my life, as far as i know.

(480×650)

tired of seeing me?

the notes are pretty self explanatory. this is one of my tests with the 2403cx pack, set to 2400 watt-seconds. a 202vf head was fitted with the chimera medium softbox. the box was 2 feet from me. this is when i felt the flash of heat from the flash. startling at first. the kinda thing where you check to make sure nothing’s smoldering. but everything was cool, and you get used to it. and getting f/32 is nice!!

the prop is a kodak 1-a pocket camera. they must have had large pockets back then. this camera was owned by my great grandfather. it has a 127mm f/6.3 anastigmat lens in an EKC shutter.

comparison between 3 flash setups, all bouncing into the same 42″ umbrella. metered at 4ft using a minolta flashmeter vi.

i did separate readings from the novatron head with its original kit umbrella. that umbrella was consistently 4/10 of a stop less than the 42″ umbrella i rented.

interestingly, it seems the novatron puts out a lot of light compared to the calumet. hands down the winner was the speedotron, pushing f/16 at its lowest pack setting of 400 watt-seconds. that’s more light than the novatron, plus more than the travelite dialed down half way.

i understand how when people bicker about all these numbers. watt-seconds, joules, effective versus actual outputs. nobody likes to use the same starting numbers to make the comparisons worse.

there is also a new speedotron unit, the force 10 which has a claimed 1000 watt-seconds in a monohead unit. but is it proprortional to this 2403CX/head configuration? Probably not, since these companies are surely trying to increase their unit efficiency in each successive product generation.. so a 1000 w-s force 10 may outperform these 202vf at 1200 w-s?

it is a lot to think about. i am not even sure i’m closer to a decision now. :)

but here is my initial take-away from all of this.

• i definitely like the chimera softbox. it is large, but that’s what it’s all about when it comes to quality of light. definitely requires a hefty stand. i can imagine buying a used stand would be perfectly fine. these are totally beat up but they work perfectly.
• a softbox pushing f/22 right in front of your face is kinda scary. you can actually feel a flash of heat from it!
• a “starter kit” has nothing on these puppies. these kits i rented are made for business and i can imagine relying on them day in and day out. they are solid. also, seeing a dish increase the output by over half a stop made me realize how important quality light modifiers can be.
• having pocket wizards are great. especially with a pack/heads kit. no worry about sync voltages either.
• a system like the 2403cx pack and 202vf head are nothing to be sneezed at. getting almost f/32 with a dish at 10 feet is a lot. losing 8/10 of a stop to a medium softbox, you’re still getting good light. and that’s at 10 feet still. i shot a self port with the 202vf and chimera at 2ft and got f/32.

so i have some data to mull over for the next few days.

for the speedotron, the power control is by specific watt-seconds. on the calumet, there is a dial numbered from 1 through 6. the chimera is a medium sized (36″ x 48″) softbox oriented vertically.

all readings taken from a minolta flashmeter vi. held in front of my face, pointed at the flash. distance was 10ft and meter was set to ISO 100. the meter reads f number plus n/10th.

photo weekend continues.

i shot this myself. the focus is clear enough on the polaroid to count eyelashes. i may have read about this somewhere, i can’t remember now. in any case, it’s good for two things. one, it is a great way to use yourself as a subject and get good focus. two, it speeds up the actual shooting where you could shoot multiple people in succession with minimal sitting time. the latter is my end goal i think.

this pre-focus technique is easy.

first, guage how far you want your camera from the actual subject. put the camera at that distance from the wall.

tape a small object on the wall, like a quarter or a 4×5 polaroid with handwriting on it. :) apply any movements you like and focus the camera sharply on the object. if you use movement, remember or mark on the ground glass where the focus area was.

measure the distance from camera to subject. for this, i used a length of wire. i tied the wire around a horizontal bar on the front standard of my camera, just under the lens. i used wire because i could stretch the wire to the subject and make a kink (bend and fold back) in the wire that would stay there.

move the camera away, usually back from its original position. prepare the camera for exposure. load film, polaroid, etc.

bring in the subject. if you used movement, look at the ground glass and move the camera until the desired area of focus is on the pre-focused spot. don’t touch the focus controls of the camera. use the measuring device you used to put the subject at the pre-determined distance to the camera. you can have the subject hold the twine or wire up until the point of exposure. they are less likely to move in the short time required to drop the wire and pop the flash.

so far, this method has worked well for me in using myself as a subject.

(650×480)

as you can see in the notes, this was shot with an f/8 super-angulon set to f/11 plus another 2/3 or so. the lens was dropped about 2cm and there was a ton of front tilt. a travelite 750 with the chimera was up at the ceiling, set horizontally and angled down. it was about 5.5 feet from me. i metered, pre-focused, and nailed the shot in one take.

i just realized i didn’t post about my new pre-focus method. i’ll do that later. it’s a great way to use yourself as a subject when nobody is around, someone’s around but preoccupied, or you don’t have the nerve to ask someone to model for you. perfect for me!

prop: fed-5c camera. i never got good negs out of this camera, but it’s so cute i had to keep it.

i currently own a small pack-and-heads kit made by novatron. it’s a 240 watt-second kit with two heads, stands, umbrellas. it’s been great actually, especially for digital.

the digital camera i use is a canon powershot g3. it’s a point-and-shoot camera with a good amount of manual settings. but recently i’ve been working with mostly 4×5 and 8×10 formats. you really start to appreciate the lenses and shutters.. when you go back to a g3 where the aperture range is f/2 to f/8.

so the novatron kit has been perfect. it would be even better, had i remembered the g3 has a built-in neutral density filter. that would have made things easier.. but i’ve coped with it so far.

moving from small-digital to LF is quite a difference in every respect. some of my LF lenses don’t even start until f/10. so i crank up the novatron and get aperture readings in the f/11 neighborhood.

so i decided to venture out of my usual area and rent some higher powered (and more versatile) equipment. here’s what’s on the list:

• calumet travelite-750, two head kit. umbrellas, stands, speedring
• speedotron 2400 w-s kit, 2403cx pack and two 202vf heads, umbrellas, stands, speedring
• chimera medium softbox
• pocket wizard plus pair

this is a lot of gear - it took me 3 trips to unload the car. i quickly realized how small my place is for this kind of thing. i did find a wall that’s more versatile than the one i’ve been using. not as wide, and it has a light switch and outlet on it, but i can work around those. plus, i can move lights off to the side and the ceiling is a little higher.

so i’ve been playing around a lot with the equipment. i’ve been shooting lots of polaroid and doing lots of meter reading. it’s one thing to study the specifications and experiences, but it’s another to actually have the gear in your hands and use your own meter and space to play.

my goal was to learn new equipment and possibly pick a new lighting system.. one i can grow into once my needs are a little more demanding and once i have a larger space to work in.

(480×650)

nikkor 210 @ f/22
travelite 750 + chimera medium @ 2.5ft
pre-focused

the nintendo wii is here. it feels like something new.. it’s small, clean design, totally different. through setting up the device, getting it connected online (via wifi), and starting to play games on it.. the interface was pretty intuitive. it can even play gamecube games (you plugin the original gamecube controllers in the back). there was obviously a lot of thought put into this device.

Buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo.

(827×1024)

i setup a shot to expose a sheet of kodak 320TXP. i wanted to test what the right timing is for 1:25 rodinal souping.

rodinal 1:25 for 16 minutes (960 seconds), frequent agitation.

this shot turned out better than i imagined. i should contact print it, high res scan that, then get it printed big.

shot on 8×10 320TXP, carl meyer apo-process 12″, f/11 @ 1/60. single 120w/s strobe, set to -2.

red.. blue.. blah blah blah. someone wake me up when government actually does something interesting and positive. it’s not like democrats are all that great these days.

today i went to a half day workshop on studio lighting at rayko photo center in soma.

out of 7 students, i was the only one not shooting 35mm digital.

the instructor covered the basics of powerpacks, c-stands and booms, heads, softboxes and grids, then went over a couple lighting scenarios. he shot the examples on polaroid 54. woo! you can pick up a book and rent some equipment to learn it, but it was nice to have all the information all at once.

i wish the workshop was a little more hands-on but at least now i know all the terminology. i had a few questions answered (specifically about speedrings and grids). i also saw first hand the benefit of using a “hair light” on a model.

been thinking about my dad today. mainly because of emery’s posts about losing his monther recently. today i replied to a posting he made. it made me think about meeting emery’s mother. i met her a few times. in fact, most of my friends have met her.

very few of my friends have ever met my dad. a few of my college friends have. in fact, my dad put up two of them in his studio apartment while they found a place to live. my friend tim has i think. and of course ed, jon, and geno. and ryan. i guess the opportunity for others never came up.

for a long time i really put a hard divider between friends and family. mainly because i was living a double life of sorts, until i came out to my parents. even afterwards, i was just so used to keeping them separate. it’s hard to change how you behave after you’ve been following the same patterns for so long.

when my dad was sick and getting worse, i vowed to introduce my dad to one of my longest and closest friends, boman. they had both heard so much about each other from me. i’ve met several of boman’s family, including his mother who comes from pakistan, his siblings and his aunts. well, i tried. it just never worked out. and before long, my dad was gone.

i did bring boman down to meet my mom eventually. we were going down for a visit and on a spur of the moment decision, i invited boman along. it felt good. everybody liked each other. it’s so silly that i didn’t introduce him before. i don’t have anything to hide from anybody now. i love my friends and love my family. so why not? besides, my mom always entertains with embarassing stories from my childhood.

anyways, i hope i can be of help to emery.