Postcards from Phoenix Arizona

For the last couple of weeks, I've been in Phoenix Arizona working in the heat of summer.  It is very hot and I did not push myself to shoot out in the heat.  However, I did managed to go out a few time to shoot in downtown Phoenix and a couple of attractions.

I've to say, there are not a lot of interesting stuff to shoot in the city itself.  Most of the interesting stuff are out in the desert which I did not have the time to go out to.  Here are a few photos I shot which I think are worthwhile.

The Hole in The Rock Phoenix

View from The Hole in The Rock

Civic Space Park

Interesting structure in the park called "Her Secret Is Patience"

View from below.  The sculpture is by Janet Echelman 

View from another angle

I am hoping to take more photos from this trip very soon.

Summer Shoot in Russell Square

I had a quick photo shoot with the lovely Ali Valenzuela in a park near Russell Square in London at the weekend.  The idea was to shoot some summer type images.  The weather was unpredictable with wind, rain, sun and cloud.  It made accurate exposure more difficult as lighting was changing all the time.  I’ve decided to shoot the images with my 85mm f1.8 lens at f1.8 as much as possible for shallow DOF.  At times I had to put a polarizing filter on the lens to reduce the shutter speed below 1/250s.

Shooting at f1.8 made focus critical.  With the model moving between poses, it resulted in quite a few out of focus images.  I had to shoot a lot more images than normal to make sure there were a good enough selection of images in focus to choose from.

Again, I used my Strobeam DL4 lighting kit with my 43” umbrella softbox for lighting.  I was using very low power so I could have used my speedlites, but decided I was to large modifier.  This is the second time I created this shallow DOF over exposed look.  I think it has its place but don’t want to over use it.  I am going to wait a while before shooting in this style again.

A Shoot in the Park

The British summer have yet to really start this year, but at least the temperature is starting to warm.  I made use of a break in weather this week and did a shoot with the beautiful Ema Sol.  She is originally from Slovakia.  I wanted to do a shoot in the park in late evening.

We met up in St James Park near Buckingham Palace for this shoot.  I decided to shoot with my 85mm f1.8 lens as wide open as possible while keeping my flash sync speed to 1/200s.  I was in luck as it was a cloudy evening and under the tree, I was able to shoot at f1.8 at 1/200s at ISO 100. This mean the images were over exposed by 0.5 stop and some highlight was blown out.  I had a polarizing filter with me in case I had to reduce the ambient light level, but did not use it.  When I saw the test image on the LCD, I was very happy with the results.  By shooting at f1.8, the bokeh was dream like and beautiful which complemented the slight over exposure.  I was traveling very light and I only took my camera body, flash trigger, 50mm f1.8, 85mm f1.8, a light stand and a Canon 540EZ flash with me.  I didn't even take any light modifier with me.  Ema needed the smallest amount of fill flash which I think was 1/64 power.

Ema was a delight to work with.  She arrived in immaculate make up and hair styled as agreed before hand.  She needed very little help with posing and I was very happy with the resulting images.  Here are a few of my favorite photos from this shoot.  I must use the 85mm f1.8 lens much more and wide open.

Shooting in The Arctic Circle

I was in Rovaniemi, a town on the edge of Artic Circle in Finnish Lapland for two weeks on a business trip.  I always photograph my trips, but this time I wanted to do something different.  As well as photography I also want to produce a time lapse video.  With that in mind, I took my Olympus E-PL1 with me.  I decided I will only take the kit lens with me.  For video work, I much prefer the Pentax manual focus lenses, but for trip I took the kit lens and a table top tripod.  From my past experience the temperature at reach -35°C.  I know I do not want to change lens at that temperature.

Since the E-PL1 does not have an interval meter built in, I had to improvise.  What I did was to set the camera to continuous shooting mode, set the Anti Shock delay to 2s.  The anti shock function was designed to add a time delay between pressing the shutter button and actually taking a photo.  After setting up the camera as I want it, I use a rubber band to wrap around the shutter button and added a small coin to keep the button pressed.

Since the images were going to be imported into video editing software and the final video will be viewed on TV or computer, I set the image size to 16:9 ratio and shot at low resolution.  Once the start the camera shooting, I just left it to carry on until I got enough footage.

As well as time lapse images I also took quite a lot of video footage.  In the end, I had to edit most of them out, otherwise it will be an overlong video.  I used Sony Vegas HD 11 to produce my video and found it quite difficult to use.  It is a powerful piece of software and I will try to master it.  I am sure it will get easier with use.

I love the creativity of video and time lapse and definitely want to work on this much more in future.  The video I produced from my trip to Finland can be viewed on Vimeo.  I hope you like it.

As well and time lapse photography, I also took some panoramic images.  Here are a couple of examples of panoramic photos from this trip.

Frozen Lake near Rovaniemi

Ounusvaara Ski Slope Rovaniemi

My Experience with using Olympus E-PL1 for Photos and Videos

I've had my E-PL1 for over 6 months now and I really like using it.  Like all cameras it does have its weaknesses.  I have listed the main weaknesses and what I've done to overcome it.

1. Focus speed – Not a lot I can do, but don't expect DSLR speed and forget moving objects.
2. Low light focusing – It can be an issue in a dark pub, but not a lot you can do apart from carrying a small LED light.
3. Hard to see LCD screen in daylight.  This is a problem even in cloudy days let alone on a bright sunny day.  I have purchased a Delkin Pop Up Shade.  The 2.7" universal shade fits really well.  So far, it worked really well on a cloudy day.  Where as before I had to turn up the brightness to the max on a cloudy day, I did not have to do anything with the shade on.  I've yet used it on a sunny day, but it can only make it better.
4. Maximum shutter speed is only 1/2000s which limit the use of fast lens on a sunny day.  I intent to buy a ND filter for get round this problem.

I've been getting more into video since I got the E-PL1 because it is very small.  Even though I have two DSLR that can take better videos, I've not bother to use them for video at all.  I was lucky enough to be given two Pentax K mount manual focus lenses.  One is an Itorex 28mm F2.8, the other a Pentax 50mm F2.  When I shoot videos, I normally use one of them simply I like the smooth manual focus which you can not do with the kit lens.  I am also able to create better bokeh with these lenses.  To demonstrate, I've shot a very short video on a very wet London on New Year day 2012.

E-PL1 fitted with Itorex 28mm F2.8 with Pentax 50mm F2 on the side. 

I normally shoot video in manual mode while using the E-PL1 as I like to know exactly what the camera is doing.  I found ISO only goes up to 1600 in video mode.  I would like to be able to go up to ISO 3200.  The extra stop would be very useful.  To combat shooting in a dark room, I have purchased a 160 LED video light from Amazon.  The light is day light balanced (5500k) and it comes with three diffusers.  They are white diffuser, orange and pink.  The white diffuser is great to soften the light indoor and not blind the people you are filming.  The orange diffuser is balanced for tungsten.  While the pink on is balanced for florescent light.  You probably will not use the LED light bare unless it’s a super bright day and you want to fill out any shadow.

I've only played with the video light at home and a couple of Christmas parties.  I am still learning about colour balance when using video lights and will update my blog once I know more.

Light & Shoot 50 Fashion Photos - A Book Review

Publisher: ILEX
Author: Christ Gatcum

As the title of the book say, there are 50 fashion photos featured in this book. The photographer featured ranged from world famous professionals (Rankin, Perou) to unknown amateurs.

At the beginning of the book, there is an introduction of studio equipment from off camera flash to professional studio lights. Then the type of modifiers and their uses are given. After reading this chapter, you should have a reasonable understanding of studio lighting. The diagrams will be use with each image featured to indicate the lighting used.

With each image, there is a short biography of the photographer. Then the photographer of each image write a short piece of text giving the thought process and use of light to achieve it. The camera, lens and camera settings are listed. The diagram showing the lighting and modifiers used is very useful. Most photos were taken with digital cameras, only a few shot on film.


It is interesting to see many images did not use any lighting or modifier at all. In fact, there are images relied on post processing in Photoshop. Some of the images are stunning. The photographer must have started with a concept and had a team of make up artist, model, costume designer and set designer to bring the vision into a photograph. While other images looks very ordinary to me. With many things fashion, there is no right or wrong, it comes down to if you like it or not.

For me, the good images makes up for the ordinary. It is a good reference book you go back to every now and then. It is not bogged down to equipment, in fact very little is mentioned regarding type of camera or lens. This book is recommended if you are getting into fashion photography and looking for inspiration.

Using Olympus EP-L1 for Studio Shoot

Something happen on a shoot recently I had to share my experience.  I organised a photo shoot with a model at a studio.  Everything came together as planned.  Only 10 minutes into the shoot, the battery indicator started to show it was running at 50% power.  I thought no problem as I packed a spare battery with me.  So I got the battery and tried to put in into the camera.  Shock horror, it does not fit!  The battery I picked up is for a different camera!  They are both Canon batteries and look remarkable the same.

I am going to have a rant about camera companies and batteries here.  Why do they feel the need to change the battery every time you release a new camera?  It just annoys the hell out of me.  My house is full of batteries and chargers.

Don't even talk about some companies that have "safety feature" which prevent third party battery working in their cameras.  Panasonic did this with a couple of micro 4/3 cameras.  That is the reason I do not even consider buying any Panasonic cameras at the moment.

I have both a Canon 500D and 550D which uses different batteries, but they look almost the same.  Now I've learnt my lesson and will be clearly marking the batteries to indicate which camera they are for.  I am not going to make the same mistake.

Now, back to the studio shoot.  I carried on using the camera for a few minutes until the battery ran completely flat.  Then I remember I had packed my Olympus E-PL1 as a back up.  I took it out of the bag and set up everything as it was on my Canon 550D and started shooting.  I was very happy with the results of this camera in a studio environment.  The only downside to using the E-PL1 as a studio camera is my arms got very tired quickly and started to shake.  I had an flash trigger on the hot shoe anyway, so even if I had the optional viewfinder, I could not use it at the same time.  I had to put the camera on a tripod after 5 minutes.  There was no way I could hand hold the camera arms out for an entire shoot.  In an studio environment, focus speed was good.  I have set up the custom button for manual focus.  So, after I achieved focus, I switch to manual focus so there is no delay when I take photos.  Since the model does not move much during the shoot, this works well.  I just had had to refocus every time the model changed poses.

Lessons learned:

1. Always charge your batteries before a shoot.
2. Always check the batteries are for the correct camera.
3. Always have a back up camera with you that has fully charged batteries.
4. Pack everything the night before the shoot.

Here are a few shots of images taken during the shoot.  I shot in RAW format, processed them using Capture One 6.2  The cameras I used was an Olympus E-PL1 with the 12-42mm F3.5-5.6 kit lens.  The model was the lovely Sherry Platts (Model Mayhem # 2306417).  She did her own make up.

Two grided strip box behind model and a large grided softbox on boom arm just over head.