http://www.flickr.com/photos/ttstam/sets/72157627082184020/with/5887208994/

May they live together happily ever after

Turns out that the place is pretty poorly lit. Even at ISO3200, F/1.4, I’m not getting enough shutter speed to get good details.

I did have my 580EXii on me, but no pocket wizards to trigger them. So, what to do?

Turns out the ambient is low enough that at ISO100 f/8 a 1/2 second exposure doesn’t get me much. So I set the exposures manually, dial the strobe to M1/4, and put my finger on the “TEST” button. Then I held the strobe and side-lit the jelly fish with my left hand.

And, a bit of cleanup, some selective darkening, vignetting, cropping and color adjustments in Lightroom, we have:

(The original is pretty white, just like the jellyfish in real life. I tweaked the white balance extensively to give it an out-of-this-world bluish glow…)

Okay, fine, all kidding about malfunctioning, evil AIs aside … I’m still alive .

It’s been a heck of a year.

I’ve had my heart broken. Badly.

I branched out from my usual routine and haunts and joined a sports team:

I had a chance to go on a business trip to Hong Kong, and visit the Expo in Shanghai:

I’ve spent waaaaaaay too much time in Beaverton, OR:

I even managed to go shooting with my old photo buddies, Allen, and DaveM:

I’ve made a bunch of new friends, and survived a boating trip without barfing:

I got to shoot some cool planes at airshows:

And a very cool car too:

And, to top it off, I met a really awesome girl:

[PHOTO CREDIT: Dave Mathiesen - www.DaveM.com]

They say one of the hardest things about a relationship is being able to grow together in a relationship *and* still maintain one’s individual identity and space. Certainly, this blog had gotten quite neglected with all the major changes going on in my life; even though in the back of my mind, I knew I should be updating this. Certainly, this blog entry here is hopefully a step in the right direction; after all, we do have a saying in Chinese that “Journey of a Thousand Miles starts with a single step”.

Wouldn’t it be ironic that if this blog, started to keep my mind off a bad breakup, ends up being a cornerstone of a healthy, lasting relationship…

First the technical details:

I dual wielded my EF70-200mm f/2.8L IS on my EOS 5D MkII and a EF100-400mm f/4.5-5.6L IS on a EOS40D. Both cameras were set to aperture priority, f/5.6 on the 70-200 and f/8 on the 100-400. Both cameras were set to ISO400, AI Servo Focus, camera back button focus, and continuous shoot mode. In the case of the 40D, the faster of the 2 modes was selected, at 6.5fps. Local to Seattle, day rentals can be had from Glazers Rentals, located downtown near the Space Needle.

Tip #1: Don’t be afraid to break the ISO100 barrier.

Four years ago when I brought my first DSLR in the form of a previously loved Rebel XT, I kept the ISO setting strictly at ISO100, and if I’m adventurous, ISO200. Higher ISO noises were an issue, by the time ISO800 came around, the image was pretty noisy. Today’s modern DSLR sensors fair much better at higher ISOs; ISO 1600 is perfectly usable from my 5D2 and a properly lit ISO400 shot is pretty clean, even on my 40D.

Higher ISO allows for a much faster shutter speed, for freezing action. This is especially useful for consumer-level lenses, which often don’t have the same max aperture as a professional telephoto prime.

The shot above was shot at F/5.6 on my 70-200mm f/2.8L IS; at ISO400, the exposure time was 1/2000 of a second. If I were shooting at ISO100, this would have been a 1/500 second exposure; there would be motion blur given how fast the players are moving.

Tip #2: Situation awareness – and keep shooting

Once, while shooting skateboarders, a skateboarder lost control and sent the skateboard flying 6″ past my head. I could hear the whizzing of the ball bearings as I ducked, but kept shooting anyway. I got some kick-ass angles. .

Here, one of my teammates almost tripped and fell. I just kept backing up and held the trigger finger down. Miraculously, this shot came out focused; pretty much straight out of camera too. It’s nice not being the “fat kid with the camera that someone took out” on my first game .

Tip #3: It’s a digital camera. The “film” gets cheaper the more you shoot.

It’s pretty much a probability game with skills tossed into the equation. Bring a large capacity memory card or two, and don’t be afraid to rapid fire. My 40D was set to 6 frames per second continuous mode; and I shot about 500 shots in the hour that we were playing. Don’t bother checking the shots at the field; that’s what a computer and a good cup of beverage is for afterwards.

Paying attention to where the action is, and conditioning myself to just fire short, controlled bursts, netted me these shots:

Tip #4: Tell a story – include foreground subjects

Every picture should tell a story, right? People’s reactions to what’s going on in the field is often priceless.

Tyler and Brandon staring at just how much air some people can get, in disbelief.

An opposing team’s player looking at an affectionate couple on our team.

Tip #5: Capture the moment “2 heartbeats before”

I have an autobiography of Shunsaku Tamiya, president of Tamiya Models. In it, he talked about a discussion with a master sculptor responsible for the clay figures used to model the Tamiya miltary model line’s soldiers. The old master said that he always pictures a moment he wants to convey, then imagine what the soldier is doing 2 heartbeats before that moment, and model that. By doing so, a great sense of motion and flow is captured, with the audience’s imagination filling in the rest.

Well, having that camera on 6fps rapid fire, really helps with that

Jessica and Julie charges in, determined, as an opposing team player prepares to “alligator” the frisbee.

Tip #6: Don’t forget the losing team

I should point out that with the exception of maybe 3 people, almost all of us on Team Young Grasshoppers are complete newbies at team sports. A few of us had never touched a frisbee. Therefore, it was considered quite a feat not coming home with a big goose egg going up against an experienced team with 4 seasons under their belt.

The following picture was taken after my team scored our very first point. The team members were slightly out of reach of my 70-200 on my 5D2, but the opposing team’s expression as they “walked the walk” was quite a camera worthy moment:

Looking at their expressions, you’d almost think that we gave them a solid butt-kicking

Tip #7: Capture the team spirit

Good sportsmanship and team spirits is why we play to have fun, right?

Tip #8: Get the individual player shots

I got some great portraits of our teammates when they were getting “in the zone” before the game while lined up:

And in case anyone wonders what I look like trying to catch a frisbee, it’s probably something along these lines:

Have fun!

Hybrid DSLRs, for those unfamiliar with them, are the latest evolution in photojournalistic tools. They allow the filming of video, often in hi-def, on a digital SLR body. Because of the large sensor size, large pixel site, and often resolution reduction employed to generate the 1080p frames, the image quality on the video is often much less noisier than what can be squeezed out of a high end video camera. Also, inherent with the use of a DSLR body for shooting video is the ability for these bodies to change lenses and maintain good control over depth of field.

This means that for the first time, indy film-makers can chase that shallow DOF film look without the use of expensive lighting trucks and 35mm film cameras. Although the movement is in its infancy, a small industry is springing up around this class of cameras (and as an enterprising engineer, I am wondering what I can do to grab a slice of that pie). There is also a very strong DIY movement too for the less affluent film makers.

Here are some of the rigs present at the meetup:

Here’s your most basic HDSLR rig. Virtually everyone shooting video does so by manually pulling focus, so an LCD hood is pretty essential. This is a Zacuto Z-Finder hood – and quite frankly after playing with all the options out there, you really get what you pay for. These retail for $299 – not cheap – about the cost of an inexpensive prime – but the magnified LCD fills one’s field of view and really allows one to pull focus.

The Zacuto comes with a die-cut VHB adhesive backed mounting flange that sticks onto the back of the LCD. Once stuck there, it can be removed, at the expense of breaking the flange. New flanges are $20.00.

As much of a fan as I am in DIYing; this is something that I’ll have to buy if I choose to go this route. I simply do not possess the optical engineering skills to design something like this.

In this particular case, some sort of directional mic with a windsock is attached to the hotshoe.

Moving onto looking at pull-focuses: here’s the DFocus pull focus system is designed by aerospace engineer David Aldrich in his free time. My kinda guy! . At about $150.00 it’s the cheapest pull-focus system out there. Since I don’t have regular access to a mill, I will have to buy one of these systems as well. Might as well support the little guy. Jag35.com carries these.

Here’s another option for focus monitoring while pulling focus. This gentlemen is mounting a portable LCD monitor to a hotshoe to miniball head adapter. There are modifications out there to put a sunscreen on the LCD as well so that it is daylight readable. This particular LCD monitor was purchased on Planet 5D forum group buys and comes from some generic factory in China.

On the other extreme end, ViewFinder LLC demonstrated their fly-by-wire radio controlled pull focus system. A RF link between the control module here drives a servo-motor setup. If you have to ask, you probably can’t afford it. That system costs more than my 5D Mk II – for the pull focus alone.

The rest of ViewFinder LLC’s stuff is equally … well crafted. See those silver connectors? Those are LEMO connectors. Swiss made, precision medical grade connectors. Idenitfy those as such publicly, and the engineer who designed that system will size you up and see how good our engineering skillz are. These guys also build accessories for the Red Camera folks – so they are doing some very high end work. All their support cages are billet CNC machined.

A really cool feature of ViewFinderLLC is their remote video start switch, positioned near the user’s thumb in the grip setup above. Apparently, on the 5Dii, putting it in 2 second timer mode, and configuring the live view screen to video only will start the video recording if the “shutter release” IR signal is received from a Canon RC1 remote unit. Now I’ll have to find a RC1 and a way to reverse engineer that IR signal…

Here are a few more of the big boy rigs:

Most of these rigs consists of a pair of rails, onto which the camera body, lens adapter / DOF adapter, lens, pull focus system, and a matt box system to control flare mounted on a pair of 15mm rails. Stainless and carbon fiber are the material of choice here for building these rigs. Kinda like expensive Legos, I imagine. Actually, the only thing expensive about these rigs is the machining. Everyone is billet CNCing the clamps, when an extrusion tool would be cheaper. No one thinks that an extrusion tool is worth the effort to do, and the MOQ on an extrusion is high. On the other hand – by CNC machining the parts, the costs are kept high, so it locks out the more budget-conscious folks. Talk about a Catch-22 situation.

Closeup of the battery reveals it to be a generic Li-Ion pack. That I certainly can build…

Here’s a home-made camera stabilizer, using copper pipes, washers for weight, and a Traxx monster truck universal joint for the swivel. It’s very twitchy, as far as stabilization goes. I am not sure if this is a design path that I want to go down; I’m going to try a silicone grease dampened design first.

Another great rig, featuring a rifle stock and a Zacuto finder again. These Zacuto units are quite popular.

Here’s Hunter’s slide rail system. This allows the camera to slide laterally during a shot. This particular system uses TGP (Turned Ground and Polished) steel rails with an oil filled bronze linear bearing. It slides really smoothly.

Here’s Yaro’s version of the same thing. I asked him if it was DIYed and he gave me a strange look. Turns out someone online builds them and sells ‘em. I pointed out that they were all stock 8020 extrusion parts.

For those interested; the parts in questions are:

1020 extrusion piece (base rail – avail up to 140+” long)

Slider (linear bearing) appears to be part # 6535.
This section of the 8020 catalog has all the linear slider components, along with the replacement UHMW inserts for the bearing slides, for those of you going the DIY route.

While we are on the subject of camera slides and camera dollies, here’s a hack to convert an IKEA shelf piece into a camera dolly track system:

In the DIY spirit, here’s a 3D photo / video system, rocking twin 7Ds with nifty fifties. Note the use of the 80/20 profiles for spacing the cameras:

There as so much gear floating around, even carrying my “full combat load” I honestly felt like an iPhone shooter at a UW garage shoot. So it was refreshing to finally see someone with *JUST* a 5D Mk II

And finally, the overhead cam group shot:

A big thanks to Phillip Bloom for putting it together and Planet5D for helping to spread the word!

Next night I went to a dog park up on Aurora. Last year I dated this girl, whose roommate can be charitably described as “socially maladjusted and less than pleasant to be around”. In an attempt to ease relationship a bit I tried a little bit of “BBQ diplomacy” by hosting a small BBQ and inviting her (the roommate) along. Well, the BBQ diplomacy failed – some people are just difficult and mean in nature – but I did get something positive out of that afternoon. The photographer in me realized that the parking lot had no street lights and thus would be a low-ambient place for light painting cars…

Here’s an ambient light only, 90 second exposure to give you an idea how dark the place is:

(The flash had slid off the hotshoe adapter, and thus refused to fire. It took me about a minute or so before I can get it reset, and by then I decided to stop the exposure to get a baseline.

Here’s with the SoftLighter up high:

And a bit of lightroom tweak:

For the most part I’m pretty happy with how these shots turned out. Moving forward, these would be the things I would try:

* Add a neutral density filter to the camera to further knock down the ambient
* Up the firepower of the strobes, probably to something along the lines of an Alien Bee
* Use a proper large softbox, to achieve more even lighting.
* Come equip with a better power source – maybe time to DIY a Li-Ion vagabond pack?
* Try flooding the asphalt to create a smoother surface for reflections.

By adding a neutral density filter, I should be able to find more places to be able to shoot from.

Andy’s hacked LED flashlight (the man stuck an 18650 Li-Ion cell inside a $2.99 keychain LED flash. God that thing is bright) worked pretty decently in the previous light painting exercise, so I figured I’d up the fire power. Ran to Harbor Freight during lunch and picked up a 1 million candlepower flashlight for $12.99.

First try was to set the camera’s white balance to tungsten (since that’s what flashlights are), camera on a tripod, f/8, ISO100, bulb mode, and lock the shutter open in a dark room. For the sake of learning, I painted one side of the car at a time:

Here’s the front of my car

And the sides:

And here’s the combined shot:

There is some spillage of the light cone. Basically the parabolic reflector throws a pretty tight beam spot, but there’s some secondary reflection / refraction off the front lens cover that’s lighting up stuff I don’t care to light up.

A quick trip to the mail room for an envelope or two, and a bit of packaging tape, solved that problem:

Results:

Next, I set up my Photek softlighter with the secondary diffuser, and hoisted it up high on my light stand. I really need a sturdier stand, or something with a counterweight to help hold this up. By lighting from up high, I am hoping to eliminate the hot spot on the bodywork. Something to do with family of angles and stuff. .

HEY! This is pretty good. Of course, a softbox is kinda like a shotgun approach to lighting, but at least there’s a choke in this shotgun barrel.

One thing to note (if you zoom in on the original) is that the light stand holding up the Photek Softlighter is visible in the shot. It’s being back-lit by the softlighter, and shows up as black lines in the reflections in the window.

I fixed this by installing the diffuser the “wrong” way. Normally I don’t do this, as it eliminates the ability to tilt the softlighter and blocks off the flash’s controls, but for what I’m doing here, it solved my problem nicely:

I moved the car to shoot the driver’s side. While there, I also popped just the hazard lights by themselves, to give an idea of their contribution independently in the final image:

With the “gimpy” configuration on the softlighter, I retry the overhead lighting:

Not bad, but the sides are a bit dark. By the way, the strobe is at M1/16 and I’m firing 2-3 shots per second while slowly walking down the side of the car. Essentially turning my 60″ photek into a virtual, 8ft x 60″ strip lighting softbox. That’s powered by 4x AAs

Another shot, this time using a 70-200 for a tighter crop and less background clutter:

Looking nice. Need to do something about lighting the front surfaces though.

Here, after lighting the top and across the hood, I walked sideways across the front and held the softbox out to the side, aiming straight at the car.

Ooops, ended up in the camera’s field of view. The edge of the photek lights up from secondary bounce; so I have to be extra careful. The next time around I’m going to try to find a proper softbox, and probably put a cardboard grid on it to control the spread more.

Now that I have a better understanding, I reshoot the sequence, being mindful to stay outside the camera’s field of view at all times with the side firing softbox:

Straight out of camera, vantage point 1

Straight out of camera, vantage point 2

To get the camera low enough for the second shot, I twisted the Manfrotto tripod around like a pretzel:

And with a bit of editing in Lightroom:

The only mistake? I got into the car to flick on the hazards, HID lights and fog lights. The suspension reacted accordingly, so there is a mismatch where the side turn indicator lit up, versus where the indicator lamp sat during nominal exposure. Nuts.

I think I’m at the point where I’ve outgrown this warehouse – the white walls really distract from the final image, but it offered me a nice, warm and dry place to practice my light painting. By the way, here’s a behind the scene shot of the “studio”:

Total time: About 3 hours, after work, for about 20 images. And a lot of head scratching.

Now, I need to location scout for an outdoor place that’s got low ambient light…

So, when I found out that there’s an empty warehouse I have access to, I took the opportunity to do some car light painting. It’s very hard to find a place where I can (mostly) control my ambient lighting to light paint a car.

Here’s my “weekend car”, the Spirit of Adventure, named after the airship in Pixar’s “Up”. (My coworker’s daughter commented that I reminded her of Russell… and I plan on taking this car on multiple photography adventures in the years to come, so I figured it’d be a fitting name). She’s a 2009 Mazda Premacy / Mazda5 Grand Touring with HID headlights and a few high tech refinements in the works.

With the overhead florescents on, we are looking at about a 3 second exposure at f/11 @ ISO 100.
Of course, this gives us a picture of a car in an empty warehouse. Hardly exciting.

Next, I turned the garage lights off, and walked around the car popping an AlienBees Ring Flash at 1/32 power at the car. Just a real quick multi-pop job. The diffuser is on the ABR.

Ringflashes, with a diffuser, is really good at throwing light EVERYWHERE. And I mean, EVERYWHERE. Aside from reflecting in ugly splotches on my car’s body work, it lit the entire warehouse up.

Next, i tried using my Photek Softlighter with the ABR. This gives me better control over the bounce. Unfortunately, the ABR’s umbrella adapter attachment is really badly designed, and the umbrella collapsed under its own weight. By some miracle the ribs collapsing onto the unit didn’t shatter the flash tube (the ABR actually belongs to my ex-girlfriend, whom I haven’t seen since our breakup – and I still would like to be friends with this girl…). Needless to say, the umbrella came off after that.

And just to see what a ring flash from the camera’s perspective would look like, here’s the ABR800 @ full power, single shot:

Note the tale-tale ring of shadow on the wall behind the vehicle.

Frustrated, I knew that I could create a nice big and soft light source by firing the ABR at full power at one of the white walls. This lit my car evenly. It also lit the rest of the warehouse evenly.

Then it dawned on me to try a different light painting technique – with a flashlight. I grabbed one of the LED flashlights off a coworker’s desk, and gives it a try. (I really need to redo this with a bigger throughput flashlight, but for now I’m working with what I’ve got).

Hey! Not bad! I should put a lens hood-like device on the flash light to prevent spill from the flashlight from being picked up by the lenses. During this exposure I also got into the car and flicked on the headlights and hit the hazard lights briefly – thus the fog lights and such being on. I also made a point to hover a bit longer at the wheels with the LED flashlight to make the wheels pop more.

Note the significantly longer exposure – the LED flashlight is pretty weak sauce, compared against an ABR800, even at 1/32 power. The ambient sodium vapor light coming in through the skylight above the door is really making its presence known on the wall behind the car, as is just ambient streetlight that’s coming through the blinds.

Tried another shot – this time I kept the flashlight relatively steady and slowly walked down the side of the car, being mindful of the specular highlight on the bodywork as the light traces its way down the panels. (Note to self – avoid the door handles next time – they tend to reflect light all sorts of wierd way). Again, same trick with the hazards – this time I used my keyless entry to get the lights to flash.

Finally, some adjustments and cropping in Lightroom, to give the following images:

A tight crop, with the “psychotic” lighting lines down the side”

And a “safe” shot.

For my next series, I’m going to try to light from a higher vantage point (bring a ladder). Better nail this with my Mazda and my Honda before I go grab MikeZ’s EVO-X …

Tonight, the goal was to test the breadboarded prototype of the bullet flight sensor’s electronics. Remember – I am a mechanical engineer; this is a completely new foray into the world of electronics for me, aside from some simple “hook a solid state relay to a microprocessor and bit bang some code to turn on the rice cooker” projects. So even though this may seem like kindergarden EE stuff, it’s a fairly big leap for me, design wise; I’m no longer relying on the ability to clobber code and instead using discrete logic ICs and doing actual calculations and setting RC time constants, etc.

We begin with the breadboarded model:

And our setup in the lab:

On the bench is a trusty oscilloscope to look at the signals at different lines, a DC power supply set to 5V, 100mA current limit, and a signal generator. The signal generator won’t be used for this project here.

First, I verified that the *new* sensor is working – the last one had a round put through it by accident:

Next, I verified that the 555IC is getting the power that it needs. Turns out that the power rails aren’t fully connected all the way. A bit of poking with an ohm-meter fixed that. Now I am ready to insert my test points:

And trip the break-beam sensor, with my gimpy fingers:

Orange line, or Ch1, is my sensor’s output. It goes from High to Low when the beam is broken. The turquoise line, or Ch2, is my 555′s trigger output. It goes from low to high when the input pulse is received. That’s a VERY promising sign.

My fat butter fingers can only move so fast through a 10mm opening, so the event scrolls off the oscilloscope’s screen. I tried dropping a small machine screw through the opening, but that actually prove to be much harder than expected (don’t laugh!). Frustrated, I finally came up with the following idea:

By flexing the rubber ducky antenna on one of my pocket wizards and getting it to spring through the break-beam sensor gap, I can generate a quick enough blip from the sensor:

Each major division is 5 milli-second on this setting, so the rubber ducky antenna is only in the beam’s path for about 10mS. My fingers can’t move *that* fast, for sure

Repeating the test again a few times, got me the same result:

Note that irregardless of the pulse length from the sensor, the 555′s output always sits at about 35ms. This is a litte bit off from the design goal of 40ms (1/250 second shutter speed, or sync speed on a 1.6x crop camera), but close enough for government work. I attribute the difference in component value tolerances on setting the RC constant.

Now the final test – does the output from the 555 trip the SCR to fire the strobe and pocket wizard?
(I selected an SCR instead of a cheaper / more common transistor. The SCR is rated to 400V, so even an older, high voltage “digital camera killer” flash will work on this sensor. )

And…

*drum roll please*

Nothing happened.

Turns out the same bug that bit me on the 555 timer bit me again. The top and bottom half of the power bus on this breadboard is not connected, and the SCR wasn’t grounded properly because of that. Now, plugging in a pocket wizard, this is what I get (with Ch2 now monitoring the anode of the SCR):

Interesting, it seems to add a bit of noise to the sensor output line. But the characteristic beep of the PW firing can be heard as the beam is broken. (Note that the sync voltage of the pocket wizard is only 3V or so).

Plugging in the 580EXii:

Again, some electronic noise on the sensor line, but we got what we need out of it – the clean voltage drop that triggers the monostable multivibrator.

And here’s the happy camera dork with his new toy (click link for video:)

Now that the circuit is verified working, I am okay with releasing the resources to order the acrylic for laser cutting to form the chassis, as well as starting PCB layout. Stay tuned…

(Leave a comment, with contact information, if you really want to know ).

-=- Terence