation to your subject.

Let’s take a look at these two effects in an example.

When you look at these images, if you haven’t seen this effect before, it can be quite astonishing. There’s no trickery here – we didn’t move the trees or the model or the vehicles in the background. This is all done by changing the focal length of the lens and repositioning the camera either further or closer to the subject (the model).

In the first image, note how flattering the capture of the model is. There is no distortion of the appearance of her body.

Also note how close the black truck and the background tree appear to be in relation to the foreground tree and model.

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Let’s face it, photography equipment is expensive. A beauty dish, which is just a reflector that wraps around your studio strobe, can cost you up to $1000. Take a look at some of the prices here.

A beauty dish casts a harsh(er), direct light onto the subject. But since the light is reflected outwards, it makes a larger light source. And since there is a go-between that blocks the light from coming directly from the bulb, the light is not as harsh as a bare strobe or a strobe with a reflector.

Short definition: basically a beauty dish is harsher than a softbox, but softer than a bare light.

So if you want to experiment with different light modifiers, but don’t want to mortgage your house, why not build your own?

Now professional beauty dishes are typically bigger, and they are engineered to evenly distribute the light from the small reflector into the larger dish, but we’re just playing around here – this is good enough for us to play with, unless you are shooting for a high end glamor magazine (IMHO).

I purchased the metal bowls at Wal-mart, in a box of 5 mixing bowls for under CDN$13. A great bargain!

Note I am building this for my cheapy Cowboy Studio strobe. I wouldn’t recommend jamming this DIY beauty dish on an Elinchrom or Prophoto strobe – it does scuff it up a bit.

Items needed

34cm metal bowl

16cm metal bowl

3.5 inch, 1/4 machine screws x 3

1/4 hex nuts x9

Black spray paint (optional)

Equipment needed

Dremel tool for cutting and cleaning

Metal cutters

Screwdriver

Pliers

Marker

Protection glasses!

Work gloves!

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Step 1:

Take your 34 cm metal bowl, place your studio strobe on the bowl. Center the strobe.

Using your marker, draw where you need to cut the bowl to fit the studio strobe through.

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Step 2:

Use your Dremel tool with a cut-off disk to make a triangular incision in the middle of the bowl.

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Step 3:

Use your metal cutters to work out from the incision, to cut around the circle you drew for the diameter of your strobe.

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Step 4:

Use the cleaning tool and/or sanding tool to smooth out the inside cut in the bowl. You don’t want any sharp bits that could cut you.

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Step 5:

You now have a bowl with a nice clean circle in the center. Congratulations! You won’t be mixing any salad in this bowl anymore.

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Step 6:

Test fit the bowl around your studio strobe. You may have to widen the hole a bit if you cut too conservatively.

Hopefully you didn’t make it too loose. (You can use a speedring from a softbox if you made it too loose, but let’s hope it doesn’t come to that).

Hold the small bowl in front of the light so you can see what the end result will look like.

You can move the bowl forward and backward to see the optimum position of the small bowl for the most even light distribution.

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Step 7:

Mark where you will be drilling to place the machine screws on the big bowl.

Put the holes at equal distance near the center – but don’t put it too close

to the center where you might break the edge.

Do the same to the small bowl – but again – not too close to the edge.

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Step 8:

Drill your holes. Make sure you are wearing your saftety goggles! Metal will fly everywhere.

Note I didn’t really drill on the ground, this is just for demonstration purposes.

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Step 9:

Drill your holes on the small bowl too. Use a workbench, not the ground!

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Step 10 (optional):

Spray paint the outside of the small bowl to make it look professional-like. Make sure none of the paint goes on the concave part of the

bowl, because that side needs to reflect. (You can use the Dremel polisher if some paint does get on the reflective side).

I used Tremclad glossy black spray paint.

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Step 11 (optional):

Use masking tape to cover the big and small holes on the big bowl, and spray paint the rear of this bowl too.

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Step 12:

Feed the 3 machine screws through the small bowl.

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Step 13:

Put two hex nuts on each screw. One hex goes on the opposite

side to the machine screw head (against the small bowl) to keep it from sliding. The other hex will be pressed against the

large bowl to prevent sliding.

Feed the machine screws into the large bowl. This might require some “persuasion”- i.e. brute force.

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Step 14:

Secure the machine screws with hex nuts on the outside of the large bowl, then tighten the “inside” hex nuts against each

bowl to properly position and secure the small bowl. Again, refer to figure for Step 13 for this.

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Step 15:

Attach your dish to your strobe head – hopefully it should just slide on with a snug fit.

Turn on your modeling light and bask in your success.

Some sample pictures taken with the beauty dish will be forthcoming.

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If you are an aspiring model, you should check out this link. It has great tips on posing, and other things you should concern yourself with when modeling.

This is also a great resource if you are a photographer learning to pose models.

If you’re shopping for a lens, you may want to consider vibration reduction (on Nikons) or image stabilization (on Canons). These are marketed as “VR” and “IS” on the lens model name. Other brands have this technology too, and may have different marketing terms.

Image stabilization is a technology that stabilizes the lens even if your hand is shaking (your hand shakes – trust me). This allows you to shoot at slower shutter speeds and still get sharper images.

As a rule of thumb, you should shoot at 1/ (without using image stabilization). So if you are shooting with a 50mm lens, you shouldn’t shoot any slower than 1/50 of a second. If you are shooting with a 200mm lens, you shouldn’t shoot any slower than 1/200 of a second.

This is a rule of thumb, but you may be able to hold your camera more sturdier than the average person, and may be able to operate at slower shutter speeds.

Without image stabilization, if you are shooting at slower speeds than you can hold and keep the camera stable, then you will need to lower your f-stop (increase the aperture size), or boost your ISO.

Lowering the f-stop is a good option, as this will allow you to use a faster shutter speed. But if you are at your widest aperture (in this example, I’m at f2.8, which is as wide as this lens goes), then you are stuck.

Boosting the ISO is an option; this will also allow you to use a faster shutter speed while keeping the same f-stop. Boosting the ISO however introduces noise into the picture, and this may be undesirable. The more you have to boost your ISO to get the optimal shutter speed, the more noise you get. If it’s very low light, you may get a lot of noise due to a high ISO.

Vibration reduction/image stabilization introduces a new option – you can shoot at a slower shutter speed while keeping your f-stop the same and without having to increase your ISO as much (or not have to increase it at all).

In the example provided, I shot the freezer at f2.8, 70mm at 1/3 of a second, at ISO 200. Using my rule of thumb, I would need to quicken my shutter to 1/70s to get a sharp picture. Since I’m at the lowest f-stop number (2.8) that my lens will allow, I would have to increase my ISO to get 1/70, and the picture would get noisier (if I didn’t have VR).

In the second image, I have VR enabled. Note that even though I am shooting much slower than I should be able to steadily hold, the picture still looks reasonably sharp.

This is the great value from VR.

(Note: anther option in addition to boosting the ISO or lowering the f-stop is to mount your camera on a tripod. This is sometimes a good option, but a tripod is not always convenient, and sometimes not allowed.)

Another great resource for photographers is the Lastolite School of Photography. Lastolite is a company that manufactures an array of high end photography gear, and their “School of Photography”, although is mostly geared towards Lastolite product knowledge, does provide great tips on photography (lighting, portraiture, etc.). The format of this School is online videos, hosted by the very knowledgeable, professional photographer Mark Cleghorn.

The tutorials can be downloaded from iTunes, or from the following website:

http://www.lastoliteschoolofphotography.com/

You can spend hours browsing the videos, so what are you waiting for?

Aside from photography, my other passion is hockey. The NHL playoffs are starting soon, and Ottawa is percolating with energy. I will be cheering my Ottawa Senators as they take on the Pittsburgh Penguins in the first round of the playoffs.

Go Sens Go!

You’ve often seen pictures of waterfalls, big or small, and how the water seems to be silky and soft.

In order to get this soft effect, you need to take a long exposure. That allows the water to flow during the exposure, causing a blurring effect. The longer the exposure, the softer and smoother the effect. (A few seconds will suffice).

The theory is straightforward, but have you tried to take a picture in daylight for a few seconds? If you don’t take any additional measures, your picture will be blown out (read: solid white image).

To be able to expose for a few seconds without letting too much light in, you need to add a Neutral Density filter. This is essentially sunglasses for your camera.

In this example, I used a Cokin ND8 Neutral Density filter. An ND8 neutral density adds 3 f-stops of “darkness” to the image. This means the filter blocks almost 90% of the light coming into the lens.

An ND4 and ND2 add 2 f-stops and 1 f-stop, respectively.

You want to place the camera on a tripod, and fire it either on a timer or with a remote control. You don’t want to use the shutter button to take the exposure, because pressing the shutter button could cause camera shake, making a less than sharp image.

I use the Cokin system since this allows me to stack the filters. I could put an ND8 and an ND4 at the same time, easily. I could also put a graduated neutral density filter, which is a filter that starts from the dark at one end, and blends into a clear part of the filter.

The Cokin system is also good because it allows you to use the filters on various lenses of different thread sizes. Normal filters screw on to lenses, and need to be the same thread size as the filter. I have various thread sizes for my lenses, so I would have to buy 4 or 5 of each of these filters, as opposed to one Cokin filter. It also means that I carry less filters when I travel or hike.

Here’s a picture of my eye.

It probably wouldn’t be anything special, except that I took it myself, which may make it a bit challenging (or lucky, if you shoot blindly).

Here’s how I did it.

1. I mounted my camera on my tripod.
2. I used my 24-70 mm lens, with a close-up (Cokin) attachment
3. I had a flash on the camera (SB-900), with a ring flash attachment
4. I sat in front of my TV, and hooked up my camera to the TV.
5. With the camera on LiveView mode (what the camera sees is projected upon the television), I positioned myself and the camera to focus on my eye.
6. I set the camera on remote control mode, so I could fire it by my remote.
7. I aimed an LED flashlight at my face to better see my eye on the television, and to aide the camera in focusing correctly.
8. Since I was using a flash, I could use a narrower aperture setting, creating a wider depth of field (in case I moved too much).

Clearly, from this picture, I need more sleep.

That’s it for today’s tip.

Focus on Ottawa has a new model. Welcome Seth to the family. Seth was born March 11, 2010, at a whopping 9 lbs 7 oz.

Many pictures to come Seth, so smile!