Photography and more
Photography
Digital Photography Basics Workshop – September 18 at SMU
Aug 29th
Every year in September I organize a workshop for the Photo Guild called Digital Photography Basics. The hot topic this year is HD Video and most new dSLR cameras will feature HD video. The last episode of “House” this spring was shot using a Canon 5D MkII dSLR. This offers new creative opportunities for photographers and new skills to learn.
We will be featuring a presentations in the morning on High Definition Video as well as Adobe Lightroom and Photoshop. In the afternoon we take everyone out in the field to practice the new skills they learned in the morning. I’ll be leading a group in the afternoon. We will be learning how to use the basics like aperture, shutter speed and focal length creatively. Other groups in the another will be working with video, macro photography and other skills.
Registration starts at 8:30 am, Saturday, September 18. The morning seminars are at Burke Auditorium at Saint Mary’s University. Everyone is welcome and admission is $40 for a full day of workshops.
Check the Photo Guild website for updated info as more details are announced.
Using a Cybersync to Trigger a Camera
Jul 18th
Big Comfy Couch Session
Ashley is home from Queen’s University and Friday night she and her some of her old friends from high school and new friends from Queen’s came over for a lobster boil. Her friends learned how to eat lobster and I had chance to test out some new gear.
After supper, the kids spent the night in the photo studio having a blast creating some classic images which I’m sure they will enjoy the rest of their lives. Ashley, the laughing blond on the left, has a Cybersync remote radio trigger in her hand which she used to trigger the camera for this image. The camera was connected to my computer and one of the monitors was turned to the couch so the kids could instantly see the results. This generated a lot of laughter!
While the kids were emptying my beer fridge, I setup the leather couch in the studio with a new 14″ x 63″ strip light softbox above and just behind the couch to use as a hairlight. The softbox came from Studio 98 on Ebay. I am pleased with the quality of the softbox and it did an excellent job of lighting the full length of the couch. I also ordered a 2×2″ grate to go with the softbox but it is starting to come apart. The softbox was an excellent value at $59 but I can’t recommend the $20 optional grate.
I recently bought a cable from Flash Zebra that allows me to use one of my Alien Bee Cybersyncs to remotely trigger my camera. I bought it to trigger my camera for wildlife photos in our backyard and woods. To set it up, I connected a Cybersync to the Alien Bee AB800 flash above the couch and connected another Cybersync with a AB800 and beauty dish in front on the left. At my camera, I connected another Cybersync using the cable from Flash Zebra. The cable from Flash Zebra has a mini-plug on one end to connect to the Cybersync and the standard Canon remote jack on the other end.
I clicked the remote trigger and checked the camera but I had a black frame. After checking my settings on the camera, I tried it again and verified the flashes were triggered. Although the flashes fired I still had a black image on the camera. Apparently there is a slight delay as the camera focuses so the flashes do not sync with the camera shutter. To make it sync, I would need a second trigger on the camera using a different radio channel to trigger the lights. I only have one trigger.
I solved the problem by using my Canon 430ex flash on my camera to trigger the optical slaves on the Alien Bee flashes. I set the 430ex to manual and minimum power. I had to remove the Cybersyncs from the Alien Bees as the optical slaves do not work when the Cybersyncs are connected. This worked!
The camera was tethered to my computer using a USB cable so the images could viewed immediately on the monitor. The monitor was turned towards the couch and the kids had a great time seeing their pictures. They were laughing all night!
Adobe Lightroom 3 now supports tethered shooting and I tried it with my Canon 50D. The transfer times were very slow so I switched to the Canon EOS Utility. Transfer times were faster so we used it. I don’t know if Lightroom is just slow or I was using the wrong settings. I need to investigate.
The only cable used with setup was the USB cable from the camera. I’d like to use a wireless connection to the camera but I can’t afford Canon’s $700 wireless adaptor for the 50D. Eye-Fi has a “Pro Wireless” memory card that can transmit the images through your wireless router to your computer. While the Eye-Fi Pro version supports RAW images, it only comes in a SD card format. It seems to me that a pro version should come in a compact flash version. I know you can get SD to CF converters so I may get one sometime.
The new gear worked great and the kids had a great time creating their own images in the studio.
Printmaking Seminar
Mar 25th
I’ll be speaking at the Imagemakers Saturday Morning Seminars in Truro on April 10th. The seminars are from 9:00 to 12:00 at the NSCC Lecture Theatre, 36 Arthur Street, Truro.
I’ll talking about to how create great inkjet prints at home. Some of the topics will include colour management, paper selection and working with your images in Lightroom and Photoshop. I’ll have samples of my work on different types of paper and different types of printers including inkjets and digital presses.
Colin Campbell will also be talking about landscape photography.
Martock RBC Snowboard Series
Mar 8th
Pictures from the RBC Series at Martock on March 7, 2010. One of the flight time pictures will be published in the next edition of the Hants Journal. It was a beautiful sunny, warm day and the snowboarding course was created the same person who built the snowboard course at the Vancouver Olympics. Martock is high enough to create a full size Olympic course.
You can select pictures by image number and post a comment.
Martock Gallery on Flickr. Select full screen in the bottom right for the best view.
Two Days – 1389 Portraits
Jun 13th
Original Image and Framed Print
Every year Xerox is a major sponsor for DND Family Days. DND hosts an annual carnival for the families of the Canadian Armed Forces at the Halifax Dockyards. The carnival includes fair rides, farm animals, displays, boat rides and more.
As part of our sponsorship we do free family portraits for the families of the forces personnel that attend the event. Over two days we did 1389 family portraits of ~4200 people. We always have lines up for the photos and we even had some come on saturday morning when it was raining. Many people comment on the photos did for them in previous years.
How We Did It
One of side of our booth is the “studio” and the other side is the processing area. I brought a backdrop from my home studio and we had two bails of hay for people to sit on as the event had a western theme this year. We also had some cowboy hats. Two Alien Bee AB800s with umbrellas provided the light and these were connected to my camera using Cybersync triggers. The Cybersyncs were very reliable and we didn’t have a single misfire.
Family Days Studio Setup
We used my Canon 50D with the 18-55mm F2.8 lens. I think every picture was sharp over the two days. Fast focusing is very important when shooting kids as sometimes you only have a fraction of second to catch the pose. Knowing the child’s name really helps to get their attention. The camera was tethered to a Macbook Pro using a USB cable and Canon’s EOS Utility. The EOS Utility generates a preview and this was displayed on a second monitor attached to the Macbook. Each image tranferred to the Macbook in 1-2 seconds and displayed automatically on the second monitor. This was a crowd pleaser!
The camera was set to medium resolution and high quality JPEGs. This was lots of resolution for a 8 1/2 x 11 print and everthing processed faster. All the camera settings were registered to custom function C1 and duplicated on C2. This made it very easy to restore the camera settings when inexperienced photograhers hit the wrong dial as we had several people shooting.
EOS Utility was writing the images to folder which we monitored using Adobe Bridge. This worked very well. When I was creating and testing the workflow I tried to use Lightroom but I encountered some limitations with Lightroom. It could automatically import images but everytime an image was imported it would interupt what anything else you were doing in Lightroom and this quicly become frustrating. I couldn’t set a default aspect ratio for cropping and I had to Export images and use a Photoshop Droplet (action) to create the frame. I decided to use Bridge and Photoshop.
Cropping Pictures on the Macbook Pro
Pictures were selected in Adobe Bridge and opened in Photoshop. Each image was cropped manually and then an action was run to size the image, add the frame and print two copies. We printed two copies as we received many requests for an extra copy for Grandma or someone else in the family. Additional copies were available on request. Of course all images are printed on a Xerox Phaser printer using Xerox Elite Silk 80lb cover.
Tecthered shooting was very efficient and we had no line ups for prints this year. We were able to do each photo session in 10-20 seconds and completed prints were done in 1-2 minutes. Of course we had line ups for photo sessions all day.
Summary
It was a great event and a lot of fun for everyone. It generated a lot of good PR for Xerox and I expect we will be back again next year to support our troops.
The Team - Dan Benoit, Korinne Maclellan and Myself
Upcoming Seminars
Jun 11th
Every year I host several seminars on various topics. This is list of upcoming seminars I will be doing. It will be updated as the details are worked out for each seminar.
Colour Theory and Management At Xerox Canada
8:30 am July 14, 2009 at 237 Brownlow Ave, Dartmouth, Nova Scotia
I am a colour consultant at Xerox and we offer seminars on colour management and workflow to our customers every year. This seminar is designed for professionals in graphics arts. The intended audience is prepress and production people who need to know how to setup colour management workflows and solve colour problems. You can contact me at peter.steeper@xerox.com for a complete curriculum. This full day seminar is $395 per person and group discounts are available.
X-Rite I1 Pro and ColorChecker
How to Photograph Flowers
Saturday July 4th, 2009
Daylily Daze
Hammonds Plains Baptist Church, 1839 Hammonds Plains Rd.
9:30 to 3:00 pm
Seminar is from 1:00 pm to 2:00 pm
Mardi Gras Parade (Pink Daylily for Photographers)
My wife belongs to several garden clubs and I usually give several seminars every year on this topic. My presentation will be one hour in length sometime during Daylily Daze hosted by the Nova Scotia Daylily Society on July 4th. I’ll update the start time when I know.
I will be doing a live demonstration of how to get the best results with your flowers. It is suitable for both point & shoot and dSLR camera users. I’ll have a few tips for photographers on how to preserve their marriage by not damaging designer daylilies. (I didn’t know they were that expensive!)
Digital Photography Basics
September 2009 - More info to come
This seminar is hosted by the Photographic Guild of Nova Scotia. This was very successful last year. It will include theory and practical hands on. Watch for more details.
Printing for Photographers
April 2010
Hosted by Truro Image Makers Photo Club
This seminar is how to turn your images into a high quality print on your inkjet and other types of printers. I’ve been very succesful in print competitions for photographers and printing is what I do at Xerox. More information will be posted before the event.
Tour de Bloc
May 19th
We have just returned from the Tour de Bloc where Ian was competing in the Men’s Open at the national bouldering competitions. He did very well and placed 11th in Men’s Elite and 36th in the Men’s Open. This was his second time at the nationals and we expect he will be competing in the nationals again next year. His friend and mentor, John Bowles, placed first and will competing in the Bouldering World Championship in China this year. I have posted lots of pictures of the event at Flickr. The event was held at Allez Up in Montreal which is an excellent climbing gym with 48 foot walls and a bouldering area.
RAID Drive Upgrade
Jan 18th
I’ve run out of space again on the drive for my pictures. Maybe I should use the delete key more often or use less layers in Photoshop files. Or save to TIFF when a print is finished.
I have one drive that is dedicated to pictures and about two years ago I bought a RAID system after almost losing all my pictures one weekend. I went from three copies of everything to one after having two new drives fail in one weekend. It was a scary weekend. The new drives had been purchased on sale for a very low price. It turns out they were refurbished. I returned the drives and upgraded my computer with a RAID system two days later. Things have been good until lately when I started running out of room again.
This weekend I am replacing the four 160MB drives in the RAID with four 500MB drives. This will increase space for pictures from 465GB to 1.4TB. As long as I don’t buy that Canon 50D with the 15MP images the upgraded RAID should last for several years. At least the RAID is cheaper than having film developed so I shouldn’t grumbled about the cost (but I do anyways).
The process for upgrading the RAID is taking much longer than I expected. I thought it would take one day but it will take two days. The first step is backing up all the data on the old setup which took seven hours using an USB drive. You don’t notice the backup time when you are doing automatic backups at night. I disconnected all the old drives but I didn’t remove from the chassis while moving the cables to the new drives. I labeled all the cables and drives with a marker to avoid mix ups. I won’t remove the old drives from the chassis until I know the new drives are working successfully. I have had problems in the past with upgrades and I don’t like to finalize the physical installation until the data is successfully transferred in case I need to roll back to the old drives.
After connecting the new drives I needed to configure the RAID controller to recognize the new drives. This is done at bootup and only takes a few seconds. Then the RAID had to be formatted. This is a very long process. Formatting started at 9:00 am on Saturday and it was only 75% done at bedtime. Fortunately it was complete this morning. Now the data is being restored to the RAID and I expect this will take another seven hours. I’ll have lots of time for other projects today while I am waiting.
Another important tip: Keep the cat out the room with the computer. The case is open and wires are hanging out. Hank, our cat, thought this would make a great play toy. Having cables yanked out during the restore will probably add two days to the process.
Profiling a Projector
Jan 17th
At the Photo Guild we have been projecting digital images for several years. Last year we purchased a Canon Realis SX6 projector to replace our old projector. This projector supports up 1400 x 1050 resolution and AdobeRGB. We had the projector profiled in September at the start of our fall season but we had many complaints about the colour of the projected images.
Recently I received an upgrade to my spectrophotometer at work including a license for creating ICC profiles for projectors. This was an excellent opportunity to test the new spectrophotometer.
To create a good projector profile it needs to be profiled with same setup as it will normally be used. To accomplish this, Elio Dolente, the current president of the Guild and I booked the auditorium at the Museum of Natural History where the Guild meetings are held. One the problems we have is that members borrow the projector and change the settings and then the profile is no longer valid.
The Guild has a MacBook Pro to use but most of the members use PCs and our competition software only works with Windows so we use Windows XP on the Mac. Windows can only support one monitor profile while Mac OS X can support multiple profiles for monitors and attached projectors. Windows has to be setup so it knows which is the primary monitor and the profile is loaded for this monitor. The Mac uses an nVidia video card and we had the nVidia control panel loaded in Windows XP. While this helped, it took some experimenting to understand how the nVidia driver worked with the monitor and projector. We eventually determined how to make the projector the primary monitor and it also fix some of the problems we were having with screen resolution. The MacBook is 1440 x 900 and the Canon projector is 1400 x 1050.
After setting up the laptop we setup the projector. The projector supports sRGB, AdobeRGB, movie, presentation as well as many custom settings. We reset the projector to the factory defaults and tested sRGB and AdobeRGB. We decided sRGB was the best choice for our base setting. Once these choices were made we profiled the projector. The results were much better than our previous results.
At the next competition the reviews were excellent and the members were pleased with the results. We still had 3-4 images where the reds are over saturated but I need to check these images to see if it is a problem with the projector or the images. I suspect it is the images as 95% of images had excellent colour.