Monthly Archives: October 2006

Studio Flash

Technique

Money far better spent than getting yet another lens or camera.

I have always been a fan of the great state of Texas. In addition to providing drivers with cheap oil in any number of distillations concocted by corrupt state politicians earning their kickbacks, any state that has a predilection for frying bad guys rather than giving them three square a day, air conditioning, free bed and board and color television for upwards of fifty years, has to deserve the respect, admiration and gratitude of the taxpayer.

The addition of another fine product from that great state, a Novatron studio flash outfit, to my small equipment cache a few years back, only served to confirm my love of things Texan. The flash heads in that kit proudly proclaim ‘Novatron of Dallas‘. Go Cowboys!

Who needs studio flash? Well, anytime a portrait beckons or a still life has to be just so and heat is not to be a factor in the equation, studio flash is the ticket. Your Coke-bottom lens, well stopped down to cope with the powerful light output, suddenly becomes a Summicron, Planar or Canon ‘L’ – and the flash outfit will likely run you far less than any of those magnificent optics. Camera shake is a thing of the past. The light duration is very short, after all.

Too bulky, you say? Don’t have studio room, you grumble? Nonsense.

Here’s my kit, with that sophisticated man about town, Bertie the Border Terrier, providing scale. (Modeling fee? 1 cookie).

What you see, in addition to that fine canine specimen, is a transportable case containing three Novatron 500 watt flash heads, three tripod stands, the power pack and some long flash synchronization cables, as well as two silvered umbrellas which attach to the flash heads when shadowless lighting is called for. I used to pack an electronic flash meter also, but that is no longer needed with digital. Pop off a couple of snaps, check the LCD screen in the camera and correct exposure is assured.

The 500 watt-second heads in my kit are discontinued, replaced by 600 watt-second ones and, as with mine, these include ineffectual modeling lamps to purportedly help you assess the effect of the lighting. Once again, that LCD screen in your digital camera does a superior job. Better still, tether your Canon EOS digital using the Canon EOS Capture utility (maybe Nikon and others make something similar – I don’t know) to a laptop and you will really be able to judge your lighting. That estimable vendor of photo gear, B&H, lists a three head 600 w-s Novatron kit for some $900. A bargain and all the power you need for the home studio.

The heads on mine have three position power switches and I usually use them on 1/4 or 1/2 power, which gives a recycling time of some 2 seconds when all three are in use. One is a main light, the second a modeling light and the last a background or hair key light. For the latter, a small tripod/boom-arm made by Manfrotto, suitably counterbalanced with a sand-filled sack, (high tech at work), is suspended above the apprehensive subject’s head. You too can make out like George Hurrell – he even managed to make Judy Garland look attractive!

Now while more modern units integrate the power pack and flash tube – thus unnecessarily increasing bulk and cost while trading both for looks – you still have to run power cables with either, so what’s the big deal? Further, some seek to add to the cost by using a wireless connection between camera and power pack. There’s something in that as it obsoletes one cable, meaning one chance less to trip, but there are already so many of those I have never been tempted by the additional outlay.

If your camera is an older Leica, like an M2 or M3 with those superb sturdy flash contacts, there’s no need to compromise with a cheesy adapter to take the standard 3mm coaxial connector that bedevils the flash reliability of cameras thus equipped. Just go to Paramount Cords and get a cable terminated with the connector of your choice. The other end? The Novatron boys, bless ’em, use a simple, cheap and very sturdy household ‘H’ plug! Must be all that experience they have in Texas with high current loads in their correctional institutions. I wouldn’t bother with those coiled cord wonders either – a problem waiting to happen. As for choice, well how about the old Nikon push lock, Koni Omega (remember them?), old Leica M (tip #30 if you must ask), Rollei locking (great for that 3.5F or 2.8F), and many more?

Users with modern digital cameras with fragile internal flash contacts worry about trigger voltages – the amount of voltage transmitted through the camera’s flash contact when the flash is triggered. Most recommend that 9 volts or less (the Canon EOS 5D allows a whopping 250 volts!) is the safe way to go. Well, you can measure the trigger voltage of any flash unit with a voltmeter and two fine tipped probes. Charge up the flash and touch the probes to the two flash contacts. My ancient Novatron kit comes in at 6.4 volts, falling to 2.5 volts if a Wein Safe Synch is fitted between power cord and power pack. By the way, my fairly recent (Chinese) Vivitar 283 portable flash unit comes in at 10.1 volts, though I understand some of the earlier Japanese ones could really fry things. Motto? Check your camera’s instruction book and use a voltmeter first, to be on the safe side.

Now $900 may seem like a lot – about the cost of one more unnecessary lens for your camera – but I have found the utility value and payback from my Novatron to be excellent. Whenever I wanted to take some studio portraits I would rush to the local pro-dealer, leave half my net worth and Border Terrier behind as collateral for the loan and pay a weekend fee which was invariably over $100. A few of these trips and several things dawned on me. First, I was wasting time and gas on all those trips. Second, it was getting expensive. Third, my credit card record was getting messed up because the clerk in the store had an IQ in single figures. Fourth, I missed my dog! Finally, I was restricted to weekends, as the weekday rate was ruinous and things far too rushed.

Thus, I reckoned, the first nine times I used the Novatron now in my hall closet, it had paid for itself. And my credit score improved too.

For still lives it’s a killer set-up, for you know your lighting is cool and constant, nothing fries and all is repeatable as you concentrate on composition.

As for studio work, you be the judge.

When a plain background is called for, by the way, I use a Photek Background-in-a-Bag. You crumple the cloth and separate the poles, stashing the lot in a small canvas bag for transit, placing the background cloth in a clothes drier for a few minutes before use, to get the wrinkles out. Some $120 for the 6′ x 7′ model, which is more than adequate for head and shoulders portraits.

So my two cents’ worth on the matter are that a studio flash outfit should be a serious consideration for anyone seeking to make quality studio portraits, picturing interiors or doing still life work.

And if the only flash connector your camera sports is a hot shoe, no problem. Just splash out $20 on a Nikon AS-15 hot shoe adapter and your point-and-shoot has just become a studio camera. I use the AS-15 on my Canon EOS 5D rather than messing about with that silly flap that stubbornly refuses to disclose the coaxial socket. B&H continues to list this great little gadget.

Finally, if you are concerned about obsolescence, my twenty year old Novatron outfit, for which parts continue to be abundantly available (though it is as reliable as it gets), works every bit as well with my EOS 5D as it did with my 4″ x 5″ Crown Graphic. I bought my kit used some ten years ago and have had no problems with it. When they go out, replacement flash tubes are cheap and heavy, professional use will likely dictate new capacitors in the power pack now and then. It’s not about to go out of fashion, until the folks at Apple work out how to pass vast amounts of current through the air without connecting cables.

An update addressing use of an inexpensive radio remote trigger may be found here.

Pages for books

Software

Another dynamite Apple application for photographers

Now before questionable grammar in the title of this piece suggests that I am a recent graduate of the taxpayer fraud that goes by the name of the California Public School System, let me put you on the straight and narrow.

What I’m talking about is Apple’s Pages application, now in its second iteration and included as part of the software suite sold under the name iWork ’06. When Apple upgraded Aperture to Version 1.5 they conferred minor upgrades on iPhoto and Pages (and lots of other iLife applications) to permit easy interchange of files.

Pages, typifying the ‘think different’ (now that was penned by a CA school grad) philosophy at Apple, is a template driven page composition tool. That sounds pretty grand, but wait. Much more than a word processor, it dictates that you set up templates for various sections of a document or book, then insert text, graphics and pictures into the appropriate template. I don’t know, but I imagine that’s how professional typesetters and bookmakers do it. Like Aperture, the approach takes a bit of getting used to but once it clicks you wonder how you ever lived without it.

Here’s a screenshot of Pages 2.0.2 showing the integration with Aperture and iPhoto albums – part of the Aperture album is shown.

To the left you can see thumbnails of the pages in the document, which happens to be a book of photographs I am working on. Like Aperture, Pages is no Ferrari on my iMac PPC G5, but it’s OK. Meaning sometimes you have to wait a second or two before things load. So why bother with the learning curve and the modest performance?

Simple. Once you have established your template – say one for the cover, one for the title, one for chapter separators and one for the body/contents, it’s a matter of seconds to drag and drop a picture onto a template page.

Having stored the 125 or so pictures for the book in iPhoto albums (the higher quality available in Aperture is wasted on an 8″ x 10″ book) and having set up my contents template by modifying one of the many included with the application, (a process which took 10 minutes for this less than expert user), it took me but twenty minutes to drag and drop no fewer than 100 pictures into 100 new pages in the book document.

Here is the drag and drop process in practice – you can see thumbnails of the iPhoto album in the ‘Media’ panel (Apple calls it the Media Inspector – not very intuitive); additionally I have pulled up the ‘Adjust Image’ panel now available in Pages, giving me control over contrast, sharpness, tint, etc. in the Pages version of the photograph without affecting the source image in iPhoto.

Reordering the pictures is a drag and drop exercise.

Then you hit the ‘Print to PDF’ button and you have a perfect PDF file ready for distribution, formatted exactly as shown on the Pages screen.

How I ever managed to compose my first book in that horror that goes by the name Microsoft Word I shudder to recall. Pages is a superb application for photographers wanting to create brochures, books and the like. It may not be fast, but then it’s net speed that matters. Try making a 100+ page book with any other application out there in like time.

Stuff

Cameras

You know, the things in the back of drawers you haven’t seen for ages

As I clear out the last of my film equipment I find I am still left with a lot of, well, stuff. None of this has much value and the effort-to-dollars-realized ratio is not very exciting but, having sold off most of the big dollar items, what am I to do? Throw these things away? Even if my time is worth more spent on other things, I feel a duty of care to these once seemingly indispensible gadgets.

Let’s see.

There is that wonderful Leica MC selenium cell meter which I bought some 35 years ago. It would clip to the top of my Leica M2 or M3 , couple to the shutter speed dial and provide accurate light readings whenever asked. Selenium cells, which need no battery, are meant to die from age but this one was always stored in the dark when not in use and remains as accurate today as it was over three decades ago. It’s the same one clipped to QE2’s M3 in that famous stamp where she can be seen holding the camera. Yes, she was an M3 gal back then. Now you should understand that she never paid for hers. No, she didn’t pinch it. Rather, Leitz, recognizing she was more German than English, honored her bloodline with, yes, you guessed it, a free one with her initials on it, no less! Sold for $40 (the meter, not the Queen).

Or how about that wonderful, inverted cone hood that Leitz concocted around 1971? By inverting the cone and venting the rear, the amount of the hood intruding into the field of view, especially noticeable with the wide angle M2 viewfinder with the older design, became a thin line which you barely noticed after a while. Brilliant. $38.

Then there’s that superb Schneider 8x loupe used to check negatives or slides for sharpness before committing all that time to scanning them. For reasons best known to themselves, Schneider replaced the 8x and only sell a 4X which is not powerful enough to tell you much. A superb tool and indispensible for the film user, if of no use to a digital photographer. $90.

Next up is that sweet little Japanese Kopil self-timer – useful for those cameras like my unlamented Leica M6, which had none, or whenever a jar-free release was needed and no cable release was to hand. No use for that with modern equipment, what will all those options which include what color you want your coffee. $13. It served me well indeed.

Here’s one of the funkier items, though none the less useful for that. A Leica lens coupling ring, allowing two M lenses to be attached back-to-back for space efficient storage in the camera bag. Just be careful you don’t ram that $3,000 21mm Asph Elmarit in there, as expensive grinding sounds will testify to rear element-to-rear element contact! Big bucks for this one – $35.

And while we are on the topic of funky, what about this little gadget? It fits around the rewind knob of a Leica M2 or M3 which, in its absence, is a device designed by Torquemada and his boys, and guaranteed to flay the skin from your thumb and index fingers as you rewind the film into the cassette. A process which takes about a day, by the way. Strange that one camera, the Leica M2, can have both the best and worst designed components at the same time. This jewel, fastened with a set screw, rises with the rewind knob and gives you proper leverage to do a painless and speedy job. Much sturdier than the fragile 45 degree rewind crank that first saw the light of day with the Leica M4. How quaint rewinding film seems now. Another $30. When Leica made their ‘retro look’ MP a couple of years ago, they fitted it once more with that silly rewind knob, then immediately started offering these for $180 as an accessory. No kidding!

What about that cute Olympus Stylus Quartz Date, a clamshell design 35mm point-and-shoot with a 35mm Olympus lens, auto everything, and truly pocketable? This one went around the world with me several times. Lucky if I get $30 for it.

Now for the heavy artillery. There’s that Leica Bellows, modelled on the Golden Gate when it comes to rigidity, which was the bee’s knees in close-up gear thirty years ago with your Leica M and the Visoflex mirror housing. Beyond gorgeous in construction and I still cannot seem to unload this one, a bargain at $80, which includes a couple of beautifully machined adapters.

Next a couple of whoppers. First the 200mm Telyt, an f/4 lens of wonderful sharpness and zero automation. You have to stop down by hand though, in its defence, it fits just about anything out there with the right adapters – Visoflex I, Visoflex II/II, any number of SLRs and, yes, you guessed it, even DSLRs. $179 doesn’t seem a lot, even though it has seen better days. Why sell? Well, when you have a Canon 200mm L, with auto aperture, auto focus and a stop faster to boot, why torture yourself?

Finally, the piece de resistance, the wonderful 400mm trombone focus Telyt. Sure, I have adapted this to my Canon 5D and it works fine in auto aperture priority mode; the snag is that I take one 400mm picture once in a blue moon, and frankly for those occcasions, the sensor in the 5D is so good that a simple enlargement from a snap taken with the 200mm f/2.8 L is every bit as good, with far less bulk and full automation. Beyond mint this one and superb in every way, it’s a bargain at $645, original box, shoulder brace, the whole megillah.

Now hang on a minute. That little lot, if it all sells, adds up to some $1,000+. Now I don’t need any more equipment, as I have all I need. Then again, a few more books with photographs never hurt….

Leica – Witness to a Century

Book reviews

A fine chronlogy, if factually flawed

I picked up my copy of this book a couple of years ago from overstock bookseller Edward R. Hamilton for a few dollars. It’s actually worth that sort of money.

This is the last place to go for factual accuracy regarding the various Leica models; I am no maven but could scarce find a page without several technical errors accompanying each of the illustrations of the many models of cameras made by Leitz over the years.

On the other hand, the book does a fine job of showcasing the work of some great photographers from Oscar Barnack, the inventor of the Leica (he was a fine photographer), down to modern times. Especially pleasant to see is the work of a couple of relatively unknown Italian photographers, probably attributable to the nationality of the Italian author, Alessandro Pasi.

And, technical errors apart, who can argue with the caption for the M3, first sold in 1954? “The turning point: Leica M3”.

Indeed.

Print the facts, forget the rumors

Photography

The best photography company publishes the best results.

Before someone accuses me of conflicted bias, let me confirm two facts. I am conflicted, as I own a boat load of Apple stock, and I am biased for the same reason. And as long time readers of this journal know, I am also a customer, electing to put my money where my mouth is.

Today, confirming that Wall Street analysts for the most part commit grand larceny every pay day, Apple published its fourth quarter results, disclosing iPod sales up 34% (the analysts had it that the iPod had ‘peaked’) and excelling in all other areas, with dramatic growth in notebook and iMac sales. Now watch all those analysts become historians (they get paid for that?) as they raise their earnings targets.

And all of this is before iTV hits the shelves, allowing you to route movies from your Mac to your TV. Then add the forthcoming iPhone, which will be the first cellular phone that will have proper ergonomics, and you have a company on a roll.

For this user it’s the iMac and Aperture and iPhoto which constitute the most powerful photographic triumvirate ever known to man. Forget front end gear. Any one of dozens of cameras by Canon, Nikon, Leica, Sony, Samsung, HP, Casio, Pentax, etc. etc. can take great pictures. It’s delivering them to the viewer that matters and that’s where Apple’s products excel.

So do yourself a favor. Make some coin for that next camera, or better, for that iMac, and buy the stock. Generally, it’s best to buy right after some two bit bed wetter calling himself a stock analyst, one better suited to garbage collection where he can pick up his detritus, pontificates that the stock is a ‘hold’ (Wall Street euphemism for ‘sell’) or a ‘sell’ (Wall Street euphemism for ‘run for the exits’). These fellows are the perfect contrarian indicator.

Don’t believe me on analysts? Try this well informed Apple Blog which appropriately bestowed its Jackasses of the Week award on two analysts from a purportedly reputable firm.

Apple used to leak famously; now that Jobs has learned his lesson, leaks are punishable by death. So the company blithley refuses to comment on Wall Street noise and just delivers the goods. And the financial results.

As for that option thing? Forget it. No way the US is going to lock up the most popular man in America.


The world takes notice. Apple stock over the past six months.

Apple. The best imaging company in the world.