Now that I have reliable triggers (read: PocketWizard PLUS II
I was about to throw them in the garbage when I had the idea that they may be useful to someone. When I told the idea to my girlfriend her first reaction was: “You keep complaining about these triggers, why would somebody want these?”. Poor girlfriend, she is totally missing the point!
Using such unreliable triggers has been of great help for me through the years. See how they can help you:
- There is nothing like having to take the same shot 5 times in a row to learn the true meaning of patience.
- UFitF (Unpredictable Flashes in the Face) also helps to build retinal light resistance which might prove useful if you ever have to duel Jessica Alba in an eye starting challenge.
- Limited transmission range ensure proper training in the ancient art of eyeball measurements.
- Finally, if you ever needed a reason to buy a real set of remote triggers, playing with these for a few months will.
I am telling you, this is the one contest you want to be in! Forget Drobos and expensive software contests, this is the real thing that the whole internet will be buzzing about!
So how can you participate? Easy! Just link to this post from Twitter, forums or your photography related blog. I will pick the winner at the end of the month (of August) based on referrals coming from links to this page. I will pay for shipping and the winners has to agree to write a short blog post about how ‘happy’ he is to get these.
Price details: 1 hot shoe trigger + 2 flash triggers, each with batteries.
Notice: I do not, and never will, waranty that these remotes can will work. Actually, you can be sure they wont at the worst possible time!
I love books, I own a lot of them. On top of being educational and entertaining, they are a great decoration element in my loft and make me look smart when people visit my place. And yes, my books are grouped by colors. It took a while to get used to it, but it is all about the look…
From the comments I have received by email (thank you!), it seems a lot of people liked my last suggestion, The photographer eye, so this time I am going to give more details about another book I like, Master Shots
This hand book is a gold mine of tips and tricks on how to position your camera/subjects to best convey a scene according to your story. Shots are grouped by themes (ex: Fight, Chase, Entrances and exits, suspense, etc..) which make it super easy to find the desired setup or get some new ideas. Seriously, just browsing the book gives me enough ideas to shoot a whole chapter!
As seen in the picture above, each setup is describe on two pages: the left page is a text description of the goals, lens to use, camera setup and advices for the shot while the right page has still frames from a (generally) popular movie using the setup, a 3D visualization of the placement of talents and camera and a rendering from the camera point of view.
It can not be simpler!
There is not much to dislike about this book. To be picky, I would say that I would have prefered to see nice (and simple) storyboard style drawings than the Poser renders. That is about it!
The concepts illustrated in the book are mostly useful for scripted stories but could also be used in documentories and other situations if you are aware of them. For example, the Entrances and Exit section gave me a few good idea on how to approach the introduction of husdand and spouse the next time I film a wedding video. Once you know the basic concepts, it is your responsability to see how to implement them to tell your story!
You can pick the book from Amazon US here.
Quick update: the Pocket Wizard FlexTT5
Warning: Because the MiniTT1 only has the choice of 2 channels while the Plus II has 4, it might cause a problem in a multi photographers environment but that is about it. I tested it through multiple walls and around corners and they triggered every single time. I will do some long range testing soon but so far, so good.
While a few of my friends tried to convince me to get Radio Poppers, I stay away from these. I do not like the fact that they require a flash on top of the camera to operate. Too much gear to carry around!
In case you did not see the news when it was published on planet5D, there is going to be a DSLR-cinephotography centric conference at the end of August in LA. It is called ‘Collision‘ and it fits pretty well with the spirit of the event: how the video capabilities of DSLR (read 5DMrkII) is a game changer for (1) photographers and (2) videographers.
I wish I could attend because it is going to be an exceptional time to see & hear industry leaders talk about the 5DMrkII. Speakers will be Vincent Laforet (one of my favorite photographer), Shane Hurlbut and many others. Go take a look at the press release or the website for details.
The cost of the conference is cheap: 350$ for the two days. If you register via the link provided on the planet 5D Blog and use the coupon code, you can save another 50$.
For those who can’t attend the event, Michael told me he will try to put some of it online after the conference. The format and content has not been decided yet but it should provide us, east coasters, an idea of what was said and shown so we would experience some remorse for not attending.
If you live on the west coast, you will need a lot of imagination to come up with a decent excuse for not attending the event!
Now that Final Cut Studio 3 is out, lets talk (and guess) about what we will find in the upcoming Aperture update.
I have been an Aperture user since day 1. In version 1, is was revolutionary but slow. V1.5 brought a nice speed boost and V2 introduced a few new tools and the plugin architecture. So what should we expect for v3?
First, meta tagging has to be improved as I talk about it a while ago. I am so frustrated about the tagging system that I am not tagging as much as I used to, which is a bad thing since it is one of the reasons why I picked Aperture instead of Lightroom in the first place… In fact, improvements to the tagging functionality has been so slow that I expect it to be one of the focal point of v3 with the release of automatic tagging of pictures which was started in the latest iPhoto update.
… and there are no mentions of H.264 real time editing. Actually, the whole update took me off guard. I was expecting it to come after Snow Leopard and be optimized to use Open CL so they could show some insane benchmarks. Seems like I was wrong again.
Nevertheless, I still believe real time editing of H.264 in FCS will be possible soon. My source was just too confident about it (and well informed) for me to drop the ball.
Anyways, I am not going to cover the various new features, others have already done a great job at it. Instead, I will act as if it never came out, at least until my bank account recovers from my recent purchases…
This is the fourth time I am writing this post and it is going to be the last. Between the time I received the Pocket Wizards, did some test in my kitchen and finally tried them out in the open, my perception of the product changed drastically. To make it short, the ETTL Pocket Wizards are going back to the store and will be replaced by the old school PW that actually work as advertised.
Of course, as faith would have it, I have the worst possible flashes to work with the MiniTT1
To be fair, the remotes work perfectly as advertised, when I am 15” away. After that, it is hit or miss until 30” which is the point where they are less reliable than my eBay triggers.
After reading the documentation, it seems like Pocket Wizards is blaming the IR from the flash as the source of the interferences. Since the IR is used only for ETTL data transmission (as far as I know), switching to manual mode should solve the issue and give me the fantastic range I was expecting when I bought these. But, nope, it does not change anything. I did some test by changing the position of the antenna of the TT5 without much success and needless to say that I never managed to shoot around corners!
The suggested alternative is to buy a hot shoe cable (OC-E3
So, unless one of you, knowledgeable readers, has managed to have these things working with the same equipment as mine, I am going back to the technology from the 90s (aka walkie talkie PW).
Tired of always answering the same question in every forum I go to, I have decided to make a blog post about it…
So you want to get a 70-200 lens but dont know which one to buy? Should it be the 70-200Lf4
To answer these questions, I would ask two others. Read the rest of this entry »
My university background is in business. I have a Bachelor and Master degree in these fields. I know all about the importance of networking, how to present a product, etc… Yet, up until recently, I never had a business card to promote my photography business.
I had my reasons: no defined photographic style, no time (ya right!), procrastination, did not feel like I needed them, etc. At the bottom of my heart, I knew I needed to have them but I always undervalued these pieces of paper as ‘old school’ means to link with clients. Also, I never wanted to restrain my photography to a specific field, so what should I put on the card? These questions had been lucking in my head for a while when I finally decided to act and order a set of business card from MOO.com.
The concept is interesting: 50 cards, all with the same content on one side and up to 50 different pictures on the other. This way, I could have a few cards for weddings, few more for travel, portraits, life events, etc…
This way, I could always give to the prospective client a card that fits his needs. Or, even better, have him pick the card he prefers among the stack. People usually don’t trash stuff they like, so this is a great way to make sure the client is going to keep the card!
These cards can also serve as portable/disposable portfolio! While my iPhone was already good at it, I think these cards are a good complement.
So, after reviewing my picks in Aperture, I came out with 26 different pictures to illustrate various aspect of my portfolio. This is what came out of it:
The back of the card is as simple as it can be: my portrait and my email address. It was useless to write ‘photographer’, clients already know that and I wanted to keep the design clean. The lack of any specialty keyword means I can use the card in more circumstances.
The ordering process on the Moo website is as simple as it can be. Just make sure you have already cropped your picture in the aspect ratio corresponding to the desired card size.
Note: these cards are much more expensive than the ‘normal’ ones. In fact, for the price of these 50 cards I could have bought a box of 1000 boring cards. Yet, I think it is a much better investment because it increase my brand value and set me apart from the others. Also, I am sure these wont end up in the trash.
Looking back at it now, the only thing I would have done differently would have been to pick a more ‘personalized’ font for my email address and maybe put a small logo or branding item on the card. Well, I only have 50 of these so I can always add the improvements for the next batch!
If you are interested, you can click the link below to order a set. I think you will be pleased by the result.
MOO Business Cards, MiniCards, Postcards. Create unique cards using your own photos or designs to help your business stand out!
Edit: use the code 7SCS4A with the link above to get free shipping!
With the redesign of the blog, I decided to put more emphasis the books I read to learn about photography, video and imaging. To prove that I actually own these books, I have taken a picture of each one, and there are a few more on the way too! One of my favorite of the stack is The Photographer’s Eye
It is not a technical book per say. It never tells you things like: use spot metering or under-expose by X stop like what you could find in Understanding Exposure. Yet, it has to be the most technical book I have read about what makes a good picture. There are a lot of explanations about how to approach a scene and how to exploit the color/contrast/lines to your advantage. It made me feel like I was back in school, but in a good way since I was actually interested in the stuff.
