A while back David Hobby had a post about fitting a monoblock with a cold shoe. I thought it was a pretty clever hack for mounting a pocket wizard on your strobe. It provided for a firmer, nicer strobe-to-pw attachment than the dangling lanyard mount that I use. Plus you got the bonus of better radio perception with the antenna being 100% upright.
The awesome Benjamin Von Wong is here on a visit and we gave my new video setup a quick run.
Since Ben comes from Canada all his devices has weird Canadian no good plugs. The solution, use one all-in-one pongs adapter and a "bought at home country" power bar. This configuration has a small foot print and can be reused around the world.
(Side note: expect more videos here, one of the first ones will be on how to create that "white" look on a budget). Click to continue ›
If you went to college around the same time that I did, you may have caught the last few professors that did not use power point for slides. Instead they used an ancient device called overhead projector which took letter (or A4) sized transparencies.
They were a behemoth of a device, capable of throwing an image across a huge auditorium. And a size to match. So did the heat produced and the noise from the fan. But in the hands of the skilled professor with a few markers those projectors were an efficient tool in hammering infinitesimal math into our plugged heads.
Those devices are obsolete now. Power point presentations and DLP projectors took their place. This is why hacking one into a pattern projector feels a whole lot better than killing an SLR. This is exactly what flickr user haristobald (blog) did and worked into a super heroes series. A strobe replaced the powerful lamp to throw a superhero icon on a wall, ceiling or even a person. Click to continue ›
About two weeks ago I was invited to shoot a local ladies basket ball group for their yearly calendar. They are called Elizur Yavne and they play the third regional league (fifth place). It is a very mixed group of ladies with the youngest being about 18 years old and the most experienced one almost 40 years old. Nevertheless they are a unified team and it was a big pleasure to see them practice after the shoot. (Heck, anyone of them can probably kick my ass on the court). Click to continue ›
If you ever had to shoot in a confined space you know that getting your light in the place can be challenging .Limited space, cabinets and shelves all join hands in eliminating good lighting placements.
Photographer Allen Mowery put together a DIY Super Clamp that allows mounting your strobe on almost every semi-open door or shelf.
We have featured two similar products before, a DIY Clamp and the Nasty Clamps, each with its own merits. This design uses a controllable pressure clamp which I can see useful when the need to mount larger weights rises.
Here is a video describing the use of the clamp, followed by a link to the DIY guide on Allen's blog. Click to continue ›
A few days back we posted a video by The Underwater Realm that shows how to build and use an air cannon to create a false explosion.
It turns out that that though the folks at Realms are super busy making an Indie film, they manage to find the time to tip the indie film community (and photographers in general) with some awesome tips (see their undestructible LED strip for example).
This time around Eve Hazelton shares a great tutorial on how to use household lights to create some awesome lighting either for the big screen or for stills.
J. P. Morgan and the team over at The Slanted Lens created a little finger-cutting-snow-dropping clip that teaches how to add artificial snow to your movies and stills.
It is another semi-carpentry, semi-lighting lesson packed with useful info. (And an obvious follow up to J. P. Morgan's Making It Rain tutorial.
You can see previous features of J. P. Morgan here.
Creating Falling Snow via The Slanted Lens Click to continue ›
Hey guys, this is Von Wong, Montreal Based Conceptual Photographer. I recently did a Tango themed photoshoot around the Old Port here in Montreal. Udi thought it would be interesting to provide a little more detail than in the actual Behind the Scenes video developing a little more into specific shots, lighting techniques and the dynamics of doing an unplanned photoshoot with a small team so…hope you guys enjoy!
Final images and a BTS breakdown by Ben after the jump Click to continue ›
Lee Morris over at Fstoppers has a great video that explains how you can tether your camera to an iPad wirelessly. This kind of connection allows you to transfer photos to the iPad as you shoot.
You would need to get an Eye-Fi card, either a Pro card or a connect X2.
The nice thing about it is that you don't need to Jailbreak t
he iPad to create an Ad-Hoc wireless network. The new Eye-Fi card will do this for you and act as a router. (well, technically speaking it is not actually a router, but you get the point).
Sadly for mid range dSLRS (like the D300 that I shoot) it does not appear that Eye-Fi are going to release a CF version soon (or ever).
How To Tether Your Camera To An Ipad Without Jailbreaking via Fstoppers Click to continue ›
A few days ago I met Ron Uriel (hebrew site) at an event he was shooting. Aside from the camera and on camera flash (got forbid) he was also carrying a small impact flash on a light stand, taking it along and using it as on the go bounce flash. The beauty of the thing was that the flash was not attached to any power outlet, but sustained using a DIY battery pack.
I asked Ron to share how he made it, and he luckily for DIYP he agreed.
When it comes to on-location photography, I tend to KISS (Keep It Simple Sweetheart). This means that I prefer carrying the minimal amount of gear and focus on photography rather than on set up and tear down. That is where my quest for portable lights began. Click to continue ›
