Archive for May, 2009
Images Featured In Digital Photographer
Digital Photographer Issue 83 Page 58
Digital Photographer Issue 83 Page 61
The current issue of Digital Photographer (issue 83, on sale now) has featured a couple of my Project 365 images in one of their articles. Each month they do a tips section with 20 tips based on a specific theme, this month’s theme being creative imagery. My image of a black vase surrounded by light trails illustrates a tip on painting with light (tip 3) and my image of a trapped figure is accompanied by a description of how I achieved that shot (tip 17). The image of the vase was also used on the magazine’s contents page to illustrate the article.
The featured images are shown below. Click on the image to go to the corresponding Project 365 entry.
Project 365: 16th Mar 09
Project 365: 5th Feb 09
Using Flash Gels
A rainbow of flash gels
I suppose the first question to answer is, “What are flash gels?”.
A gel is basically a coloured sheet of heat resistant acetate that is used to change the colour of a light source. They work by absorbing the frequencies of some colours of light and letting others pass through. Fortunately, because the light from strobes and portable flashes is a similar colour to daylight, you will get the colour change you expect - such as a blue gel making the light blue. Because the gels absorb light, you will lose some of the intensity of the light. The number of stops of light that a particular gel absorbs is available from the vendor or the manufacturer of the gel.
Gels normally come in square shaped sheets, for use with studio strobes or theatre lights, but you can cut these down to size for use with portable flashes. Some companies sell pre-cut gels that are the right size for the front of a speedlite. Gel manufacturers, like Roscoe or Lee, do sample books of the different colours of gel that they make. These contain strips of each gel that are about the right size for the front of your flash. The sample books can be difficult to get hold of though, due to the obvious popularity of ‘free’ flash gels. I usually buy the pre-cut gels from www.flashgels.co.uk.
Gels come in a multitude of different colours but, from a photography point of view, they can be classed into two types. Colour correcting gels will change the colour of the light your flash to match the colour of another source of light, such as incandescent bulbs or fluorescent strip lights. Theatrical gels change the colour of your light to give you a particular creative effect, such as using red gels to make something appear hotter or blue gels to make something appear more sterile or technical. You can also use the colour correcting gels to get certain effects but I will go into that in more detail later.
Project 365 - Behind The Scenes
To accompany the Project 365 gallery, I have been posting regular(ish) roundups which go into some more detail about the shots for that week. For a number of the images, the detail is mostly a reiteration of the image description that appears in the gallery.
Because of this, I am going to replace the Project 365 roundup with a new series of Behind The Scenes posts. These will cover a single Project 365 image and will detail the thought processes, setup or story behind that image. Unlike the roundup, only images that warrant the extra coverage will appear in a Behind The Scenes post.
I will be featuring old Project 365 images (from before I started the roundup) as well as the more recent ones, but I am open to suggestions for which images are featured. If there is a particular Project 365 image that you would like to see getting a Behind The Scenes treatment then drop me an email or stick it in a comment on this post. If you specify the date that the image appears and any particular info that you would like included, then I will do my best to cover it.
Cheap Wireless Flash Trigger CTR-301(P)
I had been using a PC Sync cable for remotely firing my flash but the connection between my 20D and the cable was a bit loose, resulting in me having to hold or tape the cable against the camera to get it to fire consistently. Using a cable is also a bit of a pain if you are moving around when shooting.
I wanted to try wireless triggers, but even the cheap end of the name brand triggers are over 100 quid for a minimal setup, so I decided to investigate the current state of the ebay wireless triggers (sometimes known as poverty wizards, as play on words with the top quality pocket wizard products).
Up until recently, the Cactus V2 triggers were the popular choice on ebay. Not massively reliable, but easy to modify and improve. Recently, two more types have arrived - the Cactus V4 and the Yongnuo CTR-301. The Cactus V4 was intended to improved the build quality and fixed the main reliability problems with the V2 version. The CTR-301 triggers were an alternative from the Yongnuo company who make a lot of cheap, third party camera accessories.
