Softer light with Elinchrom Rotalux 90x110

Finally the time has come to soften the light from my Elinchrom 500BX Ri kit! For that I decided to go with the Rotalux 90x110cm softbox. Here is a picture of contents of the box as it arrived in the mail:

Not sure if the chocolate bars are included by Elinchrom or the web shop that I bought the Rotalux from, but it was a cool extra to find in the box!

Why I got this, other available options and initial thoughts are all listed down below, so read on!

Beefing up the hardware

Last Friday I mentioned that I upgraded the hardware of my photo PC a bit. And it feels like such a good bit!

First it's the processing speed. Surely the 4 new cores feel like lightning compared to the old Intel Celeron driven laptop. Especially when using Bibble 5 as it can utilize all 4 of the cores, which means it is 4 times faster already. Batch processing will never be the same again :) Add 4GB of memory to that computing power and my relatively small NEFs from D70s are digested in under a second each (yes yes, depending on how heavy the post-work is)! That is 0.8s now compared to around 8s before! Obviously the new CPU helps reduce photo editing time as well because any change that I make to a picture in Bibble is instantly reflected on screen without no delay what so ever. Even layer masking (not one of Bibbles strongest points, imho) is much easier and workable now. That is a sweet deal right there.

In addition to the CPU power I got better storage. Now the PC is running on two mirrored hard drives which means that both are identical copies of each other, they hold exactly same information and if one HDD breaks down physically there is still the other one to work with. This mirroring into two hard drives is called RAID 1.

To solve potential software-failure-related data loss I do manual backups to an external USB HDD. I never bothered to find any software to do backups for me... Maybe I should. Will update if I ever get around to it. For now I just try to keep a clean and easy to maintain folder structure.

It did not work out to install the PC from the same USB memory stick as I used to install Fedora 13 on my laptop. This is more related to funky (incompetent) hardware (or me not knowing what I'm doing...). Maybe with time computers will get better in recognizing the USB drives at boot time. For now we deal with what we have and just burn ourselves a good old CD.

This was the second computer I installed Fedora 13 on. Again- no problems. As mentioned last week, there was an additional challenge to get the NVidia graphics adapter working 100% correctly, but just something I've never done before, not a bug or problem.

Now I feel comfortable enough to say- get your latest version of Fedora from here:

I can not realy put my finger on it, but it somehow feels good, this whole thing with moving away from Windows to open source. It will probably sound way too geeky, but I feel like home when I sit infront of my PC now :)

Cheers!
//M.

When you screw that pooch...

Dorit Chrysler was not the only concert I visited last week. Youngfuck and Leidi Misterie had a performance at Cafe Berlin on Thursday. The day I have learned that NOT always can you pull it off with just a kit lens and ambient light.

There were just a couple of small bulbs and a visual installation through out that dark cellar... So I ended up with some seriously "artistic" (read that how you wish...) pictures.

Youngfuck- shot over 40 frames from the same position before someone stepped in front of me:

And then my blurrastrophy with Leidi Misterie:

You know that feeling when you look at the pictures on a big monitor for the first time and start feeling your guts turn inside-out? That was exactly this time. Well, the bad result was visible even on the small LCD really, but I had to make sure...

Anyhow- lesson learned:
1. No more 'traveling light' to new places. Carry the flashes, be there early to have setup time;
2. Every f stop counts. The f3.5 to f4.5 of my kit lens is just not going to work (some times), no matter how many frames I shoot... Even setting sensitivity to ISO 1600 on a D70s (jep, I humiliated myself that much) will not save my ar**. Maybe a Nikkor 50mm f1.4? Or maybe I'm old enough for a D700 with 24-70 f2.8 on it?..

A talk related to messy pics is going on Zack Arias blog. Check out the comments of Blowing it on purpose post :) I do find it strange that he used those pics made by Paolo Roversi to ilustrate 'technically imperfect'... I guess there is some hard to explain fine line between a really cool and failed... I do think that some of my shots like the trumpet player from Bobastian or bass player from Kapten hurricane are artsy fartsy and not perfect in a perfect way :)


I don't get the same feel from the pics from this session at Cafe Berlin though...

Well, already had a better event with Leidi Misterie this Monday at Oceanen. Now just need to catch Youngfuck playing somewhere (where there is light maybe:) ).


Cheers,
//M.

The missing piece of Linux puzzle - monitor calibration

When preparing my photographic self for transition to Linux there was this one last thing that was bothering me -  how on earth am I going to calibrate my monitor and will the gods of OSS accept my EIZO-labeled Spyder 3 colorimeter?! Well, worse case, I figured, I'll just find a windows laptop and fix myself an ICC profile on it; never tell anyone and live in shame for the rest of my days.

So, after I installed all of the other tools like Bibble and GIMP and Hugin, I got to work on the colors. First thing I do is plug in the USB cable of my Spyder 3. No whining or crying so far. Then look for some software for it... Initial googling around points to some strange command line tool - Argyll CMS it's called... At this point I am ready to take anything that goes as no page mentions support for Spyder 3 in a positive way.  Go to Add/Remove Software in Fedora System menu, Search for argyll, select both packages and install.

Reading through Linux Photography... Doesn't sound promissing, but I still go for the test:
sudo ./dispcal -v -y l ./test

A root password later I can clearly see that my Spyder 3 is recognized by the system (because Argyll states the device name clearly). The main menu appears and I am ready to rock! This seriously made my day! I was so happy with this whole color calibration working out :D and now I can easily shout out so that anyone can hear it:

YES, IT IS POSSIBLE TO CALIBRATE YOUR MONITOR UNDER FEDORA 13 LINUX USING A SPYDER 3 CALORIMETER!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Here is a screenshot of my Spyder being abused by Argyll to prove it:

There! And don't let the lack of info be misleading. It does work and it works like a charm!

The whole process of creating an accurate ICC profile for your monitor is described by Linux Photography in here. Yes, a lot of reading, but it will also allow you to understand better the process behind creation of the ICC profile.

The only thing that I would like to add to above post from LP is that there is a strange bug in the tool and when it says 'Press any key to continue' it actually means pres Enter. Took a while to get there as I was hitting a spacebar and was being kicked out of the program for a couple of minutes :)

OK, hopefully by now you have an ICC profile file. You need to add it to Bibble, GIMP and set it as the default system profile for this monitor.

System->Preferences->Color Management
Select the active monitor, click the dropdown menu to select the profile and choose Other profile... Find the file you have just created with Argyll CMS. Done with system default.

Bibble should automatically find the system default profile. Note the word should. Even BibbleLabs say that it's well worth the hassle to point out the same file one more time for the tool, just to be sure.

GIMP will not even try to find the profile, so jump into Edit->Preferences->Color Management and point the Monitor Profile to the ICC you've created.

For browsing the calibrated internet I use Firefox. Install 'Color Management' extension and point it to your newly created monitor profile. Restart Firefox and all photos you see will be as real as they can be! You can now try it out by exporting a raw picture from Bibble to JPEG and opening it in Firefox. What you see in Bibble should be almost identical to what you see in Firefox.

Seems like we're done now! All colors calibrated, tools set up and ready to go!

Enjoy your accurate colors ;)
//M.

Photoshoot of Désirée Hermann

Last weekend took pictures of an aspiring singer/songwriter Désirée Hermann. Check out her music on myspace. In the mean time here are my two favorites from the shoot:

Both shot with Elinchrom BX 500 Ri kit. The first picture was lit with one softbox in front of her and lighting the background (a white bed sheet...) with the second Rotalux. Two takeaways: make sure the background is realy smooth; has no wrinkles and is not wavy... Otherwise you'll waste too much time cleaning it up in full lenght shots. Second- one light for background is ok, but just a little not enough to make it eavenly lit. Tried to fill in with SB-800 from the other side, but that flash is so weak compared to Elinchroms! You get used to a lot of power too quick :)

Second picture is just one softbox directly above her. To get more controll over light would be just great. A normal softbox spills light too much and I did have to do some make up work on the background to get it completely black. No big deal though, but obviously a gridded softbox goes on the ever growing wishlist.

Ah yes, shot with Nikon D70s and 70-300 VR (first pic) and 18-70 (second pic).

Have fun ;)
M.

New EL Skyport Speed!

Just a couple of weeks since I got my new BX 500 Ri kit and Elinchrom release new version of their Skyports - the EL Skyport Speed.

Main advantages according to Elinchrom are:
- Improved housing, battery drawer and switches;
- Improved integrated Hot-shoe with screw lock;
- 1/250 sync speed.

The first two should fix the main whining about these transmitters/receivers. If the buttons/switches are working as they should, I don't see a single problem with them any more. Even though my copies of transmitters and receiver I have for the SB-800 hot shoe flash are working totaly fine, there are people complaining about the buttons not functioning as they should. From my part, the only issue I have is the receivers on/off switch sensitivity... Might not even notice how you switch it off... Seems to be solved in the new version by putting the button lower then the rest of surface:

These seem also to be backwards compatible with BX 500 Ri that I already have and other current Elinchrom heads, so if I ever get arround to upgrading to these transmitters, there should be no problems with current equipment. 

The reason I'm not jumping in my seat regarding the high speed sync is that I have no issues with it even today with my D70s... But folks with other cameras sure should appreciate this feature.

Check out the remaining details at Elinchrom product page.

Have fun ;)
M.

NOTE: images in this post are from Elinchrom page, not my photographs.

True Or Not

Pictures from Johanna Nordströms 'True Or Not' album release concert now available. Great bunch of people, great music, good times! Thanks for all the fun!

Mostly used available light- two insanely powerfull stage lights that were there, crosslighting the whole place with harsh unbarable light. Sometimes added a bit of bounced fill with SB-800 (had a low white ceiling at my disposal). The usual D70s with 18-70 kit lens. The event took place on a boat, so it was seriously tight there. Lesson learned- 18mm is not enough in places like these!

//M.

Old 50mm f/1.8 manual Nikkor on my D70s

During the years of marriage to D70s I've completely forgotten my old 50mm 1.8 Nikkor lens that is gathering dust together with Nikon FM2.

Figured I might as well try it on the digital camera. Here is the result:



So, yes, it is possible to use an old Nikkor lens on a new(er) digital camera. There are a few buts though.

First- manual focus is a killer. Very hard to get it right wiht small and dark D70s viewfinder. I even started thinking I might need glasses... Well, anyway, manual focus while taking pictures of moving subjects is nothing I miss.

Second- no metering. You have to bother and play setting up the exposure manualy.

Have to be fair- once you do get the borring manual stuff right the picture is great!

BTW, the light is just dinner table lamp. It created quite deep shadows so I put a Lastolite TriFlip silver reflector to bounce some light back into eye sockets.

Feel like putting the new Nikon AF-S 50/1,4 G on my xmas wish list :)

Cheers,
M.

Heavy artillery - Elinchrom BX 500 Ri

It's almost a week since my first ever propper studio lights have arived and now when the initial excitement is over, it's about time to write about the Elinchrom EL 20751KIT Style 500/500 BXRi To Go Kit.

It is amazing how much difference working with these lights makes! Knowing that I'm coming from one Nikon SB-800 background, you should not be surprized these Elinchroms made a whole world of difference for me.

Jump inside the post for first samples.

Obviously, first to suffer were my closest ones- girlfriend and dog... :)


The dog got borred in just about no time:

This picture is cross-lit by both Portalite 60x60 softboxes that came with the kit- one camera right at about 45 degree angle, the other one facing the first, so they are firing into each other.

The dog is gone. Time to bother girlfriend!

Tried to light her in a high-key fashion... Lights are at 45 degrees both sides of the camera. White bed cover, white wall in the background. The background did not get completely white so I used the SB-800 with Skyport trigger to do the dirty work. That wasn't realy enough; in the far left top corner there still was a bit of shadow, but total time of post processing was less than two minutes- completely acceptable if you ask me.

A few dozens of shots later I started feeling boredom coming through the lens... The shoot was over :)

The only one left to bother- yours truly! Made a dark and groosome self portrait. One of the Elinchroms with softbox above my head, pointing downwords. Here I'm sitting on a chair in the middle of living room. There was some light spill on to the wall behind me, but it was very minor and, again, a couple of clicks in PP fixed it in no time (just levels, no cloning).

Hope these samples illustrate correctly why I am so happy with this purchase :)

Update with more samples:
- A portrait of a friend I made with this kit;
- Maternity photo session lit with BX 500 Ri kit;
- Added a Rotalux 90x110cm softbox to the kit;

Cheers
M.

Get those collors right- calibrate your monitor!

Or as it was in my case- get a proper monitor in the first place.

When working on Leidi misterie photo I had this strange feeling that something was not right with the colors as I did play arround with white balance a bit. So I took the photo to a lab and printed it. Good thing I did! Here is what it looked in the first place:
 

Too yellow you think? It seemed perfectly fine on my LG laptop monitor (if she doesn't look yellow to you, read on and go find your monitor dealer :) ). 

Jump into the post to see how I calibrated the colors on my laptop.

I didn't really... I tried! But it went completely wrong. For starters I got myself a Spyder 2 calibrator which in theory works with laptop monitors too. In reality it messed up the color profile so badly I couldn't recognize any of my pictures any more. Back to the shop.

A chat with a friendly sales person later I was going home with my brand new Eizo FlexScan S2232W.

It came bundled with a calibrator and software. As I understand it is a Spyder3 with Eizo label on it.

Installed on Win Vista without any problems at all. The software takes a while to startup on my aging laptop though (everything freezes for some seconds after login). After calibration I compared the default profile with calibrated one- not much difference, so if you're not too picky you can skip that part.

Was it worth it? Every single penny! There is so much more detail in the pictures now! And when I print my pictures, they look almost the same on paper as they do on screen!

//M.

Nature in winter

Some winter pictures are in order this seriously cold year. Above woodpecker shot with Nikon 70-300 VR through the kitchen window (yes it was that cold, not me being lazy or anything...).

Still excited about my 70-300, btw. A whole lot to learn (build some muscle maybe?) before I manage to hold it still even with vibration reduction on...

More cold pictures inside the post!

 

Some bugger left footpints in the snow. All kinds of creatures come by the house looking for food.

Some dry grass and a field covered with snow. Want more vacation in the middle of nowhere!

The three last images were made with my kit lens (18-70) and D70s which still works fine when it's under -20 Celcius.

Have fun!

//M.

Macros with a Nikon D40 kit

These last couple of rainy days got me thinking about the summer (jeah, it didn't take long to miss it:) ).

Digging through vacation photos found these macros I took with my dads Nikon D40. It had the kit lens, the 18-55 one, and some no-brand macro filters attached to it.



Really liked this small camera. It has almost no weight (I guess I am doing unfair comparison to my stuffed backpack), so having it with me all the time did not require any effort at all. Now I feel like going Ken Rockwell on you... :)

More bugs and butterflies inside the post!













Jep, if you're on a budget, a couple of macro filters will give you a lot! And I would never call their quality bad...

Still, the summer was nice and warm :)

New member of the crew - Nikon 70-300/4,5-5,6G AF-S ED VR

Yes! Finally - diving into the world of long lenses, shallow DOF and getting close to things I could not reach before!

Sample images from this lens (shot with my good old Nikon D70s) and some more thoughts inside the post.



Lets start with the sample pictures of autumn colors/critters:


Sharpness - check.


Nice colors - check.


And the DOF is as shallow as it should be, fixing the background for you. Though I've learned that you need to be really careful with it, especially if you have such long-nosed subjects as below... I managed to focus on her nose most of the time, leaving the eyes not sharp enough.



Just love it how long lenses separate subject from the background!

This picture of Terra, my dog, is completely uncropped. I have not done any vignette removal on it in post processing; it was shot wide open at f5.6/300mm. Now you tell me if the measurebators whining about 70-300 vignette are worth listening to... Sure, if you take a picture of someone with blue sky in the background, you might see vignetting... But usually you will also be able to stop down to f8 to remove it ;)

As for reaching far away objects - the millimeters speak for themselves. Below two pictures of a bird at 70 and 300mm, 70 being as far as I could go before getting the new lens (yes, 70mm is the small one in the corner... sheesh... :) ).



BTW, this bird was really funny, pretending to fly or blow-drying himself for quite a while there :)

VR

Is a really neat feature! 70-300 is first ever lens I have used with VR in it. It is really cool and does it's job like it should (according to it's name :)). Below picture of weird colored mushroom was taken in dark woods with shutter speed of 1/20 at 220mm zoom. Jeah, I need to practice holding this long beast, but without VR there would be no mushroom today...



Tripod

This is probably going to be an issue. My tripods ball head (Manfrotto 486RC2) does not seem to be able to cope with the weight :( After composing, fastening the lock and letting go of the camera, it slides down a few millimeters, making quite a big difference in the viewfinder, especially on 300mm zoom. Be prepared for new investment here :)

Summary

If you have not yet came to the conclusion- I love the lens. Jep, probably if I'd tried the big bro 70-200 f2.8 I would love that one more, but for the fraction of the cost, my newest toy does miracles!

I'll update this post with more new pictures as they come.

Cheers!

Down below will be links to new posts where you can find pictures made with this lens
Nature in winter

Snowy stone in Säveåns nature reserve.

Carrying your gear

If you are looking for something to carry around your DSLR (tripod and laptop?!) every day- a backpack is all you should think of (according to me :) ).

After some searching couple of years back I picked a LowePro Vertex 200 AW. A tank in other words. Here it is with my Manfrotto tripod attached to it.

Put short- I had it with me almost every day ever since I bought it. That means a lot already, but if you're still curious, jump in to the full post to see more details on the backpack.


Like I said before- it's like a tank- big, spacious and sturdy. I don't have too much equipment, so everything fits in perfectly well and there still is room for a lunchbox and a Nikkor 70-200 (some time in far future maybe?! :) ). Anyhow, today it fits all of my filters, DIY grid spots, batteries, chargers, flash and the good old D70s kit.

It has gazilions of small pockets to hold the small stuff like memory cards, remote etc.


And with the help of removable tripod holder I can carry around my tripod on it too (like in first picture). It is also possible to attach the tripod to any of the sides of the backpack, though in that case it feels out of balance. One minus is that you need to always unhook the tripod to get inside... Well, win some, loose some... I carry the tripod in hand after initial unpack anyway.

Best feature of all- this baby is weather (water) proof! I was out in pouring rain for 2 hours and it did not manage to soke through! The zippers are covered with latex and all of the material is holiding back the water quite well. In case the rain gets out of hand and you are nuts enough not to go home yet, there is a rain cover hidden on the bottom.

If there is still strength left in those shoulders you can even squeeze a big laptop into the backpack. Then the whole package is about 10Kg, but still it is quite comfy after you get all the straps adjusted according to yourself.


The major cons of Vertex 200 are similar as pros- it's size and weight. It is hard to take it with you while flying in smaller planes, also it is a bit heavy in its own weight.

Never the less, I still have it with me almost every day, walking like a turtle, carrying my whole life with me :)

Crashing Icicles

Upcoming spring is a good time for icicles to grow. And take pictures of them.



This one is shot with the SB-800 + Full CTO gell fired directly into the ice from above.



Also learned a valuable lesson today- never put stuff in you pockets! Before prepparing the next shot I've put my flash together with the remote trigger into my lower pocket. Then kneeled down to the cammera and heard something sliding down the icy slope... Jep- my SB-800 was on it's way to a 3 meter cliff, pulling EL-Skyport receiver with it... I was so afraid to go and fetch it after the crash, that just tried firing the flash with the test button from the transmitter. And it worked! Beleive it or not- it still works! Hail Nikons hardcore build quality! ;)

Extra Light

Time to start lighting things in the cool strobist off camera flash way?

The first thing in the list- light itself. After reading loads of babble on the internet, I figured that the reasonable thing to do here is to go for SB-800 (nowadays being replaced by it's big cool bro SB-900). Worse case I could use it on my D70s with all the iTTL functions from Nikon, best case it is so flexible and light that I would not mind carrying it around in the back pack all the time.


So, the baby arrived. Powered it up with four Energizer 2500mAh rechargeables. While the batteries are still rather new they last for about 300-400 shots, depending on how much output is needed. Setting it up as a remote wireles flash is no big deal and does not need to cost you anything extra. Use the built-in camera flash to trigger it. For D70s the settings are:

flash:set to remote slave/channel 3/group A
camera:CSM Menu/19 Flash Mode/Commander Mode/TTL or manual (depends on your taste)

I have no idea about other camera (like D90, D300, D700 etc.) settings, but you surely can use the off-camera flash in this manner with all Nikons that are above D70 except for the pro cameras that have no built-in flash that is used as a trigger.

There are two really annoying things about this way of triggering your remote flash.

First, if you use it in bright daylight it might not fire. Which is quite frustrating and makes you loose some shots that could've been really good... Also while working outside you have to make sure that the flash sensor 'eye' is facing the camera, otherwise it will most probably not fire even on a cloudy day.

Indoors this setup would be great, because one way or another the light form on camera flash bounces from all the walls and hits the sensor. Inside ambient light is usually not so bright to interfere with this process too. But there still is the second downside to using this setup and it is catchlight from the on camera flash... Gahhh... It's always there in peoples eyes. Waste time with Photoshop? No thanks! So I ended up covering it with my hand. Imagine preparing the shot, adjusting the camera and then quickly covering the flash to hide the catchlights... And then the same thing again... And still having to keep in mind that there is that damn light sensor on the other flash if you're outside... That was more than enough for me.

Radio triggers it is! Again lots of time browsing. Pocket Wizard seems to be called the industry standard. I bet there is a darn good reason for that (reliability is the one named most). But one transceiver costs 1/3 more that Elinchromes Skyport transmitter and receiver put together (at least in Sweden)! So the choice was kinda easy :)

Got the whole Skyport Universal Set and it looked really good, all kinds of cables in it- apparently all I would ever need. Well no! There is no PC-mono cable included and that one is the one you need to connect the receiver to SB-800. Ghhh... One horrible evening of sitting around toys and not being able to play with them, then quickly back to the shop day after.

So in the end, here is how the whole setup looks like (picture taken under tungsten/daylight mix with a mobile phone...:) )

Plug the cable into your flash and receiver, set the flash to manual and adjust the power/zoom. Put the transmiter into hotshoe of your camera and you're good to go (channel/group settings for triggers are in the manual; read it; the default works too). The flash will be triggered every time you press the shutter release button. If you want to change to the rear/front sync just do it the same way as you would for the built in flash.

With Elinchrome radio triggers life became much easier. No worries about where your flash is as long as it lights the things you need in the way you need it. I have not tried testing at how far distance it would still be reliable, but I have not had the real need for it so far and as for the distances I work at, EL-Skyport does it's job like a charm.

If you found some comments about their antennas and the fact that they seem flimsy, those are true. But it stopped bothering me now and even thought both transmitter and receiver are in my backpack all the time, I did not manage to brake them yet.

Otherwise they do their job perfectly and as expected. The only times I had the flash not fire were when it wasn't recycled yet... Nothing to do with the triggers.

All in all there is possibility to buy cheaper stuff (3rd party flash, eBay triggers and others that naturally lose quality with price...), but if you are looking into the above gadgets and wonder if they work together- yes they do. And yes, it is worth getting that flash off your camera!

//M.