DIY Light Tent

For some time I've been meaning to photograph Jen's engagement ring. Recently, I came across a blog posting on how to create a cheap light tent, and after discovering some discarded tissue paper in the recycling last night, it was a great opportunity to give it a go.

Here's a photo of my setup. I won't duplicate the instructions from the original post, although I will note that I used the box from a case of beer, which is significantly smaller than the recommended 12x12 box.

I photographed 4 things: Jen's ring, a stuffed cat toy (I think it's a pig), a beer (having drank the other 11), and a camera lens. I experimented quite a bit with flash location, direction, and diffusion/zoom setting.

One observation is that it is a major, major pain in the ass to get the right flash power setting, and it's so sensitive to location, direction, zoom and subject. Make one tiny change, and the flash power might need to be halved, or doubled. I used flash settings anywhere from 1/32 to 1/4+0.3. On the plus side, the tent nullifies the effects of the flash diffuser, zoom position, and flash distance, removing 3 variables from the equation. It is sensitive to where on the tent the flash is aimed, depending on the subject.

First up, the ring. For this shot (and all others), I used a 200mm lens at 1/1000s and f/18, ISO 200. I chose the 200mm over a reverse 50mm psuedo-macro because it's just way easier. With the reverse 50mm, I need to hold the camera in one hand, the lens in the other (as separate pieces), and get about 4 cm from my subject. Depth of field sucks, focus is uber sensitive, and working a tripod at those distances is just awkward. 200mm, crop it, save time and frustration.

The shot above is one of the better onces, but the photo below shows that the opening at the front of the box creates some unattractive lowlights at a lower camera position. A fix might be to cover the opening with some white paper, leaving enough room for the camera to peek through to the subject.

Next up, the fuzzy pig. This was the most difficult subject to light evenly. I suspect a larger box may have helped. In the end, the best results were achieved by moving the subject to the rear of the box, and aiming the flash near the front edge.

The beer was a great subject. The embossed logo on the bottle just barely registers when lit from the left (first photo). From the top, we get a much smaller catch light and partially visible embossing (second photo), and a black background (last) makes it more 3 dimensional (while bringing out the imperfections.)

 

The lens was by far the easiest. I didn't have to frig around at all. Snap, snap, snap, snap, done. I think that's due to the smooth matte black finish and regular shape. The light falls smoothly and happily over it without flaring up.

 

 

12x12 Vancouver Photo Marathon

Last night was the opening of "Raw Talent", an exhibit showcasing the entrants' photos from the 12x12 Vancouver Photo Marathon. So, I finally got to see the rest of my photos, which are now publicly available on the 12x12 Flickr group's collection entitled Raw Talent. And now it's time for me to reflect on my photos and see what I've learned.

All photos are taken with a Nikon FE2, 50mm f/1.8 lens, on Kodak Ultramax 400.

8AM: "Your Entry Number"

My entry number was 32, and I decided to take the paneling off of an old PC and photograph the processor (being a 32 bit version, like most machines.) Geeky? Yes. Imaginative? Undoubtedly so. As it turns out, I screwed up loading the film and this frame was destroyed before I released the shutter. I discovered my problem: the camera manual recommends winding the film back slightly after engaging the lead tab, to take up the slack. I probably over did it, winding exposed film back into the canister. Given that there was enough room at the end of the roll for 2 more shots, I should have just played it safe and started on the second frame. Live and learn. Because of this mistake, I was out of the running for best series.

9AM: "High Hope"

f/4, 1/60s

My aim was to visit the new hockey arena at UBC, hoping they would have the olympic logo on the ice which I would photograph (symbolizing high hopes for our olympic hockey teams.) I was pleased to find that a youth hockey practice was in progress. This guy was waiting for his practice to start. As I was framing, he turned around and noticed me, and backed up to get out of my way. I assured him that he was OK standing there, and when he returned, I quickly took the shot. Given my haste, I'm happy at how well it turned out (my notebook expresses some concern.) On the left you can see the burned edge of my destroyed first frame. I haven't yet decided whether this adds to the photo or takes away from it.

This photo was 1 of 4 grand prize winners, and is printed on a 90cm x 60cm piece of gallery quality canvas, courtesy of Opus. It will be displayed along with the other 3 winners in the Vancouver Lookout beginning in March. Go check it out.

10AM: "Nosy"

f/1.8 1/125s

Like other contestants, I decided to take a photo peering through some foreground elements at some unaware subject (in actuality, it is Jen, and she knows I'm there.) I had my flash with wireless trigger stashed in the living room to highlight the subject. After several successful "test fires", the flash failed to fire on the real shot. I think my batteries were low and the recycle time was lengthening from the repeated firing. Lesson 1: always have fully charged batteries when it matters. Lesson 2: one test fire is enough!

Even if the flash did go off, I don't think it would be a very attractive photo. Too much clutter and a big ugly white rectangle at the top. I should have worked harder to find a closer peering location, and involved more out of focus foreground foliage to cover up the unimportant background elements.

11AM: "Blank"

f/8, 1/125s

Returning to Blenz in Yaletown for the next theme announcement: "Blank". This is a photo of my drawing a blank, while jotting down theme ideas in my notebook. In other words, my concept is a lack of a concept. I had originally set the notebook on one of the white marble tables outside of Blenz, before moving to a location with a darker table to provide some contrast. I wouldn't have thought of doing that without the constraint that I only get one chance at the shot. Digital photography spoils us that way. There's no cost per shot, and we can turf the ones we don't like: so just snap away and eventually some keepers will fall out. Think long and hard about your photo before pressing the shutter and good things will happen. It was my epiphany of the day.

12PM: "Loud"

f/22 1/8s, tripod, polarizer.

The idea for this photo is courtesy of Jen. I had written down "loud colours", "bell or whistle or some noisemaking device", "traffic, hustle and bustle", "somebody screaming". Jen suggested "Canada Corner": a humongeous scaffolding cover printed with the Canadian Flag, on the Hotel Georgia at the corner of Howe and Georgia. The idea being loud national pride.

This one was difficult to compose. I walked up and down both sides of the street, near and far, crouched, stood on top of mailboxes, all the time cursing my inability to change focal length. There was just too much distracting stuff around (lamp poles, pedestrians, trees, other buildings), and looking straight up from a close position wasn't an attractive option (in my opinion.) I decided to force the flag to share some of its attention with the Olympic countdown clock in front of the art gallery. I was there for quite a long time experimenting with positioning until I found just the right spot that hid the buildings and the trees and overlapped things nicely. I used a small aperture to get adequate depth of field, and at the last minute put on a polarizer to minimize the glare in the front of the clock. Metering was tricky, as I'm not very used to my camera's centre weighted meter. As you can see, the sky fooled me into underexposing the photo.

1PM: "Wild Goose Chase"

1/8, 1/8s, monopod

My interpretation of "Wild Goose Chase" was of holiday shoppers (several other participants had the same idea.) I wanted a slightly elevated view point, to get a good perspective of the crowds (oh, and there were crowds.) After some wandering around Pacific Centre mall, I ended up taking this shot while riding down the escalator. I used my tripod with the legs folded in, to help steady the camera at 1/8s, so I could capture the motion of the shoppers. I took the photo just in the nick of time, as immediately after I took the shot (while still on the escalator), I had a security guard tap me on the shoulder and request my credentials. He was fair enough, and after I explained what I was doing he said I would still have to sign in at the security desk, but allowed me to leave given that my objective was satisfied.

2PM: "Wild Things"

1/4, 1/125s

I was about to head home to photograph the cats when I remembered there's an off leash dog area in Yaletown. Luckily, there was a group of 5 or so small dogs playing. I obtained their owners' permission, squatted down, and waited...

This was going to be tough. Manual focus, dogs running everywhere, grouping, disbanding, coming near, going far. Only one chance to get that decisive moment. One dog was trying to hump another dog, and I missed it. Eventually, 5 dogs played in a group. I took the shot, but was a bit late and ended up releasing the shutter as 3 of the dogs fled off to my right, while two of my subjects stood there looking very un-wild. Damn. I missed.

Perhaps I should have had a bit more patience. Looking at the result, I also think I should have tried to get closer.

3PM: "Tie"

f/2.8, 1/125s

Losing steam, I went home to help Jen with some gift wrapping. I think this picture was a bit of a cop-out, and am not particularly excited about it. It looks decent enough, but had I tried a bit harder I might have come up with something better.

I used an incandescent upright lamp for some nice warm light, and a wide aperature for shallow depth of field and softness. I'm not sure why it's so foggy though. The black looks dull and grey. I look at this photo and think it's from the 70's. I'm OK with that, but a bit puzzled as to what is the cause.

4PM: "Perform"

1/4, 1/15s, tripod

I was at first thinking theatre, or car. Then I remembered there are some music shops down by Broaway and Blanca, so out I went to Rufus' Guitar Shop, where the owner was kind enough to let me take a photo.

It didn't turn out like I hoped. Dull and foggy, like the previous photo. The wall of guitars as I remembered it was dimly lit, but lively, sparkling with the store's small halogen track lights reflecting off of the chrome fittings and varnished surfaces. None of that shows up in this picture. Perhaps I just don't remember it correctly, and I only imagine that the scene was lively and beautiful.

5PM: "Flash"

f/2.8, 1/15s. SB-600: 1/8, 50mm.

Amazingly, this photo turned out just as I had planned it, better even. I wanted to include the flash in the frame, and get a nice starburst out of it. So I thought up a scene with a strange figure (me) walking through a dark alley. This took some major guesstimation. I found this spot behind my apartment with an empty parking stall, dumpster, and dim light on a brick wall. Perfect. Now to set it up. Made a guess at the flash power setting, and probably overdid it by 2 stops. The starburst turned out nicely though. I knew that the shiny new dumpster would give me some glare, and perhaps I should have pulled out some cardboard and covered part of the dumpster surface. Flash gels would have helped too, so I could have matched my flash colour with the wall light. This photo was the winner for its theme.

6PM: "Nickel and Dime"

f/8, 1/60s. tripod. lens reversed hand held. desk lamp.

This was also a bit of a cop-out. Dig out some nickels and dimes from the change bin and take a macro shot, theme done. While I think the resulting photo looks nice, I could have been a bit more imaginative. Although I don't feel so bad because several other participants did the same thing.

I did the ol' reverse lens trick for this one. I should really get a reverse adapter, so I don't have to hand hold my lens for macros. For metering, I metered with the lens on (forwards), at f/1.8, and then dropped the shutter time by 4 stops for the actual photo at f/8. I'm not sure if this is technically correct (due to the difference in focal length when the lens is reversed), but it apparently worked in this instance. Whew.

7PM: "Panhandle"

f/2.8, 1/60s, tripod, desk lamp

Turns out I wasn't the only one to take a photo of pan handles for this theme. Many participants took pictures of chefs at work through order windows, many went to the kitchen section of department stores, and I set up another psuedo-studio shot on my dining room table with the desk lamp. Credit to Jen again for the setup.

I suppose I should make some overall concluding remark here. I can't think of much for now (as I'm in a rush). The photo marathon was awesome and I'd definitely do it again, although I would try and spend more time at home base (and not at home) so as to more fully engage in the social aspect of things.

Best Theme Intrepretation at Photo Marathon

Although the results of the 12x12 Vancouver Photo Marathon have not yet been released, The Province ran a brief article today on the competition winners. Apparently, my photo for the theme "High Hopes" (a child watching his peers' hockey practice) won an award for best theme interpretation.

I haven't yet seen the photo (which is published in the print version of The Province), but I look forward to seeing it as well as other contest photos at the opening of tomorrow's exhibit.

Icy Fog

This is not the interesting post promised on December 13. The results of the Vancouver 12x12 Photo Marathon won't be announced until January 16 2010, at the opening of the event's exhibition entitled "Raw Talent". I've learned that the first photo of my entry into the competition (for the theme "My entry number", which was 32) was an all black frame. I'm not sure how improper loading of the film would create this result (I would think an all white frame would turn up in that case), but I screwed up somehow. As a result, I am not in the running for the top honour of overall winner, but my 11 remaining photos are still in the running individually. I'm optimistic.

On my birthday, I got out for a brief stroll in the foggy frost (or frosty fog?) that was still lingering about mid day. Here's a photo from that excursion.



I wanted to capture the dull blanket of the fog. The relative clarity (a term used loosely in this case) of the foreground tree with those in the background captures that effect. Here, positioning is important. Ideally, I would liked to have been closer to the foreground tree and made it a bit clearer, but that would not have allowed a similar composition given the surroundings (the foreground tree's lowest branches are quite high, and there is a tall chainlink fence just below frame of the background trees).

Believe it or not, this is a colour photo. The fog is thick, and the trees are backlit, so the scene looks pretty much as it was when I stood there. I did fuss with the tone curve a bit to get a satisfactory amount of detail in the foreground tree's branches.

A few more photos from this outing can be found on my Flickr photostream, tagged with 'fog'.

Interesting Post Coming Soon...

It's been a while, but that doesn't mean I haven't been taking photos. Last week, I bought a Nikon FE body for the Vancouver 12x12 Photo Marathon, which was yesterday. My next post will contain a discussion and some of the photos I took during the event.

Morning Landscape Potpourri + a Sculpture

I've been doing a lot of reading and very little shooting lately. I got up early this morning to try another sunrise. I picked Stanley Park as the location, hoping to get the sunrise over Coal Harbour and Downtown Vancouver. After parking the car and starting along the seawall, I noticed a barge housing a large set of illuminated Olympic Rings (to my delight). This would be my subject.

It wasn't long after picking a location and setting up that 1, 2, and then 3 other photographers showed up. They were sporting some really fancy equipment, and looked like they knew their stuff. Although it's a little discouraging to think that I wasn't being original, I also took this as a sign that I was clever (or lucky) in choosing a good spot at a good time.

I experimented with a bunch of different compositions at pretty much every focal length to see what worked. The photo below, taken at about 6:50AM with a 28mm lens, is my favourite.



I noticed how quickly the light and mood changed. Reviewing my photos, I found as the sky got brighter, it also got grayer, the colourful reflections in the water diminished, and I generally found the cityscape to look less exciting under daylight than when illuminated with its own artificial light.

The following shot was taken looking the other direction (towards North Vancouver), with my 20 year old Nikkor 50mm lens.



After getting home and looking at the photos in more detail, I was amazed just how good this lens is. I had taken similar shots with my 18-55mm and 55-200mm zooms, and none of them comes close to looking as nice as this one does. The details are great, and I think the starbursts on the specular highlights look really cool. I should use this lens more often.

On the way out of the park, I saw some moored container ships. I wanted to fit as many of them in the frame as possible, without making them too small. The following photo, taken with a 66mm lens, is my favourite composition. I adjusted the tone curve to achieve maximum contrast in what was an original with a very small tonal range. I also heavily desaturated the photo (there's still a bit of colour left) to give it a mechanical, industrial feel.



Finally, I stopped in the west end at a public display of sculptor Yue Min Jun's Laughing Figures. I wanted to emphasize the rough, rusty texture of the metal. I used my 50mm and shot at f/1.8 and ISO 400 so that I could use a fast shutter speed. I ended up with many different shots that I quite like. Most of them feature a pure white background from blowing out the overcast sky, but for some reason I really like the out of focus apartment building as a background in the following photo.

Jericho Sunrise

Went to Jericho Beach this morning to photograph the sunrise. It happened pretty fast, and I clicked away at various focal lengths, compositions and settings.

Noticed that my gear is dirty (could be the sensor), and that I sometimes get abnormal looking smears around the blown-out sun. Here's my favourite shot.



Apart from the usual tonal curve adjustments in Photoshop, I cheated a little and made use of the "Smart Sharpen" filter. Although I am generally in favour of trying to get a sharp photo at the time of capture, I should admit that I'm impressed with the result.

I was sharing the pier with a few guys tossing crab pots into the water. I wanted to get an action shot (a pot-toss shot!), and was loafing around nonchalantely waiting for the right moment. During that time I took this photo of smooth gradient of the water's surface. Never did get the pot-toss shot though.



Update (04/10/09): While checking out The Drift, I saw a photo in Vancouver Special by Shea W. Pollard. It's called The Deep End.

I like hers more than mine. The water has a lot more texture, and the photo is just really well executed. The sticker was $700 for what looked like a very nice 36"x36" print. I wouldn't dare say that it's not worth that much, but I can't help but wonder... if I made a nice big print of mine, what it would be worth?