Presidium Blog

Pushing the sync speed - Canon 5d MK II/2 beyond the 1/200 to 1/2000

admin — Sun, 11 Jan 2009 12:58:08 +0000

After receiving my new 5D MK II just before christmas I was a bit disappointed with the sync speed. With my old 40d I could happily use 1/250 and if I was prepared to loose a bit of the bottom of the shot I could go beyond this to 1/320, which for outdoor shooting was great. I mostly shoot with Canon 540ezs because they are cheap and the power is pretty good, but I recently invested in some Bowens 500s for a bit more juice and because I have been setting up a bit of indoor space as a studio.

Armed with my Pocket Wizards, the 5d and my Bowens I could only consistently get 1/160 without any banding which is pretty rubbish and is not very practical for the outdoor shoots. So I started to play around with my 430ex set to high speed sync (this shows as a flash symbol with a H sign on it on the flash display) attached to the hotshoe, I also set the camera to operate in high speed sync and this is then pointed at the Bowens which have an inbuilt optical trigger and with my amazement I could go past 1/200 and onward up to 1/2000. I have only tested this indoors (and I won’t be winning any awards for the quality of the composition) but from the shots below you can see that there is no visible banding and that the Bowens is producing all of the light in the picture. I need to try it outdoors once it stops raining but am pretty hopeful that this may be a solution.

All at f/5 and ISO 200

1/200 Ambient Only (not a lot to see)

1/125 430ex on Camera only

1/1000 430ex and Bowens 500

1/2000 430ex and Bowens

Lighting DVDs review - Strobist DVD, Onelight, Zeroplusplus

admin — Sun, 04 Jan 2009 21:28:37 +0000

A quick review of a few DVDs I have been watching over the last few months.

Strobist DVD - www.strobist.com

A 8 DVD box set documenting a days workshop and subsequent example shoots.

+ve
- great for beginners to off camera lighting
- covers all of the basics of multiple light setups
- some good examples of how to creatively light

-ve
- a bit repititive (especially if you watch the gear dvd then the first episode of the workshop back to back)
- the examples though useful are in the most part quite uninspiring

One Light - www.zarias.com

A 2 DVD set showing a quick intro to off single lighting with some digital workflow descriptions

+ve
- quick and to the point
- inspiring examples of how to light
- a good intro to Lightroom from a working pro

-ve
- the intro section on stops was a little OTT for my taste

Fashion & Glamour Lighting - www.zeroplusplus.com

A 750mb 90min download of studio lighting techniques and post processing

+ve
- great intro to a cheap lighting modifier made of ripstop nylon, this will save you a ton of money
- some really good fashion shot examples
- a great insight to what you really need (in terms of equipment) to get pro looking shots

-ve
- not enough time spent on communication between photographer and model
- not enough detail on the post processing

Overall

If I were to spend my money again and only choose one to buy I would go with the Zack Arias Onelight DVDs.

Venice Flooding

admin — Thu, 04 Dec 2008 17:28:30 +0000

Venice is in my top five yet to visit places and seeing the photos of it flooding is making me think I should get my act together and get there soon, I may have to move it up a couple of spots on the list. See some pics of the floods here:

http://www.boston.com/bigpicture/2008/12/venice_under_water.html

Gloves to use with iPhone and laptop

admin — Sat, 22 Nov 2008 21:33:24 +0000

It is getting pretty chilly round these parts and while out wrestling the Christmas crowds I realised I had left my gloves at home, after the wife handed me the third bag of new purchases my fingers were getting bloody cold. I had seen some gloves on one of those gadget sites recently which had flip open finger tips so that you can use your mobile, so I went on the hunt for a set in little old Nottingham. No joy, but what I found was actually a much better solution for me. I got a set of North Face Etips, now they look a little geeky with their faux electronic circuit pattern on the palm and the crappy ON symbols on the index fingers but they work really well. They have a conductive part to the thumb and index fingers that work perfectly with the iPhone so you can swip etc without taking them off. I got a set in black but the North Face site shows an even more rubbish looking set in grey, see:

http://www.thenorthface.com/catalog/tnf-catalog-master/etip-glove.html?parent_category_rn=#

Overall a great purchase.

OS X: Auto mount drive for iTunes

admin — Thu, 20 Nov 2008 19:52:15 +0000

I don’t know how many of you use iTunes with some kind of NAS but I do. I have a readynas which is brilliant and with my new mac I wanted to use the NAS as my music library but every time I rebooted the mac it lost the connection and iTunes defaulted back to my local hard drive. To solve the problem you need to:

- download AutomountMaker
- set up your mount details (e.g IP Address etc) and save them
- then add the file into your login items (System preferences > Accounts > Users > Select user account > Login items > Click add icon)

Now this will auto mount your drive as soon as it boots and no more itunes tears.

PC to Mac: Some things I needed to know

admin — Tue, 18 Nov 2008 20:10:21 +0000

So far:

Force quit an application - http://www.wikihow.com/Force-Quit-an-Application-in-Mac-OS-X

Bootcamp installation pdf - http://manuals.info.apple.com/en/boot_camp_install-setup.pdf

Time machine to readynas - http://www.readynas.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=13319&start=90

Where is the # key - http://ogston.com/blog/2007/09/typing-the-hashnumber-key-on-mac-os-x/

Minimise the dock - http://www.tech-recipes.com/rx/2168/os_x_hide_dock/

Itunes on shared storage - http://www.macosxhints.com/article.php?story=20070424081346722

More Lightroom web templates

admin — Tue, 11 Nov 2008 20:24:41 +0000

Another great resource for Lightroom templates, see here.

Instant photo frame

admin — Tue, 11 Nov 2008 19:02:32 +0000

A neat little christmas gift, trim your photo and write your message on the frame to make a little Polaroid style personalised gift. See here.

The big switch: PC to Mac

admin — Sun, 09 Nov 2008 19:54:40 +0000

Well people, tomorrow night will be the start of the big switch over to Mac. I can’t wait. I do most of my work on a laptop and my Sony Vaio is just too slow, I have a VGN SZ4 but with it’s 2gb ram and 2ghz centrino duo I just can’t get it to run well anymore. When I say anymore I suspect I really mean I have finally had enough of having to choose either Lightroom OR Photoshop to be open and capable of any performance. I have gone for the Macbook Pro 2.53 with 4gb ram and upgraded the hard drive to a 320gb 7200. I hope that will be enought to keep me happy. I have some pretty big concerns over the current issues of running Vista/XP on it but am pretty sure that Apple will fix those over time and this should also make me less likely to just run them on the MBP without fully embracing the OS X experience. I will be putting up any decent switcher links on the blog as I find them. Here are a couple I have found so far:

- http://the.taoofmac.com/space/HOWTO/Switch%20To%20The%20Mac
- http://www.smashingapps.com/2008/11/07/15-free-tools-for-mac-os-x-you-should-bookmark.html

Hot shoe spirit level

admin — Thu, 06 Nov 2008 18:32:03 +0000

When I replaced my Manfrotto cheapy tripod with my shiny new Feisol number unfortunately I lost out on having a spirit level. I ended up on good old ebay and bought a three way hot shoe spirit level for less than £6. If you are like me and take quite a few landscape photos it is will definitely help and stop those feature losing crops to get it level again. I didn’t get it from this ebay seller but you can find very similar ones here.