Sunflower Centre

Nikon D90, AF-S DX Micro Nikkor 40mm f/2.8G, ISO200, Manual mode, f8, 1/125s, Nikon sb700 triggered wirelessly via CLS and bounced into an umbrella to camera left.

Venetian Painted Mask - a one light portrait.

Another version of a previous pic (in colour) from the same session that I posted here: Venetian Painted Mask

Nikon D90, Aperture Priority Mode, Nikkor 18-105mm kit lens at 105mm with VR on, hand held, f/5.6, 1/200s, ISO200, Nikon sb600 fired into a bounce umbrella to camera left.

Toni (with an "i"), photographed in my "Strobist" style studio.

Nikon D90, Manual Mode, Nikkor 18-105mm kit lens at 105mm with VR on, hand held, f/11, 1/200s, ISO200.
A Nikon sb600 bounced in an umbrella to camera left set just slightly higher than the subject, and a Nikon sb700 bounced in an umbrella to camera right and somewhat higher than the subject (about 45 degrees), with both sb's on light stands and triggered via Nikon's excellent CLS.
Edited in Corel Paintshop Pro X4.

A Quick Portrait.

Took a quick portrait this evening, setting up lights, shooting and packing back down all done in about 20 minutes!

Nikon D90, Manual Mode, Nikkor 18-105mm kit lens at 90mm with VR on, hand held, f/11, 1/200s, ISO200, two Nikon sb's bounced into two bounce umbrellas, edited in Corel Paintshop Pro X4.

Old Brass Bell shot with a Nikkor 40mm AF-S DX Micro f/2.8G

Nikon D90, AF-S DX Micro Nikkor 40mm f/2.8G, Aperture Priority mode, ISO200, 1/80s, f9.0, two off-camera Speedlights into bounce umbrellas fired via Nikon's fantastic CLS system.

Another Simple Portrait

Another simple portrait with a plain white background.

Nikon D90, Manual Mode, Nikkor 18-105mm kit lens at 52mm with VR on, hand held, f/8, 1/80s, ISO200, bunch of various small Nikon sb's and some umbrellas, edited in Corel Paintshop Pro X4.

A Simple Portrait

A simple portrait with a plain white background.

Nikon D90, Manual Mode, Nikkor 18-105mm kit lens at 52mm with VR on, hand held, f/8, 1/80s, ISO200, bunch of various small Nikon sb's and some umbrellas, edited in Corel Paintshop Pro X4.

How Getting Creative with White Balance can add a little Zing to your Product Photography!

Ok, so how to add a little something to a pic by fiddling with the white balance a bit? First, I took a standard pic of my daughters sneakers. What do you mean that's not something you usually do? Just go with the flow and stop arguing with me ok!

Standard pic of daughters sneakers:

This was taken with two Speedlights to light the sneakers, an sb700 to camera left on a light stand firing into a black-backed umbrella and providing the main light from the front. There is also an sb600 with a home made gobo shooting onto the white wall behind the subject (sneakers) to provide a second soft light from behind.

The result is not bad lighting wise, but what if we wanted to add another element to this to change, and hopefully improve, the look?



So what I did was attach the incandescent filter that comes with the sb700 to the front of the sb700 that was giving me my main light. It was on a light stand shooting into a black backed umbrella from camera left a little up. (See the set-up/pull-back shot further down.) The pic below is of the sb700 with incandescent filter attached and firing, while the sb600 is providing the light against the back wall. The cameras white balance is set to incandescent, so the sb700's light is correctly balanced and the sb600's light turns a lovely blue!

And here is the sb600, complete with home made cut-from-cornflakes-box-covered-in-silver-duct-tape gobo. It is held on the flash with a spare modelling balloon "borrowed" from my wife who uses these things to make balloon animals at childrens parties. Yeah, I know, but it works! ;^)

This combination now gives me a result that I like a little better! See for yourself:

And here is the promised set-up/pull-back shot:

The orange cloth is a cheap microfibre cloth which is great for cleaning surfaces, products, camera lenses, and my glasses. Never leave home without one. The table is a cheap fold down variety that is quite sturdy, but light weight. You can get them cheap at Netto in Scandinavia. That might be a bit far to travel for a cheap table if you live in the US or Africa (or elsewhere) so rather look out for one locally. But if you do decide to get one at Netto, look me up when you get to Malmö, I'll buy coffee!

One last piece of equipment that I used in this shot was the Nikon SG-3IR, which is a special cheap plastic flippy flappy thing that attaches to the cameras flash hotshoe and covers the built-in flash to filter out any light from the flash while still letting the infrared light through to maintain communications with the remote flashes without influencing the light on the subject (sneakers). It looks like so:

The photo of the sneakers was taken with a Nikon D90, AF-S DX Micro Nikkor 40mm f/2.8G, Aperture Priority mode, ISO200, 1/60s, f11.0, implementing Nikon's fantastic CLS system, hand held and processed in Adobe Lightroom 4.

Have a great day!

Small Speedlight Studio Setup on a budget.

Don't have enough for those very tempting studio lights down at the camera store, but have a couple of Speedlights in your camera bag? Well then you have pretty much all you need to take some pretty cool portraits!

This is my friend Chinedu, and he just wrote a book. Once I get the details of where to buy it I will post a link right here.

I took his portrait in my small home studio in the corner of our lounge and the set-up looks more or less like this:

That's a Nikon sb700 on the stand shooting into a black backed umbrella and throwing back oodles of beautiful light onto the victim model. On the chair at the back is a Nikon sb600 with a home crafted gobo made from a corn-flakes box covered in silver duct tape which is spitting out light onto the white wall behind the previously mentioned model. The end result is quite satisfactory, at least that's what I think!

Boy with Agfa Isolette

Same details as the previous photo posted below.

Girl with Agfa Isolette

I recently purchased a used but mint condition Agfa Isolette camera in a second hand store, the same one used in this portrait. When I get around to it I will post better pics of the camera, but first the details of this shot!

This was taken with a Nikon sb700 bounced into an umbrella camera right and about 45 degrees up and to the side of the model. Second light is a Nikon sb600 down, behind and left of model with a corn flakes box front cut to become a gobo to prevent light spill onto the back of the model but splash oodles of beautiful light onto the white wall behind her. It worked.

The lights were triggered by the popped up flash on my Nikon D90 via Nikons nifty CLS system. The pop up flash had the handy IR filter doodad that Nikon produces to keep light from the onboard flash influencing the lighting on the subject, but still allows the camera to communicate via IR signals with the off camera flashes.

Nikon D90, Nikkor 50mm f1.8D "nifty fifty", ISO200, 1/60s, f8.0, hand held, one sb700 Speedlight and one sb600 Speedlight, processed in Adobe Lightroom 4.

Portrait in Monochrome

I used the set-up shown here: Portraits in small places

Children are Tough to Photograph!

As many of you know, I spent most of December shooting kids in a mall, and I have to say, it was tough! I have a new admiration for photographers who specialize in working with children!

But it is very rewarding to photograph children as well, to see the reaction of the parents when they see the prints for the first time and you know they just love it! The reaction of the children can be priceless. For me the interesting thing was to see how each individual child's character really comes to the fore, especially in the themed setups we did.

In the photo below are three very different siblings doing very different things in reaction to being in the same shot. Rather than trying to keep maximum control over what the children were doing while posing, I just let them have free rein and got some great memories for their parents.

Some parents ended up getting several extra prints made for all the grandparents, uncles, aunts, god-parents, etc. which was very good for business!

 An explanation of the set-up used is here: My Santa Set-up

My Santa Set-up

Since the 5th of December I have been taking the typical Santa in the mall pics that we see every year! It's actually quite fun, but a lot of work as it has been crazy busy. While I have been there a lot of "pros" and amateurs alike have expressed an interest in my lighting set-up, how I do it, and why! It seems that the "strobist" concept hasn't caught on in South Africa the same way it has elsewhere in the world. So here is a short explanation and a few sample pics.

My basic setup is a couple of Nikon sb flashes, one sb700 and one sb600. I bounce both of these into umbrellas in order to diffuse the light and get a nice even lighting over the entire set. I use a shoot through umbrella and a black backed bounce umbrella, and the reason these two? Because it's what I have of course! If I used studio lights it would become much more complicated and require cables running electricity around for people to fall over, it wouldn't be as easy to unpack and pack, etc. Here is a pull back pic of the entire set-up:

There is a very large skylight directly above the area where we are located and the light coming in is constantly changing because of the sun moving, clouds, rain, etc. so in order to keep the light and colour consistant I totaly underexpose the scene by setting my camera to manual at 1/200s and f11. Without flash it looks like this:

My flashes are set to TTL and they automatically bring the exposure back up to normal. I fire them wirelessly via Nikons very cool CLS system. The final result looks like this:

Perfectly exposed, sharp, and with very consistant colour! I don't have time to download these to a computer, tweak them and then print them, so I shoot jpg and make sure that all my settings are correct in camera to achieve the fastest workflow and print them directly from my SD cards at the lab in the mall. The resultant prints are just great!

So if you want to put that nice shiny new dslr to good use and actually make some money to justify the expense then you now know how to do Santa pics for Christmas 2012! Whoohoo!

Simple Product Photography Set-Up.

Simple is always good!

And the result:

Shades

Another day another product shoot!

Nikon D90, manual mode, 200ISO, f11, 1/200s, Nikon 50mm f1.8D, Nikon sb700 and sb600 bounced in umbrellas left and right high. Set-up shot below.

Stock card seamless white background held up against the wall by duct tape. No photographer should ever be without duct tape!

This would have worked much better with a light tent... but I don't have one. Someone recently told me that photography is about problem solving, so sometimes you just gotta make a plan!
Note to self: get a light tent...

There's no BizNiz like ShowBizNiz!

Another "Portrait in a small place"

Click HERE to see the set-up shot and more info for this photograph.

Portraits in small places

So you don't have a studio, and the wife won't let you convert the spare room either, and the garage is full of junk, so what to do to be able to use that shiny dslr and the speedlights you got for Christmas last year and you've been itching to put to good use? Well you make some compromises and improvise. I have been living in a small apartment for the past year and don't have much space, but I can still setup my lights for a two light pic like the one below:

Here is how I set it up:

By using the curtains as a backdrop and squeezing the lights in between couches and side tables I managed to get a fairly good two light portrait set-up. Behind the model is my Strobist DIY Beauty Dish on a tripod. To the right and high is a shoot through umbrella on my junky tripod converted to super cool light stand. Nikon sb600 in the beauty dish and sb700 in the umbrella, both triggered via Nikons very cool CLS system. Easy peasy!

Studio session with a Famous Fashion Icon!

Probably the most recognized face on the planet, and for all the wrong reasons. If you would like to practice portrait lighting setups on a small scale Barbie is your girl though! She doesn't charge much, she is very co-operative and always has a friendly smile. Oh, and she never complains about working long or odd hours.

Here is my small scale studio set-up:

The light on the left is my Strobist DIY Beauty Dish draped in a swathe of thin white material that basically turns it into a small softbox.

The Barbie doll was set into a cake and decorated for a 6 year olds birthday party.