Black eyes

Last post from this year. 2011 was interesting but turbulent year and it also meant resurrection for this blog with lots of new posts. Based on google statistics some people were also reading it so I try to keep posting here more stuff always when time for that. Happy New Year 2012!

Jar of fireflies

We had good outdoor location scouted but as the weather was really bad and raining whole day, all the photos from this shoot were done inside. Great that the Saara had access to this building which provided selection of indoor backgrounds to use in photos. More photos after the jump.

Gwendolyne

 Rainy & dark December, so time for another set of photos from autumn.

Jodie

This photo was taken at the early November when autumn was switching to winter but still some leaves left in the ground to give color. I have been recently trying to use just the ambient light for outdoor photos. It makes working faster as you can just focus on taking photos and not carrying or setting up lights. Colder the weather gets, less time you want to spend with tweaking the lights. For this photo ISO was pushed to 400 and VR from 70-200mm helped to keep the shot sharp.

Lens statistics

It was interesting to check Lightroom lens metadata statistics from the main catalog. By looking just the numbers, 24-70mm/f2.8 is my most used lens with over 11000 photos in the catalog. 50mm/f1.8 comes really close by having only 1000+ shots less taken with it. For me, surprising parts were the big amount of photos taken with super wide angle lens (Sigma 10-20mm) and that I have taken almost as many photos with 35mm/f2 than with 50mm/f1.8.

Photos in 0mm category are from MF lenses or corrupted images where camera lens info was lost from file. Yes, that can happen when memory card gets corrupted.

While I think lenses are not that critical for making the images, I like to test them. Especially when there is opportunity to test some special gear like MC ARAX 35mm/f2 or long telephoto lenses. I own only few of the lenses in the list and by looking statistics I could make most of my images just with 24-70mm zoom and one longer prime.

Profoto Umbrella XL

Profoto Umbrella XL, latest addition of light shaping tools from Profoto. First impressions and sample portrait photos taken in studio after the link.

Sugared

Fashion shoot with maniac girl in the land of sugar & trains. Best part of using candy as props is that you can eat them after the shoot. Models are so adamant about their diet that they can't eat them anyways :)

Pin-up

Teaching again

Yours truly, teaching portrait retouching basics about month ago. Non destructive image editing with layers was new to some listeners and I heard they updated image editing workflow after my presentation. When I teach Photoshop basics, I mention the layers, masks and blending modes to be the most fundamental tools with the software.

Problem with some Photoshop books are that they list everything you can do with software but don't focus on getting the workflow basics on the right track. But we all started from the zero, and first images were edited by running tens of silly filters to them. Oh those were the days.

It is amusing how much laughter you can generate in the audience by demonstrating liquify filter to create some photoshop disasters.

Photo: Lothar Mallon

Dr. Sketchy

Promo photo for Dr. Sketchy's Anti-Art School Suomi.
Models: Tin Ker Bell and Jackie O'Lantern. Small berets by Molla Mills. Drawings by Aiju Salminen.

Graffiti artist

Trama, graffiti artist


Making of N9 wallpaper graffiti


Setup for above time lapse

London & Bristol

It was good to see merry old England again. Last time was 11 years ago, time flies. English breakfast & lunch is still something that requires time to get used to. Or what would the life be without bacon?




And one from Bristol

Testing colors

Lightroom is awesome for quick testing of color adjustments (split tones, faux cross process etc.). Doing same things in Photoshop is much slower while it provides more ways for fine tuning the results with masks, opacity changes and so on. I spent some time to make this 3x2 photos .PSD file for testing different color toning combinations and collecting different tweaks under one file. Each color/contrast change effect is organized as own layer group and file can be always updated by dragging/creating more layer groups to it. This was good sandbox approach to test new color tonings as the result can be seen immediately for 6 different images.

Ahtolaiset

Ahti. From the editorial shoot for Nina Lahtinen's clothes in Espoo forest. This was done at the early autumn time. While scouting locations before starting the shoot, we were momentarily lost in woods. Never venture into woods without map & compass... :)

Travel photo editing

I wanted to play around with iPad image editing apps during summer vacation to test how they work with camera kit. Usual scenario when you travel without laptop and need to do some image editing. Some quick notes for couple of the well known image editing iPad apps.

Photoshop Express

This is quite far from real desktop Photoshop if compared by number of features, but can you really complain as it can be freely installed to your Ipad.

Photogene

Good number of tools and possible to undo multiple steps. App comes with presets for retro or other effects if you are in search for quick effects to spice your photos. What I liked in Photogene was the way to allow resizing image before sending it to mail/service and ability to view camera Exif & IPTC metada. Editing the IPTC metadata was also possible.

Photoforge 2

UI with rolling list of editing commands didn't felt as intuitive to use as UIs from other editing apps. But support for layers and blending modes gave this app more of real Photoshop feel. Seeing editing history as thumbnails was another bonus as was the possibility for real 1:1 zooming of photos.

Snapseeed

I liked the gesture based editing controls & tools selections but lack of zoom & limited undo options lowered little bit overall value. With latest updates, crop tool got the much needed aspect ratio selections but resize seems to be still missing.

With one or two of these apps you can do all the needed basic image edits and lot more while not having access to full Photoshop or similar software. Editing photos with iPad was fun & easy but works best when you only need to tweak just few images. Retouching tens or hundreds of images especially in detailed level is something where you still need desktop with bigger display & mouse/drawing pad for precise brush/mask control.

I was going to test few other apps but drifted away by playing Plants vs Zombies HD and other games with Ipad...

Steampunk

Visited yesterday Ofelia market. One guest from the event with steampunk styled hat.

 

Steampunk glamour fashion show.

Focus breathing

Handheld photos made from around 2 meter distance @ 200mm (AF-S 70-200VRII left & AF-D 80-200 right). Because of heavy focus breathing (change of focal lenght by focus distance) of new AF-S 70-200/f2.8 VRII you get lot less than 200mm FOV when focusing close to minimum focus distances (1.4-2m) :/  By reviews I wasn't sure how big drawback this would be in real use, but now after using the 70-200VRII some times at studio, it feels annoying. For headshots, you need to sometimes crop final image while older 80-200 would have delivered tightly framed shot. 70-200 with this trait is still fantastic lens and VRII makes it awesome for low light shooting. Would I have ever noticed this without internet reviews? Probably not :) Ignorance is bliss.

Studio session with flowers

From the first studio shoot with D700. Taken with AF-D 85mm/f1.4. 85mm with FX-body feels little bit too short for this kind of tighly framed headshots. So I need to start using more of my longer lenses (100mm macro & 70-200mm) for studio photography.

Ghostbusters

Fun shoot with Hell's Inc. Ghostbusters Finland. This was taken at studio using gridded SB-800 as key light and Pro-7b with gridded softbox as kicker. Smoke from smoke machine.


We had plan to take the photos on location but weather turned out really bad so we ended up taking most of the photos in studio.


One from outdoors. Group's costumes raised some interest with the locals :)

Charging...

Preparations for tomorrow's photography session. Got those high capasity (around 2500mAh) Eneloops (as seen in the the top of picture) recently. Should have about 25% higher capasity than regular Eneloops. However, they can be only charged around 500 times (compared to 1500 with older Eneloops).

I am switching little by little to low self-discharge NiMh AA batteries. More convenient to use as you don't need to constantly recharge them.

Post apocalyptic talk show

This time Hellmet hosting the post apocalyptic talk show

Nikon 1 J1 & Digiexpo

Nikon J1 with 10-30mm from Digiexpo. I have mixed opinions about Digiexpo. This year it felt to be even more filled with people. Lots of companies not represented there at all but in the other hand some good discounts, interesting guest speakers and possibility to see & test new toys.

Quickly checked the Nikon 1 J1 & V1 cameras. Not sure if they are suitable for what I need from cameras, but would like to test one with more time to get proper opinion about them. Pink lenses for this system might become collector items :)

Heli

Stala & So.

Promo photos & EP cover photos for Stala & So. band. Setup: Pro-7B with 3x4' softbox camera right. Taken about 2 stops from maximum power to allow overpowering partially the ambient and give almost instant recycle times. Which helps when taking group photos. You don't want to miss moments of good expressions.

AF-S 300mm f/2.8G VR II

Quickly tested this beast lens.  Nikon 300mm f/2.8G VR II is primarily meant for sports, wildlife and paparazzi shooters. Rugged build, fast focusing, great IQ wide open, latest VR technology and weather sealings makes this pro grade lens.

This lens should also handle teleconverters well, even the TC20, but I didn't test those. Weighting almost three kilos, lens can be still used some times even handheld but monopod/tripod is recommended.

This is intimidating looking big piece of glass if used by portrait photographers (unless you are paparazzi and need the distance).

Best thing to test heavy telezooms like this. Once you switch back to your normal zoom/prime lens, camera feels lightweight :)


Padded case (CL-L1) comes with the lens. 300mm/f2.8 is quite compact when lens hood is attached to it reversed way. 24-70 next to case for size comparison. Sure, the case is still bigger than smallest DSRL camera bags.


As there wasn't any live wild animals available, stuffed weasel worked as test subject for testing 300mm/F2.8 VRII. VRII works great, this was taken handheld at 1/50 shutter speed.

Body painting

Quick visit to health, beauty, fashion etc. fair. One photo from body painting Finnish championship 2011 competition. This was the winning work.

Umberto & Anni

High Voltage workshop

 
Month ago I spent day teaching portrait lighting at Power Electronics Laboratory (high-Voltage technology laboratory). Unique location and lots of different setups during the day. Thanks to Tapiolan Kamerakerho for arrangements and Hanna & Elina for modelling

Costumes

Summer in pictures

Retake for Hellmet shoot

Exhibition

I was asked to participate small exhibition with theme about Finnish heroes or heroism. I chose this work and ordered the print, mounting and laminating from Dialab. Good service & quality from their side. I think somebody thought my work to be a painting :)

D700

My D300 broke and got some constant mirror problems during last shoot so I had to send it for check & repair. Somewhat annoying to get black viewfinder about 20 times during the important shoot when you should be focusing to other things than fixing camera. And repair ain't cheap either, estimate was around 300€. During the repair they open the whole camera and some of the grip rubbers need to be torn away which means extra expenses to replace those parts :/

This feels about the worst time to buy new Nikon DSRL semi-pro body, as everybody are waiting the D3s/D700 successors to be announced. As I need to have the working camera soon, I couldn't wait for next week or next month. So decided to get the D700 as all D300 my accessories (like batteries and CF memory cards) will work with it. I was thinking to get D7000, but it would have required to buy pile of SD cards, battery grip etc. 

This is first time I am not overly excited about the new camera. Absolutely nothing wrong with the camera but I feel it as more of tool than toy. I just put the custom menu settings as they were in D300, tested that all my most frequently used lenses are focusing ok with this body and stored the camera to bag to wait next shoots.

 

First impressions after taking 1000+ frames with camera. Bigger viewfinder is very nice and one of the reasons I chose FX-body. Vignetting when shooting wide open with primes is clearly more visible but easily fixed with LR/PS. High ISO IQ is improved compared to D300 (ISO 3200 and sometimes even 6400 are usable) but I might be one of the rare persons who still thinks that even D70 delivers usable results with ISO 800.
Shooting 14bit RAW files made the D300 considerably slower than with 12bit files so I kept using 12bit files. With D700, you can shoot 14bit RAWs without noticeable shutter lag. Changing to FX made me to rethink what lenses I need to carry around in camera bag. With D300, 85mm prime was long enough for tight headshots, but it feels a bit short for that when attached to D700.

Update: now after about three months of using D700, there are finally new rumors that D4 and/or D800 are coming next year. Maybe :)

What gel holders?

ND2 & color gel wrapped & taped over the Compact 600 R + zoom relector. Doesn't look good but works perfectly.

MiniTT1, FlexTT5 & AC3

I had quick test with PocketWizard MiniTT1, FlexTT5 & AC3 ZoneController for Nikon. With AC3 & ControlTL  (Control the Light) you can wirelessly control remote flashes in TTL or manual mode. There is lot to digest with all the settings and PocketWizard utility software tweaking (going through all the manuals are about reading 50+ pages) but I got the wireless controlling with AC3 to work at first try. Reliable triggering, even through walls. The standard what you would expect from PW products. Turning the control wheels of AC3 was faster way to adjust power settings of remote SB-800 connected to FlexTT5 than doing it old fashioned way from camera/commander flash menu.

When one teaches, two learn

Around two weeks ago I spent one evening teaching flash photography basics for friends. 1-3 lights setups using everything from vintage Nikon speedlights (SB-24) to battery powered heavy duty lights (Pro-7b). Why to use certain modifiers, how to guide model, what to do when wind destroys gear (like it did on the workshop) etc. Teaching is interesting way to rethink why you do the lighting certain ways and also get some new ideas from the people participating workshops.

Post apocalyptic gang

From the post apocalyptic themed shoot with Jamo. See more photos after the link

Loupes

Hoodman Loupe

Loupes are indispensable for still & video capturing during sunny days. You can't properly focus or see the results from LCD without them.

Masking & actions

I read from somewhere that making a mask with Photoshop shouldn't take more than 20 minutes. I think that is big fat lie, even with CS5 and refine edge tool. Tai sit en vaan osaa.




I have been also recording some Photoshop actions to speed up my workflow. If you need to do same thing for tens or hundreds of photos, it will be way faster to make those things with actions. Color space change & flatten layers action for saving the PSD as JPEG was so important I binded it under F2 key. Using the Photoshop might soon start to feel like playing FPS games where most of the keyboard keys are mapped to certain game commands :)

Pyry

More pictures behind link

Zombiewalk Helsinki: Spring Wake

123 zombies & 2 zombie dogs walked through Helsinki.

More pictures behind link

Two setups

Sometimes you need or want to use only one light, and sometimes lot more. First setup what I did in this shoot was with basic four lights setup. Key light from beauty dish, fill from softbox, rim light and one light for background.

Profoto Pro-7b

Few years ago when I started to take photos with off camera lighting (at that time with Nikon speedlights), battery powered studio lights were something that I though I would never purchase or want to haul around. Hunger grows while eating, and I eventually stepped more into the realms of studio photography. Because I started with speedlights that could be used anywhere without AC, natural choice was to get also some battery powered studio lights. I have been using some time now the AcuteB, 600 Ws battery light which have been performing well in all shoots, even when used outdoors in winter time. For some situations I have been needing even more power or battery that just last and last, pop after pop.

I found this used Pro-7b battery powered generator + heads from local Profoto reseller, and deal was too sweet to miss it. It has previously served kaupoi in active use, so hoping it has absorbed some of his good skills. Light is light, but hard to be not excited about the new lighting toys. Hopefully the table & information below is useful for photographers thinking whether to get or not battery powered studio lights. Of course there are many more alternatives in the market and also external power packs (Vagabond, Tronix etc.) that can be used with "traditional" studio lights.