Hands Up Muybridge - I've Got A Fujifilm Repeater...

Idling away on the South Perth foreshore one evening, I was trying to think of a use for the Perth skyline. I mean, they've taken a lot of trouble putting lights on the buildings and all and it seems only courteous to take some sort of notice.

Then I read further into the instruction booklet that came with the new Fujifilm EF X-500 electronic flash. The Fujifilm people make a reasonably good set of instructions and the flash itself is easy to master. The bit that intrigued me was the arrangement that could be made for multiple flashes.

You have three decisions to make via the page buttons and the scroll wheel:

a. Level of manual flash power.

b. Number of flashes that you want to fire.

c. Length of time over which you want to fire them.

Each one of the flashes will record as a separate illumination in the final frame while the background will keep burning into the image. If you want to capture the movements of the subject cleanly, you need a black backdrop...but anything else is pure art.

To work in South Perth at twilight you also need an open space that people do not intrude into. Short of laying perimeter mines, there is little you can do to achieve this. The world, his wife, and their relatives visiting from another planet will all walk back and forth behind the model. Some will walk in front. It is an exercise in restraint - on your part - because they ain't gonna be on theirs...

The results? More like Marcel Duchamp descending a staircase with his clothes on than I really wanted, but intriguing nevertheless. The rigid precision of the flash firing is probably going to be very useful for motion studies, but against an inky backdrop. The flash fires at lower powers if you command it to fire often or at small intervals - there must be some time required inside it for power to be built up in the capacitor, after all. But given the good high ISO performance of the Fujifilm cameras there is a surprising amount of light coming off the flash head.

The model is the beauteous and patient Jane Hebiton.

Weegee Woulda Been Proud Of Joby

Arthur Felig was not a man to use compact cameras for delicate pieces of ethereal art. His batting record with still life bowls of fruit was woeful. I do not think he ever used a graduated neutral density filter at the seaside in his life.

Yet...he was the greatest blood and guts press freelancer...in the toughest areas of New York in the 1940's...and he used press cameras to do it. One shot, two shots, and then run for it. Run for the car to develop the film pack in the boot and then run for the picture desk of the newspaper.

Arthur...also known as Weegee...had no time for weak equipment, and if you are in the same frame of mind, Joby have just what you want - the Joby Pro Series Hand Grip With Ultra Plate 208.

Heckuva thing to sell - a complex metal casting to bolt onto the bottom of your camera and a rubberised grip to hold it with. I mean, cameras have grips already, don't they? Yeah, but not if you're Weegee class - big handed with tough assignments.

If you need to sling a flash from the left hand side of a camera instead of right in the middle, this is the deal. You screw on a Manfrotto double-thread adapter, a cold shoe, Joby's own locking arm, or any other connector to the top of that grip and the thing is going to stay there without coming off in ANYTHING.

 

You can pop the baseplate onto an Arca-Swiss mount all along the length. You can run a wrist strap or one of your camera stop ends onto the right lower edge of the camera as well as the upper right edge and sling the camera vertically like the old Leica M5. Metz provided this option for years with the metal bracket of the 45-series and it was a blessing. It would be even more so now when we want to keep that damned strap out of our eyes as we raise the camera for a shot.

If you've a mind to, you can attach the grip below the camera for a handle. Raise the thing above the crowd surrounding the murder victim, fire the flash, and run for it*. Weegee would have.

And if worst comes to worst,  that handle and the metal casting make a good mace. A lot easier to hang onto than the grip of your average DSLR.

* Popping a red-hot Press 25 at your pursuers while you leg it...

Fill Up At the Fujifilm Pixel Pump Today...

Well, that's what the images of the new Fujifilm EF X-500 flash reminded me of after I took their pictures for this column. I kept feeling around the left hand side for the filler hose...

The real reason is I wanted to show you the easy menu system of the flash. The menu of the previous flash was only a two-button affair, but that meant that you were condemned to following through a whole series of things that you did not want before coming to the bit you needed. The new flash uses more buttons and a control dial but lets you in and out far quicker - and it lets you do far more things.

a. Standard - 91 octane - you set to set your own level from full blast to 1/512  of the power. Or you can just leave it on TTL and see what you get. The oblong lighted button under the Mode sign opens the page and you whizz the control wheel round to whatever you want. Then punch either the page button or the central wheel button to set it in place. No waiting ten seconds while the computer thinks about it.

b. Ethyl - 95 octane - the next push on the page button sets up the zoom for the flash tube - you can run it from a 24mm wide angle to a 105mm portrait length. Again there is the Auto zoom option if you are changing gears frequently.

c. High Test - 98 octane - the page button will also take you to the LED light. This light glows just under the main flash head and can be operated separately or together with the flash. It acts as a quasi-modelling light or can be run up to quite a fair power as a video light. Again there is an intensity control and arrangements for this light to assist with illumination for auto focusing.

d. Oh, I almost forgot...how do you know when the flash is receptive to change and when it is locked? The part of the screen that contains what you are trying to adjust - in this case the power of the manual flash - is rendered black when it is active. Once you hit the page button or the central wheel button it is locked in and turns white.

e. Aviation Petrol - 100 octane - now it gets fun. See the thing that says Multi? That means the flash is going to fire like a stroboscope while the shutter curtains are open and you are going to get multiple images recorded on one frame. It is either going to be art or science.

You get to choose how many times the flash goes off and how it is spaced out - the Northeast corner of the green panel contains two figures; the left one is how many times it fires, the right one is how often. You can set the power level as per usual on the scale below these. This is a manual operation - not TTL.

f. Diesel - this is the setting for the flash when it is going to serve as a slave in a flash group. The amber colour is a distinct warning that you have clicked the switch on to the next segment. You'll see that it shows as Manual but you can also switch it to TTL. I am in several minds about this - the times I have tried to run systems where they had a degree of autonomy have always seemed to contain the most out-of-control light levels. 

I have decided that I know what ratios I want and am prepared to dial them into the various group flash guns. The number of times that I have had to deviate from the plan are minimal, provided I have had time to test out the shots before the actual action start`s.

g. Cognac - when you have finally decided to be the boss. This is the master position for the flash - it can run up to three other groups of flashes, with multiple flashes in each group. As you can see, there is TTL, or otherwise. The degree of control may be far more than you can sensibly manage in any one shooting session, but if you find the combination that works, you can lock it in for future reference. The flash gun will return to previous settings after it is turned off and on.

PS: You don't get discount pixels at Camera Electronic but the restrooms are clean...

The Fujifilm Flash Comes Of Age

If you are opposed to the use of electronic flash in any form for your photography - for artistic, technical, or cultural reasons, this will be a thin week.

If you are dedicated to a camera system other than Fujifilm, you might also wonder whether you are going to get much on your plate. Have faith - there are a number of good lessons here for you as well that you can apply to the equipment of your choice. The close approximation of some flash systems will let you benefit.

We showed the externals of the Fujifilm EF-X500 flash on the 6th of January this year - the column got a large number of readers. I've added a couple of the images to help illustrate this series but this week is dedicated to what the thing actually does - and did - in my studio.

A quick basic recap for those who don't want to plough through the Jan 6 post: the flash is a classic TTL hot-shoe electonic flash with more power than the previous Fujifilm offerings. It contains provision for commander and slave operation, manual working, and multiple-flash ( high speed ) applications. It has a video light built into it. It is dedicated to the Fujifilm X-series of cameras. And up until this week I had only ever fired it once in the X-system.

Okay. First test was to open the battery compartment and put in four AA cells. Don't laugh - some manufacturers make the battery door so thin and cheap that you hesitate to get your nail in there to prise it open. No such problem with Fujifilm, and they have had the good sense to make the stacking order in the compartment simple - batteries down in the front two wells - batteries up in the back. It means you can change the blessed things in the dark without having to see some little diagram. As well, the design of the casing means the whole flash will lay on it's left side on a flat surface to do this - no juggling act.

Clip it onto the X-camera.? Now we have a metal shoe to do it with and a lever lock for the front pin. Much better than the plastic shoe and wheel of the EF-42.

Can you hold the flash from the front as you use it without impeding the function? Yes, but be aware that there is an LED panel at the top and the communication port for the wireless control down the bottom.

Is the tilt a locking mechanism? Yes. The rubber button pressed in lets it go freely. It locks into horizontal and vertical. The swivel has a firm detent.

Is this a power port? Yes, it is, and apparently they are going to produce an external battery pack to aid the flash. Wedding and event shooters may rejoice. Until it arrives, we are going to use AA lithium cells.

Setup. Well you can specify a great many things that suggest alternative uses for the flash. It will power off in one hour if you want, or you can power off in 8 hours. I think this accommodates the people who are going to be shooting time-lapse sequences. It will sit there as a remote flash for 10 minutes before giving up or you can ask it to stay alert for 60 minutes. It is all a matter of using up battery power. Try asking ME to stay alert for 60 minutes at a wedding...

The actual menus that apportion the flashes when you are in TTL mode can be sent out to 3 groups - normally this is a daunting set of commands to order up from an LCD screen. In this case Fujifilm have made it " almost " intuitive . I think they have benefited by waiting and watching other Japanese makers invent the language of menus. It only foxed me once with a strange use of English.

The weight of the flash is about 120 grammes more than the previous EF-42. As a trade-off, you get a much improved feel of build quality.

The front bezel around the flash tube is held on with two metal detents. Takes a bit of a struggle to get it off, but once done, you can slip on a box diffuser. It does as much as these designs ever do, and if you slip it forward from the detents, you can get a useful spread of light. Still not as broad as a Mag Mod, so you may still want to add this to the setup.

 Tomorrow - first studio shoot. Have I bought the right thing?*

* Yup. I sometimes spend my own money on the things I review. Once you find a good thing - stick to it.

The Fujifilm X100F Camera Under the Spotlights

Every item of equipment for sale in the photo shop is under a spotlight - and some are under enough glare to suggest a three-ring circus. This is all to the good - every camera maker and advertising department knows that every time a fuss is made about something people will focus on it, and they might concentrate long enough to reach for their wallets.

The new Fujifilm X100F examined this week IS a worth successor to the other cameras of the series - the leap in performance since the original X100 I own showed out on nearly every level. Had I elected to make larger images than just the little illustrative ones for these articles, the lead would have been wildly increased. But that is for me...would it be so for other people. And just WHO are the people who would be wise to buy this camera?

a. The one-camera family.

If you are going to have one camera to do the best job for all members of the family - mum. dad, and the kids, make it a one that delivers the goods. And delivers them simply enough so that when you haul it out and press the button, you get the picture. Better yet - the less experienced shooters in the family can also get good results.

b. The traveller.

I am thinking here of the frequent traveller who needs a record of what is seen from a normal point of view. Choose another super-tele camera to go to Africa for polar bears or Manitoba for lions. Choose this one to go to Melbourne or Madrid. The lens is wide enough and long enough for most travel shots, and if you need to expand or contract there are screw-on supplementary lenses that are excellent. I use a wide-angle one all the time for car shows.

c. The daytime flash shooter.

Whether it is the car shows, or brides, or architecture in the Western Australian sunshine, you'll need to fill flash somewhere. If you try to do it with a conventional focal-plane shutter you'll be in a world of calculations and compromise. Some shots will be inpossible because of the failure to synch properly The leaf shutter on this camera synchs at all speeds and if you pair it with a new Fujifilm EX-500 flash unit, you can work with minimal stress.

d. The grub.

Oh, this is not a waterproof camera, but it IS a sealed one. No opening the lens mount for changes and no inrush of dust onto the sensor. The relief from worry is palpable.

f. The stylish and trendy.

 Not that you can ever be on-trend for longer than 15 seconds anyway, but this retro-style is classic, and classics keep on coming back time after time. The camera has the bits you want to twiddle in the places you expect to find them. If you are a twiddler, it is rewarding. Of course you can put the camera into Programmed Automatic and just cruise if you want to.

g. The diarist.

Like the regular traveller, the diarist wants to record it simply, but with enough detail to provide for art or science later on. 24 mega pixels will do this, and the ISO auto settings will generally help you to nail it in an instant. Even my old X100 does daily duty for advertising shots and ideas capture. It beats the silly mobile phone all hollow for resolution and dynamic range and the ergonomics of holding it out the window while driving at 90 miles per hour down St. Geo Tce - steering with your knees -  are ever so much more convenient.

h. The collector.

 Collectors are strange creatures. They amass piles of things the rest of us ignore, and the funny thing is that they like to look at other people's piles as well. Thus the catalogue shoot and internet share site.

Most collectors are not professional photographers, but the ability to produce a clear close classic of an image is more useful to them than to many people. They rarely want Instagram filters to mess up their pride and joy collection - a camera like this that can turn out clear illustration time after time without adjustment is perfect.

That may sound boring, trite, and pedestrian to artistic photographers, but no-one wants to have to spend an hour tweaking the image of a 19th century pram if you have 800 of 'em to photograph.

i. The hipster.

Naw, I'm just joking. They are still looking for 828 film for defunct Kodak folding cameras from 1940. The thought of getting a good result easily would be anathema...

The Long-Awaited Fujifilm Flash Gun

As an honest weblog columnist I can do no better than to send you off googling for a YouTube clip made by the Fujifilm Guys. It features our own Warrewyk and Will - Australian photographers and Fujifilm demonstrators - putting the new Fujifilm EF-X500 speed light through some of its paces.

I'll wait here until you go see it and then come back. You'll probably want to search up the official Fujifilm Australia site as well to check out the technical specifications of the new gun.

Okay, if you're back you'll have seen how easy it is to use the EF-X500 to do fill flash with the new Fujifilm X-T2 camera in broad daylight - making use of the supplied diffusion box to soft the result. No longer should anyone have to struggle with fill-flash ratios and get either black or blasted results.

The simplest drive - that of TTL - should work flawlessly with all hot shoe-equipped Fujifilm X series cameras. The other modes require some learning but the estimation of power should be pretty straightforward if you are going to use Manual. Unless you know you are going to need all the power of the full dump, you are probably best trying a first exposure at 1/4 power and then going up or down from there.

People who are familiar with the previous Fujifilm EF-42 flash will be pleased with a number of improvements:

1. More flash power. GN is now 50. Illumination even with direct flash is remarkably even. 5 Metres away from the backdrop muslin.

2. Metal foot to the hot-shoe mount. There is also a locking lever rather than a plastic wheel to keep it fastened to the camera.

3. Manual power levels down to 1/512 of full power in 1/3 EV steps. Macro work particularly catered for. The Chevy and the Airstream trailer are 1/64 scale and that's done with one on-camera flash + diffuser

4. Master and remote modes available with optical command. Regular TTL and Commander are indicated by green panel and Slave mode is indicated by the amber panel.

5. LED video boost light available on front of unit.

6. Locking flash head tilting and stiff detent swivelling of flash head.

7. Up to + or - 5 EV in 1/3 EV steps. And Glory Be, it is done with a simple rotating thumb wheel rather than a series of button presses!

8. Socket for EF-BP external battery pack. ( YES! )

9. Up to 3 separate lighting groups in the master/slave relationship.

It is the unit all we Fujifilm users have been waiting for. For myself, the stiff detent and the locking tilt mechanism are wonderful, as they allow better control of the flash head when a heavy diffuser like a Gary Fong or Mag Mod unit is fitted. An event shooter can mount the flash, turn the head 90º to the right, and then just raise and lower it from portrait to landscape orientation to perfectly match the light angle to the camera. The EF-42 can do this too, but is weaker and allows the head to flop out of place as you move around.

The battery pack, when available, should also take some burden of waiting for recharge in the middle of a fast-developing event.

What Do You Mean " I Shouldn't Buy Another Lens...? "

This column is nothing if not flexible. We can provide advice that bends in the middle and faces both ways at the same time...

A previous post reported a conversation with the new photographer centred around advice about buying a new Nikon AF-S DX 35mm f:1.8 G lens. That was good advice, and I stand by it firmly, and am now prepared to contradict myself. I've been watching politicians after elections and I can see how it is done.

The new photographer is using a Nikon D3300 which is a dandy camera - with a Nikkor AF-S DX 18-55 f:3.5-5.6 GII lens which is a dandy match. Her main focus will be family shots. I suspect she may get more benefit in this pursuit from another Nikon product - the SB 700 flash.

Her camera does have a pop-up flash in the prism housing, of course. It is linked to the TTL system and is capable of the measure and shoot trick that makes for perfect tiny illuminations and mild fill flash. It can do a portrait inside the house. But it is necessarily low power and equally necessarily draws electricity from the camera battery - restricting performance as it does.

The SB 700 stands outside the electricity supply of the D3300, drawing power from 4 AA batteries. I always recommend Toshiba, Panasonic, or Duracell batteries for this sort of application...and I have settled into using disposable lithium-ion AA cells for all my speedlight work. She'll have plenty of power, quick recycling times, and extra shots in the camera battery for the camera itself.

Okay, what should she do with the SB700 to start with? Fuel it up, slide it onto the hot shoe, lock it there, and turn the flash to TTL mode. Then go out and pursue the kids. The camera will operate as fast as its own AF system will permit and the flash will fire enough light to stop any actions it sees.

Note: I don't mean it will stop the kids from shaving the cat, but it will provide clear pictures of the operation for later evidence. It is hard to stymie the TTL system on a Nikon as it pre-flashes, measures, then exposes the scene. There is PLENTY of flash power for all ISO choices - I have used this same unit for big-church illumination at weddings on 800 ISO with no problem. It can cope with household spaces perfectly.

The thing is consistent. Make no mistake about the comfort that this can provide. People do not want to be sitting in front of a computer whacking the sliders to try to chase fugitive white balance. You tell a Nikon camera to shoot flash and it will agree with this SB700 for every single shot.

And the new photographer can hesitantly press in the rubber locks on the side of the flash head and gingerly tilt it up towards the ceiling and take a shot...And thenfind out more looking on the LCD screen that ever we can teach. Even better - she can pop on the diffuser that Nikon includes in the pack and see even more. I'm not going to take her through the complications of the Mag Mod Dome...I'll just leave that as my little professional advantage...

She may never get past the need for the TTL and move onto the GN settings, or the manual flash. She may never need a slave or master flash setup. But I think she will find the addition of such a sophisticated portable light to be a wonderful thing.

An Instant Night Out - At the Leica Club

I went to the Leica Club at Shoot Photography this week and was greatly entertained...

The entertainment included good things to eat and drink, of course, and a chance to see some of the newest Leica cameras and lenses...and the chance to try out a novelty; the Leica SOFORT.

We've mentioned it here in the column before but this was the first time to get it into action... I was chosen as first experimenter...and I discovered that there is more to the SOFORT than meets the eye.

To start with, the name. SOFORT is rendered as " immediately " in the Google translator. Immediately turns out to be about 5 minutes...but " fünf Minuten " does not look quite so well rendered in the font that Leica uses for their cameras. In any case the camera does eject the newly-shot picture immediately and you just have to wait the 5 minutes for the full picture to develop.

To be fair, what is happening under the pure white outer case of the Fujifilm Instax film that you are holding in your hand has been described as a silent tornado of chemical reaction, so we really should be respectful of both the Fujifilm people and Dr. Edwin Land.

Okay, back to using the SOFORT. Point it and shoot and it delivers a good on-camera flash result. As the flash is situated on one side of the lens there will be a bias as to where it goes - remember this when you position people near reflectors. No.3 in the composite shot shows that I should have reversed my position to get away from the wall

The interesting thing that Connor McGill, the Leica Area Manager, pointed out is that the flash can be altered separate from the exposure of the shutter. This was tried by Don with a no-flash shot of the drinks tub to see what the dynamic range of the result can be. See No.4 in the composite shot. Pretty good.

The other thing that was evident was that the Fujifilm Instax film that this is loaded with has a very good skin-tone response. Even under the quizzical white balance of the Shoot premises there was a good colour to it.

Of course the SOFORT is intended as a fun camera - you will get a lot of that out of it in shooting give-away shots at events. And you will make more useful contacts and more friends doing so than just banging away with a standard digital camera and then taking the results home. People like having you take their picture when they can take that picture away themselves.

Part of the fun with this is selfies. Now I am not the sort of person who stands in front of famous buildings or objects to have a selfie - if I see something and take a good picture of it I think it evidence enough that I was there. And there are a lot of places in the world that I do not want to have evidence about...but there are those who like to take them.

To this end, Leica have put a small mirror on the front of the SOFORT to help you compose the result. It is just large enough to encompass two maniacs, as the No.1 picture in the composite will prove. Maybe a Godzilla or and Eiffel Tower in the middle...I'll leave the aesthetics up to you. The point is you can get a selfie in 5 minutes that is as good as any digital one. and you need not do it on a stick.

One thing, though, note that N0.1 and N0.2 on the composite are both upright pictures. But one was taken facing back - one facing out. The pictures both look good, but they are orientated 180º to each other on the paper. You'll need to remember this if you are intending to put the result into a special Leica album for display.

Thanks to CE and Connor for a good entertaining night and to Don and Mark for being good-humoured models.

See more about the Leica SOFORT here

A reminder that CE's 12 days of Christmas sale is happening right now! Day 5 is 25% off Fstop, Ona, Lowepro, Pelican and Think Tank bags. See the full list here. 

Mag Mod In The Theatre

We have been privileged to get the use of the Little Theatre stage while the company is resting - production of their next drama will be commencing in October. Their stage is being used for prop storage and construction at present so we could borrow it to illustrate the Mag Mod range of light shapers. Here are the ones we spoke about earlier in our weblog column:

a. The basic magnetic attachment strap - fitted here to a Fujifilm EF-42 flash. Keen spotters will see the folding stand under the flash - a promotional item from a firm that used to make photographic equipment...Kodak.

b. The gel holder - here with a cyan gel in place. Note that the soft dome also has a gel holder slot integrated in the base.

c. The basic 40º grid. Stack as many on as you fancy.

d. The flexible snoot - this is the position that produces the tiniest dot of light.

e. The soft dome. A bare-bulb look.

f. The white scoop. More light out the front as well as around the room.

The only disadvantage seen so far with these marvellous modifiers is their tendency to stick together like mating squid. Those magnets are super-powerful. In the plus side, the modifiers can be whacked onto a metal surface like the product table frame or the studio fridge and they stay there perfectly.