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One photographer’s biggest issue with the Sony system

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If you are using one of the Sony A7X system as a stills camera, you are probably familiar with the EVF. It’s that little monitor at the back of the camera that shows you what the exposure looks like depending on exposure settings.

Of course, you can also set the monitor to show you a constant “proper” exposure regardless of the camera setting. You can decide on this behavior using the “Live View Display: Setting Effect On/Off” menu. When you are at Setting Effect On, the EVF will match hour exposure settings, kinda giving you a preview of your soon-to-be-exposed photo. When you are at Setting Effect Off, the camera will give you a constant exposure. Now Rob Hall has an issue with the third option…

When you add a strobe, or a Sony compatible trigger though, the camera will move into a new mode and show you what it thinks a “proper” exposed subject will be, if you used the flash correctly. Sadly, you have no control over this override and once a strobe is introduced, you are stuck with this method of EVF display.

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Pop, Pop, Power To Spare, Anywhere – First Look, Profoto B1X 500 AirTTL Monolight

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As destination workshop providers, instructors and guides, we don’t get to shoot nearly enough studio images. So when an opportunity comes along to break out the studio strobes and craft some well thought lighting and imagery, we get excited. When Profoto sends us their new flagship portable strobe we get downright ecstatic. As we both love landscape images, what better product to test out, in the great outdoors and put it through its paces.

Any experience with Profoto gear will tell you that it’s not the least expensive product out there, but long term experience will tell you that the quality is certainly present in all of their products and the system, as a whole, is pretty hard to beat when it comes down to your control over light shaping. Investments into Profoto gear are exactly that, investments and almost all investors will tell you that when looking at investing, think about the long haul. This is where Profoto really shines, it’s always with you for the long haul, ready to be used over and over again, shoot after shoot, reliably each time…

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Hands on with the Godox Witstro AD200 Strobe

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As we reported a few weeks ago, Godox has launched new Witstro AD200 Modular Strobe. It’s also called 200x or eVolv 200, so if you see it under these names – have in mind it’s the same thing. If you’re thinking of investing in one, we’re sharing a review from photographer Robert Hall. As I can see from the video, this unit is very versatile, and I believe it’s worth the buck. According to Robert, this is the most versatile Godox unit so far, and it has lots of tricks upon its sleeve.

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Godox launches new 200Ws hotshoe strobe thingy without a hotshoe

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I’ve become a big fan of Godox (Pixapro, Flashpoint, etc) over the last couple of years. They sprang out of nowhere, and in no time at all built up a solid following. They are the first company to offer a complete self contained solution that covers everything from speedlights to studio strobes. But their latest addition is something of an oddity. It’s not quite a speedlight, and it’s not quite a strobe, but somewhere in between, and both at the same time.

The Godox Witstro AD200 is a 200Ws flash unit with two interchangeable heads. One is a bare bulb, like the AD180/360. The other offers a more traditional speedlight-like fresnel head. But it doesn’t have a hotshoe, so you can’t easily mount it onto your standard speedlight bracket. It does, however, have 1/4-20″ threads in the side and underneath. One big advantage of this over something like the AD180 or AD360 is the weight savings. It doesn’t use an external power pack, but a built in a LiIon battery.

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Fake Sunshine Glow – Warm Up Your Fall Photos With Strobe Sunlight

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I was just raking up the last of the fall leaves and though that I’d like to get some photos of the kids jumping in my big leaf pile.

The image I had in my head was one of those amazing fall days where that gorgeous warm glowing late day sunshine was back-lighting the leaves and highlighting the kids.

Problem was: by the time I was done raking the leaves, it was petty late in the day so most of my yard was in shade, and the ambient light that was available was coming from the wrong direction.

To get the photos I wanted, I decided to fake that late day warm sunshine glow with strobe sunlight. In this article, I will show you how to do it yourself (its actually pretty easy to get great results)!

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The Flashpoint StreakLight 360 has the funniest instructions ever. Including “You might DIE” reference

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The Flashpoint StreakLight 360 is known by many names. Godox, for example,  sells it as the Witstro AD360II. But there is a solid reason to buy that strobe under the Flashpoint brand, and that is that it has the best instruction set ever made for a strobe. (Thanks Chris-Burger for sending those over)

Forget about Chinese machine-translated texts, this one is 100% original and it will get you LOLing at lest a few times if you read it through. Actually, I think that this instruction set is a work of art. So rather than throwing that manual away, take the time and RTFM, you’ll thanks me later.

Here is a scanned copy of the manual, followed by some text. And now, RTFM!

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Helpful tips for combining natural light with flash

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Nine times out of ten, I would rather shoot with natural light. But no matter how prepared I am or how keen I am on picking out the perfect moment, the reality is natural light sometimes needs a little assistance to capture the vision I have in my mind. It’s at times like these when I do my best to combine the best of both worlds: natural light and flash.

To show off how best to bring together these two beasts photographer Adam Angelides has created a helpful tutorial.[Read More…]

Lighting direction as a tool: Popping vs blending your subject within a scene

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As someone who shoots on location a lot I’m often given a choice on what I like to call “popping” or “blending” a subject into a scene, in short this really as as simple as using your main light source to either complement the direction of a natural / embedded light source in a scene (a candle, window, lights etc) or contrasting it completely so that the subject “pops” out and suspends the belief that they are illuminated within the scene naturally.

Here’s what I mean:

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Fun With Color – Photography Gels and RGB Additive Color

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I was recently at an interactive installation that had three theater lights – red green and blue shining on a white wall.

The kids were fascinated by this – especially with how the colors mixed and how they could make different colors by casting shadows on the wall.

This is a human scale representation of the red-green-blue (RGB) additive color model (the electronic screen you are looking at right now uses the exact same method to reproduce every color you’re looking at).

It also reminded me of some of the really cool applications to use photography gels to have fun with color.

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