Backdrop it like its hot!

Navi annoying Link like always.

So this past weekend I was up in Houston for an anime convention, Delta H Con. It was fun and I had my backdrop setup like before with the white but this time I had a different backdrop because my last backdrop was messed up by my last shoot :o but it was so worth it. So when I went online to get a new backdrop I got a vinyl backdrop and I LOVE it! Here are some of my favorite shot from this weekend!

Link ready for battle

Navi being ignored like always :(

 I did not have any lights directed at my backdrop so it came out a bit grey in photos but that doesn't matter because I was aiming for a solid backdrop. Also for this con I forgot one of the key pieces for my off camera flash system so I had to use all three flashes one on master the other two on remote and I was bouncing the flash that was on my camera. Most of these shots are from a production company I work for Twisted Dreamscapes Productions you can find us on facebook. I will post up a review for my backdrop I just need to write it up first :D

All of these have already been posted on my facebook but there will be more so keep an eye out!

The Mad Hatter

Ariel and her dinglehopper

Star trek engineer, she was super sweet!

Happy bat family? probably not...

Cat woman can steal me any day!

Aperture Preferred? Shutter Preferred?

So this post today is to get to know your beautiful DSLR better! This is not about one specific photoshoot so it will have a small mix to get my point across. Now most people who don't know how to shoot manual usually shoot in auto which is the little green camera if you have a newer dial type of camera I believe on older DSLRs it is the P option which stands for program auto which gives you a small range of options that you can change, but that is not why we are here today!

Today I am going to tell you about the Aperture Preferred option and the Shutter Preferred option. In the first image I am showing you the Nikon D700 so for that one to get to either option you have to hold down the mode button and turn the dial that is by your thumb till you hit the A or the S. Can you guess which is which? On the image to the right I am showing you the Nikon D7000 and to change the modes on that one you turn the dial till the white mark on the side is pointing at the option you want.

Now on the the fun stuff! For the Aperture Preferred you will use this option when you know that you want to create a image with a good depth of field but you don't know what to put the other settings at. If you look back to my depth of field post you will know what I'm talking about when I say depth of field. So basically you can create something like this where your subject in the front is in focus and the back is blurred.

Basically for this you are setting your f-stop and the camera changes the shutter/ISO to make the image usable  Using this option help you learn a little more about your camera because it will adjust your other settings  to make the image come out close to what you want. Now while on this setting you are going to want to put your ISO on to auto so it adjusts that you, this isn't exactly necessary but it helps with the quality.



The next one is the Shutter Preferred, and you guessed it, it lets you adjust the shutter and then it takes care of the rest. Now you may wonder when the heck do I want to do that? The answer is simple when you want to capture an image in stopped motion so if you are taking pictures of your child's soccer game or your friends children running around the playground. This way you don't end up with blurred movement. Also this is good if you know that you cant hold a camera steady worth a damn and don't have a tripod handy.You could also use it to help replicate and image like the one from my very first blog post. This way you don't have to worry about the other settings in the camera just the shutter. 

This is also helpful if you want to shoot something where there is movement visible. The best example I can come up with and unfortunately do not have on hand to show is water. If you are photographing some type of waterfall and you put a low shutter the water has a tendency to come out a looking like it was painted. I will hopefully get an image up here for that soon but I don't have any right now.

Now you can go out there and try out different settings and hopefully learn something about what shutters and f-stops do in conjunction with each other. Remember practice practice practice!

Photoshoot with off camera lighting!

Ok so for today's post I will be talking about my shoot with one of my friends last Sunday! This was a fun shoot to do and also very dirty! For most of these images I used off camera lighting and for some I didn't use any at all so everything was natural lighting.

For this shoot I used:
- Nikon D7000
-SB 910
-SB 700
-CowboyStudio NPT-04 (Wireless trigger for my flashes)

On a side note you will now notice a logo on the images, I now have my own facebook like page :D so feel free to go like it: www.facebook.com/sixtysixphotography

For this image my camera settings were at ISO 400, F-stop 5.0 and Shutter 1/250. As for the lighting setup I Put one flash on the ground at about a 30 degree angle shooting at the wall behind her to illuminate that and another flash at the same angle further down to illuminate her and the wall between me and her. Both of the flashes were set at a 1/8 of power so that it didn't overpower the subject. The f-stop is what gives us the depth of field where the wall closest to us is blurry and the subject is in focus.

For this image the camera settings were ISO 320, f-stop 4.5 and the shutter at 1/250. The lighting setup for this was one flash to the left of me on the ground at about a 25-30 degree angle. The flash was on full power and a little further away from the image above so it didn't over power anything. What I was playing with in this image was the shadows so I had the subject step up about 4-5 steps from the wall so that the wall got pretty much all of the subjects shadow on the wall to basically replicate her pose.

This image was fun to shoot because I was on the other side of the building shooting so I couldn't control much. The camera settings were ISO 250, f-stop 5.6 and shutter 1/200. I used a flash on the floor behind her to light up the background, the flash was on full power pointing straight up to the ceiling (it was a pretty tall ceiling).

I honestly had so many from this shoot that I love and all had different setups so i will try to only do 2 more. For this image I used ISO 320, f-stop 5.6 and shutter 1/200, very similar to the last image. For the last image I had some ambient lighting to work with but not too much since the sun was on the other side of the building. For this image I had more ambient light but I didn't have it where I wanted it so i used both my flashes on full power at about a 30 degree angle pointed towards her to light up the room. I used the lower f-stop to create the depth of field where the flowers are in focus and she is blurry in the background.

For the last image I will talk about is this one, i did not use any flash because she was literally 1.5 floors above me on the opposite side of the building so I was working with ambient light the whole way. The camera settings were ISO 250, f-stop 13.0 and shutter 1/250. The sun was coming in straight on her face so I had to adjust for that which is why I make the f-stop higher since I wasn't doing any depth of field work.




So if you liked these images you should check out my facebook page I have more pictures from this shoot!  (dont forget to like the page too!)

Its All About the Setup

Since I just now decided to start this blog I don't have a picture of my setup for this first post but this one is all about your setup and timing. I sketched out what the basic setup was in Photoshop so hopefully you can understand what I did.

So to start you will need:
-A pale or something to have the water in (I used a paint liner that was painted black)
-A flash (Nikon SB 900, I used the SB because it has a higher sync speed than a strobe so you can used a faster shutter)
-Camera (duh!)
-A paper with different colors printed on it (make it in Photoshop or paint, 2 colors preferred)
-Something to drop water into the pale (for this I rigged up a bag to continuously drop, but if you have a helper you can have them drop the water for you)
-A tripod (optional)
-A stand for the flash (or a helper)
-A Table to setup on
-An off camera flash system (you can use a corded system, pocket wizard, Yongnuo, whatever your heart desires it just has to be off of the camera)

So to start I got the paint liner and filled it with water and placed it on the table. For the water droplets I filled up a bag and rubber-banded (you can tape or just hold it) it to a backdrop stand so that I could have a constant water drop and I didn't have to time it just right with someone else. The I taped the paper to the back side of the paint liner and taped to top of the paper to where the bag was connected. For the flash I had a helper and he would hold it and tilt it as I needed. but the key thing is to have the flash pointed at the paper across the water so the colors reflect across the water. This is what it should look like with no water droplets:

Now for shooting it I recommend using a macro lens so you can get closer to the droplet without having to crop in and reduce the ability to print on a larger canvas. Now with a macro lens you are going to have to clean off the lens because when the water drops it does splash a little. The other option is to use a longer lens but even those have limitations on how close you can really get to the droplet.

Next for the settings in my camera I had my ISO at 250, my shutter at 1/2500, and my aperture at 14.0. you can mess with these settings as much as you want but the high shutter is a must if you are wanting to "freeze time". My ISO is usually at 250 when shooting indoors with a flash, its pretty much my golden ISO. For my aperture I wanted pretty much all of the image in focus so I went with a higher f stop. The camera I was using was a Nikon D7000, that really doesn't matter in this or anything else because you can get this image with any camera that has a fully manual mode or even a partially manual mode, you just need to control the shutter.

For focusing it will be hard since you are basically focusing on a plain black surface so what I did was figure out where the drops were landing and used a straw to focus on that then turned the focus to manual. At this point you only have to refocus if you move, and I do recommend moving, try different angles its what makes the image better. You can as I mentioned before move the flash around at certain angles it reflects better in the droplets that are in the air making them stand out more.

Pretty much every image that you capture will be different and don't be afraid to take too many, its all digital now so you aren't wasting film. Do keep in mind your flash can only take so much, don't over heat it, especially if you are using the SB 900 that one overheats really quickly but it did me just fine for this shoot. Now I don't know exactly what the flash was set at but I usually start it at its regular default power and just turn it up and down as I feel it needs. For shoots like this I usually don't change the flash settings I mostly change the camera settings.

Here are a couple more from this shoot: