Roberts Raw!

› archive for ‘Educational’

Spring Cleaning – How to Clean your Closet

Its time for spring cleaning; out with the old, in with the new.  Or just out with the old.

If you have old cameras, flashes, lenses etc.  We are happy to help you unload some of the old goodies that haven’t seen the light of day for awhile.  If you have questions regarding trading in products for something new or would like us to buy some of your antiquated equipment, drop us a line here. A little birdy told me that earlry May will bring our always popular “Cash For Cameras” event during the Spring Expo.  If you don’t want it, there’s a great chance that our buyers do.

read more



Nikon Pocketwizard Flex TT5 and Mini TT1

Hello Everyone!  Happy New Year to you all.

To follow up Marc Lebryk’s excellent post on the Beta Pocketwizard units for Nikon, i wanted to tell you a little about my own use of the units and how they performed under my testing.  For my day to day purpose of standard flash use, the SU-800 and CLS handles almost all my needs.  My testing of these units was all about freezing motion with extremely fast shutter speeds.  One of the greatest features of the Flex/Mini units is what Pocketwizard terms Hypersyncing.  This feature, much like the Nikon AutoFP capability, allows a shooter to use faster than normal sync speeds (shutter speeds) with high powered flash output.

read more



New Local Photo Class, Basic Photo 102

Well everybody, it’s a brand-new year, and we’ve just officially added a new photo class for all of you in the Indy area (define that however you want, we’re just saying that we only hold these classes in Indy. If you’re in Chicago and feel like making the drive, we’ll gladly count that as in the Indy area. Same for LA and catching a flight, but that seems a bit extreme.)

Anyway, we’ve finally added a Basic Photo 102 to our offered classes. Obviously intended as a follow-up to our Basic Photo 101, in 102 we’ll help you understand DSLR lenses and crop factor, and the advantages and disadvantages inherent in that system.

The cost for this class is $15 a person, and it will run about 2 hours whenever we offer it. The next session is Wed February 16 at 6:30pm. More information and how to reserve you a seat can be found at http://robertscamera.com/classes



Lighting On Location – Controlling Mixed Lighting

The so-called “Golden Hours” of light are an opportune time to shoot portraits, but all too often we are limited to shooting around others schedules or need to make use of a full day to complete the job or jobs.  There are times i will spend entire Saturdays shooting senior portraits.  From 9AM to 7PM, 5 seniors, 5 sessions.  5 times the business.  Lets forget for a moment it’s near impossible to rouse the average high school senior out of bed at 7am on a Saturday.  If i limited myself to the golden hours, i would have 1.5 hours in the morning and 1.5 hours in the evening.  I’m not really capitalizing on my schedule.   We shoot when we need to, not always when we want to.  Tips and tricks after…

read more



What the Heck is Super Macro???

So you like macro photography, huh?  Think its neat to see down into that super small world of tiny objects?  Its cool to make it larger than life, right?  Macro photography is, generally speaking, a reproduction ratio of better than 1:4 or at least 1/4 life size.  In english, this means you can magnify an object to fill at least 1/4 of your viewable area (and therefore, the camera’s sensor, film, etc).  Full macro, meaning 1:1 or life size reproduction (Nikon calls this Micro) require specialty lenses designed for this style of photography.  Canon goes the extra mile with a VERY special Macro lens called the MP-E 65 f/2.8 1-5X Macro.  As you might suspect, this lens can achieve a reproduction rate of up to 5X greater than life size.  There is an entire group dedicated to the use of this lens on flickr.com.

Im not one to leave well enough alone.  Here’s the setup: Canon 5DmkII, Canon 2X Extender II, Canon 1.4X Extender II, Canon 25mm II Extension Tube, the MP-E 65 lens and the Canon MR-14EX Ring Flash.

And here are the results:

The top image is the “D” in the word dime on a, you guessed it, United States Dime.  The bottom image is even a little bit greater magnification of the words “E Pluribus Unum” written across the back of a dime.  The letter D is approximately 1/16th of an inch in height or about 1.6mm tall.  This combo turns the 65mm lens into a 252mm focal distance.  A 252mm lens focusable at less than an inch away from the subject which equates to approximately 15X life size or 15:1 reproduction ratio.  The margin of error in focus is a hair’s width, so a tripod mount with a micrometric adjustment plate is essential for precision focusing. I did mount the camera system on the tripod you see behind me in the top picture for the shots of the coin.

Other than a small amount of diffraction resulting in a loss of sharpness caused by stacking the Canon Extenders together,  I highly recommend this setup for extreme closeup photography.  Hopefully, the new mkIII Extenders with their improved optical design can correct this loss of performance.  Get on our wait list today for Canon’s latest and greatest 1.4x and 2x Extenders.

Happy Shooting!



Lighting Control – Mixing Flash with Ambient

First things first, we will be discussing some mildly advanced techniques and controls of flashes.  Because there are many manufacturers of lighting equipment it is impossible to accurately describe a specific process for each brand or product.  Thus, i will be using as generic terms as i can and will expect you to have read or at least have good intentions of reading the product instruction guide.  Yes, i know the guides are boring and may as well be written in Sanskrit, but that’s no excuse.  The information in the instruction manuals is important and well worth your time.  If you want to get the most out of your lighting equipment, you must know how to control it.  Incidentally, this goes for cameras, too.

Generally speaking there are a lot of rules in photography that can be bent or broken.  Contrary to popular belief there is no perfect f-stop or shutter speed or focal length to make a perfect picture.  However, photography is based on math and physics, so there are some fixed values and ideas to wrap your minds around.  The following information is basic instruction to control your photographic lighting.

read more



Power of Light – Small Flash Pt. 2

To continue our small flash theme from last week, lets talk in detail about some regular uses of speedlights.  In an effort to keep this simple, i will limit this post to two styles of photography: macro (close-up, high magnification) and portrait photography.

Macro photography offers a view of the world in a way that most people don’t have a chance to see it.  The trouble is you are often shooting into dark places and a little extra light can make a really big impact on your photograph.  In the image above, i used a single SB900 Nikon Speedlight triggered wirelessly with the built-in Nikon CLS control, a Nikon D90 and the AF-S 105mm f/2.8 VR Micro.  CLS is the “Creative Lighting System” and it offers some of the very best abilities in the flash photography market.  Nikon has always been pretty serious about speedlights and the role they carry out in photography.

read more



The Power of Light – Make Use of Small Flashes

If you haven’t embraced the abilities of small flashes yet, then you might be missing out on some of the most enabling aspects of today’s photographic world.  I “chucked” (no correlation to the venerable Mr. Pace) my studio strobes several years ago in favor of a portable, light-weight lighting solution.  Anything from macro photography such as jewelry, flowers or bugs to location shooting like weddings or family portraits to shooting in the studio, small flashes have found a niche.

Today’s flashes are more powerful and faster recycling than ever before, and can be accessorized with secondary power packs like the new Quantum Blade to further increase performance.  RF transmitter/receiver systems like Pocketwizard’s Plus II’s have supplied reliable triggering devices for years, and most recently the TT1 Mini and TT5 Flex from Pocketwizard have TTL (auto flash) capabilities which further increase the level of quick, precise control.  Light modifiers (e.g. umbrellas, soft boxes, snoots, grids, beauty dishes) are now built specifically for small flash usage.  The bottom line: its never been easier to shoot high quality flash photography.

Im certainly not saying there is no reason to own studio equipment, and some of the newer strobes are almost as small as Nikon’s and Canon’s Speedlights.  For example Elinchrom’s Quadra RX are powerhouse units and weigh in at a measly .25Kg or about a half a pound.  More to come on the Quadra system.  Studio strobes will generally put out much more power than small flashes which will allow you greater control of ambient light.   However, a strobe will not travel as easily, always have its own portable power system or be able to sync at faster shutter speeds than today’s small flashes.

In the next post i will talk in depth about how to control small flashes in different situations.

Stay tuned…




Better Than Daylight


I do a fair amount of higher ISO rated shooting with my photography these days and there is no doubt that the capacity to which we are capable to shoot this way has literally changed the realm of photography.  Its a game changer as much as roll film or Polaroids or the advent of digital photography.

Camera sensors are rated for a range of sensitivity and my Nikon D700 shoots from 200ISO through 6400ISO. Then you have the option of pushing beyond the sensor’s ratings into “High ISO” or, essentially, push processing (remember that?).  Push processing was rating film at your camera for underexposure then “pushing” the film back to its original rating during the processing of the negatives. This was tricky to get just right, unless you did the math.  Let’s be honest though, the math sort of ruined the fun and sometimes I’d rather just guess and see what came out the other end. This was akin to shocking your film with a cold water rinse just before the fixing stage or cross-processing chromes in color chemistry. All these options, with so much left to the unknown, often resulted in undesired results, but every once in awhile strange and happy photographs would greet you on the other end.

I know a lot of photographers that wont budge over 800ISO on their fancy pro DSLRs.  Three years ago I was more inclined to agree with them as the loss of detail through noise reduction or the overwhelming amount of noise produced in the image made it near impossible to see what was what.   Put simply, as a photographer, all we do is chase the light around.  Today, however, if you’re not venturing down the higher ISO road, you’re missing out on some great light.

I love night photography.   The color cast from lights at night are anything but normal.  The strong shadows and eerie light patterns are a draw to my photographic eye. Normally higher ISO ratings aren’t a necessary tool with night photos, a sturdy tripod is, however, a must have piece of equipment.  My daily tripod is the Manfrotto 3021BPro which is the earlier version of the 055XProB.

The image above (click for a larger view) was shot without a tripod because I can’t find my quick release plate for my tripod head.   I know, I know… =/  so the thought enters my head, lets see what light is out there.   With my D700 and my 70-300VR lens hand-held (lens hood pressed against a glass door) I looked across the backyard, dialed the ISO to High 2 (25,600 ISO, this is two stops above 6400 with each stop acquiring two times as much light), set the aperture to f/11 (the sweet spot on that lens) and the shutter speed to 1/2 seconds.  This metering set is equivalent to 200 ISO, f/11 at a 60 second exposure time (shutter speed).  Keep in mind VR in your lens can compensate the same 2-3 stops regardless of what shutter speed you start from.   I braced myself against the back of a chair for a little extra stability.

B/W picture control was set at the camera. The image was processed through Nik Capture NX2 for sharpening only. NO noise reduction was applied (NR was off in the camera, also).

I don’t normally venture above 6400 ISO on my camera, but i didn’t often cross-process slides either. Some days it just feels right to be a little abnormal.

Go shoot something differently tomorrow.

Get outside your comfort zone.

___________________

John Scott




Switch To Mobile Site