OMG: flickr is actually still alive

I have to be honest, I haven't been very active on flickr this past year. Infact, l almost didn't renew my PRO account.  Why? l guess I was finding flickr pretty stale.  The interface hasn't changed much since joined in 2006.  There are still a  lot of really good photographers using flickr but it was pretty painful browsing the UI  to find their work.  I'd typically goto my favorite group load a couple pages & give up.  The new refresh of the groups 'more pictures' UI was something that was sorely needed. Its tiles load  fast and scroll smoothly which makes browsing, even on my tablet much more enjoyable.
 It's nice to know there are still some developers left at flickr, maybe next year my decision to renew will be easier.

Self Assignment:Cowboys

Rifleman, originally uploaded by photogeek21.

A couple weeks ago I did something for the first time. It didn't have anything to do with lighting, technique or post processing. In fact, it had more to do with personal phobia than photography - I asked a total stranger if I could take their portrait. To my releif, they said yes. Actually, everyone I asked was more than happy to pose for me. It was good practice too, since I was on their time, I had to set up quick grab the shot, thank them and let them get back to what they were doing - no time to fart around with different lighting angles and such, just know what I wanted, set up and do it - nerve racking and fun at the same time.

I'd been thinking about a self assignment for a while now so when I saw that there was a cowboy shooting match at my local range, I grabed my camera and lighting bag and headed out the door.

It wasn't all about picture taking either, I truly treated this as an assignment and introduced myself to the match director and made sure he was okay with me strolling through his course of fire. I interviewed several of the competitors to get a bit of insight into their sport. And while I'm far from being a writer, I shared a little of what I learned in my flickr post.

I also sent 5x7 prints to those that posed for me as a token of appreciation for helping me out. Got some great feedback too, One wrote to tell me that when he pull out the picture his wife saw it, grabed it, and said "this one's mine" and has got it on display in her office.

So I guess my first self assignment was a sucess, I got the shot (and didn't get shot), learned quite abit about cowboy shooting, and met some really cool people.

Wireless tethering on the cheap.

One of the lesser talked about features of the new Canon 5D mkIII  is its ability to simultaneously write to both an SD and CF card.  CF cards are by far the pro standard for speed, capacity & reliability but the SD card is significant because it allows the use of an Eye-fi wireless card. With Eye-fi's free app, I was able to wirelessly tether my 5D to a Kindle fire. With the camera set to write raw files to the CF card and medium Rez Jpg's to the Eye-fi card, I can get maximun image quality & fast transfer times to the kindle.  I've tested this setup on my last shoot and it worked out well.  As good as the 5D's new high res screen is, it was so much nicer to check critical focus on the larger screen,  but  what was really valuable was the ability to show the images to the subject in order to provide direction without them move off mark or having to take my camera off the tripod.
 Another good thing about this setup is that its relatively cheap -the Eye-fi is about  $50, the app is free and you canpickup refurb kindle fires for less than $140.
I currently have a 1Dx on pre-order but now I'm a bit disappointed that its 2nd card slot is for a CF and not an SD. I may need to reconsider that potential purchase...

Phottix Odin TTL wireless triggers - Check channels for reliability

Autotesting the Odin

Bye Bye FLEX TT

Well after 2 years of trying to make them work, I finally gave up on the Pocket Wizard Flex TT5s - they just weren't reliable, I even picked up a a 430exII just to see if they'd work better than my 580exIIs- they did. But then it hit me, was I really going to downgrade all my speedlights to get this to work- uh no.

Lucky me, I found someone to buy all my PWs for more than I paid for them (thanks Craigslist)

Hello Odin!

So for the same price as my 3 TT5s and AC3 I was able to pick up an Odin Transmitter, 3 TTL receivers, 2 Manual Receivers, and 1 manual transmitter - Not a bad deal - as long as they work, right?

Well to find out if they do work I set up a test using my intervalometer and 4 speedlights. To try and test as many modes of operation a once I had each speed light set up a bit different:

• 430exII on TTL
• 580exII on Manual w/TTL receiver
• 580exII on Manual w/TTL receiver
• Vivitar 283 on manual w/manual receiver

I set the strobes outside facing the camera which was setup indoors, set the intervalometer to take 100 shots 8 secs apart (to allow that old vivitar to recycle- and prevent overheating) I repeated this test on both my 1dmkii and my new 5dmkiii - results indicated no differences for each camera.

So how were the results? Not good - I had a fairly consistent 15% failure to fire across each of the speedlights - disappointing to say the least, especially when I read so many rave reviews on this system. However, switching everything from CH1 to CH4 I saw a dramatic improvement-100% operation on all the TTL receivers and only 5 FTFs out of 200 attempts for the manual receiver (which could have been the old vivitar being tired) This is a MUCH better start than with my old PWs.

So far I've only shot one job with them so I still need more time with them, but so far I'm happy.

Initial impressions:

Pros:

• Internal Antenna: While the build quality may not be as solid as PWs, I appreciate the absence of any appendages - the antenna design on the TT5s was plain stupid an I always felt like it was just a matter of time before that sucker gets rip outta its socket.
• Better Manual control: Adjusting Manual power settings from the odin seems MUCH more consistent than with the AC3 - the full power setting on the AC3 was far from what my 580s were capable of.
• All sync cables included - even the camera shutter release cable that PW rapes you for $95!
• 2.4Ghz - they work with my 580ExIIs - I have an acre lot and couldn't get enough distance between camera and flash for them to be out of range - this was much better than the 25 ft I sometimes got with my TT5s
• Remote control of zoom setting on each TTL Flash - TT5s didn't do this trick.
• HSS and Rear Curtain sync just like the PWs but as I said above these guys work at distance which I need when I working in daylight with my 70-200 and need some distance.
• 1/4" threaded adapter is inline with the hot shoe - a small thing, but sometimes the offset location on TT5s caused some grief with certain modifiers.

Cons:

• No Hypersync - not missing it so far.
• Manual power control is only in 1 stop increments (not 1/3) - I've been playing with the zoom setting to bleed some power off as a work around.
• Doesn't control the power of my Einstein640 - this was the one thing that caused me to hang on to my PWs for so long.

Pocket Wizards have long been the de-facto standard in wireless triggers and all others were just cheap imitation rarely worth the risk. However, in the TTL game, Pocket wizard has really dropped the ball and now have a product that actually performs WORSE than the cheap knock offs.

XD Problems - It's always the little things...

I remember a friend that used to race buggies in Baja always would say how it was always the little things that put him out of the race, never had a problem with the engine or blowing out tires but a stupid little 5 cent bolt that broke and left him stranded.
Well this was exactly what happened to Ryan in this year's Spring Steel match, 8 stages and I think his gun only ran one of them without a malfunction. Initially, I thought he was just so use to the 1911 he'd been shooting for the last several months that he wasn't letting up on the trigger enough to reset but after I told him he would deliberately take is finger off the trigger to assure it went forward enough and still nothing. His trigger was definitely failing to reset intermittently. We took it into the safety area several times to check it out but never could find anything wrong.
It wasn't until my drive home today from work that I had the 'Aha moment' and I figured it out. I remembered showing him how the trigger worked in the XD and noticed that the over travel screw wasn't adjusted properly and at the time didn't think much of it until I realize that if the screw backed up far enough it would hit the magazine which would prevent it from resetting - we never saw this because magazines aren't allowed in the safety area. But I confirmed this was the case as soon as I got home. Yep a stupid little 2 cent screw stopped Ryan from putting any sort of performance together for the match.

My choice for a photographer's tablet.

So no more than a few days after posting my thoughts on the Kindle fire, here I am giving my initial thoughts on another tablet, the Samsung Slate 7. If you haven't heard of this device, it's a 11.6" tablet powered by a Intel core i5 processor with 4gb of ram and a 128gb SSD running (what?!) Windows7. The display is both touch sensitive and capable of pressure sensitive pen input via wacom technology.

So before I give you my initial thoughts on the device, it'd be useful to know what drew me to this purchase. l wasn't looking for another tablet , the kindle fire is performing that limited use case well. Rather, it was the promise of a full-blown PC capable of running REAL apps like Photoshop, Lightroom, a real browser and doing REAL productive work in a super small form factor that got me interested. But as a photographer, It was the allure of the wacom powered pen input that would allow me to draw right on the screen just like the Cintiq's I've been lusting after for years that actually made me hit the 'buy' button.

So what are my thoughts so far? Let's see.

Pen vs. Touch: Well everything you may have heard about Windows7 being terrible with touch is absolutely true, and while the hardware is very responsive the OS just doesn't know what to do with it. And while Samsung makes an attempt at putting a touch enabled launcher on top of Windows with a couple of touch enabled apps, it's a futile attempt at making this tablet something it's not; which is, anything remotely competitive to the Ipad. All this being said, its pen interface is mature- and it's winning me over. The handwriting recognition , even without training it, is amazingly accurate with my writing style. In fact I wrote this whole post using it and found it much better than pecking at a virtual keyboard. The accuracy & precision of a stylus just can't be matched by one's finger and the added expression enabled with pressure sensitivity is just awesome when using Photoshop or Painter. Steve Jobs may have been right that 'people' don't want to use a stylus, but as a photographer / artist, I've 'seen the light' and couldn't imagine going back to finger painting.

Screen: While not the gorgeous IPS display of the Ipad, the display is bright, vibrant, and has sufficient viewing angles for typical single user close up tasks like writing & painting where you are typically working at a consistent distance and angle to the display. Since this is a Windows box, I can use my Eyeone display to properly calibrate the screen and get some consistent results when editing my photos (+1 for the Windows tablet) The ultra-wide aspect ratio of the screen sort of forces you to use a landscape orientation, which works out perfectly in Photoshop allowing your panels to dock on either side and still allow enough room for an adequate canvas. For some reason the screen rotation is obnoxiously slow sot usually leave it locked. I have to believe this is a software driver issue because there's no way hardware Sensors could be this slow.

Performance: I heard the Core i5-2674 processor was throttled for thermal envelope reasons and may never reach its full Clock rate of 1.6GHz or 2.3GHz in Turbo mode yet the system is very responsive and has enough horsepower to smoothly track the artist brushes in Photoshop without any appreciable lag between pen & stroke. If you put any value in the Microsoft experience index, this system scores a 4.2, but this low score is due to its Aero Performance score, all other values are in the mid 5's, and the SSD scores a blistering 7.5 which may account for the system's sub 30 second boot times. Photoshop start up times are also much quicker than on my SSD equipped desktop.

Conclusions: I was originally skeptical and ready to pack this thing back in the box to send back but as I used it, even with all the touch unfriendly aspects of Windows7,it has really won me over. I truly feel this is a powerful media creation tool, not just another neat gadget as I view the Ipad as - and I'm positive the release of Windows8 will just make things better. I know this thing isn't for most, but when I consider that this has all the power of a laptop packed into a sleek tablet, for me, it's a keeper.

Quick Tip: Minimizing Time in Post

So here's a little situation I found myself in after a shoot at the local high school - all my headshots had visible wrinkles and seams in the background. Looking at the LCD on the back of my camera, I thought I had the background far enough away from the main to be properly underexposed, but after pulling up the images at home I saw that this wasn't the case. They were pretty bad, in the original image to the left, you can see wrinkles in the background and the edge is visible on the left side of the image as well as a seam under the subjects arm.

No biggy right? just clone it out? Well not, if I want to make more than minimum wage on this job. I had to think smart and come up with a way that I could quickly correct the days shoot in the minimum amount of time. The technique I found worked quite well and, more importantly it was fast. Round trip from Lightroom to Photoshop and back was less than 2 minutes - I think the results (right) were believable and I know It would have took me at least 4 times as long if I were to try and clone or paint my way out of this mess. While the main take away from this job could have been 'get it right in camera' I think it really stressed the importance of taking a second look at how you approach a problem in photoshop and consider alternative solutions rather than jump to the first technique you know, cause it could save you a whole bunch of time.

I put a little screencast together showing the technique I used and while the video compression really makes it tough to see the defects in the shadows, you can still get the gist of what I'm doing...