The Speed Light In The Studio - Fujifilm EF X-500 Makes A Debut

The use of speed lights in indoor situations is sometimes looked upon with condescension - there are so many dedicated strobe units that run off power packs or as monoblocks that the studio shooter comes to think of that as the only legitimate way to proceed - how very limiting this is....

I decided to wring out the new Fujifilm EF X-500 speed light by making it do what my normal Elinchrom EL250 and EL 500 lights do - make artificial sunlight for my model car dioramas. This is pretty stiff going as the Elinchroms - and any other dedicated studio strobe systems - have the advantage of lots of light shapers and dedicated control systems.

In the case of the Fujifilm I elected to use it to simulate street lighting on an industrial site. This is because of the small nature of the flash tube in the housing - it can achieve far sharper shadows than the larger tubes and reflectors used in studio strobes. The fact that I had only one flash to illuminate the transport yard was made up for by use of white Foam-Core sheets as reflectors. Steve Sint is emphatic in his books about the use of single light sources and reflection boosters.

Connection between the camera near the model and the Fujifilm EF X-500 up on a light stand like a street lamp was achieved with one of the Captur sets from the shop. The one I have is a non-TTL version that sends a radio signal from hot shoe to hot foot. The fact that the hot foot has a tripod thread in the bottom means you can rig the thing up anywhere that you can sling a 1/4" bolt.

Not surprisingly, it works...and the shadows cast from the model edges are sufficiently hard and sharp to match in with the scale of the scene. People have an instinct for shadows that even they might not realise - they can zero in on false lighting even if everything else is perfect. It is the same with their ability to see whether a person in an image is real or just a scale model - it takes a master miniaturist to fool the human instinct for a face.

The Fujifilm flash can also be utilised with modifiers like the Mag Mod diffusers and gels. It is a tight squeeze to put the rubber belt on the removable bezel, but once on there it need not be taken off. I elected to warm up the scene for a late afternoon look with some of the orange gels that clip onto the basic Mag Mod set.

But how can you tell where the flash is going to go before you shoot it? After all, that is the great selling point of the studio strobe systems with modelling lights - you can position the things precisely and look at the shadows as you do. Well, the Fujifilm flash has an LED panel under the main flash head that can be switched on independently of the flash tube. It has a considerable range of brightness that is controlled on the back screen and as long as the flash head is pointed forward, it approximates what the discharge will do.

I used it to determine where the street light would flood in through the overhead skylights of the Mangina Transport before I triggered them off. A little long exposure made sure that the shop lights would also register. If you look carefully you will see that the floor in the MT shop is clean...but this will change very shortly. I used to work as a labourer at a construction site and can testify that repair shops dealing with earthmoving equipment are rarely clean...

Verdict for the EF X-500 in a studio situation? Good on-site substitute for the Elinchrom EL250. It will make photography at exhibitions a lot easier.

Sony Week - Part Three - The Model A Test

I regret that title. I suddenly realised that Sony - as well as Henry Ford  - used to make A model cameras too. Hopefully readers will be able to separate them in their minds*. The Sony products do not have wire-spoke wheels or rumble seats. A pity in some respects...

Well, the contest between a full-frame camera and an APS-C camera in the studio will always range around two things; the out of focus appearance behind the plane of sharpness, and how wide that plane can be spread in the picture.

You can quantify it easily - just go to the DOFmaster website and specify the focal length you will be using. The figures on the calculator are minutely accurate, and infinitely depressing if you are trying to get a deep depth of field. Nothing you can do at close range will increase it markedly. But you grasp for every millimetre you can get.

An APS-C camera with a 35mm lens will have the same angular field of view as a full-frame camera sporting a 50mm lens - the pictures will have the same look and perspective. But the 35mm will have more depth of field for every equivalent f stop.

If this is important to you - it can be a big factor in what you choose.

On the other hand, if you need a shallower depth of field for portraiture or atmospheric images, the 50mm on the full-frame camera is the way to go. You will also benefit from more resolution and the ability to blow the image up to a bigger print. You'll pay for it in more memory being used and a consequent longer time for processing, but the details will be there.

In my case, I rarely blow my work up enough to justify the increased quality, and I DO need every millimetre of DOF I can get.

Some words of practical praise for the Sony FE 50mm f:2.8 macro lens:

a. It is superbly sharp.

b. It has a very positive focus feel to it. No lag, no slip.

c. It goes a true 1:1 macro.

d. It has a focus-hold button - that little round one in the middle of the control panel - that freezes the action of the AF so that you can shift the lens slightly away from the original position. This allows you to follow a slightly moving subject without having the lens hunt back and forth and become uncontrollable.

This isn't all that useful for toy cars but it saves many a " Yike Yike " moment for the bee photographers...

* Mind you - the cameras only come in black...like Model T's...Hmmmm...

A Small Slice Of Reality

Well here are the next with the series of Fujifilm X-series pictures taken of the Tomahawk Cafe. The motorcycles left outside the cafe provide closer detail and the salmon and coral Chevy Nomad that belongs to Miss Marsh the schoolteacher is the final test. All JPEGS, all unsharpened - straight off the cards:

And the Nomad. Chevrolet's answer to a question that hardly anyone ever asked...

I promised you some conclusions in this posting, and they are these - if you are buying a mirrorless camera for photography of studio subjects and the final image needs to be no larger than A4, consider well whether a 50 or 60º angle of view will do most of your shots. If it will, buy the latest variant of the Fujifilm X-100. 

Currently it is the X-100T. In the future there may be a different letter at the end, but it will be a similar fixed-lens camera. It will do the job you need to do flawlessly...at that focal length. People who whoop and dance about more finely divided sensors or higher steam pressure in the flux capacitor can go hang - the Fujifilm X-100 series can really do the job. The new ones run at 16 megapixels if that is something that feels good to you.

If you need to change the angle of view with a series of fixed primes or a zoom, hold onto your hats. The camera to go for is the Fujifilm X-E2s. Same basic flavour as the X-E2 with a few sprinkles on top...and capable of doing all you need in the studio. 

Or you could get hold of an X-T1 or X-Pro1 or 2 and go to town. They do the job very well indeed.

And in the third weblog column of the series I'll tell you why you should buy the new X-T2...

See the Fujifilm range on the Camera Electronic website here

Four Facets Of Fujifilm

One of the advantages of owning your own studio is the fact that you can use it to do photographic experiments without interference from other people. You might be able to do this in a commercial rented space, but every minute you occupy the place costs money - and you might be tempted to skimp on the science to economise.

You can also do photo experiments out in the open air on any number of subjects - if you are a landscape shooter, outside is where they keep landscape. But there are no end of atmospheric and optical variations that might be introduced and skew your results. And outside is dirty - if you're going to change lenses some of that dirt may get in the camera. Err...not may...will...that's why Camera Electronic Repairs Department does so many sensor cleans.

Well the question that arose today was what practical changes can we find in the Fujifilm X-series of mirrorless cameras between the first X-100 and the newest X-T2? I mean practical changes in the final image that comes from the camera. I assembled four bodies and tested them under my own conditions. The conclusion is not quite as predictable as I thought it was going to be.

The basic bodies were an X-T2, and X-E2, And X-Pro1, and an X-100. I know there are more in the Fujifilm X-series but these are four good mileposts along the way. And I own three of them, so I can use them freely.

The scene I used is the Tomahawk Cafe in Wet Dog, Alberta, August 1966. It is noon, and nothing is moving...probably all the way from Medicine Hat to Edmonton, but that is beside the point...The lighting is a constant and all the cameras have been set to a standard Kelvin temperature for it. Shutter speed is 1/250 for the X-T2 and X-100, 1/180 for the X-E2, and 1/125 for the X-Pro1. Aperture is f:16 in all cases, and as three of the bodies have interchangeable lens, a 35mm Macro lens was used in turn. The X-100 has a 23mm that is fixed but it can be switched to macro as well.

The X-100 has the least division of the sensor - 12 megapixels. The X-Pro1 has 16 megapixels, as does the X-E2. The new X-T2 has 24 megapixels...a considerable advance on the first in line. As well, of course, as the series has advanced, the processor inside has been improved. So perhaps there will be a doubling of goodness...?

Well, as with all these propositions, there were some small hiccups. None of them share the exact same range of film simulation modes. The RAW encoding is different enough to need different generations of ACR to deal with. So I opted for the simple large fine JPEG for the tests. I grant that more detail would be available in the boxes if they were all running on RAW, but my software won't cook the X-T2 RAW files and I'm too cheap to buy fresh stuff.

Okay. You can look at the results on this blog post and the next one - too may shots to run on one page. I've identified them with lettering in the image so they can't get confused. First, the overall shot:

Now the medium view:

At this point I started to become suspicious, but I'll let you wait until you see the results of the last two tests tomorrow before I tell you what I think and let draw your own conclusions.

See the Fujifilm range on the Camera Electronic website here. 

                                                                                                                                          

                           

The Silent Studio Assistants Pop Up

Getting some help in the studio when you are tackling product shots can be nerve wracking. You have to advertise the position, read the resumés, conduct interviews, choose a candidate, fill out the tax file and workers comp forms, and then wonder whether they are going to show up on time.

Some days you wonder whether they are ever going stop talking, or eating, or go home...

Well cheer up, because Cullmann have come up with some pre-packaged answers to your problem; kits of camps, holders, grips and props that can be the extra hands in your shop when you really don't want to hire extra hands.

The studio accessories from Cullmann are well-made and for the most part explicable. By that I mean they look like something that was made for a purpose and you can figure that purpose out by looking at them.Here are three kits grabbed from the shelves with slightly different content for slightly different jobs.

a. The FLEXX Tabletop Set. This gives you a clamp to grip the edge of a table or upright, an extension pole with 1/4" socket on the bottom and screw on the top, and a small ball head. The camera plate of the ball head unscrews and reverses to become a small flash shoe.

That's one hand free to do other things with - not you have three at our disposal. Like hiring half of an assistant...

b. The FLEXX Support Set. This has the clamp, extension poles, mini ball head and adds a suction cup attachment, a Copter tabletop tripod, and an accessory grip. Another hand in the mixture. Now you have a full-fledged assistant holding things steady for you as you shoot. And doing so without singing or muttering under their breath...

c. The FLEXX Assistant Set. This one has three spring clamps - a big one that grips the tabletop or a pool support,, and two smaller ones that grip products, gels, reflectors, or flags. The connection in this case is not rigid - it is a flexible gooseneck in metal. You get one of the mini flash shoes as well for a speed light holder.

With Cullmann you are really only limited by your own imagination as to how you combine the elements. Here they are in individual for so that you can plan your rig. Wise studios get several kits and keep a supply of the parts in a big box. The time that they save in positioning articles is money in the bank.

Oh, the heading image? That is from the Little Studio's pantry. It is a 60-year-old tin food canister full of rice and popcorn. It served to prop up that product boxes beautifully. Not for sale, but if you visit the studio with beer I might pop some...

Bending Over Sideways To Please The Client - Tilt/Shift Part One

This is not a column about business relationships. It is about optics. If you want the other sort you'll have to go to Dale Carnegie or The Better Business Bureau.

Three manufacturers that I know of currently make tilt/shift lenses that can be used on digital cameras; Nikon, Canon and Samyang/Rokinon. There have been others in the past but my researches don't turn them up readily now. The one in use in the studio today is the Samyang 24mm f:3.5 version with the Nikon mount. Of course you can get it with a Canon mont as well...

Cynics may be forgiven for looking at the design and screwing up their faces, but I'm not here to judge whether or not Samyang unbolted another maker's design and reverse engineered it. Nor any I going to make the obvious comment about the use of high-grade plastics to replicate someone else's metal part. Take it from someone who used it that it is well-built and works as it should.

You don't get AF with these lenses, nor do you want it. You get MF and ADJF...Adjustable Focus.

 And you get to adjust it in ways that are at once artistic and practical.

The subjects that people cover in the studio can sometimes be challenging in that they are longer than the depth of field of a lens will cover. Stop down as much as you like, you still can't get everything in focus -and clients demand everything in focus. If you need to use a wider aperture for artistic effect, you are in even a worse fix.

Here is where the tilt mechanism of these lenses comes in. They are the way to produce the Scheimpflug effect - the phenomenon that occurs when you rotate the lens and the sensor to intersect the plane of the subject. Sounds complex, turns out to be surprisingly visible in the viewfinder, and nails the focus along the length of the subject - in this case a 1:24 Chevrolet Fleetline. Even at a modest aperture, it's in focus.

All in focus from headlight to rear bumper.

Away from the plane that you select, it goes out of focus faster...so if you want to create a fuzzy effect that is where you do it. Again useful in the studio to diffuse the backdrop and smooth it out. The clients want to see the products, not the brick wall behind them.

Note that the focusing you do with this lens is with the broad front ring. It's well damped, and does not creep. The lens is a pleasure to use.

As always, available now in-store or on-line.

A Picnic In The Country

After sampling the delights of early morning tourism in Rossmoyne ( Land Of the Two-storey Mansions Trying To Be More Massive Than Each Other ) I headed over the historic Old Shelley Bridge toward the Artistic Quarter. As this is where the Little Studio is located, perhaps that should be amended to Artistic 1/64th. No matter - I was determined to try the Olympus Pen F as studio camera.

Don't screw up your noses - it might have been meant for a street camera or a tourist camera, but inside that chrome lurks a very special studio camera - one well-adapted to the Little Studio.

The sensor in a Micro 4/3 camera is smaller than the sensors of other mirror-less cameras - they might have the 24mm x 36mm of a full-frame camera or the 18mm x 24mm of the APS-C camera. The Olympus company has pioneered the micro 4/3 sensor which is which is 13.5mm x 18mm. The lenses that are made for micro 4/3 cameras have their focal lengths selected to match this smaller area.

As the lenses have shorter focal lengths while still maintaining the angular coverage of their larger cousins, they benefit from an increased depth of field. The photographers who always want shallow depth of field to throw backdrops out of focus might growl at this and have to take special care to use wide apertures - but those of us that shoot close-ups of various types think that more DOF is wonderful.

To give you a concrete example - if I want to have a digital view of the world that is the same as that was seen in an old 35mm film camera when it had a 35mm wide-angle lens mounted here are my choices:

1. A full frame camera with a 35mm focal-length lens. No mathematics involved. If I focus on a subject at 10 centimetres and use an aperture of f:22 I get a depth of field of 4.6 mm. That's very little when a subject might be 25cm long - It means the subject can only present a very shallow side to the camera.

2. an APS-C camera uses a 23mm lens for that same angle of view. It is better when the same criteria are applied - you'll get a depth of field of 12.6mm. Still shallow but the subject has more space to move and can start to be seen more in 3/4 view.

3. The micro 4/3 camera uses a 17mm focal length lens for that same view - and this time the DOF expands out to 25.1 mm.

Now, obviously if you can move away from the subject a little then the DOF gets wider too, but in the tabletop studio you are clawing for every millimetre of focus that you can get - it can literally be a no-debate question if you are faced with a 40mm macro lens or a 35mm macro - you choose the latter.

Now the good part about the Olympus firm is that they have incorporated massively good sensors and processing engines in their cameras to take advantage of those smaller sensors. Studio work on a tripod does not using their extensive anti-shake mechanisms as such but there is certainly provision in the camera to use the shifting sensor to capture more detail from an immobile subject.

Note that in the examples made today, this extra resolution mechanism was not put in place - I was working on the premise that the camera was being used as a tourist camera so I left it off. Another time might show far more detailed results.

As it is the results from the front bumper of the Chrysler 300 to the back are more than adequate. This is a good test model as it is one of the longer cars of the 60's and it tests DOF to the limit.

One fun thing - there are provisions in the 'art" section of the colour control dial for "retro", "pinhole" and other effects. They are surprisingly good, and if you did not want to add plug-ins or complex actions to Photoshop to achieve old-looking images, this would be a good choice. There is also a very adjustable monochrome control to explore.

For those who have never ridden in a Chrysler 300 from the late 50's and early 60's - they are interesting cars. The front seats swivelled to the side to allow easier entry and exit and in some cases they had adjustable steering wheel rake and the wheels themselves were shaped like television screens. The ones with the press-button automatic transmission did away with column or floor shifts.

They were big and fairly fast on a highway, but the suspension on them had a fore and aft roll to it that could set up a rocking motion that was a killer for people with travel sickness.
You can find the Pen-F available for order on our website.

Stick To The Tabletop With Slik

Those of you who do landscape photography know the value of a good big tripod - you buy sturdy Manfrotto and Cullman outfits and valiantly haul them about the place looking for the view that no-one else has seen. You know it's out there because you've seen it in their photos...

Come inside for tabletop or macro photography and you can get away with smaller and lighter tripods - provided you are using a small light camera and lens. Sometimes they really do need to sit on table tops.

In the case of this cutie, it combines metal legs, a two-way head, and an extendable center column. It don't extend up very high, but it does go down to the table top, and they have put a unique feature down there - a suction cup. All in aid of a little more stability.

Fortunately most studios do not have cross-winds. But it is still comforting to get as much hold as you can.

This Slik Mini 8 tripod is just the thing. A small thing, but a thing nevertheless.

Strobin' With Fujifilm

The "strobist" fad went through here a couple of years ago and was quite popular for a while - but I suspect it was before its time in some respects.

You see, the little clip-on and strap-on accessories that we sold for speed lights were all very well - for the most part they did modify the light output - but they were accompanying large, heavy regular DSLR cameras. In some cases the DSLR's were bearing even larger and heavier lenses. It might have been fun, but it wasn't balanced.

The fad seems to have passed - some of the manufacturers have stopped making the accessories, and other fads have appeared. Yet - the time is right to take this up as we have smaller and lighter mirror-less cameras to use now...we can achieve balance.

I went to see the toy cars on Sunday. While I paid for an adult entry ticket, I didn't want to be an adult - it's hard enough keeping up the pretence all week here in the shop...I did take a mirrorless camera with one lens and a speedlight with a couple of strobist accessories. And I had a whale of a time.

The camera was the Fujifilm X-Pro1 and the flash was the EF 42 from Fujifilm. It is a speed light that has an easy manual program you can change with two push buttons. The right lens for he job was the Fujinon 35mm f:1.4.

The strobist accessories were a wireless trigger set that allowed me to shoot with the camera in one hand and the flash in the other, and a bounce panel above flash tube. This was one of the nylon/cloth panels that attach to the speed light with a velcro strip - very lightweight and easy to pack away. In yesterday's case I used a 5" size.

Note that these sorts of reflectors were made by Honl and are still available from Rogue.

Exhibitions and shows can be crowded places and you don't have much room to set up tripods or light stands. The ability to have one good diffused flash that you can shift around on the end of your arm is priceless.

f:11 was no problem with this setup - and you need all the depth of field you can get for tabletop subjects at close range. It worked so well, and with such a light weight to carry, that I experimented with it here in the shop's mini studio set. I am quite impressed with what it can do in one shot. Even simple shelf shots are better with the diffuser.

Wanna know more? Come in and see me.

Uncle Dick