DIYPhotography.net

If you read this blog long enough, you know I am a big fan of small strobes. They are portable, relatively cheap, can squeeze some intense light and great for on the go. Key words for this post are relatively cheap.

While you can buy used SBs on eBay for a bit over $100 or a LumoPro for a similar price, you are still in for more than a $100 for lights.

Just saw photog Andy Game setup which has a great answer to the money issue. Click to continue ›

Yesterday I posted a cheat sheet that tried to question the applicability of the Inverse Square Law (ISL) on the way we use portable flashes I called this post The Inverse Square Law Cheat Sheet - Myth Busted.

The post stirred up a great conversation from which I learned about Light, some physics and some in camera processing facts. But mostly I learned that it is great fun to experiment and to share your findings. It definitely helped me get my knowledge to a higher level (at the small price of throwing a way my totally wrong fringy and conventions breaking experiment.

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I have just finished reading Light: Science & Magic (for the second time) and (again) I can not calm down. It took me a week and I spent every almost every waking hour reading it. Let me share the joy I had with you.

In general, Light: Science & Magic tells you everything you need to know about photography lighting. And the stuff it doesn't tell you, it tells you how to figure out yourself.

Just before I go into an in-depth review of the book, I'll say that reading this book in one week was both good and bad for me. Good, because I got an intense dose of photography lighting, obtaining critical mass of lighting know how. But, because reading so fast did not allow me to perform any of the exercises on the book, this is why I plan yet another slower reading of Light: Science & Magic where I will try out and test the techniques portrayed in the book.

Have you read this book? Let me know what you think in the comments. Now for the review:

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Some time ago I wrote about taking art images for my mother in law. Since I don't have my dream lens yet, I had to compromise on the lens and use the great (but not ideal for this task) Nikon 18-70 lens. (The image to the lest if one of the original paintings)

I got a few mails and comments about the issue of getting closer to the pictures to make the picture fill a wider part of the frame.

Sample Comment (by 'Anon'):

Kind of a newb, but why would you have used a zoom lens? And at what
distance/mm? I would think 50-70mm would be ideal, or would getting any
closer affect the "family of angles" thing?

As Norm replied, the main issue of getting further from the image was the Family of Angles constraint. Let me explain:

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