Fashion-Style Christmas Portrait BTS posted

I've updated the Fashion-Style Christmas Portrait post with a description of the setup I used.

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Fashion-style Christmas Portrait (Updated - with BTS)

The previous week our daughter got sick.  She got well then my wife got sick.  Then my son.  I thought I could dodge a bullet but we got exposed to the cold rain on Friday night, so yes I got sick too, but I think the fever broke last night.

Anyway, a couple of weeks ago my wife wanted a "fashion-style" portrait.  I looked at the examples she gave me and I interpreted it to mean slightly edgy portraits.  What tools would you have used for that kind of project?  I'll post the setup I used tonight.

Hit the jump for the setup I used.

We took the shot in our garage which I hastily rearranged.  Here is a shot of the setup:

For the key light, I used a Nikon SB-800 with a beauty dish  (IIRC it's a 17-inch Fotodiox beauty dish).  Whereas a shoot-through umbrella will scatter light everywhere, a beauty dish is much more controlled and has a rapid falloff, which lets me choose what to light and what not to light.  To me, it's somewhere between hard and soft, and it looks more dramatic than some of my other light modifiers.

For the fill light, I thought about using a high highlight-shadow ratio to make it feel edgy, so I just used a 42-inch reflector.

For the background light, I used a Paul Buff ABR800.  Actually I don't usually use it for that purpose.  I could just as well have used the B1600.

For the rim light, I used an SB-800, which I clamped to one of the background stands.

To trigger and control the whole setup, I used a combination of Nikon CLS Advanced Wireless Lighting and the Paul Buff CyberCommander. (I don't like having to go to each speedlight or strobe to adjust the power.)  The SB-800 in the beauty dish was acting as master flash, and was connected to my camera via a TTL cord.  I could have used another SB-800 to control it wirelessly, but if I did that it would have contributed to the exposure and I didn't want that.

To sync the CyberCommander to Nikon AWL, I first tried connecting it to the SB-800 master flash.  Although the ABR800 did fire, it was not syncing correctly, and I could not see the ABR800's light in the shot.  I tried another way, which is to connect the CyberCommander via PC sync to my camera.  Unfortunately since the D600 doesn't have a PC sync port, I was forced to use my Fuji S5 which is my only DSLR with a PC sync port.  Connected that way, the CyberCommander synced properly with the Nikon AWL.

This was pretty much the SOOC shot, with some cropping:

Note that my kids' lower body has much less light than their faces - that's the beauty dish falloff in action.

In post, I decided to add a couple of graduated filters to remove some of the light on the right side and make it look like there is a shaft of light behind them.  I also exported to Lightroom in order to use ShineOff.

Here again is the end result.

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In Memoriam

Yesterday I took the day off to watch our kids' holiday recital and to take them to Disneyland, so I didn't read or listen to the news or check my e-mails.  It was only much later in the day when I found out about the atrocity in Newtown.

My initial reaction was horror that something like that could even be contemplated by anyone and could befall any of us.  I don't pretend to understand how or why it happened.  I thought at first to keep silent.  In the face of the senseless murder of innocents, words seem so futile.

As I had more time to reflect upon it, however, I felt that the best way to defeat the unspeakable monsters who did this is to transform these incidents.  I believe these crimes were designed to hurt the community - not just physically, but as an attempt to sow fear, hate and dissension in the community.  That attempt cannot be allowed to succeed.  Inasmuch as these depraved acts were intended to demoralize us as a community, I believe the best response is to strengthen our sense of community even more:

- After 9/11 happened, I remember that there was such a strong sense of patriotism. Everyone in America went out of their way to be kinder to each other and to do something for the community to heal and become stronger.

- Similarly, after the mass shooting in Norway, which was motivated by Breivik's hatred for immigrants, Norwegians sang a children's song that celebrated diversity.

The perpetrators wanted to break the community's spirit but they failed, and on the contrary, the community strengthened. 

I hope that we continue to respond that way, and that we make it very clear to the beasts who wish to hurt the community that they will fail miserably at their objective.  They seek to create evil, yet instead we will have more love and kindness in our community.

Lord, make me an instrument of your peace.

Where there is hatred, let me sow love.

Where there is injury, pardon.

Where there is doubt, faith.

Where there is despair, hope.

Where there is darkness, light.

Where there is sadness, joy.

O Divine Master,

grant that I may not so much seek to be consoled, as to console;

to be understood, as to understand;

to be loved, as to love.

For it is in giving that we receive.

It is in pardoning that we are pardoned,

and it is in dying that we are born to Eternal Life.

Amen.

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A Couple Of Yashica Oldies

Yashica Electro 35 GTN + Yashica ST-7

 
How many of you know the above camera? Have you seen such a tripod before? Hit the jump for a flash back in time.
 
The first camera I have ever used, and learned to take photos with, was my father's Yashica Electro 35 GSN, it is not the one shown above, but it is identical in almost everything, and the top part has a silver color instead of black as the one in the picture, which is a GTN by the way.
 

Aperture, Distance Scale, DOF scale, WB, Self Timer & Bulb Mode

 
It was (past tense used to indicate it was decommissioned ~ 10 years ago) a 35mm film range finder, it has a fixed 45mm f/1.7 lens, and to focus, you look through the viewfinder where you see two images of the same scene but slightly shifted horizontally, you move the focus ring until the two images of the object you want to focus on coincide on top of each other, only then can you trip the shutter.
 

Film Speed

 
We used it with color Kodak film, I think it was ASA 400 film, you had a dial to select the film speed (aka sensitivity, or ISO in digital). The camera was mostly automatic, you pick the required aperture and it will select a shutter speed between 1/500 sec up to 30 sec depending on the light conditions, there are two lights that tells you if the shot was going to be over or under exposed, which meant the camera couldn't select a shutter speed suitable enough, and you had to take action. I remember my father taught me to use f/16 aperture when shooting in sunlight, and down to f/1.7 indoors, middle apertures were used in between both extreme lighting conditions.
 

Self Timer

 
See that silver lever with the red dot? That's the self timer, you move it counter clockwise until it locks in place (it uses a spring mechanism), and when you trip the shutter, it returns to it's original position slowly, you have around 10 seconds before the camera takes a picture.
 
One of my step mother's friends gave the camera and the tripod shown here to my daughter to play with, it was the first time for me to see that tripod, it was quite interesting, a unique design which I never saw before, let's have a few looks first, I will compare it to my Slik Mini-Tripod with a ball head, which I adore, especially that it can carry up to 3kg of weight.
 

Yashica ST-7 is really tiny

 

Unscrew the bottom, spread the legs, and screw it back

 

Legs expanded

 

Made in Germany

 

Ball head, a nice surprise

 

Compared to my Slik tripod with only the legs opened

 

Slik's maximum height

 

Maximum height, with maximum legs length

 

How would you focus like that without a rear live view screen? We're quite spoiled.

 
The tripod was a very nice surprise, it is tiny when closed (a mini monopod), it has a ball head, a nice hand strap, and it is very sturdy, and all the mechanical bits are too smooth. The one who came up with this design is a genius. Of course I doubt it will carry a heavy DSLR with a heavy lens with such short legs, but it is more than adequate for small cameras and my soon-to-be-acquired Olympus OM-D EM-5.
 
All of the tripod pictures were taken with the 5D Mark III and the 100 Macro L, I was too lazy to use any lighting equipment, so I just used available overhead room lights, all exposures were completely hand held (not even resting my hands on a table), f/8, ISO 1600 and 1/6th of a second, now that's more than 4 stops of image stabilization, and in some of the shots I was at macro shooting distances, the 100L is really the perfect lens.

Posted with Blogsy

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Nikon D600 Price Drop! Now Just $1999 WITH 24-85 VR Kit

The Nikon D600 with 24-85 VR kit is now available for just $1999.  http://shop.nikonusa.com/store/nikonusa/en_US/pd/ThemeID.18145600/productID.256095900/pgm.81985000

The same deal is available at Amazon until December 15, 2012.

FYI I bought my Nikon D600 for $2099 + tax.  Compared to that, this deal is like getting the 24-85 VR lens for free!  Alternatively, you may be able to sell the 24-85 VR (retails for $600) for $400 or $500 and cut down the price of the D600 to $1500 or $1600. (Wow... Almost makes me want to buy another one....!)

Offer good until December 29, 2012 only at the Nikon store.  Plus, at the Nikon store for December 14-16, 2012 only, you can get a DSLR/laptop shoulder bag AND next day shipping for free!

This offer appears to be intended to take the wind out of the Canon 6D's sales (pun intended hehe) (comparison here).  Recently, Canon did a similar thing to the D600 by drastically lowering the price of the Canon 5D Mark II.  (The difference is that the D600 is a cutting edge camera whereas the 5DII is a capable but aging camera.)

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Some Valuable Resources for Teaching Your Child Reading and Math

Yes this is a photography blog. If you found our site and are looking for photo-related stuff, don't worry you're in the right place. Just see any of the 500+ articles that we have already posted. In particular you may want to start with the index. I haven't updated it in a year but it will still help you navigate through many of our articles.

This post, however, is for our readers who have young kids. I have a 2-yr old daughter and a 5-yr old son. I found some very helpful resources for teaching reading and math, and I wanted to share them with you.

READING

I believe it's essential to foster reading skills and a love of reading in my kids, so I have been reading to them regularly. With my son now in kindergarten, I started trying to teach him sight words using Meet the Sight Words by Kathy Oxley. He had been learning to read the books, so I was pleased with his progress. But I noticed that he was misreading some words. For example he sometimes misread "that" as "the" and vice-versa. He was also intimidated by new words.

Meanwhile I learned another method of teaching kids how to read called DISTAR (Direct Instruction System for Teaching Arithmetic and Reading) or "Direct Instruction." I bought a book that was based on that method called, Teach Your Child to Read in 100 Easy Lessons. I learned that the sight words method could foster bad reading habits such as being overly reliant on pictures and guessing words instead of learning to read. That certainly explained some of the mistakes that I saw my son was making. I stopped with the sight words books and switched to DISTAR.

The 100 Easy Lessons book builds up reading skills in 20-minute lessons. Each lesson has several short components, such as recognizing the sounds of letters, reading them phonetically, writing them, and in later lessons, testing reading comprehension with short stories followed by questions. By the 100th lesson (or even before that) the child will be reading stories with several paragraphs, which I suppose is good enough to enable him to read pretty much any kind of reading material appropriate for his age group.

I have been using DISTAR with my son for the past several weeks with good results. At the beginning it felt kind of strange because it is very rigid (they use a script), but after several lessons I learned when it was not necessary to use the script. Regardless of my initial impressions, the results have been good. My son has definitely been learning to read phonetically (I tested this the other day by presenting him with nonsensical made-up words to see if he could read them). He has also been understanding what he is reading. I was so pleased with the DISTAR reading program that I wanted to look into using the DISTAR approach for math as well.

MATH

Math is one of my favorite subjects, and I have tried to teach my son math conceptually. He knows how to count but I want to be sure he understands what the numbers mean and is not just rattling them off. I found it somewhat frustrating to think of different ways to teach him concepts like places, carrying over, etc. using coins, counting beads, and an abacus. It felt so inefficient because I am sure someone has done this before. The resources I did find already assumed an understanding of the fundamental concepts (e.g. Kumon math books).

After I got good results with the DISTAR reading program I tried to look for DISTAR Arithmetic resources. I saw one on Amazon but it was priced at $158 (!!). I found out the publisher was McGraw Hill and I checked it out there. The workbook for kids was $50+. OK that's within reason. The manual for the teachers is $700. Just for level 1. WTF. Level 2 is of course another $700.

After some more searching, I eventually found out that there are actually FREE software for DISTAR arithmetic AND reading. It's on a site called www.funnix.com . I was suspicious at first, but found out it's by Siegfried "Zig" Engelmann, the inventor of the DISTAR method and co-author of the 100 Easy Lessons book. (FYI the free offer is just a temporary promotion. The math program is available free until December 15. The reading program will be available for free from December 16 to December 31. If the promo has ended by the time you read this, you can also buy the software at around $32 and $38 respectively.)

I was also curious about whether DISTAR Arithmetic would teach math conceptually. I got my answer in the video on this page by Zig Engelmann. In it, you'll see kindergarten and first-grade kids who have been taught using DISTAR demonstrating a very solid understanding of math concepts. Check it out. Call me a nerd, but I found it very touching and inspiring.

That video was made in 1966. It is heartwarming to know that Zig Engelmann still continues his work and his advocacy for underprivileged children.

FUNNIX BEGINNING MATH

Most free programs or books are usually just teasers. This is the real deal. It includes 100 lessons. The software is 800MB. There are PDF files that are included. The workbook is 208 pages. This is not some bullshit promo teaser. There are no ads. It's not time-limited. It's not disabled in any way. It's complete. There's no upsell. As far as I can tell it's identical to the software that they sell for $32.

- Lessons are 35 mins each., and are intended to be done once per day, 5 days / wk.

- Covers addition, subtraction, algebra addition (e.g. 1 + x = 5), algebra subtraction (e.g. 10 - x = 6), and basic fractions.

- A prerequisite to starting the class is to pass a "placement exam" with a minimum of 10 pts. Essentially if your child can count reliably up to 10 and can identify the numbers 1 to 10 then they will pass. If the child doesn't yet meet this score, the authors recommend a beginning language program instead.

I have yet to start the program but I've reviewed the materials and am very optimistic. There are several similarities with 100 Easy Lessons, such as the fact that the lessons are organized so that kids learn mini-skills in bite-sized pieces that ensure success, which are reinforced and later combined into bigger skills that are again repeated for reinforcement and combined into still more complex skills.

Will update after some lessons.

FUNNIX BEGINNING READING

Will update after downloading and trying out.

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Room With a View: Indoor Photos with Scenic Windows

One of the lighting scenarios that I find most demanding to capture is an indoor room with a scenic window.





You know the issue -- you take a photo of your friends or family with the gorgeous window view as a background.  But all you get is your subjects and totally blown windows.

A shot from another party I took a few years ago.  Most of the details in the scene outside were gone.

The problem of course is that the dynamic range is extremely wide.  However, it is not impossible to capture it all, particularly with the newer DSLR sensors.

The first step is to expose for the windows.  The subjects will be severely underexposed.  However, newer DSLRs have incredible shadow dynamic range, so you will be able to recover the shadows.  If you know your DSLR's highlight dynamic range limit, then so much the better -- you can overexpose the window view to the limit of your camera's sensor to get additional light on your subjects.  In terms of selecting your exposure, it would be best to use the ISO with the widest dynamic range.  Usually this is the base ISO, although on some cameras it is a stop or two higher than that.

The second step is to add flash if possible.  It's not absolutely necessary, but it will make the shadow recovery much easier, and will decrease the noise on the recovered shadows.  If you do decide to add flash, then you should set the shutter speed to your camera's sync speed.  Doing so will decrease the ratio of the ambient to the flash.  Do not go above that and use high speed sync (aka HSS or Auto FP) because you will lose more than 2 stops of flash output, which will be a greater decrease than the decrease to the ambient, i.e. there is a net increase in the ratio of ambient to flash.

What about the ISO and aperture?  There's no combination of ISO and aperture that you can do to decrease the ratio of ambient to flash.  So I suggest sticking to low ISOs in order to get a wider dynamic range.

If the conditions outside are bright and you choose your sync speed as your shutter speed, your aperture will likely be around f/8 or even narrower.  With a low ISO and narrow aperture, your flash will be working extra hard.  In the shot above I was at ISO 200, f/7.1, 1/200.

If you use direct flash, you probably will have enough light:

However, it's very unusual to have a source of hard  frontal light indoors so the flash use is very obvious.  I prefer to get soft light, to mimic the actual light indoors.  To get soft light I used bounce flash.  At ISO 200, f/7.1, my SB-800 didn't have enough power to light up the subjects, even when zoomed to 105mm.  But that's ok.  I know that I'm adding at least some light to the subjects and making it easier to recover them.  This was what the SOOC image looked like with the addition of flash at full power:

Scary, yes?  Seeing this, there is a strong temptation to adjust the settings to bring up the exposure but I knew from experience that the Nikon D600 could recover those silhouetted subjects.

The third step is of course post-processing.  I used Lightroom 4 for post-processing, and I adjusted the following:
- Increased the exposure to brighten the subjects.
- Increase the shadow recovery to around 20 (not more than that, or else the image will look like HDR).
- Decrease the contrast.  This will lift the shadows, just don't overdo it.
- Decreased the highlights -100 to recover as much of the highlights as possible.
- Used the adjustment brush to paint another -100 highlight adjustment (yes, it's cumulative)
- Increase the clarity of the scene outside the window.
- Adjust black clipping and white clipping if necessary.

Here is the end result:

(Note: it was cloudy outside, so the scene outside was really kind of grayish.  There were zero blown details.)

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