Never One To Let Well Enough Alone...With the Promaster LED 120

Ah, that is the universal motto of the photo enthusiast. We read a little, think a little, google a little, and then go out and fiddle a lot. We invent things to do that need not be done, and ways to do them that make no sense, and then lash the ideas together with 1/4" bolts and gaffer tape.

Just as well we are playing with cameras. If we were amateur explosives enthusiasts there would be smoking holes in the ground all over Perth...

Inspired with the Icelight 2 light painting wand, I decided to see if some of the other LED light devices in the shop could also do the same things...albeit on a smaller scale. Because I am a man who does things on a small scale - the name of my studio - The Little Studio - is not just cute marketing. I really do little bitty stuff. Not as little bitty as the macro workers, but small enough.

Okay - we have had a number of small light panels in at various times. LEDGO, Promaster, Metz amongst others. They go for various prices and are different sizes and shapes. Different price points too, but as with most things, you gets what you pays for.

I grabbed a Promaster LED 120 panel with, you guessed it, 120 LED lights on the front. It runs from 4 standard AA batteries and has a simple on/off switch. There is a shoe mount with a standard 1/4" thread on the bottom and they throw in a small bracket to bolt it onto the bottom of a camera as well. The extra icing is provision of a plastic orange cover to compensate for tungsten lighting.

Cheap as, and even cheaper now since it is on a 50% off sticker. Ideal experimenters gear.

I tried it as illumination for a colourful studio car. The first idea involved a darkened studio and the whole panel lit up from several directions. The shutter on the camera was open on bulb while this was going on - 3 seconds at 200 ISO/f:11. The switch at the back was less convenient to use than the thumb switch of the Icelight 2 but then we're talking $50 vs $700. If I was going to use this technique extensively I would add a handle to the panel using the threaded socket in the base and put a thumb button on the handle.

Then the panel occluded by several strips of gaffer tape to narrow down the beam:

Promaster don't quote their bare light temperature as such - only referring to the plastic filter as yielding 3300ºK. Ian guessing about 4500 - 5500ºK. It is times like these that I wish I had a small cheap colour temperature meter. Indeed, since we encounter light sources out in the real world that don't actually seem to HAVE a colour temperature...or if they do it is fitful and feverish...that meter would get more use than you'd think. I note that Kenko make several colour temperature meters, but they are out of my price range.

Here's a less dramatic portrait shot of Chelsea Bunz - the Absinthe Fairy - done with only the Promaster LED 120 playing on the scene.

Postscript: I have been told that there is an app for colour temperature meters. I have an app installed that prevents me from purchasing apps. It is a part of the sOS - the Stein operating system - it is a product of the CheapJohn company, and it is free...

The Three-Ring Circus, Or The Wrong Auto-Focus

It is embarrassing to be foolish in my old age. The business of being a sage elder seated upon a mountain is all very well, but I have come to suspect that I am not suited to it. Case in point was this weekend when I stuffed up a photo assignment.

This was not a paying job, thank goodness. It was an annual visit to the Super Model Car Sunday in Malaga to take pictures of the little cars. I love 'em and am always in awe of what the other enthusiasts can come up with in the year's interval. I use the pictures to report on my hrhoa.wordpress.com blog. The hall is brightly lit, but with a weird colour temperature so I tend to prefer off-camera flash to illustrate the paint jobs on the cars.

In past years I rigged up a Nikon D300s, 8-200 lens, SB700, and Stroboframe holder and got brilliant results. But I was hauling 3.8 kilograms of rig around all day and I ain't getting any younger*. I planned to lighten the load to 1.9 kilograms this year by combining my new Fuji X-E2, a Rayqual adapter, a Nikon 28-105 lens, and a Fuji Ef 42 flash.

The old nikon is an AF-D lens with an aperture ring. The Rayqual adapter also has an aperture ring as it can be used with G lenses. As it does not autofocus or auto aperture on the adapter, that was all to be done by hand. The problem with this was that there are 4 rings of doubt there and only a limited number of hands and fingers to actuate them. And the final criteria for the focussing was to be one old right eye.

That eye used to get me into trouble when I was looking through a Nikon F3 film camera -  some of the dance shows I covered with that film system showed bad focussing near the end. The shift to AF was a blessing. Note: My days of potting sepoys with a three-band Enfield are long behind me, but even then I noted that there was less accommodation to the eyesight as I got older. A formed body of mutineers in red was easy to hit but individuals sometimes escaped.

Well, to cut a long story long, about 3/4 of the images from yesterday show me that I was off with my focussing. The colours are gorgeous, and the flash exposure all i could want.
Setting the Fuji to the Astia film simulation mode with a dynamic range of 200% is perfect for bright toys  - but in this case unfortunately it turned out to be fuzzy toys...

I live and learn. I shall buy a 60mm f:2.4 Fujinon macro lens for the camera and be done with it. Shop tests prove to me that it really can do what I should have been doing yesterday.

* Better looking, yes - but not younger.