DIY gel holders

A cheap and effective way of holding gels to your speedlights is to use Velcro. However attaching the Velcro directly on to the piece of gel will reduce it's life and waste the Velcro when you have to replace it. Not that gels are expensive by any means, but I save where I can.

I did not invent this and saw this at one of the strobist meetups I attended, taking from the idea of gel holders like this Rosco kit that you can buy, you can DIY the same thing with business card sleeves.

Simply get a pack of these and cut away. Try to match the area of the flash so that there are no extra material on the sides in case you want to use it with a dome diffuser. Stick some Velcro onto the business card holder that you've just cut out. You can even use a dome diffuser to hold down the gel holder, make sure the material is not that thick that you start to warp your dome diffuser and lose the tight fit. There, you have yourself a DIY gel holder that you can use again and again until it gets to destroyed and you can afford to just toss it and make another one. Get a sheet of the colors you use more often like CTO and window green and just try to score some Rosco or Lee sample packs for all the other funky colors.

Conversely, the SB-900 comes with a gel holder that's nice and compact. You're suppose to use it with the gels the SB-900 came with so it can do auto WB but I don't see why you can't just use it with regular gels that you've cut up. Of course, if you do not want to be ghetto like me, this Rosco kit is a nice, elegant solution.

secure hot shoe mount

Being the cheapskate that I am, I take care of my gear because I can't afford to replace them. When you're putting a speedlight on a stand, for those of us with some of the newer speedlights (like an SB900 @ $500+), you are putting a lot of money into a very high place. Even though they're built like a tank, a 6 foot drop won't do it any good.

I use these Impact umbrella adapters, they're great for what they're worth but the hotshoe mount really suck. I've had a SB800 fall from 7ft off of this adaptor, lucky landing on something soft with no damages.

I had a Photoflex XS Softbox at one point and I want to get another one when I get the chance, the adjustable mount that you need with this softbox comes with a very nice speedlight hot shoe mount. Very secure.

I looked for this online and it wasn't a part that's sold on it's own. So I emailed the good people at Photoflex and got a very prompt reply from Alex:

Hi Rocky,

Thank you for your email message and for your continued support.

Yes, this part exists. Here is the info:
Item# RR-QRSHOE - $11.95usd ea
Availability: out of stock, will have in stock Jan 17, 2010

To place your order when it’s in stock, please contact us at 800 486 2674 mon-fri 8am-4pm Pacific.

Thank you!

So there you go. At 12 bucks, I think it's a very good investment for a secure solution and only a fraction of the cost of what your flash costs.

my flickr, my progress

The topic of why I started this blog came up.

First of all because everyone has one and I want one too.
Secondly, it's something to compliment a portfolio when I have that up (soon).
Lastly, I think when I look back on it some time from now, I can really see my progress in terms of my photos and my thought process on photography as a whole.

This is more for me than for you. Just like my Flickr stream. On the odd day when I'm bored, I go through my stream and start from the beginning to look at all the crappy photographs I created.

I recommend everyone to go through their work once in awhile from the beginning to keep track of your progress and what direction your photography went and is heading towards.

strobist wino

A great weekend with some fresh seafood (so fresh we didn't cook it) with good friends. I hosted a get together at my place so I did a lot of the preparation, rand around most of the night and didn't get a chance to snap some shots of everyone.

Bought a set of new wine glasses too, even though they're not DF's 50 dollar/glass, so I want to show them off. I can't call myself a wine enthusiast but I certainly enjoy wine. I have been regularly tasting (drinking) with DF and been documenting the group's get-togethers for DF's blog.

These are some of the more refined shots I have taken thus far.
The set up as follows.

1) I didn't want to set up my white backdrop so I decided to just shoot on the bar top. It has a glossy vinyl surface so it's quite versatile in it's appearance depending on what angle you shoot at. Please don't mind the junk...

2) SB900 on white shoot through camera right to start things off.


3) Adding a SB800 to light the background.


4) Because of how I laid out the bottles, one key light on the left would leave the bottle on the right side underexposed. So...SB800 on a shoot through on camera right. I moved that background light behind the bar and pointed up. You'll notice a bit of spill on the light on camera right, fixed this by flagging the speedlight.


5) I snooted the background light to give focus to the bottles. I did this with a piece of black construction. The position was a bit off and I needed to play with it a bit to get it just right.


6) The final set up.


Be sure to check out these wines at DF's blog
From Left to Right:
2008 Thirty Bench Riesling
2004 Reichsgraf von Kesselstatt Riesling Kabinett
2008 Flat Rock Cellars Nadja's Vineyard Riesling

And the resulting shot, enjoy!

subtle HDR preset - thirty bench winery

I'm a fan of HDR's and I could spend hours tweaking one to perfection (my version of perfection anyways). I personally have nothing against HDR's and have an appreciation for them as a methodology to to simply increase the range or a style when going for the dramatic, rendered effect. When executed with care, they turn out beautifully.

This set was taken by bracketing at +/-0.7ev. +/-0.7 is a good range to increase the range just enough to give it that pop while not going HDR happy.

There is more to it than just running it through Photomatix. This shot took more masking and adjustments to look the way it did now. One of the main things I look out for is the trade-off between revealed detail and noise, a shot at iso100 can easily look like it was shot at iso400. I don't bother trying to compose a HDR when you're shooting at iso400.

You can find this Photomatix preset here.

Mind you that the preset will not work for every shot. Each HDR requires its own attention to the adjustments to achieve the look you want. Having said that, this may be a decent starting point. The main thing I change when I start out with this preset is the temperature as that seems to be what varies the most for me.

Enjoy!

The final product.

lighting for a party room

I make an effort to make the flash as seamless as possible relative to the environment. Gels are important for an on-location shoots where you want to balance the background with the flash. You often see indoor shots where the subject in the proper white balance while the background with ambient tungsten light is orangy-red. Adding gels to unify the temperature of the light avoid weird tints in the shot.

In this situation, there's some mixed lighting so it made it sorta difficult to match. I turned off some of the lights that weren't needed so that I would only be working with one temperature. I used a 1/2 CTO gel for my flashes but it didn't match the ambient perfectly. I set my WB to tungsten and the flashes still seemed a bit blue relative to the ambient lights. At the beginning of the event when there was still light coming from the outside, it was very difficult to work with since the temperatures of light had too much variety from the light coming in from the windows to the ones coming from the incandescent bulbs. Things got better and more consistent as the night went along after the sun set.

Two speedlights were placed in the main room, one in the kitchen area, and one on camera. Initially I used a piece of black foam to flag the flashes and pointed towards the ceiling, so that it would be less distracting to the guests. However, I lost a lot of light and it just wasn't enough to light the room, so I removed the flag and just used a diffuser to bounce off the ceiling.

The shots for this event here.

Enjoy!