Capitol Hall of Columns - © Copyright 2012 by William Beem

Capitol Hall of Columns

This is another area of the U.S. Capitol building that just displays beauty and grandeur in architecture.  The corridor is about 100 feet long and lined with 28 columns.  It also includes part of the National Statuary Hall Collection of statues donated by the states. You can see one of my favorites on the right – Father Damien (now Saint Damien since 2009) by Hawaii.

I’ll say it again.  If you haven’t visited the U.S. Capitol, it should be on your must-see list.  I could spend days taking photos in here, if only they’d let me.

Review of Wacom Intuos5 Tablet

Thinking about getting a graphic tablet or wondering if you should upgrade from your Intuos4 to the new Intuos5?  If so, please check out my review. It’s completely changed the way I interface with my computer, but with some caveats that take a bit of adjustment.  You can find my article under the Reviews menu, or just click this link:

Wacom Intuos5 Tablet Review

Cheap Trick - © Copyright 2012 by William Beem

I think this qualifies as my first concert photo opportunity. Back in 2006 at Orlando Harley-Davidson, Cheap Trick was playing for Bike Week crowds.  Yes, I am a biker and I love free concerts.  My boss at the time was not a biker, but he loves concerts.  I didn’t realize it, but he ended up in one of my shots over the crowd – talking on his Blackberry.  That just isn’t right. You can’t go to a concert and talk on a cell phone.  If there’s a law against writing on the sidewalk in chalk, there should be a law against using cell phones at concerts.

There was no photo pit or special access.  I was just a guy in the crowd with a Nikon D70 and a cheap Nikon 70-300mm lens that I bought for $150 years ago, trying to shoot over the crowd.  No glamourous stage lights or explosions, but a bit of nice light coming from the sunset. Most of my shots didn’t come out because I honestly didn’t know a thing about concert photography.

Music Photography

If you ever wanted to get photos of your favorite musicians, it may have seemed impossible. The good news is that it’s not impossible.  People are doing it all the time.  You just need to know what they know.  That’s where you’re in luck.  Alan Hess just published his book  on concert photography – All Access: Your Backstage Pass to Concert Photography (Amazon URL). If you’re curious what you get, check out my review of his book. I wish I’d known then what I know now – particularly at an open even like that one!  The good news is that I can try again.  Only a little over a month until Bike Week comes back.

Still, I had reasons for not always carrying a camera with me.

• My employer prohibits cameras on property
• I don’t want to have several thousand dollars of gear sitting in my car, subject to theft or Florida heat.

What I Need from a Camera

I usually have my iPhone with me, but its use is limited and the quality of its images are functional, but not breathtaking. It does a good job of helping me remember where I parked at Disney World (Dopey 107).

The quality of images from the point and shoots I’ve had in the past left me less than impressed, and they typically store photos in JPG. There are times when that’s alright, but there are other moments when I know I’ll want more information to tweak in Aperture or Photoshop. For example, I’ve had some quick moments where I totally blew the white balance on a JPG shot and I just didn’t have enough information to get it right. I like having that safety net of more information saved at the moment of capture than the simple convenience of JPGs.

HDR is becoming a big part of my photography, but it’s also something that requires a bit of dedication. There are times when I’d like to go on a trip without taking a ThinkTank full of gear and a thousand-dollar tripod along, but I still want to have the means to capture an image if the opportunity arises.

Finally, I’m curious about video. I don’t have any expectations that it will replace my still photography, but it’s another area where I can learn and tell a story in a different way. It would be nice if I could have that capability in a rather compact form without sacrificing too much quality. Again, my iPhone can take video, but the quality is minimal and zooming depends upon my ability to move the camera in relation to the subject (e.g., zoom with your feet).

The Nikon Coolpix P7000

A few things are different for me this year. I’m once again working from home, so I don’t have the restriction on keeping a camera with me. It’s now feasible for me to take a camera with me all the time, even though I’m not going anywhere except from the bedroom to the home office. Never mind. it’s the thought that counts.

I’ve had my eye on the P7000 for a while, but held off for the issue at work and also while waiting for my Mac/Aperture system to accommodate its RAW files. Since Apple recently updated its RAW support to include the Nikon Coolpix P7000, the final piece fell into place. I ordered the camera from Amazon.com for about $380 and also purchased a Hoodman RAW 16GB Class 10 SDHC card to go with it. I’ve been a fan of Hoodman CF Cards and decided to stick with them using this format.

Although it’s not a DSLR, it includes a lot of familiar features that allow me to take control when I want. It has the usual idiot modes, but I can also shoot it in Aperture Priority, Shutter Priority or Manual mode. The P7000 is a dinky little flash, but there’s also a hotshoe (with i-TTL) and it’s compatible with Nikon’s Creative Lighting System (CLS), though it doesn’t act as a commander.

The focal length ranges from 28mm – 200mm, which is quite convenient and offers a longer reach than other popular cameras in its class.

On paper, it seemed to have everything that I wanted at a reasonable price. Before buying, I decided to visit Flickr’s Camera Finder and look at some examples. The quality of images I found there convinced me that the P7000 could deliver what I expected.

Field Test

My P7000 arrived on Friday. One of the advantages of living in Central Florida is that we have a plethora of colorful places, and I have an Annual Pass to Walt Disney World. Lots of colors out there. I decided to start at the Magic Kingdom, which is why my car decided to pull into Animal Kingdom first. Things never go as planned.

I walked around looking for small details rather than large scenes. The sky was overcast for most of the day, which was perfect, though there were some times when blue sky and harsh sunlight appeared. It’s great for tourists, but hard on photographers out in the midday sun.

As I walked into Animal Kingdom, the first thing you see (and most tourists blithely ignore) is a small oasis area with common Florida birds – white ibis and spoonbills. I walked up to the spoonbills, as I remembered shooting some infant birds there a while back. They’ve gotten a bit bigger. However, I immediately ran into a problem with the camera. Every time I pressed the shutter, it would give a slight jerk and shut down. This happened about half a dozen times until I realized I was pressing the Power button, not the shutter. Another brilliant moment in my photographic history. Once I actually pressed the correct button, I was pretty happy with the results on the screen. Keep in mind that what you see on the back of your camera is just a JPG preview that’s been processed. The color was brilliant and it looked pretty sharp. The RAW images are a bit flatter, but the P7000 RAW gives you a good starting point:

Spoonbill Close-up - © Copyright 2011 by William Beem

Spoonbill - © Copyright 2011 by William Beem

Video Sample

I had no idea what I was going to use for a video test, until an opportunity presented itself. Suffice it to say that I’m going to need a lot of work on my videography skills.

httpvh://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e7pOM6WHRPU

With no more experience than a few video clips on my iPhone, I’m really not qualified to judge this camera to any other. Instead, I’ll just say that it meets my need. The color seems fine, the audio was clear and better than I expected. In fact, it has a 3.5mm audio jack to attach an external mic for better quality. Zooming in an out was somewhat cumbersome. That’s not just because I couldn’t remember which way was longer or wider, but because there’s some slop in the focal length adjustment. It’s difficult to be precise. Fortunately, zooming is much slower during video than when trying to adjust focal length for a still shot.

Low Light & High ISO

The P7000 goes up to ISO 6400, but I kept my ceiling at ISO 1600 for the first time out due to my concern about noise. Indeed, it does have some noise in those images. It’s not bad, though, and cleans up nicely. My plan was to test it with a live show – specifically, the dancers at the Diamond Horseshoe Review. Clearly, I haven’t been paying attention because that shoe closed in 2003. Therefore, I was left with the Country Bear Jamboree (don’t judge).

Here’s an unprocessed example of a shot at ISO 1600

Country Bear Jamming - © Copyright 2011 by William Beem

There’s noise in the shot, but that’s a usable image. Any modern noise-reduction software can clean that up easily. I should have pushed up to ISO 3200 and 6400 just to see the result, but that’ll give me something to try next time out.

White Balance

The P7000 offers the usual array of white balance settings. I left it on Auto to see how it would fare. During daylight, it worked quite well. The only time I saw the Auto White Balance being confused consistently was during shooting with stage lights. That’s one of the reasons I preferred a camera with RAW files, though. Both of these shots are also right out of the camera, to illustrate how it changed the White Balance in the same lighting scenario.

Country Bears 1 - © Copyright 2011 by William Beem

Country Bears 2 - © Copyright 2011 by William Beem

Not Quite Perfect

There are a couple of niggling issues with the camera. As I mentioned, the focal length adjustment is sloppy. I had to bounce back and forth a few times to get the composition I wanted. That caused me to miss a few live shots (particularly with tigers). Even when you release the adjustment control, the lens keeps moving slightly before it stops. Then you move it back, and then forward, until you finally just accept what you can get out of it.

Since it’s point & shoot, there is a bit of shutter lag. It’s not terrible like some other devices I’ve had, but you aren’t going to have immediate response. It could take almost a second from when you press the shutter button and the actual image click happening. Again, it’s a good way to miss a shot during action. That’s a limitation of this class of camera and I accept it. If I want to shoot action, I have a DSLR that’s much more appropriate.

Saving an image takes a few seconds in RAW mode. During that time, you can’t do anything else. Unlike a DSLR, you don’t have a buffer that lets you keep shooting for a while as it writes images to disk. Perhaps I’m wrong, but if there is a buffer, it wasn’t helping me at all. I frequently saw a message on the back of the screen telling me I couldn’t do something until the image completed writing to the card. On the bright side, I’ve read that write speed was improved in a firmware update – I was still using the original 1.0 firmware.

The manual seems to have pretty small type, also. I wear glasses, but I have 20/15 vision while wearing them. It’s still difficult to read, though.  Fortunately, Nikon keeps PDF versions of its manuals on the support page. I loaded that on my iPad and everything was easily readable. Maybe I’m just getting too old.

Conclusion

I’m very happy with this camera. It fits its role very well and offers a lot of flexibility. The camera is so light that I could barely feel it while walking around with the strap hung on my shoulder. This is a camera I can take with me when I don’t want to carry my Nikon D700 and lenses, but still be assured that I’ll get quality results. This is only a first impression, but it’s off to a strong opening run.

Note: I have no self-interest here. I don’t work for any of the folks mentioned, their publisher, Amazon, etc. I’ve provided a link to Amazon for each book, but I’m not on any kind of commission or referral program.

iPad: Fully Loaded by Alan Hess

iPad Fully Loaded

Alan Hess does a great job describing the kinds of content you can put on your iPad and how to use it. He goes beyond the basics to dive into getting the most out of your iPad with tips, instructions on using apps and relevant hardware. Want to know how to stream television to the iPad? Interested in keeping your books, photos or comics on the iPad? Need to find alternatives to the built-in apps or Apple’s iWork? Alan has all of that covered in the book. He doesn’t just tell you what the iPad can do, but he provides step-by-step instructions to help you get the most use out of your iPad.

Captured: Lessons from Behind the Lens of a Legendary Wildlife Photographer (Voices That Matter)

Captured: Lessons from Behind the Lens of a Legendary Wildlife Photographer (Voices That Matter)

I love animal pictures as much as anyone, but I’m not a wildlife photographer. Also, this book came out with so much hype online that I almost didn’t buy it. In fact, I was a little worried reading the first three chapters, which were rather biographical. Did I buy the wrong book?

Nope. Moose put that information in the first few chapters to show you how he came into the field and why it matters to him. That helps you later when he starts explaining his views on capturing an image. his perspective is different than the usual books on creating a perfect exposure. Instead, he shares insights on how to look at light, use it as your subject, and even know the best time of year to shoot prairie dogs..

Moose relates to photography the way the best musicians relate to music – by feel and emotion. You need to understand the basics of exposure, and then move beyond it. Moose shows you how he does it, so you can make the same leap.

LIFE Guide to Digital Photography: Everything You Need to Shoot Like the Pros

LIFE Guide to Digital Photography: Everything You Need to Shoot Like the Pros

Everything you need to shoot like the pros. That’s a bold claim to put on the cover of your book, so an author better be able to back up that claim. If you have any doubts about Joe’s ability, head over to Google Images and search on “Joe McNally cover” to see why he has the talent to back up that title. Now that it’s clear he can shoot, you have to wonder if he can teach you to do the same.

Apparently so. He puts buts in the seats whenever he lectures on lighting and photography. He shares that wisdom in print with his unique writing style, dropping hints, tips and advice with apoplectic insouciance.  This book is to take the beginning or intermediate photographer by the hand and show them how to make the most of their photography using the same tools and methods that pros have learned over the years. He explains how to understand light, use flash, creatively select depth of field, use color and refine your compositions. If you’re starting out or wondering why your photos don’t look like Joe’s, then this is a good book to get some direction.

Speaking Freely: Trials of the First Amendment

Speaking Freely: Trials of the First Amendment

Floyd Abrams has unique insight to the First Amendment, based upon personal experience tryingcases before the U.S. Supreme Court on a number of cases. He begins with the Pentagon Papers; a topic similar to current news with Wikileaks. This isn’t a book about photography or technology, but about a fundamental right in the United States Constitution.

Abrams details why First Amendment rights are so important, and how easily they can be trumped. Of particular note to photographers and artists is the chapter describing his battle against New York Major Rudolph Giuliani’s efforts to bully the Brooklyn Museum into censoring an art display. While reading about his strategy on these cases, you think about issues in different ways. It challenges your priorities and makes you realize that the world is not black and white. If you’re a photographer standing up for your First Amendment rights, then read this book.

Speaking Freely: Trials of the First Amendment

by Floyd Abrams

Update

In many ways, I think that Kelby Training is one of the best values available for training photographers. I’m specifically going to look at their training for lighting in this review, but there’s much more available on this subscription based service.

That subscription is the key here.  You have access to all of the training available on the site for the price of your subscription. Whether you pay $24.99 for a month or $199 for a year (discounts apply to NAPP members), you get everything – Photoshop, photography, Lightroom and other Adobe CS products, etc. Compare that to a DVD and you have a lot more resources at your disposal. However, those resources disappear when your subscription ends. To keep you hooked on the subscription, Kelby Training consistently develops new training and adds it to the available queue of courses.

The courses relating to Lighting fall under the Photography category. As such, they often are part of a larger subject. You can also find lighting information here provided by a number of instructors, including Joe McNally, David Ziser, and Scott Kelby. With different instructors, you also get some different teaching techniques. The courses on Kelby Training generally follow a segmented or chapter approach to lessons. You can follow in order or skip around.

Since this is a web service, you need connectivity to view the courses.  There is no option to download the training and watch it on-the-go. The online player works quite well, giving a large display and can enlarge to a full screen display. The basic controls allow you to play, pause, adjust volume and skip forward or reverse. There’s been some discussion online about providing iPad support, but that has’t been provided yet – likely due to a large development effort required to support the iPad without using Adobe Flash.

It’s Not a Foundation

Something I find to be a glaring omission is the lack of a foundation course. These courses assume that you have knowledge of the camera’s exposure triangle, and that you also understand flash power and flash to subject distance. The courses will touch on some of these aspects, but none of them give you a straight-forward, “this is where you begin” kind of foundation to lighting. With that in mind, what you get from the various Kelby Training courses on light is a series of tools to enhance your existing knowledge. It’s not equipped to help you really understand lighting from Step #1.

For those viewers who don’t have that foundation, it’s kind of like watching show & tell. You see some cool stuff, but you may not know how to replicate it with your own gear. For example, Joe McNally’s course, Light Shaping Tools, has a segment where he addresses the need to vary the exposure on the model, but he doesn’t want to change his aperture for depth of field issues. You see him lower the power on his Elinchrom Ranger until he gets to its lowest setting, and yet the exposure is still too bright. Does he change his aperture? Does he explain that moving the light back would reduce the output of light on the model?  No.  Instead, he shows you that switching the power port on the Ranger from A to B reduces the power and gives him more room to control his exposure.

That’s excellent advice if you have an Elinchrom Ranger. Doesn’t do a damn thing for the rest of us. He had good reason to keep his aperture steady because he liked the depth of field it provided. Closing down the aperture would have extended DOF and changed his image. He also had good reason for keeping the light in its position. As he explains in the lesson, the quality of light he gets by moving it closer to his subject is more desirable than if he moved it away. We see him working through a problem and we can see the results of the problem in the images he shows. Unfortunately, there is no real explanation about the relationship of these factors, and his solution was dependent upon a specific product that many viewers probably don’t have.  That’s why I refer to it as “show and tell.” I didn’t get information that I could replicate or the foundation to understand my other options to solve the problem.

Plenty of Insight

Perhaps the aspect I enjoy most about the various courses and instructors on Kelby Training is that you get insight to how they think. They have a logic and reason for their approach, based upon years of experience, and they explain that do you. David Ziser discusses why he likes to use sidelight on a bridal portrait to bring out the brocade on the dress. You see him examining his environment and looking for opportunities to provide an interesting background or bounce light. His purpose is to show how to create wedding portraits using off-camera flash. So light is an important part, but you need to keep in mind that he’s primarily discussing how to achieve a result, not training you in lighting theory or ratios. He’ll mention the results he gets from varying his shutter speed to lighten or darken the background, for example, but this once again drives the point that you need to understand that foundation of lighting to grasp all of the issues at play, and how they affect his ability to control. During one example, he raised his shutter speed to darken the background and also realized that he lost some of the ambient light that was creating a fill light on his subject.

I enjoy this aspect most when they run into problems and have to work out a solution. Joe McNally  gives some great insights in his training course about how to work-out problems. One of the best examples is his course titled “Corporate Photography.” He’s shooting subjects in their office with a nice view of the Tampa Bay outside. It’s a great backdrop, but comes with a list of problems to overcome:

• Floor to ceiling windows
• Reflection
• Control of light

He has to deal with different levels of ambient light, inside and outside, and create a believable level of light on his subject while allowing the outside view to become part of his exposure and eliminate any reflections on the windows. He’s balancing outdoor daylight, an incandescent lamp on the desk, florescent ceiling lights and his flash. You can see how he deals with these problems by controlling the light – putting up black flocking paper on the walls to eliminate some reflection, or even putting a black case for his gear over his khaki pants to prevent them from reflecting on the window.

Application-Specific Lighting

By showing you how to deal with problems, Kelby Training is giving you insight to the nature of light and some tactics you can employ to change its direction, shape and quality. The courses are providing instruction above the foundation level. You get insight on lighting a diverse array of subjects in very different environments. Here’s a list of some of the instructors and courses involving lighting on Kelby Training (subject to change as more courses are added):

David Ziser – His primary realm is wedding photography, but he offers great lessons on posing, classical lighting, on and off-camera flash.

Frank Doorhof – A fashion photographer teaching about on-location shoots and lighting

James Schmelzer – His realm is senior portraits, covering lighting techniques, outdoor lighting, and production ideas

Jim DiVitale – A commercial shooter who delivers a rapid-fire, drink from the firehose course on lighting and color for product photography.

Joe McNally – Joe probably has the most courses on lighting of any instructor on Kelby Training.  He covers small flashes, big studio lights, light shaping tools and modifiers, how to use lighting for portraits in corporate, environmental or sports environments.

Scott Kelby – He provides three different versions of courses called “Light it, Shoot it, Re-touch it” where you get to see a portrait go from creation to completion, and understand how lighting affects the final image.

That’s not even a complete list of courses where lighting plays a role.  Joe Glyda’s course on Food Photography gives some insight, as does Moose Peterson’s course on Photographing Florida Birds (flash brings out the color of those feathers). The courses I’ve listed are the ones where I think you get the most insight to Lighting as a subject.

More Than Lighting

These courses provide a light more information than just lighting, which is probably why they’re listed under Photography as a category, rather than Lighting. The intent is to teach you how to achieve a resulting image, not to teach you specifically about lighting. In other words, all of the gear and knowledge they share is to help you to understand how to use lighting as a tool to achieve your desired result.  Toss in all of the other education related to photographers and it’s a great value.

However, I really do wish that there was a course on the basics of lighting to provide a foundation to better understand the rest of the information provided here. If you watch enough of these training sessions, you’ll see the man working behind Joe McNally or Scott Kelby who could provide that training.  Brad Moore is clearly the evil lighting genius who makes the instructors look good. He was formerly Joe’s assistant and now works as Scott Kelby’s assistant, Technical Editor on DTownTV, and is an all-around great guy. I think Brad would be a perfect instructor for a Lighting Foundation course on Kelby Training.

Conclusion

I’ve been a subscriber to KelbyTraining.com for quite a while now and I’m very satisfied. They have excellent production values on all of the courses – no problems with sound, video or other aspects. Its clear they’ve thought about their topics and how to present them. You get access to a LOT of training and information for a low price. If you let your subscription end, then you lose that access.  That may or may not matter, depending upon whether you like to go back and reference the training material or not.

As I noted on the post this Monday, there were some problems with access lately. That isn’t an issue I’ve seen very often, and it also extended to the PhotoshopUser.com site for NAPP members. I sent a note to Larry Becker who quickly replied.  Apparently, it’s a hosting issue and they’re working to resolve it. That resolution may or may not involve moving to another host. I believe this is a short-term problem, based upon my experience using the service for the past year or two. I’ve generally never had to think about the quality of my connection.  Considering how much video they’re pumping out to subscribers, that’s kind of impressive to me.

Unlike my other reviews for Zack Arias’ OneLight Workshop DVD or David Hobby’s Strobist Lighting Seminar DVDs, there isn’t a segment of Kelby Training on YouTube for me to embed here. They do have some promos there, but I don’t want to show you a commercial. Fortunately, Kelby Training provides the first lesson of every course for free.  Just visit the site and you can get an idea about the quality of video and instruction you see to decide for yourself.

I’ve been a happy subscriber since February, 2008.  I don’t have any hesitation to recommend Kelby Training, but do so with the caveat that it (currently) lacks a Lighting Foundation course.

Strobist Lighting Seminar DVD

David Hobby brought lighting knowledge to thousands of people with his blog and his Lighting 101 course. The subsequent community that’s grown from comments on his blog and on the Strobist Flickr forum is also a fountain of knowledge covering lighting, gear, and perhaps a fetish for batteries. He’s able to get absolutely stunning images by using small, hot-shoe flashes off-camera and he teaches you how to do it, too.

In this case, I’m referring specifically to his Strobist Lighting Seminar DVD set – 8 discs broken into three segments:

1. All about the gear
2. A live session as he teaches his seminar to a class
3. Several sessions illustrating how to light everything from models to athletes in action

One of the first things you note about David’s style is that he’s a hacker.  As he says, he would rather build his own tools when he can and save his money to buy the things he can’t build. For example, he builds his snoots out of cereal boxes and tape. Instead of spending $30 or $40 for a Gary Fong lightsphere, he gets some soup at a deli and then cuts the bottom to fit over his flash (after eating the soup, so it’s a 2-4-1 deal). Just look at the brown paper and string wrapper on the image and you get the idea. This is lighting on a budget, but he’s not sacrificing quality in his images.

That said, I’m afraid the budget mentality really shows on the video and presentation of information. David presents information in a rapid-fire stream of consciousness. Sometimes that stream gets side-tracked, goes off on a tangent, and then hopefully comes back to the topic where it all started. Unfortunately, that kind of technique really makes it much harder for a beginner to rely on his DVD training to obtain the foundation you need in order to understand the rest of the information provided here. All of the elements you need to know are here, but they aren’t presented in a clear and concise manner. You’re left to pick out the pieces you need and assemble them as you go along.

The Gear

Disc One starts with David sitting behind a table showing you all of the pieces of gear you need to perform basic lighting. He covers the kind of camera you need, or at least the capabilities your camera needs. As with the OneLight Workshop DVD I reviewed earlier, David is a proponent of operating in Manual Mode. Therefore, he explains why you need to be able to control your ISO, Shutter Speed and Aperture – as well as why you need a hot-shoe.

Next up, he covers the flashes – starting with a 20 year old Nikon SB-26. It also works in Manual Mode so he can control the power down to increments of 1/64, has a PC sync socket to attach a trigger and a hot-shoe. You can find them (per this 2007 DVD) on eBay for $100 – $125. Modern flashes have a lot of additional features, but you also pay for them. He mentions that a Nikon SB-800 costs about $320. The current Nikon SB-900 goes for $500. The point he makes is that you don’t need to pay that much for your flash if you work in Manual Mode and understand how to use the lights, rather than relying upon the elaborate TTL system. Flashes are durable devices that can work for decades, as evidenced by his SB-26. What’s important is to make sure they have the features you need, such as the PC sync socket and perhaps another sync for an external battery pack. Some less expensive flashes, like the Nikon SB-600 or SB-700 don’t have a PC sync socket, which means you can’t hook them up to a trigger like the Pocket Wizard.

Well, it sort of means that. He also covers adapters, like the Wein HSH. Basically, it’s a little block contains a household electrical jack. You plug your flash on top of it – just like a hot-shoe on your camera. You need a cable that has a PC sync jack on one end and a household plug on the other. The signal goes from your trigger into the adapter, which then triggers the flash to fire.

Speaking of triggers, he goes over everything from the cheap products that work in short distances, and perhaps not always reliably, to the gold standard of wireless transmitters, Pocket Wizard. If you’re an amateur and a $30 solution that works most of the time sounds better than a nearly $200 solution that works all of the time, then you have options. For Nikon shooters, you can also use the CLS system to trigger your Nikon flashes (at least those that support CLS). The down-side is that CLS (Creative Lighting System) is a line-of-sight technology and it doesn’t always fire (particularly outdoors). There are plenty of ways to trigger your flashes, but it’s up to you to decide what fits your needs and budget.

He gives a very good overview of why NiMH batteries are the best way to go. You can find a lot of discussion of these batteries and your options in the comments on his blog or Flickr forum, or you can just go buy some Eneloops and a good Maha charger from Thomas Distributing and be done with it.

As a working news photographer, he’s really developed a great system of carrying a light kit with some simple, clever mods. Basically, he starts with a Bogen 3373 stand and drills some holes in it so he can attach a shoulder strap. He adds a compact Westcott umbrella stuffed into his home-made snoot and attaches it to the stand with some ball bungies. Simply brilliant.

The Workshop

Four of the DVDs cover a day-long workshop, broken up into two morning sessions and two afternoon sessions. While I think the information he has to share in this workshop really demonstrates his knowledge, this is also where the training aspect of the DVD kit breaks down. Unlike most other training DVDs and online courses I’ve watched, he isn’t teaching solely to the DVD viewer. In fact, you are pretty much an after-thought because he’s really in front of customers who attend his workshop while the cameras roll to catch it.

The production values here are pretty poor. When he references a company, he spells it out for the attendees and mentions it should be displayed for the DVD views.  Well, sometimes it is and sometimes it’s not. There are moments when he literally walks out of frame and it takes a moment for the camera-operator to realize that he needs to move to get the instructor back on screen. David has a microphone and is generally clearly heard during the course, but the class participants are not very clear. In many cases, David will repeat their question and the provide the answer so you know what’s being asked, but there are times when he forgets to do that and you may not really understand why he’s giving a response.

One of the elements I found most frustrating was during his shooting examples. David would get members of his audience to pose as subjects while he demonstrated the results of various lighting changes. However, you don’t get to see those results as he takes them. Neither does his live class, obviously. Instead, you wait for him to hook up his camera to a projector and talk through the photos after the fact. This is a big departure from most training and I think it’s a poor choice. I’ve attended live training where the photographer would tether his camera so the audience could see the result of a shot as it happened. Other online and DVD training also tend to put the photographs before the viewer to sync up with the live action. It’s great reinforcement to see the image results as the trainer is talking about what he’s doing.  In fact, David’s later Bonus Sessions use this technique and it works. I’m baffled and disappointed that you can’t see the photos during the actual workshop session.

As I mentioned previously, David provides his information in rapid-fire discussion. I don’t want to say that the guy never shuts up, but it just seemed that there were hardly any natural pauses to allow the information to sink in before proceeding to the next subject. Also, he goes on various tangents that interrupted the information he’s presenting.

While the morning sessions are primarily lecture, they also re-hash some of the information you watched in the first DVD on gear. The afternoon session start to show some of the lessons in use, and also get into creative use of light and light modifiers, ranging from umbrellas, color gels to balance incandescent or florescent light, and ordinary objects found in the room. He gives great examples of how the distances from flash to subject affects the quality of light, as well as the range of light provided by the Inverse Square Law. You just don’t get to see those results while it’s happening. Another complaint is that he occasionally brings up a topic, but then doesn’t follow-up. For example, he mentions how you can use lighting to make an editorial statement, to make someone’s skin look smoother, older, etc.  Why wasn’t that incorporated into the training and reinforced with examples? Because it was something that came out in a stream of discussion, but wasn’t really part of the course.

I can’t fault the information and knowledge that David shares, but I can fault the manner in which he shares it. It’s like drinking from the firehose because he’s trying to fit in everything he knows. I admire his talent and intent to share, but not his planning and presentation.

Bonus Sessions

The remaining three DVDs follow him on nine assignments. You see simple portraits indoors to bikini models at sunset. He covers balancing flash to ambient light in hallways and swimming pools. He shows how to use two small flashes to light a high-school gym for a basketball game, and more. These are the sessions where he teaches directly to the DVD viewer and you can see results included in post-processing as he shoots. It not only reinforces his lessons from the lighting workshop, but it also gives you a great insight to how he prepares, composes and shoots an assignment. He’s amazingly flexible with relatively inexpensive and lightweight gear. As he mentions a few times, the small flashes have enough power and he doesn’t have to carry a heavy ProPhoto kit around. Perhaps more importantly, he can shoot at lower power than a studio light when needed, or arrange his light modifiers in such a way that he could practically shoot inside the area where a studio soft-box would be – giving him an advantage that studio lights lack.

Conclusion

There’s a lot to learn here. Should you buy the DVDs?  That depends upon your intent and experience. If you want a clear, concise discussion of lighting that’s easy to understand, this isn’t the place to get it.  David discusses all of the things you need to know, but it takes him four DVDs to convey that pertinent lighting information that Zack Arias delivers in 27 minutes. However, there is more information about how to use those lights, once you have a foundation, than Zack provides. He meanders around quite a bit, but it really is a wealth of information. If you have patience and the ability to track information spread diversely around the DVDs, then you can benefit from the Strobist Lighting Seminar DVD.

You can find ordering information on this site.  The DVD kit costs $139 in the USA from Midwest Photo Exchange.

That last line is what really matters to me. At the end of the training, can I come up with my own, original idea and know how to light the subject to capture the image I visualize without merely replicating a scenario that was presented in the training? That’s the test. Anyone can take a great picture using the “monkey-see, monkey-do” approach. That’s replication or mimicry. You know you’ve learned the material when you can use the knowledge presented to create your own, original pieces of work.

Setting the Tone

Zack starts off by setting expectations. He lets you know that there’s going to be a lot of technical information (flash to subject distance, shutter speed, aperture, ISO, flash power) and it can initially seem intimidating. Then he tells you that this kind of thing needs to become second nature. You don’t want to be “tweaking out” this stuff in your head while your subject (client) feels disconnected from you. Basically, he’s telling you that you need confidence and experience in the technical aspects of lighting so you can spend more time paying attention to your subject. The information he provides over the course of two DVDs delivers that capability so you don’t look like a fool in front of your client and you can earn their trust.

Once that introduction is over, he dives into the variables that affect your exposure, the kinds of indicators you should see to recognize a correct exposure. It can be a bit subjective, but he gives clear examples of skin tones, for instance, that are exposed correctly, over and under. The brochure inside the DVD case also provides examples of how changes in your exposure affect skin tone.

Perhaps most importantly, he stresses that everything being taught will be done in Manual Mode. You need to understand what is happening and why it’s happening. By setting both Camera and Flash into Manual Mode, you control every aspect of your exposure. Automatic modes take control away from you and make decisions without letting you know why something changed. When you work with an evaluative system like TTL, minute an imperceptible changes may vary the amount of light delivered from the flash. You use Manual Mode so that you know that the amount of light being delivered is consistent from one shot to the next. If you’re in control of your ISO, shutter speed, aperture, flash power and the relation of your flash to your subject, then you can expect consistent results.

What if those results are consistently bad? That’s why you need to understand the relationship each of these elements has with the others, and how they effect your overall exposure. The meat of the lesson is how to see changes in your exposure by manipulating one or more of these variables. Zack’s intent with this course is to show you how to think for yourself and manipulate these variables to get consistent and correct exposures.

The Lecture – Characteristics of Exposure

Screen Capture - OneLight Workshop DVD

As you can see from the screen capture above, Zack makes interesting use of his environment to provide the basic lessons. As he reviews each element of exposure, he drills down into the purpose of that element (e.g., in this example, that your shutter speed controls the amount of ambient light that enters your exposure) and factors the may limit or affect your use of the element. You may think that a lecture sounds boring, but it’s really not.

The thing that Zack does next is either brilliant or obvious – yet he’s the only instructor I’ve seen who demonstrates it so clearly. Photography is a visual medium, so you can’t really expect to use bullets to completely convey your message. That’s why he then shows a series of photographs that illustrates exactly how changes in shutter speed (and no other changes) make dramatic differences in the ambient light – ranging from pitch black background in the middle of the day, through to beautiful ranges of sky exposures, to completely blown-out skies. During these examples, he fires a flash against the wall. You can see that the amount of light from the flash remains consistent through each of the exposures, but only the surrounding, ambient light gets affected. This is the kind of clear presentation followed by a visual aid that helps drive the lesson home. Later in the course, he mentions and shows changes in shutter speed to reinforce this basic lesson.

Following the lesson and examples, Zack goes into a discussion of choices your get to make about controlling the ambient light. When and how does it matter to darken, lighten, or balance the light from your flash and the surrounding light? The answer depends on the creative choice you want to make. Would your subject look better on a bright, high-key background, or pop more from an under-exposed background? Do you want your subject to blend seamlessly in an environmental portrait? He explains how changes in your shutter speed provides these options to support your creativity.

Aperture is the next variable under discussion, and he drives home the message how aperture controls your flash exposure. Is the flash too bright on your subject? Close the aperture. Conversely, open the aperture if your subject is too dark. Now you have creative control over the light on your subject that is different from the creative control on the ambient light in your environment. If you’re scratching your head wondering why, he explains it quite simply. Flash happens faster than your shutter speed, so that amount of light isn’t entering your exposure over the same period of time.  The variable that allows you to collect more light from your flash (separate from ambient light) is the size of the whole allowing light onto your camera’s sensor (or film, if you still use it). That’s your aperture. A larger size aperture allows more light in the same amount of time than does a smaller aperture. If you need more light from your flash, lowering your shutter speed won’t help because the flash duration is shorter than the shutter speed.

The lecture continues with discussion of ISO and Flash Power, but I don’t want to recount those here. However, I do want to point out his method of teaching Flash to Subject Distance and how it’s affected by the Inverse Square Law. Like most instructors, he sort of whines about it, but I don’t see why.  He’s once again used the simply brilliant example of a photograph to illustrate what happens to light as it travels. You can find the image on his blog here. Go ahead, click the link and look at the image.

You can immediately see how the light changes in size and intensity as it travels along the distance of the wall. Zack marked the intensity changes to illustrate light fall-off. Notice how the distance between these marks gets larger as the light gets further away from its source.

Zack breaks it down like this. You lose 75% of your light when you double the distance from your flash to your subject. Now bear than in mind and look at the photo again. At its brightest point, doubling the distance is a matter of an inch or two and you’ve lost 75% of your light. That could have a dramatic impact on your exposure if your subject simply leans forward or backward. However, the nice thing about doubling is that it gives you an ever-increasing range of space to use. If you need room to move or have to group a few people together, you’re not going to place them an inch away from your light source. Place them a few feet away, however, and you have a larger range of space to accommodate your subject in a consistent amount of light. All you have to do is open your aperture for that range of distance in order to get a correct exposure.

Once again, Zack follows up with photos to illustrate the point. He shows a group of people standing in different relationship to the source of light. You can clearly see the range of contrast as the light travels and falls off. Since a single exposure is limited to a single aperture setting, there’s no way to properly light everyone until they get into an area where the variance of light occurs over a larger physical distance.

The photos that show light at different distances are helpful, but Zack keeps going to illustrate how this may apply in a real world scenario – like a wedding reception. There’s inevitably a dance floor and he knows he has to get a photo of the couple during their first dance. That’s not the time to be working out lighting ratios. However, he can setup his lights in advance in a single position, and then divide the areas of the room according to light fall-off. The dance floor will be at an area where the light fall-off is particularly wide. All he has to do is change his aperture depending upon the part of the room where he’s shooting. For the dance floor, he can go down to a lower aperture and get consistent light over the space of the floor. That allows him to be confident with the amount of light and exposure, so he can concentrate on getting images of the couple. You could light a basketball court with the same philosophy.

By the time this initial lecture and his examples are done, you’re only 27 minutes into the DVD. Honestly that was all it took to clear up all of the misconceptions I had about lighting, tie together the bits and pieces I’d learned in previous training efforts and workshops. That was the meat and potatoes lesson that answered how to creatively light and control my photographs. Pun aside, it was like a light went off for me. Epiphany. I had the information I needed and I could see examples of how it works. More importantly, I had a foundation to use to create my own images. Yes, I need to practice, but that’s expected. Think about this in terms of a parable:

“Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day. Teach a man to fish and you feed him for a lifetime.”

Zack didn’t present any recipes for lighting.  He never told you to set your ISO here, your shutter speed here, choose this aperture, this amount of power on your flash and put your subject 3 feet away, then all of your pictures will be perfect. Such advice would only be useful under those specific circumstances, so why waste everyone’s time with a recipe? What Zack provided was clear instruction of how the variable perform individually and interact with each other to create an exposure.

The Gear

Photographers love gear. Every course, every workshop, every session I’ve watched has had some segment on gear. The advantage of performing in Manual Mode is that you can use a variety of different types of gear. However, there are four elements you need:

1. A flash
2. A support (e.g., light stand)
3. A trigger (e.g., sync cable, Pocket Wizard)
4. A modifier (e.g., umbrella, soft box, reflector – something to shape the light)

It doesn’t matter if you use a cheap flash you got on eBay or a studio strobe. You can use the elements he taught in the basic lecture to manually control the power of the flash. What you need from that point is a way to hold the light, trigger the light to fire, and modify the light. He discusses his thoughts on some specific brands of lights, pros and cons of different triggers, and how various light modifiers (e.g., reflector with grid, big softbox) modify the quality of light that falls on your subject. It’s useful information, but you don’t see much here in the way of examples. In the next segment, he starts shooting and you see how all of these elements come together during a session.

Live Shoot – Lessons in Practice

The rest of the first DVD gets divided into a couple of sessions – an indoor studio session where he covers examples of how to achieve a specific look by either changing exposure variables (e.g. darkening a background by use of shutter speed) or by using different light modifiers. Zack also gives his thoughts on how to work with models, composition and other aspects of photography. One of the interesting techniques I liked was when he placed a single bare-buld light behind his model and used the ceiling and walls to reflect light around. He mentions that he’s a fan of having movement in his photos. After shooting a few frames to cover the basics, his gets his model to start moving around, whipping her hair and creates some very energetic images – all with one bare bulb standing behind her.

The benefit I got from watching the live shooting sessions was to see how you can use the lessons to add creative impact to your images. You can see how he sets up his shots and he consistently tells you what settings he’s using. If he changes something, he mentions it and tells you why he’s making a change.  All of this adds reinforcement to the basic lessons provided in the lecture and you see the immediate results. The video post-processing team did an excellent job of showing the images as he clicks them, so you don’t have to wonder what’s happening on the shoot – you see every frame. If there’s a problem, he discusses it and how he changes something to remedy the issue.

The second DVD gives you the same kind of insight, but with a slight difference. Instead of using a model he hired for training, you go along with Zack on live shoots with actual clients. As much as this is a learning device about lighting – because he still reinforces everything by telling you what settings and changes he uses – you also get to see his creativity in action. You see how he deals with his clients, changing locations, using resources he finds along the way.

At the end of the second DVD, he covers a bit about his post processing in LightRoom. It’s not a LightRoom tutorial, but once again, it gives you insight to his vision and how he expects the resulting photo to look. For example, there are some shots he made where he knew he was looking at the result in Black & White.  He goes into his thoughts about the elements that help him decide what to process.

Wrap-Up

The DVD package is $250 plus shipping ($12). As I said at the start, this is the DVD I would recommend to anyone interested in truly understanding using flash for photography. It doesn’t tell you what to do, it gives you the tools to do what you want. For that reason, I view it as a completely successful educational package and a great value. Had I started here, I could’ve saved a boatload of money. Also, having this foundation helps me appreciate the rest of the training that’s out there, but doesn’t quite dive into exploring all of the information presented here.

I have one complaint about this DVD, and only one. The music absolutely sucks. Don’t let that stop you, though. It’s only a few seconds of some rap/hip-hop beat that drones on between segments. In fact, I’m giving it too much credit by calling it music. However, at least I can say that it fills the empty space between one segment and the other. It’s my fault for being raised with a talented musician for not appreciating this slice of Urban crap. Now seriously, if that’s my only complaint, I hope that tells you that the rest of the material works.

My little rant about the music aside, I’m absolutely thrilled with this DVD. I started shooting immediately after watching it and found myself completely comfortable with the lessons. While this DVD pretty much focuses on using a single light, I found it very easy to adapt the lessons to include multiple lights and balance different aspects of the exposure. That’s what impressed me the most. I got the foundation necessary to improvise, adapt and overcome my previous limitations. It’s not magic. It’s just good, on-topic information.

On Thursday’s post, I’ll dive into a review of David Hobby’s Strobist DVDs. Work beckons for a long day Wednesday, hence the delay to write-up the next review in the lighting education series.

You can order the DVD from this page: http://onelightworkshop.com/page5/page5.html

A Night at the Grammys - © Copyright 2010 by William Beem

Note: The image above was taken at the Westcott Shootout at Photoshop World 2010 in Las Vegas. Scott Kelby wrote about it yesterday on his blog.

Last week, I detailed a bad experience I had at the Westcott booth on the Photoshop World conference Expo floor. I waited about a week from the experience before I wrote about it because, quite honestly, I don’t like posting negative reviews or experiences. There’s absolutely no pleasure in  it, just as there was no pleasure in my experience. I ultimately decided to write about it because it was a true part of my experience, and that’s what I share on this blog.  I’m fortunate that the majority of my experiences are good, but I don’t want to just sugarcoat things. Sometimes you need to share something that doesn’t live up to expectations.  As a result, I received comments from other folks who mentioned they also had negative experiences at the Westcott booth, one even dating back to the previous year.

It turns out that Westcott folks paid attention.  I received an apology from the man in the booth and we exchanged a couple of e-mails discussing various issues. It seems that my post struck a nerve with him. Over the weekend, I also received an e-mail from a VP at Westcott who was clearly concerned. The note mentioned that Westcott prides itself on customer service and invited me to discuss the situation in more detail. I shared some information regarding the apology I received. I’ve been assured by the VP that Westcott has learned from the experience and wants to insure this kind of issue doesn’t happen again.

About the Spiderlites

Something else came along with the initial apology. It was the very information that I wanted to get during PSW. With the permission of the salesman, I’d like to provide that information here. I’m going to edit any personal details out and try to present only the pertinent information about lighting and equipment, so I won’t promise this is word for word.  However, it’s knowledge that I didn’t have and am happy to share with others.

You brought up many good points in your post, and, me having been a shooter for over 40 years, can relate to everything you say.  There is no doubt that electronic flash does indeed make unsharp images due to camera shake and subject movement almost non-existent.  And, the same cannot be said of continuous light.

The use of electronic flash for long periods of time brings a photographer a certain level of comfort with that lighting source.  You say you have never really liked our TD5’s because of the reasons you present.  Certainly, there is a range of photographers that never are, and never will be, comfortable with the techniques of shooting with these types of lights.

Shooting with continuous light is the same as shooting outdoors with daylight.  I have always practiced the guideline of shutter speed being equal to the focal length of lens being used as the optimum speed for hand held use.  Hence, as a guideline, the use of your 70-200 should give acceptable hand held results at 1/200 sec. speed.  I personally, have been able to successfully hand hold at one or two levels below that, so, a 200mmm lens has me being fairly comfortable at 1/60 sec.  Although I do find that number creeping up as I get older, and, camera shake is always a concern when hand holding…especially long lenses.  To tell you the truth, when I use a long lens (I own a Sigma 70-200 f2.8), even when I’m using flash, I try to at least use a monopod.

I once had a professional photographer that I respect greatly impart with me wisdom that he got from his mentor…

“The difference between a professional photographer and an amateur is that a pro uses a tripod.”

This photographer lives by that rule and always uses a tripod in his work.  I asked him,

“What about when you are using strobe….does that not mitigate the chance of fuzziness because of the short duration of the flash of light?”

He responded that, to him, it did not matter.  He said that even when using flash, it does not preclude the slight movement of the camera when taking an exposure.   Besides the point that tripod use ensures predictable composition and repeatability.  Certainly, it stops the action of your subject, but, in his opinion, tripods are king and, according to him, if you want to be sure of tack sharp images, use a tripod.  Not a surprise that during my time repping [redacted], I sold literally millions of $’s of very high end tripods.  That was in the back of my mind when I spoke to you.

Now, let’s discuss the actual exposure one can expect from daylight fluorescents.  Yes, they do not come close to the raw light output of electronic flash.  That is why Westcott sells both continuous and electronic flash products.   And, continuous light is not suitable for all types of photography.  Fashion photography, where one has to light up a large area, with a moving target, is one particular type of photography that screams for strobe.

The set-up we used at Photoshop World was one of those that we were stretching the capability of continuous light because the sets were complicated, large, and dependent on the use of models.   As you noticed, it was perfectly suited to have large numbers of people shoot at the same time since syncing, the biggest negative of strobe use, was not an issue.

Typically using continuous light, especially daylight fluorescent, it is at it’s best when you can put it nice and close to your subject resulting in beautiful soft light and, usually, acceptable exposure.  Like any light, when exposure is not sufficient, you have to add more light.  Well said, too, that a shorter focal length will help ensure sharper pictures.

The greatest advantage to continuous light is that you see what you get.  This is a huge thing to the more inexperienced photographer.  Experienced pros like it because of the same reasons as it lend itself better to “painting with light.”

Additionally, the lack of a bright flash seems to transform a portrait sitting from an emotional roller-coaster where the subject is waiting for each exposure, tensing up while waiting for that tell tale flash.  Then, they relax.  Most subjects are not professional models experienced in getting their picture shot.

I also like the inherent softness of daylight fluorescent, especially as compared to the inherent harshness of electronic flash.  This is particularly important when using a chip as opposed to film, where film, by it’s very nature, is a low contrast medium, and the chip, by it’s very nature, is a more contrasty sensitive medium.  Remember the days of film when we regularly overexposed to pick up “saturation”?  The use of strobe with an electronic chip begs for blown out highlights.  We compensate for this by moving a strobe further from the subject and diffusion.  Daylight fluorescents are the opposite in that they are inherently soft, and if used with the same amount of diffusion as in a soft box as a strobe, is very flat.

That is why we used shallow, big soft boxes at the show, that use very thin front diffusion panels of only 1/4 stop, as compared to the double layer of 3/4 stop diffusion common with strobe.  It is desirable to put the lights closer to the subject than we did at PSW, but then, we would make it harder for a group of people to shoot at once.  So, you were using TD5′s in a manner that is different than if you were the only one shooting in your own studio.

Product photography also is much easier to accomplish with continuous light.

All-in-all, the joys of shooting outdoors is embodied in continuous light use.  Certainly, it may not be for you.  But, I appreciate your attempt at using them with the set-ups we provided, at great effort, just so people had something interesting to shoot, which is, at it’s very heart, a photographers lover’s show.

What it Means to Me

The salesman continued with an apology and also made a generous offer to test some equipment, which I declined. Maybe that’s just me, but I didn’t feel this was the right circumstance to accept the offer. I’ve no doubt it was made in a spirit of contrition (as we discussed in later messages), but I replied that I didn’t write my account in hopes of any gain.

In fact, I said the one thing that almost any consumer advocate will tell you to never state – that I would never buy a product from this vendor again. I certainly meant it because I was incensed and didn’t see any problem at all by dropping a potential provider from my gear list.  Let’s face it; I’m a hobbyist. My own purchases are not going to affect their bottom line.

That’s why I respect the contact I’ve received from Westcott. They could have easily written me off as another loud-mouthed blogger. Instead, they realized that something was wrong and reached out to correct the issue. I’m still sorting out my own feelings about the issue, but I definitely respect the effort to contact me, apologize, and try to mend fences.

Westscott Models - © Copyright 2010 by William Beem

I’ll be honest, I’ve never been a fan of continuous lights. Having used these Spiderlites at various workshops, I’ve never found them to put out sufficient light or have the punch of flash or strobe lights. When combined with my favorite lens for portraits – the Nikkor 70-200 f/2.8G VRI – and a moving model, it’s a recipe for fuzzy images.  Perhaps not every image is like that, but most of them are throw-away shots.

Still, the sets are beautiful, as are the models, and I figured that there must be a technique to getting decent shots. Other folks come away with some nice images and I want to do the same. I shot a few frames and chimped. Not bad, but let’s zoom in a bit. I have the center-button of my D700 programmed to quickly zoom so I can see what kind of quality I have in the shot.  Sure enough, most of them were fuzzy, like this one:

Westcott Model - © Copyright 2010 by William Beem

That’s just not going to cut it. I varied my settings trying to get a faster shutter speed – pumped the ISO to 3200, opened the aperture to 2/8, made sure the VR was turned on, etc. I was getting shutter speeds ranging from 1/40th to 1/160th of a second. A few shots here and there were sharp, but most still had no comparison to my experience using flash and strobes. I decided to go visit the Westcott booth and speak with one of the sales reps.

That decision turned into the most disturbing experience I’ve ever had with a vendor. I mentioned my problem and showed some examples.  His response was to burst into laughter and openly mock me right in front of everyone in his booth on the show floor.  Some of his comments included:

• You just don’t know what you’re doing.
• You don’t know how to hold a camera steady.
• Maybe you need a tripod.
• You think a strobe is going to help you get a sharp image? No, it’s your fault your pictures are fuzzy.

During this conversation, I just felt humiliated and insulted. However, I also had this out-of-body experience while he was mocking me. As I stood there, accepting his insults because he wouldn’t stop, I imagined that he thought I was one of the worst photographers in the world.  Simultaneously, I thought he must have been one of the worst salesmen in the world. Who mocks a potential customer?

Look, I’m not perfect. However, I know from experience that I’m not as bad as this guy was claiming and I have my own photos to prove it. As you can tell from the bullets above, he laughed at the idea that a flash will help retain sharpness and eliminate camera shake in an image. That’s when I realized I was dealing with someone who was either an idiot or was completely deluding himself.

It’s a matter of physics. Your camera captures a reflection of light. Your shutter speed determines the duration of that reflection. If your subject is moving during the time your shutter is open, then the reflection it captures will result in a blur on the resulting image.  Simple physics. If you cannot reduce the time your shutter is open in order to capture a correct exposure, then you need to reduce the duration of light reflecting on your subject. That’s what a flash or strobe does and that, my friends, is why it eliminates the appearance of camera shake on your image. Short duration is why some people spend thousands of dollars on Profoto lights rather than Alien Bees.  Light is light. You can correct a white balance issue in post, but duration of light is something you have to get right at the moment you click the shutter. If you want a sharp image, you have to stop the movement of that reflection.  Westcott Spiderlites simply cannot do this because they are continuous lights. The salesman’s comments aside, a strobe WILL help you get a sharp image.

Let me give you an example.

Megan - © Copyright 2009 by William Beem

I shot this image using the same Nikon D700 and 70-200mm lens at ISO 200, F/8 and a shutter speed of 1/8 second. Why is this image sharp and the one posted above from the Westcott booth fuzzy? Because this one used a SB-900 flash in a Lastolite EzyBox to light the model. The reason I used such a slow shutter speed was to allow the ambient light time to creep into the exposure.  I knew that the flash would keep the details of the model sharp. This same image would fail with the Spiderite TD5 because of the duration of light on the model would show any movement she made, or any camera shake that I made. I tripod would help, but it’s cumbersome in a model shoot and still wouldn’t eliminate the model’s movements.

During the sessions at the Westcott Shootout booths, the models were moving nearly continuously.  That’s because there were always a dozen photographers or more. They had the odious task of trying to make everyone happy, make eye contact and change poses, etc. We can’t blame the models for the movement in this environment because they’re doing what they need to do. Basically, the only thing this shootout booth proved to me was how poor the Westcott Spiderlite TD5s are for portrait photography.

So how do you work with this lights to eliminate camera shake? The answer is to reduce your focal length. The axiom is that you need a shutter speed equal or faster than your focal length to eliminate camera shake. Since I liked to shoot at 200mm, I needed a shutter speed faster than 1/200th of a second.  That just wasn’t going to happen here unless I bumped up to ISO 6400, which introduced noise and eliminated sharpness and detail.

Another way to eliminate shake is to have more light. That wasn’t going to happen at the Westcott shootout because of the low power of the Spiderlites.  However, my D700 and 70-200 can get some sharp images in challenging light.  I know because I did it earlier that morning at the PSW Keynote:

Felix - © Copyright 2010 by William Beem

Felix (100% crop) - © Copyright 2010

It’s not a model portrait, but I find it interesting that I got more detail in a concert setting than I did using a vendor’s lighting gear. For this shot, the stage lights put out enough to get 1/320th of a second. Felix is waving his arms from side to head and moving around for the show, and yet this image is sharper than most of the ones taken with Spiderlites. So is this image of Scott Kelby that I shared yesterday.

Scott Kelby Rocks! - © Copyright 2010 by William Beem

Fortunately, I didn’t allow the encounter with the obnoxious Westcott rep to dissuade me from trying to resolve my problem. I went up to my room and exchanged my 70-200 for my 24-70. It worked much better, as illustrated by this image I’m now showing for the third day in a row.

Marionette - © Copyright 2010 by William Beem

Here’s what I learned from my experience with these continuous lights. You need to work with shorter focal lengths because they lack the power and duration capabilities of flash and strobe. The benefit of these lights is you can see exactly where the light falls on your subject prior to the shoot. The drawbacks, however, are unacceptable to me. I like using my 70-200 because of the way longer focal lengths compress the subject. It’s a more pleasing result. If I have to use a shorter focal length to eliminate camera shake issues, then I sacrifice some creative choices. It also means I may have to work much closer to my subject or accept some other distortion issues caused by wide angle lenses.

Other photographers who were at these sets posted some really nice photos.  When I dig into those photos a little closer, I generally find two things.  Either they were shot with a shorter focal length (e.g., 50mm) or they don’t post a very large image. That latter issue is likely because the photo looks acceptable at a small resolution, but the imperfections begin to show up in larger sizes.

I have Nikon flashes and Elinchrom strobes.  I’m quite pleased with both. Though I thought there may also be room for some continuous lights in my arsenal, I now know that this is a product I won’t purchase because of its drawbacks. Perhaps I could use them for still life images, but the gear I already have will do that just as well. There is just one more piece of this story that convinced me to never purchase from Westcott again.

After I exchanged my lenses and tried using the 24-70, I encountered the same Westcott salesman again. I was at one of the model booths down on a knee with my camera to my face trying to compose an image. That’s when the sales guy deliberately walked right over to me, stood right in front of my, and spent a little time snapping some shots on his iPhone. All I could see was his ass in front of my lens for a minute or two.

Come on, this wasn’t some misunderstanding or accident. When you walk toward someone and you see them composing a shot, and then you stop with your butt right in front of them, it’s intentional. He turned around and walked off without a word or acknowledgement, though he looked right down at me.

Money goes where it’s treat well.  I’ve had excellent experiences with other vendors at the Photoshop World Expo. Mark Astmann at the Manfrotto booth has helped me a number of times and that’s why I buy Elinchrom lights, modifiers and other gear from his company. Hoodman USA makes great products and treats me with respect, so I’ve bought cards from them at every PSW. The nice folks at Artistic Photo Canvas have also earned my business and I plan on repeating with them plenty of times. My NAPP membership is due for renewal in a couple of months and they will most definitely get my return business.

It disappoints me to end up writing a negative review. I wanted to find to learn how to work with these lights, so I wrote a short note to Terry White asking when he was doing his demo.  He responded with the time and I expected to show up, ask a few questions and learn from a man who uses the product. However, I didn’t see a point in attending after my conversation with the salesman. When you mock me, berate me and show me your ass just because I came to you trying to succeed with your product, it’s not a path to earn my business. I will never, ever buy a product from F.J. Westcott again.

PSW Begins - © Copyright 2010 by William Beem

About a year ago, I attended my first Photoshop World conference. Not only did I learn a great deal, but I had a blast doing it.  So much so that I decided to attend the next one in Orlando earlier this year. Once again, I learned a lot and had fun doing it. That was enough to convince me to return to the next one in Las Vegas. Guess what? I still learned even more and still had a great time doing it. That says quite a lot about the people who put on the show, the instructors, and the people who attend. I’ve been to many different conferences in my career, but Photoshop World (PSW) is clearly the best of them all. That means you’re quite likely to see me attending again in Orlando next Spring.

My day job has nothing to do with photography or design, so PSW happens on my vacation time. I pay for the conference and any associated fees.  I pay for my travel.  I pay for my meals. I almost paid for my hotel, but didn’t have to do it. You see, I am the Paris Hilton of Photoshop World. By that, I mean that I enjoyed living a luxury lifestyle without ever having done a thing to earn it. How does this happen?  I have friends who are degenerate gamblers. When they heard I was booking a hotel room, they told me to cancel the reservation and put me in a comped suite at Mandalay Bay. I spent a couple of days before the conference at Encore on my own dime, but my generous friends kept me in good shelter for the duration of PSW. They also stuffed me during lunch at Olives overlooking the Bellagio Fountains and at Nob Hill in MGM grand. It’s a strange feeling to be wined and dined without any expectation.  Make me wonder why the hell they like me enough to do all of that, but I’m very grateful for it.

During my last two visits to PSW, I attended a pre-conference course. This time, I didn’t do it because I wasn’t sure if I would be in town. When I finally decided to come a few days before the conference, the pre-cons were booked up. I’d thought about taking the HDR course with Matt Kloskowski and R.C. Concepcion, but I waited too long. After arriving at Encore on Sunday evening, I spent the next couple of days out shooting in Las Vegas. When I checked into Mandalay Bay on Tuesday and walked to the registration area, I found R.C. out with part of the HDR pre-con group and I had a mild case of envy – they were all smiling and appeared to be having fun. As we walked by each other, R.C. surprised the hell out of me.  He recognized me, smiled warmly and shook my hand.  The reason I’m surprised is because we really don’t know each other.  Perhaps he remembers my face from the last PSW, or because we both attended Scott Bourne & Trey Ratcliff’s HDR workshop in Tampa earlier this year. Either way, I was really impressed by the man’s gracious welcome. Seriously, the guy is really very cool.

The Forum Party & Tweet-Up

The folks on the PhotoshopUser.com forum got together for a party at Burger Bar in Mandalay Place, and then there was another party among the Twitter users in Mandalay Bay. It seemed like about 30 folks showed up and finally discovered how to talk to each other in person, rather than online. This really turned out to be a great thing for me. While I’ve done PSW alone in the past, I found new friends and almost always had someone from that group to share a conference session with me. Shortly after we settled into our tables, we were joined by Scott Kelby, Matt, and R.C.. They pulled up a chair across the table from me and chatted with us for a while. I’ll probably say this too many times during the review, but they were really great guys. We had a nice conversation and they all gave me the same advice – I need to buy Call of Duty for my XBox 360.

After dinner, we headed to the Tweet-up and joined an even larger crowd of folks. Nancy Masse @NAPP_News) is the voice of NAPP on Twitter and she rounded us all up for the party. I’ve missed this event the last couple of times, either due to being on the Photo Safari with Moose & Joe or because I had a deadline to edit photos from the Concert pre-con to try and win a prize. One of the advantages of not taking a pre-con is hitting the party. Folks setup some studio lights and take photos all night.

Scott Diussa, one of the instructors from the concert pre-con was there and we had a nice chat for a while.  The man travels quite a bit and I got some insight to his world, including his passion for music and aviation photography. Sharon Peterson came over to our table for a while, I think to escape some smoke, and joined the conversation.  I’d never met her before, but I’m glad she joined us – she just seems like a wonderful woman. A bit later, Moose Peterson came along to join her. Do you recall that  warned you I’d say too often that people were really great? Moose didn’t disappoint, either. He politely introduced himself and reached out for a handshake – exactly the kind of man my parents raised me to respect. I follow his blog and training online, so I respect his abilities very much. It’s comforting to meet folks who exceed your expectations. Scott, Sharon and Moose made great company.

After that, I spent a bit more time just talking with my newfound forum friends. In fact, we closed the place down.  Everything was cleaned up and carted away before we finally left our little table for the evening.

The Photoshop World Keynote

Like most conferences, PSW starts with a keynote session to set the tone for the conference. I bought a Speed Pass, as I’ve done in the past.  A Speed Pass allows you to have preferred seating at the Keynote, each of the classes, and the wrap-up at the end of the conference. Not everyone wants to pay extra, but I’ve always been pleased with the opportunity to get up front. Unfortunately, there was a problem. Several of us with Speed Passes were standing right by the entrance waiting for them to call out for our early entry. It never happened, though. They just started letting people in, and that caused some confusion as to why we didn’t get the benefit we purchased. I asked the NAPP staffer inside why they didn’t call for us and he said they did.  I asked other Speed Pass folks and they said that they never heard anything until general entry. Once we got to the seating area, the front was filled.

Once again, I asked a man who was directing seating there about sitting in the Speed Pass area and he told me it was full. I mentioned that there wasn’t any notice, but all he could say was, “Well, I’ve been in here for an hour.  This area is full.”

It irked me. People make mistakes and I understand that. Clearly, some folks were let in early to fill up those seats, but they weren’t the folks standing by the door. Several Speed Pass users were with me and they were also kind of irked about it. it. Quite simply, you expect the benefit you purchase. However, that wasn’t really what bothered me the most. It was the fact that my concern was merely dismissed. Mistakes happen. A good rule for customer service is to acknowledge the mistake and apologize. I didn’t expect that he could fix the issue at that time, but I was rather nonplussed by being somewhat casually dismissed. It left me with the perception that this was my problem, not his.

There are some reasons I bring up this issue. It seems completely out of character for the type of customer service  have always experienced from NAPP. This is an organization that’s gone out of its way to provide excellent customer service in the past. Of course, then I realized that the person who dismissed me wasn’t a NAPP employee, but was one of the instructors – basically, a freelancer for the show. Perhaps he hasn’t received the same customer service training that the NAPP staff members receive.

I’d like to stress that this is the only issue I found during the show, or during the past three shows.  That’s quite impressive to me. There were no problems using my Speed Pass later, and I’ve always found NAPP staffers to be really friendly people. I brought up this issue because I’d like to recommend some changes for the next PSW:

• Be very clear about where Speed Pass users should enter. If you want them to come to a specific door, let us know in advance. When you announce it’s time for us to enter, be very LOUD about it.  There’s a large crowd outside and you need to ensure you’re heard when you make that announcement.
• Train your instructors and other folks who help so they know how to deal with issues and complaints. It’s easy to be nice when things are going well, but these folks need to know that paying conference members also like courtesy when things go wrong. A kind smile and apology for a problem can go a long way toward soothing someone’s feelings and, more importantly, protecting your brand. You’ve worked hard to build an image. Don’t let someone else destroy it with a dismissive attitude, particularly at the very start of the event. This is where you set the tone for the whole show. You don’t want that tone to be a negative first impression.

A big reason I bought the Speed Pass is because I wanted to shoot the keynote opening, and you just can’t do that from the back rows. Since I didn’t get the seating I expected, I figured I was justified in getting up to shoot the show from a reasonable distance, so I had a little fun.

Scott Kelby Rocks! - © Copyright 2010 by William Beem

Last Spring, the Concert Photography pre-con was a lot of fun. The truth is, I wanted to shoot a band again and this was one of two opportunities to do it during PSW. The theme for the show was a rock event. They opened with a VH1 Where Are They Now video covering an old band – NAPP. As you can tell, it was a KISS parody with a Photoshop twist. Scott Kelby and Felix Nelson both played live. Dave Cross and Matt Kloskowski were on stage, but had some stunt doubles performing backstage (Tony Llanes and Scott Stahley, respectively). Not only did they sound great, but the stage was alive with lights and smoke. They had everything but explosions and it made for a fun song to shoot. I was behind Laurie Excel and briefly entertained the thought of shooting my own version of “Where is Laurie’s Hair?“, but I kept focused on the band.

Learning New Stuff

You can’t see everything. When you’re sitting in a classroom, you’re missing all of the other sessions. That’s why they give you a book – lovingly referred to as “the phonebook” – filled with course notes for the sessions you couldn’t attend. The trick is to decide what you have to see while you’re there. Last Spring, I focused almost entirely on the photography track. There’s plenty of Photoshop training available online, but first-hand knowledge is a good thing. It also had the advantage of being in the same room, so I really didn’t have to go anywhere to attend the next session.  Zack Aris, Joe McNally, Moose Peterson – they all came to me!

This time, however, I decided to split things up a bit. I started with Zack Arias talking about Stuff You Need to Know to be a Photographer. It was technical, inspiring and terrifying all at the same time. I took copious notes in that session and almost every other one, so perhaps I’ll share more in a later blog post. Suffice it to say he packed a lot of good information in that first hour.

Matt Kloskowski - © Copyright 2010 by William Beem

Next up was Matt Kloskowski with Five Ways to Select People. I realized I’d never attended one of Matt’s courses in my previous PSW conferences, so I made up for it this time. I think he was a presenter in at least three sessions.  Poor guy may have seen me in the front row and worried that I was stalking him. I was actually a bit concerned about this course, because I suck at selections.  Truly, I’m awful. Even when I select something, it seems like there’s a little ring around the selection after I make some change. No more, though.  Matt’s instructions were excellent and easy to understand. Techniques that were previous obscure enough to seem as black magic before now seem rather trivial to perform.  That’s a pretty good result for an hour’s worth of training.

The APC HDR WalkShop

I could bore you with a plethora of detail about everything I learned in my sessions, but I’ll break things up now and talk about some of the events. Wednesday night was pretty busy for me, as I signed up for an HDR event sponsored by Artistic Photo Canvas (APC) and lead by Brian Matiash.

APC HDR WalkShop - © Copyright 2010 by William Beem

Quite simply, we loaded about 30 people into a bus and headed down to Fremont Street to spend a couple of hours capturing brackets for HDR images. Brian shared his knowledge and techniques with us, and was yet another cool guy to meet. During the ride down, Brian posited an idea that contradicted advice I’ve previously heard about HDR photography, and even heard later during PSW. I’ve always heard to keep your camera in Aperture Priority Mode while shooting to keep it from changing the depth of field. It seemed to make sense, and that’s what I’ve always done. I heard it from Matt Kloskowski in his HDR course on KelbyTraining.com and from Trey Ratcliff during his HDR Workshop in Tampa. It had to be the only way, right?

Not so. Brian correctly pointed out that shooting in Aperture Priority affects how you meter the scene. To make sure you meter the right portion of your scene to get the middle exposure correct, you need to set it in manual mode. My immediate concern was that the Auto-Exposure Bracketing would change the exposure by affecting my aperture and/or shutter speed.  Apparently, that isn’t so. Bracketing in Manual Mode only changes your shutter speed, not your aperture.  Effectively, it controls the +/- exposures in the same way as Aperture Priority mode – by changing the shutter speed. You don’t lose control over your depth of field and you gain more control over your exposure by shooting in Manual.  Who knew?  Brian knew, and that was just one of the lessons he shared with the group.

We broke up and walked around Fremont, apparently confounding the local business owners and visitors alike. Imagine 30 folks with cameras on tripods suddenly showing up in your area. On the downside, it took us a while to spread out enough to get some images without another photographer and tripod in your scene.  I think we all screwed up some compositions for each other until we just moved far enough away.

Another thing we all shared was the questions from people around us. The security guy from one of the local nudie bars came up and asked me what was going on with all the camera, as did a few other vendors. A number of visitors asked the same question, which was then followed by questions about which camera they should buy.  One guy asked me which aperture he should buy.  I could only think to tell him “Apple.”  He didn’t get it.

Pioneer Club - © Copyright 2010 by William Beem

The folks at APC were great hosts. They passed out t-shirts and discount cards for a future purchase, as well as holding a nice time at Border Grill after we got back for some free drinks and appetizers. APC is a pretty small company based in Florida, but they work on a grand scale. I had recently received my first canvas from them and appreciated their quality and customer service. Running their business and attending PSW pushed them pretty hard, but they did it all in great style. There were plenty of great examples of their work in the expo hall and that’s what earned my trust to give them a try. I’m definitely a satisfied customer and will return, so the HDR event was just icing on the cake for me. Try them out with your own images and see what I mean.

The PSW After-Hours Party

This turned out to be a very long first day. I’m tired, I’m sweaty and I’ve been lugging around heavy camera gear all day.  Still, I’m not going to miss this party. It had already started before our bus returned from Fremont Street, so I hurried up to my room after the APC cocktails to shower and change before hitting the party. Once I arrived at the House of Blues, the band was up and playing, the crowd was loving it and I immediately pulled out my camera and worked my way to the front of the room to start shooting.

Scott Diussa - © Copyright 2010 by William Beem

One of the cool things about this party is that it’s all open for photographers. You don’t have to beg for access if you have a ticket. Come in the door and shoot as much as you want. The band is into it as much as the photographers.  They gave us all plenty of great moments to capture. More important than that was the fact that they’re just great players. I’m not just saying that because I’m kind of snobbish about musicians. It’s not because I’m great – I haven’t picked up my guitar in nearly four years. However, my brother Don truly is great. He’s more than great, he’s phenomenal. Growing up around him gave me an appreciation for the real thing. Scott Kelby and his bandmates delivered. They also brought up Scott Diussa, one of the instructors for the concert pre-con, to play guitar. That’s him ripping through the notes in the image above.

It seems like I was sweating again in no time, but I didn’t care.  There was a cool band in front of me and I had access to shoot. Front of the stage, the left or right, side-stage, from the back of the room over the crowd – I got it all. Hundreds of live concert images are just begging to see which ones I’ll pick.  It’s an embarrassment of riches and I wish I could shoot like this all the time.

Model Tableaus and Expos

Every conference needs an expo hall for vendors to show their wares. If you go, here’s a tip.  Some of them will drop prices on Friday to clear out inventory. Even if they don’t, there are often show specials to save you money compared to regular prices. I like to buy my Hoodman CF cards at this show because I save $50 apiece and this show was no different. I love these cards. The first reason is because they’ve never had a reported case of corruption, so I trust that my images are safe. The second reason is that they’re fast – 675x fast. During PSW this trip, I filled up three 16 GB Hoodman cards and one of my old Kingston 133x 8 GB cards. When it came time to download images from the CF cards into Aperture on my iMac, it took longer to download the one 8GB Kingston card than all three of the Hoodman cards combined!  That’s some serious speed. I’m using the Hoodman FireWire CF card reader for all of my downloads, so the only variable to affect performance was the card itself. When I was shooting the keynote and band at the after-hours party, I never once had to stop and wait for my buffer to empty out before I could shoot again while using my Hoodman cards. I won’t buy anything else. I just wish I could afford the 32 GB versions.

One of the big draws at the Expo Hall is a set of tableaus provided by Westcott. They contract with a local modeling agency and bring in some really great scenes to support the lovely models. They do this to show off their TD5 Spiderlites. Honestly, I’m not a fan of those lights, but it makes sense to use continuous lighting in this kind of circumstance. Could you imagine trying to pass around a PocketWizard to use strobes in this kind of crowd?

Westscott Models - © Copyright 2010 by William Beem

That’s the crowd on a light period. Imagine the scene with three times as many photographers, and many of them don’t want to leave once they work their way up to the front of the pack. I’ll write a separate post on my experience with this situation, the lights, and dealing with the vendor rep. For now, suffice it to say that my only other negative experience happened with the vendor and I will NEVER give any of my business to Westcott again.

The models, however, were lovely and did their very best to accommodate the crowd. As I showed yesterday, people went home with some really cool photos from this part of the expo hall.

Marionette - © Copyright 2010 by William Beem

Wrapping it Up

I am not a man who wins at games of chance or contests. I don’t expect to win anymore. That’s why I’m surprised that I won a number of things at PSW.  Here’s the list:

• I played video poker and won $5. You may not think that’s much, but I had to cash out once I got $5 ahead just so I could leave happy.  I count this as a win.
• I won a DVD from Zack Arias (One Light).  To win, I had to ask Vanelli what was in his shorts.
• I won a DVD covering retouching techniques from David Cuerdon at his excellent session on Fashion Portraits. That was because I remembered that Shift+ cycled through various Blend modes in Photoshop.
• I won an APC print of a photo that Alan Hess took of Scott Kelby during the first concert pre-con. You had to be present to win.  I was, but the person they drew before me wasn’t. Perhaps I’ll mount that one here in my home office so I can imagine Scott Kelby questioning my decisions when I process images.  ”You’re going to use Pinlight blend mode on that shot?  Seriously?”

Despite my long-winded account of the event, I left out a ton of stuff.  My plan is to go into a bit more detail of specific portions of the conference in other posts this week. What I hope you can take away from my review of PSW is that it’s really a great event full of nice people and great information. Yes, I had a couple of quirks, but that’s it.  Just two things.  Certainly nothing to ruin my experience or take away from all the good things I encountered. When you consider all the complexity of putting on a conference for thousands of people, I’m amazed that NAPP continues to produce such an excellent experience twice a year. I wish I could be around this group of people all year long. Next Spring will be here before you know it, though.  See y0u in Orlando.