Still Motion Music Video

For those of you that are photographers you've probably heard of the Hypernova video called "Sinners" that is all the rage right now as it was shot at 10 frames per second with a Canon 1D Mk III and some Profoto Strobes.  The fluidity, yet slight jerkiness of the filming really rocks.  If you haven't heard of it, click on the video in this post and check it out.  Even if it isn't your type of music (I like it, but hey I like lots of things) just keep your eyes open in amazement that this is 16,000 stitched together still images.

Digital Photography Book, Volume 3

I just finished editing a bunch of photos (one posted here), nearly catching me up with a backlog of images and even had time to read Scott Kelby's latest edition of the Digital Photography books, Volume 3.  I really enjoyed the first two books in the series and this one was no exception.  His writing is humorous (at least to me) and the book is easy to read and understand.  While the book is really geared toward amateurs and advanced amateurs I definitely picked up a few tips from it.  Other pages I was able to skip over as they dealt with subjects I was very familiar with.  Generally I'd say that for the (rather large) market of budding photographers out there, this series is perfect, gives a broad base of skills and information and I can't recommend it enough.  Like his Photoshop books, the sense of humor as well as the simple language make for an easy read.  For pros or serious advanced amateurs this book will maybe be too simple, but still probably enjoyable.

Speaking of the market for teaching budding photographers, I took an on-camera flash photography course over at Vancouver Photo Workshops on Saturday.  I've taken a few of them in the past from this company and enjoyed them, but (and it's my own fault) this one was largely review for me of skills I already had.  I should have really looked at the course information first, it's not VPW fault at all though it was ultimately disappointing that they did not have models for us to shoot this time which has been the norm in the past and is always enjoyable.

In the end I did figure out a new way to use my flash and discovered a setting on my camera I had been either missing or ignoring.  It is interesting how when we are working in photography we stick to what we know and avoid trying new things so that we can get predictable results.  Courses like this allow us to experiment while under no pressure to perform and for that I was glad I went.  Next up for me I think will be the Fashion Photography course they offer as for me it really relates to wedding work and how I see brides on their wedding day, as beautiful women on the most beautiful day of their life.  Like they stepped out of the pages of Vogue.

One thing of interest to me at the course, and I've seen this before, was the absolute disregard for my gear by the instructor as it didn't have Canon or Nikon written on it.  This kind of brand bias amuses me to no end, but since my plan is to compliment my gear with a Canon 5D MkII in the near future I guess I'll have to stop smirking at some point.

Now, back to editing photos!  You can find a link to the book on the right hand side of the blog.  Right now I'm bookless, no books left to read.  Going to have to go browse Amazon.

Kill the Photographer

Was out shooting Paint Jam yesterday, a light version of the Canadian Bodypainting Championship that will happen here in the spring.  We took a break from shooting the models and I had one of the other photographers take a photo of me getting assaulted by the big monster hand.  It was a pretty fun day.

There were lots of cameras there, a D3, 5DmkII, and plenty of others.  The only one I didn't know how to use was someone's Canon Rebel that for the life of me I couldn't figure out how to change the aperture for them in manual mode.  Only having one dial was confusing to me.  I guess we all get used to our gear and can't figure out even the simplest of other gear.   We even managed to use someone's Kodak point and shoot in the studio dialing down their flash and using it to trigger the studio strobes and seemed to have captured some good photos with it.  For other photographers, sharing a pocket wizard frequency and the proper exposure settings from a light meter had everyone cooking and able to use the same lights with their models.  A nice way to get multiple photographers working together.

Film Scanning and Body Painting

Well, it has been about a week since I've blogged, mostly because I'm up to my neck in wedding photo editing.  But I find myself now taking a break from that and scanning some old film negatives with the Nikon Coolscan.  I've done this before, getting all my old personal wedding photos into the digital world.  Now I'm back at it because when my daughter was born and through the first two years of her life I was using a Pentax film slr.  I've been wanting to make up a photo book and DVD slideshow for our family and just can't do that without those baby photos.  What I will say is that film scanning is very tedious work.  It is something you do while you are engaged in other things (like blogging) and you just go back to the scanner once every 10 minutes or so and put in another negative strip.  The Nikon scanner though does a really great job and saves to tiff files which are easily manipulated in Photoshop or Lightroom.  Once I have one set of 24 scanned I just import them to Lightroom and get to work on them just as I would with any other raw file from my camera.  The plus of these files is that the original film captured wonderful dynamic range (I know people will disagree but film is still better in that one area) and there is a grain that I find appealing and raw.  The downside is that each tiff file is 67.5 mb.  That fills up my external hard drive really fast.  In fact I've scanned almost 85 GB of files so far.   Good thing hard drives are cheap.  Saving memories like your child's first years and bringing them into the digital world is priceless though and worth any tedium that the job brings.   I've posted up one scan in this entry.

While I'm blogging I wanted to mention a really good read on Thom Hogan's blog today.  He is talking about Nikon's troubles and what really makes the entry interesting is that he says that Nikon is struggling as they are failing to innovate like Olympus, Panasonic and Pentax.  The lack a retro styled camera (EP-1, and the beautiful new Leica's) and small systems like the micro 4/3rds offerings, and water sealed cameras (Like Olympus) even though he says Nikon was the first manufacturer to really offer such cameras historically.  He goes on to lament that they are falling behind in the megapixel race and I can't really side with him on that (D3X) but heck he makes an interesting argument.  Camera manufacturers are really pumping the technology right now.  Cameras are outpacing each other constantly.  If it isn't Canon playing catch-up, then its Nikon or one of the others.  Frankly, it seems to me to make sense to pick whatever random brand suits your current needs and just roll with the punches as a consumer.  If another brand suits you better, go buy it.  Loyalty to a brand or corporation is senseless.

Speaking of which.  What is with the new Canon 7D?  I don't get it.  On forums I hear how the noise handling is very good, yet when I look at the full sized samples I see a noisy, smeared mess.  18mp on a 1.6 X crop sensor makes for the same pixel density of the four thirds sensors (and in my opinion worse noise) and yet the Canon faithful seem to blissfully ignore that.  I really thought Canon had figured out that more megapixels does not make a better camera, but regardless of that I'm more amazed by the Canon loyalists that are willing to be happy about a camera that seems to repeat the mistakes of the 50D. Interesting.  Me personally, I'm thinking of getting a 5D MkII.  Just as soon as the price drops.  Hopefully it does as the D700 and new full frame Sony offerings should (fingers crossed) drive down entry level full frame prices.  Maybe I'm just wishful thinking.

I'll be photographing 'Paint Jam' tomorrow for the bodypainting folks.  Should be fun.  It is sort of a mini Bodypainting Competition that I photographed last year for the first time.  The art that is produced on human canvases is really very amazing.  I'm sure I'll have a sample image to share soon.

Lastly, I used my Olympus OM4t at my last wedding just for one roll of Illford Delta 3200 black and white film.  It is in at the lab now and I'm pretty excited about what result I'll get.  Grainy (chunky grain I'm thinking) but hopefully super cool.  My first result from the camera with Kodak 400 black and white film was really inspiring and fun.  I'll be sure to post a sample just as soon as it returns from the lab.

Olympus OM-4t.....my full frame camera

I just bought an Olympus OM-4t on Ebay and it came in the mail yesterday with a 50mm f1.8 lens.  The photo in this post is the very first frame I took with the camera as I dropped my daughter off at summer daycamp.  I then took it out on a shoot with a bride last night.  All I can say is that it is love.  The first roll I developed from it has me totally amazed.  I won't be switching back to film full time or anything, but it is so magical.

Hot Shoe Review and Big Sunflowers

I just finished reading "Hot Shoe Diaries" by Joe McNally. This book was in my Amazon wish list for a while without getting the order from me as I was hesitant to order it assuming it would be really slanted toward Nikon shooters. Turns out my concerns were valid. The book is heavily slanted to Nikon gear, terminology and all things Nikon. Having said that, it didn't wreck the book for me at all. Small flashes generally all work the same (though Nikon does seem to have the edge with their stuff) and Joe takes you through many different shoots and how he managed them using small flashes and some light modifiers. Being as I use Olympus gear that also has really well thought out wireless flashes I can easily translate his advice to my photography. I also use Pocket Wizards, which he doesn't use much of, seeming to prefer to go to great lengths to use the flash commander system where all flashes must see each other so that he can keep TTL. It's not always the way I'd do it, but hey, not every cook ads the same amount of pepper.

This book is filled with fantastic walk throughs on shoots Joe has done. Like his earlier book that I liked "The Moment it Clicks" he has a style that makes you feel as if you are sitting in his living room chatting about photography. The one warning I would have is that the book is expensive in that it generates some gear lust. Joe frequently uses more flashes for one shoot than I own. He also uses Lastolite panels and Honl gear that will have you running to your local camera store and dropping a couple of thousand dollars to keep up with him. There are of course shoots in the book requiring less gear, but if you really want to emulate Joe, you're gonna have to spend some dough. David Hobby and a roll of gaffer tape this is not.

I signed up for an external flash course at Vancouver Photo Workshop.  I'm pretty sure that the course content won't be new to me, but I find these one day courses fit well within my time budget and the way that VPW sets up their courses and hires models for practice is really valuable.  Hopefully after reading Joe's book and attending this upcoming course I'll be a flash expert!

Thought I would end this with a quick snap my wife took of me and this huge sunflower I finally took out of our garden. What does it have to do with photography? Nothing, but it is a huge sunflower! Find a link to Joe McNally's book if you are interested on the right hand side of the blog.

Panasonic Wows while Olympus Proves it is Tough

Not sure if everyone had heard of the new Panasonic GF-1.  Pretty awesome.  As an owner of the LX3, I must say this camera looks great.  I'm loving the electronic viewfinder.  Cameras like this and the Olympus EP-1 are the products that are going to put Micro-Four Thirds on the wish list of every photographer.  These things rock!  So if you have no idea what I am talking about follow the link in this post to read about it.  Small cameras, big sensors, interchangeable lenses.....life is good.  Also I admit it, I pixel peeped.  I hate pixel peeping but I did it.  In my opinion, 1600 ISO on this new camera and on the Olympus EP-1 look better, cleaner and have more detail than the samples from the Canon 7D.  I have no idea what Canon was thinking putting 18 megapixels on that little sensor.  It makes absolutely no sense to me at all.

Anyway, I rarely play with iMovie (being as I'm a photographer, not a videographer after all) but I really want to get better at it as I'm playing with inserting video into wedding slideshows (did it once this year already) so I did up a little video of my daughter playing with my waterproof Olympus 850SW camera.  I love that camera.  I have no fear about handing it over to a seven year old.  Check out the movie in this post.  If you are a parent I think it will convince you you need a waterproof, drop proof point and shoot.