Heath Robinson vs Rube Goldberg

Or how I learned to love photography.

Old photographers will remember the sorts of things that we did in the darkroom to produce the special effects. Weeks spent gathering equipment, chemicals, containers, tanks, agitators...months spent sealing the space against the ingress of light - while letting the most aggressive of the poisonous fumes escape...hours spent trying to get the negatives to register accurately in the gate of the enlarger or he paper to register accurately on the easel. Then the clean up afterwards. Scrubbing the stains out of the bathtub before the wife discovers them...

Now we just download a plug-in app and click the mouse. All over in a second and no scrubbing. All the fun has evaporated.

Well, no, it hasn't. Not by a long way. We now have the wireless link and the WiFi and the iPhone  and the hot spot and all the other horrors of modern electronics. In the interests of saving the lives of copper miners by reducing the amount of cables that are needed, I have prepared a plan for the best selfie ever.

1. PocketWizard transmitter in pocket firing a...

2. Camera with a transmitter firing...

3. Several speedlights wirelessly, in full TTL, with frosting and sprinkles, while the camera is...

4. Recording the image on the WiFi card that sends the image off to the computer that...

5. Sends the image automatically to Facebook, Twitter, and Google who then pass it on to...

6. ASIO, NSA, the FBI, the KGB, Mossad, M.I.5, and Julian Assange while simultaneously...

7. Sending it to the Epson 3000 printer that whirs away while...

8. It goes to the cloud where it then rains down on your iPad, and iPhone.

All this within a fraction of a second. No smells, no stains. The bathtub is pristine. Your bank account has a hole in it but that is the price of progress. Cheer up - with on-line banking you don't even have to go to the local branch. You can stay at home and press the shutter release a second time.

The first shot will cost you $ 8900 but the second brings it down to $ 4450... a snip!

We Love Photography - We Hate Cockroaches

You can be forgiven for wondering at the conjunction in the title - our shop slogan with crawling insects. Leaving aside speculation about the characters of the sales staff, I can explain.

Someone in the shop asked me how I got good results for belly dance photographs and images of model cars. I think they wanted me to tell them a secret of a special lens or a special light - an item they could buy to improve their own pictures. I was delighted to tell them the secret, but it did not involve selling a piece of equipment - it involved selling an idea. And the price was cheap.

The real way to get good images of anything - cars, cockroaches, brides, or belly dancers - is to either love or hate the basic subject. You can choose for yourself which emotion you fancy, and you can freely switch between them as you like - provided you really do care one way or the other.

If you don't - either through general lack of interest in any topic or burnout from long exposure to it - any pictures you make will show this. And the people seeing those pictures will perceive that disinterest. That's a powerful clue for them to let them know how they should react to your work, and they will comply readily. If you don't care, they won't either, and you have wasted everybody's time.

I think this is a pretty good explanation for a number of photographic books and monographs that I have seen in bookstores in Melbourne over the years. The old Printed Image bookstore in Prahran had shelves of them - the NGV bookstores at the main gallery or their Federation Square branch are also pretty good ...errr...dump bins. Okay, not every picture book is Cowboy Kate but some of the depths of banality that are plumbed by small publishers...

Not talking about vanity photo books or self-publishing here - the things that we make of our holiday snaps or our hobbies. These actually have some substance - the audience may be limited to a family, club, or individual, but the book is often intense and treasured. At least the thick ones can be used to swat cockroaches with.

Heading image: Thanx to Jane and Henri

An Eye Opener in A4

My birthday rolled around and my friends wanted to get me a present. Passing up the hints I sent them - the advertising flyers for the Nikon D4, the Maserati, and the weekly special at Dan Murphy's - they chose a gift voucher for an online photo book publisher. It has turned out to be the best present yet, and a real learning tool.

Prior to this, like many analog photographers, I had tried my hand at calendars, posters, and self-printed photo books, and like many had found a basket of problems. Difficult to incorporate text or tables, difficult to position images, difficult to get consistent results. The cost of printing paper and chemistry made it comical rather than economical.

All changed. This latest experience was easy, seamless, and far more successful than ever before. I elected to make a book of my "Hot Rod Honeys" in 300mm x 300mm form, and downloaded the free software from the publisher to do it. Fortunately the firm that does it realizes that most people are duffers when it comes to this so they also set up a couple of instructional videos. I looked and learned.

First problem was the format that they advocated was square, not rectangular. I had to revise the cropping on some images though fortunately I tend to leave enough air around my main subject when I compose. In future I will probably opt for a different format so that I can do the landscape stuff - it is do-able but you have to do your own positioning.

Second problem - if you want a full bleed you have to get your margins out a decent way past the on-screen guide lines. No trying to squeeze that last millimeter into the square - you'll end up with a white flash at the edge of the page. See, I am learning.

Third problem: Printing is good but the paper seems thin - particularly compared to the double-sided matte or lustre paper we get for our inkjet printers. We'll have to see how well it holds up with time.

But here is where the good part starts. You choose your pictures in jpeg or tiff form, position and crop them as you will - then put on drop shadows or other frippery, and start to review your work. Look very carefully, as you get tired and miss things on the first run. I proof-read, if that is the word for a non-verbal book, at least 4 times before I picked up my obvious mistakes.

Uploading it to the firm is easy - the 60 page book with 260 Mb of info tootled off in 15 minutes and 10 days later a well-wrapped parcel dropped at the door.

I am thrilled - the pictures from my Nikon D300 that I have really only seen on screen or through my Epson printer are far more detailed than I imagined when spread out on a printed page. Even better is the realization that the screen image and the commercially printed image are the same - that time spent calibrating the screen with the little Spyder Express is well spent. The choice of colour space - Abobe RGB 1998 is also fortuitous.

Next experiment will be to search out files and images for further photo books - perhaps exotic dancers or railway locomotives - and try out two different on-line publishers. The birthday gift was a credit with a firm that operates in Melbourne so it will be interesting to see how their product compares to printing from the USA or China.

Conclusion: I thoroughly recommend that you try some of your own images in book form. You will be thrilled and you can bore the socks off your friends and family without needing to carry a laptop!

A Coupla Dollars For Your FIlm

Have you heard that one lately? I haven't - I suppose the gradual change to digital capture has changed the terminology. I wonder if acquaintances who want to avoid paying correct professional price for their event photography will be be offering a coupla dollars for my digits?

I hope they do. It will make the maths so much simpler. A dollar a digit. You can have one or two - you choose.

Of course when your relatives engage you all thought of monetary reward should be shelved. You will do the engagement party, 3 year-old's birthday party, wedding, or 50th anniversary celebration for free - your only reward will be the chance to escape at the end of the evening and the possibility of your card corrupting. Accept your fate gracefully - Batch edit the 500 pictures and burn a handful of disks and tell everyone that they are welcome to the copyright. Pray fervently they don't remember that you have a large-format printer, lest you be condemned to a month of printing...

But what to do when someone tells you that the event they want illustrated is for "charity" and they would either pay a desultory amount or nothing at all? What can you say - it is for "charity".

What you can ask is who will be exercising the act of charity and upon what premise. If your work directly feeds the hungry and clothes the naked, then you are being charitable and will be blessed for it. If your work is a tool for someone else to garner that blessing then you are merely in the business of being a tool supplier, and like Sidchrome or Snap-on, you are entitled to a correct financial reward. And in today's market, that is more than a coupla dollars for your film.

Uncle Dick

Small Flash - Big Light

Kingsley Klau was talking at the WAPF weekend about his forthcoming courses on small flash technique. It was great to hear someone confident with the equipment and able to produce really outstanding flash photographs - many people shy away from this when they could do so much more.

I asked Kingsley what sort of equipment he will be discussing with the workshop attendees - sort of trying to get an idea where we in the shop side can contribute. Of course there was an ulterior motive - I wanted to get his inside tips on flash for myself. I use the Nikon system and this seemed a good chance to get ahead.

From what Kingsley said it looks as though he will be using several flash heads in soft boxes to do his setups. The flash units might be Nikon, Canon, Pentax, or other small speed lights. We will be able to supply Nikon SB 700 and SB 910 flashes that work very well as slave or master units. The Canon people have a ready supply of 430EX and 600RX speed lights in store right now. Pentax should be able to supply 360  and 560 units as well.

The soft boxes that Kingsley mentioned are made by Lastolite. The smaller of the two is called the Ezybox Speed-lite and is 22cm x 22cm. It wraps and straps on the front of most flash units with two overlapping Velcro straps. It is secure enough not to blow away from the front of the flash.

The larger soft box from Lastolite is the Ezybox Hot Shoe Kit. It is 28cm x 38cm and comes with a bracket at the rear of the box to support a flash unit with a hoe at the back - there is even space to mount a dual flash to push more light into the box. The whole is supported on a tilting mount and a medium-sized folding light stand.

Actually, you might also want to support the smaller flash unit on a similar stand - small CL units are available for as low as $55, though a more versatile size would be about $ 89. In any case, the manufacturers of the flash units always enclose a plastic "foot" with their flash with a tripod socket moulded into the bottom of it. Very useful; you can mount the thing on a light stand or balance it on the floor or table quite independently of the camera body.

The realization that you can have a 2 or three light setup for studio results out on the beach is mind-boggling - particularly when it is small enough to sling over an average shoulder and doesn't need a power station or an electrician's ticket to run.

Want to know more? Computer on over to www.shootphotographyworkshops.com.au/ and look for Kingsley's section in the workshop area. He'll be conducting the workshops on April 29, June 10, and August 12 but it would be wise to book now to make sure you get a spot. It's only $ 189 and it could be the best lighting workshop deal of the year! 

Whadda Ya Want?

Pardon the vulgar title - but it came to us while we were writing the previous blog posts and directing them over to the Facebook site - that it would be nice to be able to serve our guests the photographic cocktail of their choice. And the best way to find out what you want is to ask you.

If you have access to a computer - as you are currently reading this on a computer we can take that as a positive....type back to us here and tell us what stories you would like to read. Let us know what topics occupy your mind and what subjects you would like to know more about.

We're happy to share what we know, and happy to go find someone who knows more than we do to answer an inquiry. Of course, there will always be questions that cannot be answered - secret technical information that would compromise state security were we to divulge it, or who took the last muffin from the packet. But there may well be things that are NOT trade secrets that we can elaborate on.

This has two benefits - you get to find out what you want to know and I get to sit down at the keyboard after a hard morning on the sales floor. My feet thank you.

Better Photography - Gadgets and Gizmos

For those of you who read Better Photography the last issue 66 / Summer 2012 we featured in Gadgets and Gizmos two products. The Owle Bubo for iPhone and the Hoodman Hoodloupe 3.0. The articles are featured below. We also ran a full page advert as well which is below.