And yet every time I need to do this I end up tearing my hair out.  Why?  Timezones.

I’m based in France and when dealing with clients abroad I need to find a time that suits both parties.  That should be easy, but typically it’s a frustrating and time-wasting experience. Just yesterday I needed to organise a meeting with an American client who informed me that he was available from 9am to 12am CDT. Converting that to Paris time should be simple.  Right?

Wrong.   On-line world-time converters typically just list a bunch of cities – I haven’t a clue which of the American cities in the list happen to to fall within the timezone that I wish to convert from.  If I want to specify a timezone such as “CT”, or an offset such as GMT+2, or even a whole country (if it isn’t split into different time zones), I can’t.

I got so fed up with the situation that I finally took some time out to search the web for a better solution, and I eventually discovered the best online timezone converter I’ve ever seen. Simple, elegant, ad-free.  The author’s accompanying blog article is an excellent read and epitomises my experiences with alternative solutions.

I realized immediately that this would make a great Mac OS Widget, so with the authors blessing I spent a couple of hours making one.  Feel free to download it and simplify your lives too.

Chase produces very high end – and high budget – photography, and this shows with the gear that the team are using. For example, the two field drives are G-Tech 256GB SSDs, and at $1200 each they’re worth significantly more that the MacBook Pro itself!

Chase knows this though, and he makes a very important statement at the end of the video when he says “everything I say here is scalable, and you need to design your backup solutions for your needs”. Storage and Backup are vital, but the workflow can be scaled up or down based on requirements and budget. There’s no single “right” solution for that’ll work for everyone, but there’ll certainly be a solution that’s right for you.

I thought it might be interesting to describe – with far less grace and without the cool little graphic doodles – the workflow that I use. I hope it’ll prove interesting for other photographers who have comparable budgets to myself. I’ll compare my workflow to Chase’s so that you can see how the key ideas are the same, even if the gear isn’t.

In the field – Key concept: backup multiple copies immediately

In the field Chase ingests his photos into Aperture using a fast firewire compact flash reader and has them copied onto two daisy-chained SSDs. The images are therefore backed up onto each SSD and (I assume) the hard drive of the computer – three copies in total. Since SSDs have no moving parts they are an ideal storage solution when travelling.

I ingest my images using Lightroom (obviously!) and have them backed up to an external 2.5″ rugged hard drive. Once that’s done I then stick my compact flash card into a NextoDi backup device. This little gadget copies the photos off the card extremely quickly and performs a hardware verification of the data. The end result is that I also have three backups.

Chase’s SSDs look fantastic, but my rugged hard drive is much cheaper. It’s also very small and light; for my work size and space are of paramount importance, especially when trying to fit everything into a rucksack. Although there’s more risk of mechanical failure with a traditional harddrive that with an SSD it’s still slight and with 3 backups I’m secure. That said, SSDs will be cheap enough to make them a no-brainer in a few years time.

Why a NextoDi rather than a second exernal hard drive on my MacBook Pro? Well, if the MacBook Pro breaks down, crashes, smashes, bursts into flames or simply runs out of power I can continue to backup my work. In fact I think that this feature is so important that I’ll undoubtedly invest in a second NextoDi in order to ensure that I can continue to back up 2 copies if the laptop fails – never be afraid to evolve your workflow.

Also worthy of note is that my external hard drive is partitioned, and a SuperDuper’d copy of the MacBook pro has been placed on one of the partitions. If the Macbook Pro’s hard drive fails I can boot from this and continue to work.

Base Camp – Key concept: back up your work in progress

Back at base camp Chase copies his field drive to a G-Tech 2TB G-Safe. A lovely piece of kit. With one copy procedure he gets two backups (thanks to the RAID setup), each of which shares a room with a different person on the team.

I think that different photographers will have different needs when it comes to making backups at base camp. Personally I use fields drives that are big enough to hold the data for the entire shoot, so I don’t need to make any further copies. Once again the idea is to travel light. For very big shoots I can certainly understand Chase’s approach however.

If working with an assistant then separating the drives is definitely worthwhile – the biggest risk being an opportunist thief.

The Studio – Key concept: backup, backup, backup.

In an environment such as Chase’s, where there’s an entire team of people working at the studio, a central server is an absolutely requirement. But many photographers, including myself, work alone from either a home studio or a small office – in this case we can limit our expenditure whilst still protecting our work.

I use a powerful Mac Pro with a 30″ NEC Spectraview as my central workstation. A fast computer is essential when working with the large files such as those generated by a 5D Mk II. In terms of data storage, it’s set up in a particular way:

• Data is stored internally on 3 “enterprise level” 2TB hard drives in a striped RAID (very fast data transfer, but if one fails everything’s lost). I don’t physically separate RAW files from “Live work” but I do work non-destructively, so the RAWs never get modified.
• The boot drive is an SSD and doesn’t contain any photographic data, but it does contain most other things (accounts, emails, etc).
• A 4th internal hard drive (actually the machine’s original boot drive) is used as a Time Machine back for the boot drive. Time Machine’s great.

The 3 2TB hard drives form a single data partition, and every night this partition is SuperDuper’d to a partition on an external Drobo while I’m tucked up in bed. The same is true of the boot drive.

Note than when I get back to the studio after a shoot the images from one of the field drives are copied to the Mac Pro, but the field drives aren’t emptied until this data had been backed up over night. Typically, they aren’t emptied until the next shoot, just as an extra safeguard.

For those that are interested in maximising the performance of their Mac for photography I highly recommend reading the Mac Performance Guide by Lloyd Chambers. Chamber’s explains how he configures his data drive on a Mac Pro, and also the reasons behind the the stripped RAID that I’ve adopted.

At this stage I have my data backed up twice – once internally and once on the Drobo. This does not suffice. As Chase also states an off-site backup is an absolute necessity. You must protect your data from fire, theft, flooding or any of the other unpleasant things that might happen to you. I keep my data backed up on an external hard drive at a friends house, and I keep his at my studio.

So I’ll leave you with my last words of wisdom – “3 backups, one off site. No less.”

1. Chase – how did you do those cool little graphic animations?

Fact 2: One of the frustrating things about photography is that that there are so many types of photography to explore.  It can be quite overwhelming for those coming into our world.

For those contemplating professional photography as a career then the good news is that somewhere in this gargantuan gulf of photographic endeavours there’ll certainly be something that’s right for you.  Whether you’re introvert or extrovert, a recluse or a team player, an image taker or an image maker, an artist or a technician, there’ll be a branch of photography which will suit your personality.

For example, as a professional fine-art wildlife photographer you’ll be spending hours waiting patiently for that perfect moment and then selling your images as pieces of art, whereas a traditional wedding photographer may need to deal with difficult mother-in-laws and control crowds of slightly merry people while managing the technicalities of his or her flash.

The vital thing is that you choose a form of photography that’s right for you.

I’m commercial/advertising photographer specialising in active lifestyle images, very often sports or outdoor oriented imagery, and I love my work. Commercial photography imposes its own requirements on the type of personality that’s best suited to this career, so  I thought I’d present my own reasons for choosing this path – it may well help some of you to go in either the same direction, or else strike it off your list and look at the many other options available to you.

Create, not take

I love to create images – to put all the pieces together to form a compelling photo that will provoke a response in the viewer.  I enjoy composing the image, placing the talent and perfecting the lighting.

Carrying my camera around at all times in case I see something enticing just isn’t my thing – I know this through experience.  I’m also uncomfortable taking images of people who haven’t chosen to be in front of the camera.  So travel photography, journalism and other such pursuits simply aren’t well suited to my personality.

A creative outlet

Creating images is great fun, but being creative gives the greatest rush.

Commercial photography offers plenty of room to express yourself as a photographer; most shoots offer opportunities to be creative.  Sometimes the client involves the photographer in the early stages of a concept, other times the brief is specific but there’ll be opportunities to express yourself on location once the required images are in the bag.

And of course you can do anything you like when creating images for self-promotion….

Personal interaction

Comercial photography requires a lot of interaction with a large variety of people – clients, art directors, models, make-up artists, stylists, assistants, etc.  It isn’t a job for the introverted, (although you certainly don’t need to be an extrovert to succeed), but you need to enjoy the human contact.

Variation

My job is incredibly variable.  My activities include self-marketing and prospection, client meetings, brain-storming sessions, production and logistics, photography, post-processing and retouching, accountancy, paper work, chasing up clients, maintaining my web site, keeping up to date with the latest technology and techniques, updating this blog, etc etc.

I really enjoy variation in my life, but I appreciate that this constant juggling act isn’t for everyone.  In particular you should know that actually taking pictures is but a small proportion of all the above.

The technical stuff

All forms or photography require a certain degree of technical competency. Commercial photography requires a particularly high level of understanding if you wish to avoid being limited in your ability to create images.

The geek in me loves this stuff.

Finally, the challenge…

Many good amateur photographers have told me that they couldn’t become professional because they like to take their own images rather than being “dictated” to by a client, to which I’ll quickly retort that it’s perfectly possible to take and sell your own images professionally – fine art or stock photographers do this all the time.

That said, in my case I adore the challenge of accepting a client’s brief and exceeding his or her expectations.

Of course I do get plenty of opportunities to create my own imagery for self-promotion.  It’s the best of both worlds.

Concept

The concept was a simple one – the guy who’s so passionate about his sport that he even skates to his day job.

The shot that I really wanted in the bag was very straight forwards – the skateboarder would be skating very casually through the town, perhaps dealing with a client on his mobile phone.   The concept dictated that the control of the skate board had to be completely second nature – as if this is the character’s main form of transport.

Planning

Although this shoot is considerably simpler than the tennis player composition that I detailed previously, it still required planning and forethought.

The first problem was to find a model in the right age range who was willing and able to skate through the town wearing a suit.  This would obviously draw attention from onlookers so the talent would need to be at lease a little extravert.

I found a specialist skateboarding shop and explained my project to the owner; he immediately thought of an ideal candidate and offered to pass on my business card and explain my request. Within half an hour my model had called me back, willing and able!  The cherry on the cake is that the model was an ex-salesmen so he already had a suit that would fit.  If only it was always this easy…

Using competent sportsmen and women is essential for my work.  The fact that they are often not professional models doesn’t tend to be an issue since they’ll be concentrating so much on what they’ll be doing that they’ll look natural on camera.  This is very different from asking a non-professional to take a static pose.

We set a date for the shoot and I crossed my fingers that that weather would hold out.  Since this is my home town location scouting was a fairly painless process.  With the help of my assistant, Matt, we chose a couple of interesting locations.  I knew that I wanted to shoot with a wide angle lens to get the context of the town into the photo, so the major considerations were the position of the sun, the look of the backdrop and a smooth surface for the skateboard.

The “cool dude” shot

This is the shot that I wanted in the bag.  I shot with a fisheye from low down, pre-focussing at the point at which I wanted to take the shot.  The fisheye would allow me to have the skater take a predominate position in the frame – thanks to his close position – while still allowing me to capture the surrounding context.  I chose to use a fisheye for aesthetic reasons, I don’t like the way the edges of the frame look disproportionally large when shooting with a  rectilinear lens under these types of conditions.  In post I would remove just some of the fisheye look.

I then asked the model to pass in front of the camera lots of times, varying the poses – hands free, in pockets, using phone, etc.

The sun was back lighting the subject so Matt provided fill using a Sunbounce Pro.  The entire spectacle drew attention from the people in the café for a few minutes, but they soon got bored and started to ignore us.

The “jump” shot

Once I was happy that I had a keeper we moved onto the second location.  The model was keen to try something more dynamic and by this point I was more than happy to start expanding the limits that I had originally defined.

This time he would be skating into the sun – a compromise forced on us by the fact that he needed to put his right foot forwards.

The key technical difficulty was the focussing – even with a very wide angle lens with a small aperture the photos were totally unacceptable if the focus point wasn’t near enough to the model’s head at the moment that I took the shot.  Since the jump was never in exactly the same spot each time this reduced the number of keepers significantly.

During the whole shoot my model was just great.  He was incredibly enthusiastic and tirelessly devoted to getting the best image.  He would even offer his discerning eye over the results, explaining what was right and wrong about a shot from a skateboarder’s perspective.

Post processing

Back at the studio I made my selects using Lightroom and then processed the images using a combination of Lightroom and Photoshop.  The post-processing phase is really the point at which I get to express my personal style.  You can see the before and after shots for the jump here.

"Out of the camera"

The final version

I organised the shoot with a fairly local professional model; there were no hard and fast plans, we simply headed for the Alps with the intention of getting some mountain lifestyle shots.

Although there were no specific requirements I never undertake a shoot without having quite a few planned shots, so I’d spent the previous week sketching image ideas as they came to me.  For an easy-going shoot like this I’m not obsessional about actually getting all the shots that I’ve noted, but they do give me a starting point once on location, and from there I allow the shoot to evolve.

I worked with a great model.  Since she wanted to use the images for her portfolio she’d also taken the time to think of some ideas before hand, and this allowed us to brainstorm various possibilities and do some scouting to find interesting locations based on our plans.  The best images always come from a collaborative exchange of creative ideas such as this so I’m always thrilled to find myself working with like-minded people.

Organising a shoot like this is fun and rewarding.  Here are a few things to keep in mind:

• Have some clear ideas of your objectives before you go.  Even if you don’t follow your original plans they’ll give you a good starting point from which to get your creative juices flowing.
• Allow yourself to deviate.  If your models have ideas then don’t brush them off – collaborate.  You’ll get more from them if you encourage their participatation.
• Think about your models’ comfort.  In this case I bought along some extra snacks and fruit to keep us both going.
• For lifestyle images create a “story” around each picture so that the model can more easily imagine the appropriate poses.
• Think hard about the gear you need to bring with you – both photographic or otherwise.
• Have fun.

Carrying camera gear into nature’s more wild expanses is always problematic. It’s heavy, it’s big and it needs to be carried with a certain amount of equipment needed for the trip itself – extra clothing, food, first aid kits, etc.  The problems can often be mitigated to a large extent when working with assistants that can help share the load, but even this plan can fail since more assistants often means that there’s more opportunity to carry even more gear!

The ugly reality of the situation is that there are very few good carrying options on the market today. Lowepro have the biggest range of rucksacks but personally I’ve never found them to be comfortable with heavy loads – they’re camera bags first and back packs second. To make matters worse most of them don’t leave any room for non-camera related essentials.

It was therefore very intrigued when I came across a fairly new company called F-Stop Gear that makes a couple of camera back packs specifically designed for the outdoor photographer: the day-sized Tilopa and the expedition sized Satori.

Both packs are based on the same premise – they are extremely good back packs in their own right, and they are specifically designed to hold an “Internal Camera Unit” – or ICU – to carry the camera. F-Stop gear provides two ICUs – a large model and an extra large model. Both packs will hold either ICU, but obviously the extra large one leaves less space for other equipment. The Tilopa is supplied with the large ICU and the Saturi with the extra large.

I spent a long time trying to decide which of the two packs to buy, but in the end I went with the Tilopa. It’s big enough for a day’s commercial shoot on the hills, but not so big that I’d be tempted to overfill it and risk carrying a silly amount of weight.

My main concern was whether or not the large ICU would be big enough for a typical trip, however my fears were lain to rest this week when I packed the sack for it’s first call of duty. In the ICU I had:

• 1 Canon 5DMkII with battery grip
• 1 Canon 70-200 f/2.8 IS L
• 1 Canon 24-70 f/2.8 L
• 1 Canon 16-35 f/2.8 L
• 1 Sigma 15mm fisheye
• Lens hoods for all the above
• A pocket wizard Flex transceiver/transmitter kit
• 1 Canon 430EX Mk II
• 1 Nextodi (to back up memory cards)
• 1 Manfrotto Mini tripod

Outside of the ICU I had room for:

• Lunch
• A Gortex jacket
• A fleece jacket
• Hat and gloves
• Map/compass
• Walki-Talkies
• iPhone
• Leatherman
• First aid kit
• Waterbottle (in side pocket)

Needless to say, there’s plenty of room in this sack!  But space isn’t everything, and the Tilopa just kept on delivering the goodies.  Here are the things that I just love about this pack:

• First and foremost the Tipola is a great back pack in it’s own right.  There’s an internal metal structure to place most of the weight of the sack onto the hips, and the hip belt is adequately padded and very comfortable to wear.  The above gear weighed 12kg (26lb) and I was fine carrying it.
• Most camera packs offer easy access to gear, but with the Tilopa (and Satori) access to the gear is from the back of the pack.  This means that it’s the front of the sack that gets put onto the wet/muddy ground – the back stays clean.   Access to the top is also designed around this concept.
• Opening the back access is easy thanks to a nice rounded zip that avoids sharp corners.
• The pack’s flat bottom means that is can be stood upright.
• The shoulder straps are perfectly shaped for maximum comfort.
• There are pockets galore.
• The 3 colours in the range are great choices.  The black makes this pack a great choice as a camera back pack for street use.  The red is ideal for the mountain where high visibility is important and the foliage green will appeal to wildlife photographers.
• The pocket on the hip belt fits an iPhone very nicely:)

All considered this is the best and most comfortable back pack that I’ve used.   I was also pleased to discover that their customer service was both speedy and competent.

F-stop gear offers free worldwide delivery, however I wanted to avoid the complications of import duty to France so I bought the sack from their German distributor.  My only complaint is that this was a fairly complex and frustrating event – they don’t even take credit cards!  Still, once the transaction was made the bag was delivered promptly.

A fun and unusual family portrait....
(click for larger size)

The snow we had here just after Christmas was impressive – It measured 60cm on the garden table. It’s the first time we’ve had that much here since we moved to France nearly 10 years ago.

Having the family blocked in the house was a good opportunity for a fun family portrait. I decided to play with interior paranoramics.

Interior panoramic images present the greatest degree of difficulty for the panoramic photographer. The close up nature of the subjects requires that there be absolutely no parallex error when rotating the camara, otherwise the image stitching will fail. To achieve this the camera must be rotated precisely around the entrance pupil – there’s no room for sloppiness.

The image that I wanted to create required that the subjects would be very close the lens. The tiled floor would add to the stitching demands, but to really compound the problems the subjects would also be moving! I wanted my 2-year-old daughter to appear once with each person (and the cat)…

The camera was mounted vertically (so as to have a taller image) with the Canon 14mm MkII lens attached (this lens is sharper than my Sigma 15mm fisheye). I rotated the camera for each shot and moved people in and out as required.

The resulting images proved tricky to stitch because in some cases the subject would take up a significant proportion of one frame, but wouldn’t appear in the images to each side. In the end, and to my surprise, it was Photoshop CS 4 that came to the rescue. Each image was added as a layer and then aligned automatically – PS did a near perfect job with the exception of its choice of central position (which I had to change manually) . Since I still had my layers it was easy to mask in and out the subjects as required. Once I was happy the layers were blended together to remove all trace of the seams.

A fun result for a family portrait…

Note that I’m offering panoramic tuition as part of my new workshops.

Participants of the Panoramics Workshop will receive Kolor’s demonstration DVD and a discount code for their Autopano software.

Many photographic workshops are aimed at newcomers who seek basic guidance and support, covering entry-level subjects such as exposure, composition “rules” and simple post-processing techniques. My objective is different — to address the needs of intermediate and advanced shooters who wish to push themselves further and overcome any hurdles that are preventing their progression.

With this in mind I have chosen not to offer a rigid menu of predefined workshops. Instead, I will discuss your requirements with you in advance so that each workshop will be a unique experience designed to meet the specific needs of its participants. Nothing is fixed — the dates, course content, duration and even the location are all open to discussion (and guidance).

You can browse the list subject areas that I’m currently proposing on my workshops site. If you have other needs then please feel free to contact me.

To get the ball rolling I’ve decided to offer a 20% discount on the first five bookings for 2010.

I thought it might be interesting for some of you if I explain how this image of a tennis player diving for the ball was created, starting with the concept and working through to the the post-production.

Concept

Once the initial idea for the photo had been conceived (and having the idea is often the biggest challenge) the first step was to determine exactly how to achieve the result.  In this case I clearly couldn’t ask a model to dive onto a real tennis court (that’d hurt I would think…), so the only option left open to me was to produce a composite image.

As with all commercial-style shoots it’s important to pre-visualise the final image since this will guide the choice of location, the model, the clothing, etc. In the case of a composite image this pre-visualisation becomes absolutely critical; if the result is to be successful each of the individual images needs to be taken under similar conditions.  If the perspective of each subject isn’t consistent, the depth of field doesn’t match or the lighting is too different then the final result won’t be convincing.  It’s not feasible to undertake a project of this nature without having a good idea of what the final image will look like.

Planning

I knew that I wanted to use a wide angle lens with the tennis player close to the camera for a more dramatic perspective, and this implied a number of important considerations:

• I would need a very wide chroma key (“green screen”) backdrop.
• I would therefore need a fairly large studio.
• The perspective distortion would be strong, so it would be very important that the photo of the tennis court be taken at the same focal length as the photo of the player so that I could place the player at the correct distance into the image.

Unfortunately I didn’t have access to a green screen as wide as I needed, so I had to improvise.  I ordered a 1.2m x 15m roll of “Fadeless Art Paper”¹ so that I could stick it up on the wall using masking tape.  I didn’t expect this to be ideal (and I was right!) however I was prepared to spend a little more time in post-production to work around any problems.

Other than the backdrop issue there were many other things to think about – even a small scale shoot like this one needs careful planning.  Here’s an non-exhaustive list of the things that I needed to consider or remember to bring along:

• The date and time: the studio, the model and myself all needed to be available at the same time.
• The camera equipment: which lenses and strobes would I need to bring along? I have a very long equipment check list that I use when planning a shoot.
• The model’s comfort: food and drink (I made a quiche), access to toilets, a place to change, etc.  Also, in this case, a mattress to land on!
• Setting up: It’s the simple things that are easy to forget – masking tape, scissors and a step ladder for  putting up the backdrop for example.

The “Dive” Shoot

The "dive"

I planned to give myself an hour of set-up time before the talent arrived, however I was lucky enough to find a great model who wanted to be involved in the whole process.   She arrived early to help me unpack the car and prepare the equipment.  Without her help putting the backdrop in place would have been a horrendous experience – thanks Selma!

I’d bought 2 mattresses and a thick double duvet to use as a landing pad.  I positioned these at the angle that I wished to take the photo and moved them as far away from the “green screen” as I could.  The combination of a wide angle lens, a very wide subject (model horizontally out-stretched with a tennis racket) and close shooting distance meant that I couldn’t get as much separation as I’d have liked, so the green would inevitably “spill” onto the model and increase the post-processing time.  The main light also cast a shadow on the backdrop (although that isn’t too hard to handle later).

The lighting setup was fairly classic.  I used two monobloc flashes to light the backdrop as evenly as possible.  The main light was a Profoto AcuteB with the “New Zoom Reflector”, placed just left of camera and just high enough to put a catch light in the model’s eyes.  I planned to use another AcuteB as a fill light but it wasn’t necessary in the end (the white walls did that for me).  Rather than let it go unused I was able to use both power packs together for the main light (a dual tube Acute “Twin” head) allowing me to reduce the flash duration to better freeze the model in mid-air.  Finally, a Canon 580EX with a C.T.O. gel used as a kicker gave a slight separation.  All the flashes were set off simultaneously using PocketWizard radios.

After an hour’s set-up time we were ready to shoot.  Once again I was lucky to have been blessed with a great and enthusiastic model.  She took a 10 minute jog to get the sweat going a little, and then proceeded to take 70 (yes, seventy.) dives onto the landing pad.

My 5D MKII was tethered to my Macbook Pro, and the images were bought into Lightroom² so that she could see her body position and facial expressions.  This sort of direct feed back really helps to get the talent involved in the shoot, helping them to help you.

At the end of the shoot I took an image of a tennis ball under exactly the same lighting conditions.  This would facilitate the composition later on.

The “Tennis Court” Shoot

The tennis court

The choice of court would have an huge effect on the final image.  Since I wanted a slightly gritty/hard feel to the image I found a court that would suit that look.

The light falling onto the court was very flat – not at all like the hard light falling on the model – but that actually gave me more opportunity to control the image in post-production, and for the look I was after the flat light was more appropriate.  Had I wished for more lighting consistency it would have been crucial that the light was coming from the same direction as the light on the model (and that would have cast my shadow on the ground, complicating things a little).

The only major shooting considerations were therefore the focal length and aperture (which needed to be the same as that used in the studio), the focal point and the angle of view.

Post Production

I personally use Lightroom to catalogue and rate my images, so the very first step was to bring the images into my main catalogue. Once this was done I selected the images that would be used in the composite.

To choose my selects I use an iterative process.  On the first run through I give one star to all the images that have any possibility of being selected (in this case filtering out the ones where there model has already landed or where she wasn’t placed correctly in front of the green screen, etc).

I then filter for only these images and go through again to find the 2-star images – this is possible now that I have a familiarity with all the images in the collection.

In the third iteration I find the best images from the collection and I also check for critical focus.  If necessary a fourth iteration will leave me with just a few images to select from.  For this shoot the body position and facial expression were the two most important criteria.

Once I had my “dive” shot selected I bought it into Photoshop to remove the green screen (and the green spill).  This is a critical step, a badly cut out image will destroy the final effect.  Delivering a well-executed composite image requires a fair amount of post-processing experience and familiarity with your editing application (Photoshop in my case).

The tennis court also received some retouching to remove the fussy background. I wanted a clean image in which there weren’t lots of details fighting for the user’s attention.

The resulting composition is achieved using a fair number of layers in Photoshop.  Good use of layers ensures that the composition is created non-destructively so that it can be tweaked until it’s right.  The three principal images (court, talent and ball) are included as smart objects so that they can be transformed and retouched many times without compromising the image quality.

Here’s a look at the resulting layers palette to give you a feel for the work involved. Bear in mind that some of the work isn’t visible here since it’s inside the smart objects (the green-screen masking, for example).

Note that it’s best to read from the bottom up.

Attention to detail is essential if the composite is to look real to the casual observer. Things such as the subtle colouration of the ball and t-shirt from reflection of the ground help to ensure that the result is as seamless as possible.

Over to you…

I hope that this has been a useful insight into a shoot of this type.   There are many things to consider and to control, but this is what makes photography so interesting!

If you’re interested in learning more about photo realistic composition then you may be interested in the workshop that I’m going to to start offering for 2010.

If you have any questions then please feel free to leave a comment so that others may benefit.

1. This was harder than it should have been since I couldn’t find such a thing in France so I had to order from the UK.
2. Tethered shooting is possible using a combination of EOS Utility and Lightroom

In my last blog post I talked about my new plug-in, PLUS for Lightroom, that’s used to embed licensing rights information into the XMP meta-data of an image.  I received a couple of questions about XMP so I thought I’d explain the basics of meta-data for the benefit of those who are just starting to get to grips with the digital workflow.

Meta-Data

Meta-data is just data about data.  Information about information.

Huh?

A concrete example may help.  If the data is a photo, then the meta-data will include information about that photo, such as the time it was taken, the photographer, the shutter speed and aperture, etc.  This meta-data isn’t part of the captured image itself, but it’s information about that image. Conceptually, it’s as simple as that.

The usefulness of meta-data becomes apparent when the photographer starts to appreciate the importance of a good workflow, and it becomes essential knowledge when photographs are passed between different people in a professional situation.  As a very basic example, a photographer will wish to ensure that a copyright line is carried with each of his or her images.

Meta-data can be stored in a variety of places. If you write down some notes about your photo and stick them on a pile on your desk, that’s meta-data. Obviously that would be far from ideal though.  A better solution is to use a computer to help us with this task, and there are tools designed for photographers, such as Lightroom, Photo Mechanic or Aperture that are designed to do just that. These programs usually maintain a database in which meta-data about each photo (such as a description, it’s location on the hard drive and a 5 star rating) is stored.  Since the metadata is centralised into one database it’s very quick to run searches and filters, and to do other cool things that will help your workflow.

There’s another option for meta-data storage too.  The meta-data can be embedded inside the file with which it’s associated, which is to say that it’s stored inside the file (the JPEG, TIFF, etc) in such a way that it can be retrieved by a capable application.  This method has the advantage that the meta-data is actually attached to the file, so if the file moves or gets sent somewhere by email, then the meta-data will travel with it.  The disadvantage of this approach is that it’s less efficient if you need to do a search; if the computer needs to open every file to read its meta-data then this would slow down meta-data searches significantly. For photos stored elsewhere (such as those archived on a CD), then you would be required to insert the CD just to complete your search request.

In reality we use a combination of approaches.  Some meta-data is stored in the file, and some within the database software.  Most often however, the same data is stored in both places, so that searches are efficient whilst important information is guaranteed to be kept securely with the file itself.

EXIF & IPTC

The terms EXIF and IPTC refers to two different and complimentary meta-data standards.

EXIF, stands for Exchangeable Image File data.  It’s a standard for storing information concerning the camera’s settings at the moment the picture was taken.  The EXIF meta-data contains things such as the shutter speed, aperture, flash settings, exposure compensation, focus point, colour space, focal length, time and date, etc.  The camera stores this meta-data with every picture that you take.

The IPTC is the International Press Telecommunications Council. In 1970 the IPTC defined a standard for meta-data that was designed for improving the digital workflow within the press world. IPTC meta-data contains information that is added to a photo by photographers and editors, such as the copyright information, image descriptions, descriptive keywords, etc.  Over time the standard has evolved, and there are a host of possible fields that may be filled in depending on the needs of the organisations involved.

Both of these standards have had to evolve over time, and this hasn’t been a straight-forward task.

The IPTC standard started life as a text-based standard for news related articles and gradually expanded to meet the needs of television and radio industries.  It wasn’t until 1994 that Adobe would include the ability to store IPTC data (or “IPTC headers”) into its digital image file formats. These traditional IPTC headers  are no longer appropriate for modern usage. Lacking proper support for non-English characters (even accented characters are not well supported) foreign languages may be impossible to incorporate.  Furthermore, the standards defining the location of the headers inside various file formats aren’t as strict as they should be.  You may be able to read the headers in one application but not another. The CrossIPTC tool is an example of a tool that attempts to convert IPTC data for use between platforms.

EXIF meta-data has it’s own problems.  While there are a lot of standardised fields, camera makers have also added their own proprietary information.  Since this information and the way in which it’s stored changes from one make to another, imaging applications may not be able to read and display all of it.  Worse still, saving a modified version of a file may result in a loss or corruption of this data, since the application isn’t even aware that it’s there.

XMP

With all this past experience came the opportunity to create a new all-encompassing meta-data standard.  Creating a new standard is a hard thing to do – people don’t like change.  To create a new standard requires a huge amount of time, money and drive.  It also requires the support of the industry. In 2001  Adobe stepped up to the challenge and created XMP.

XMP, the Extensible Meta-data Platform, provides a standard for storing meta-data, any meta-data, with the associated document. Adobe used their weight within the industry to gradually push XMP to the forefront.  All of the Adobe Creative Suite products provide support for XMP meta-data, giving virtually every digital imaging professional the ability to work with XMP.

Structured upon open standards that have been proved (XML), the data is stored in such a way that any of the world’s languages may be used in any text.  The standard is well defined and completely open, so it’s possible for all developers to write conforming applications.

XMP is, by definition, extensible.  If an organisation needs to store a piece of meta-data in its files that isn’t defined in the standard, then this information can be added to the XMP meta-data such that can be read and written by XMP aware imaging applications¹.  The applications don’t need to be changed to cope with the addition, and there shouldn’t be any way in which two proprietary meta-data blocks can be confused with each other.

Finally, one of XMP’s greatest strengths is that it defines how this information is stored in a particular file type. For file types that don’t support meta-data inclusion, XMP meta-data can still be stored in an associated file (known as a sidecar file) which should be moved and copied with the original.

Structurally, XMP is based around schemas.  A schema is simply a collection of related data, and there are standardised XMP schemas for the most common types of meta-data.  This brings the advantages of XMP to the well known meta-data standards that are used throughout the world today.  For example, there are schemas for both EXIF and IPTC, providing a robust system for including these standards, and giving the them freedom to develop.

It’s thanks to the extensibility of XMP that the PLUS coalition have been able to develop the PLUS standard for embedding usage rights information into image files.

Multiple Meta-Data

You may be wondering what happens if you include XMP meta-data in a file that already contains traditionally encoded IPTC and EXIF data.

It’s a great question and the answer is that it depends on your application.  If you’re running an older application that isn’t XMP aware, then it’ll just read the old IPTC and EXIF data as usual.  A newer application may see the XMP, and use only that, assuming that it overrides any older forms of meta-data, or it may offer you access to everything.

When images are saved newer applications may convert the IPTC and EXIF data into the new XMP schemas. The application may also try to simultaneously write the meta-data in the old format so that older applications can read it, however there are limitations to this approach.  Over time the old formats will be dropped and only XMP will be supported, removing all ambiguity.

XMP is a great creation.  Embrace it!

1. Within Photoshop, it’s even possible to design custom panels that will be displayed in the File Info box along with the other XML meta-data. Adobe supply document that explain how this is done.

However, I’ll fully admit that my DSLR isn’t always appropriate; I find that I hardly ever get my ‘big’ camera out for casual just-for-the-fun-of-it shooting.  I miss that. I’ve just come back from a week’s break to Florence and the size and weight of the 5D MkII with two 2.8 lenses was just too much – it was a bane around my neck, literally….

But I could use a small compact for the fun stuff, right?  Well, no.  The problem is that I get absolutely no pleasure from shooting with today’s compact cameras for several reasons:

• Their minuscule sensors give near infinite depth-of-field, and if I can’t play with selective focus then much of the pleasure of taking photos is gone.
• Their ergonomics and slow reaction times are frustrating.
• The resulting images are poor – for years the camera manufacturers have been playing the marketing game with the megapixel count, and as they’ve struggled to cram far too many pixels¹ onto those tiny sensors the results have been tragically poor quality images and appalling low light performance.

I thought that my hopes had been answered in 2006 when Sigma revealed the DP1 – the  first compact with a big sensor, but the camera wasn’t really up to the job.  Two years later, with the DP2, they hadn’t learnt much from their mistakes².

So, I’ve been waiting a long time for a compact digital camera with a wide aperture and corresponding large sensor (for reducing the depth of field) that offers high image quality, good low light performance and decent reactivity.

I’d nearly lost all hope, but now it seems that that day is finally dawning.  By the end of the year they’ll be quite a few “serious” compacts that make a concerted effort to meet these needs.  Here’s a quick run down.

Leica M9

It seemed impossible – a rangefinder style compact with full-frame 35mm sensor and interchangeable lenses!  The M9 looks like a dream camera (and so it should be at $7000!).  Leica seems to be making a concerted effort to come back from the M8 disaster with their heads held high, and for this they should be commended.

For me personally the M9 is well out of my budget for a ‘fun’ camera, and the full-frame renders it just a little too big.  I can certainly understand the appeal for many other photographers however – a traveller’s panacea.

Leica X1

Leica seem to have read my mind concerning the price and size or the M9.  The X1 offers a smaller APS-C sized sensor (still bigger than all the other competitors) and a much reduced price tag (albeit still with the Leica tax).  Unfortunately it has a fixed mount 35mm prime lens, rendering it less flexible than it could have been.

Olympus E-P1

Olympus tried to steal our hearts this year with their E-P1 and it’s gorgeous retro styling.  I’m a sucker for good design and if my heart ruled my head I’d buy this camera for the looks alone.

Based on the Micro four-thirds format the sensor has just a quarter of the surface area of the Leica’s 35mm sensor.  Nevertheless, this is still much bigger than those found in other compacts and offers very respectable selective focus possibilities.  The smaller sensor size also helps to keep the body more compact and the price down, which is a fair trade off.

The lenses are interchangeable, so lots of creative possibilities are opened up.³

Is there a catch?  Yes – the unusably slow auto-focus.  If I can’t use it to take photos of my fast moving two-year-old daughter then there’s no point.  Even for that beautiful styling – sniff…

Pansonic Lumix DMC-GF1

And so I save my personal choice for last.  Panasonic’s DMC-GF1 has sports a compact body, a four-thirds sensor, a good selection  of lens choices, fast auto-focus (nearly as fast as a consumer DSLR) and unremarkable-but-still-nice-styling.

It’ll be available very soon, and I’ll be trying before I buy, but this does seem the winner to me.

More to come?

Will there be any others by the end of the year?  Who knows…  It’s an exciting time.

1. Do consumers need typically need upwards of 12MPixels to print family snapshots?  I made beautiful A3 prints with my 6MPixel 300D.  It’s utter madness
2. I have to wonder what they were thinking.  They clearly saw that there was a market for a big sensor compact, but it didn’t occur to them that the market consisted of serious photographers who would want a fast camera.  Sluggish performance is one of the major issues I have with consumer compacts.
3. Which is to say, my wife’ll be happy with a zoom (she won’t care about the aperture), and I’ll be happy with a wide aperture prime….

Food photography presents many small problems that keep the grey matter on its toes. Experimenting with new techniques and keeping them fresh help keep the mind open and aware during all photos shoots.

Should a professional photographer limit his or her photography to just one or two specialist areas, or is it better to be a generalist?

I know a local photographer who has had a very successful career as a generalist. He’s been successful for two reasons: firstly, he’s a very good generalist photographer who is able to adapt himself easily and secondly, he runs his business through a shop that is easily accessible to the general public. He’s also an extremely likable and chatty character who inspires confidence and who has gained an excellent reputation in the local area.

The ability to work with confidence in interior environments is critical to my professional work. Although my images usually involve people, I still need to be able to light the environment appropriately.

Nevertheless, as a general rule I believe that most businesses are far more likely to shine when they do one thing exceedingly well rather than many things reasonably well. Restaurants are an excellent example of this principle; our expectations are far higher of restaurants that offers one type of food. A restaurant that offers everything from an Indian curry to a Sunday roast may be okay – but it’ll never be exceptional.

If your web site has portfolios for weddings, still life, studio, architecture and fashion then what sort of message are you giving to your potential clients? Unless your work is undeniably top-notch across the board¹  you’ll be sending a confusing one at best, and an amateurish one at worse. It’s important to ask yourself if you’ll be taken seriously.

Being confortable in the studio is also important to me. Maintaining the skill set required to tackle more challenging materials such as glassware opens up a world of possibilities for my work - especially when it comes to compositiing images...

Despite this I do actually believe that a great specialist photographer should also be a good generalist. It’s important to vary photographic experiences in order to maintain and attain skills and techniques. Having a good repertoire of skills to call upon is essential, and calling upon them with the confidence that only comes through regular practice will undoubtedly have a positive effect on ones specialist photography, allowing the photographer to constantly advance and avoid creative or technical stagnation. For this reason it’s very important for me, personally, to have personal projects that I undertake for no other reason that personal satisfaction and growth.

Can the need to maintain a specialised professional portfolio be reconciled with the more eclectic work that I’ve just mentioned? Should a photographer avoid showing his or her work outside of the specialist area?

The answers to these questions are “yes” and “probably not”.  Personal work often provides a view into the photographer’s soul that isn’t visible through the commercial work; it would be a shame to hide this, and very possibly counter productive.  However, the distinction should be very clear and the professional portfolio itself should be focussed and unambiguous so that it sends a clear message to clients. Other work should be presented separately – there are several ways of acheiving this:

• Separate commercial and personal work on your site.
• Place non-specialist work into a blog or other non-formal presentation that can’t be confused with the professional portfolio.
• Place personal work onto a totally separate site.

Macro photography isn't my speciality, but it has been useful to me in the past. Maintaing this skill is not only personally rewarding, it can be useful at the most unexpected times..

My own site has evolved through experience and with the benefit of advice kindly shared other professionals² – I hope that this post will do the same for some of you….

1. If you really excel at several forms of photography then it’s probably worth having a separate site for each one.
2. I attained a wealth of great advice from Chase Jarvis during a workshop for pro-photographers – thanks Chase!

Despite this, all too often the post-processing stage is neglected.  Some photographers even condemn the practice, uttering arguments along the lines of “wishing to capture the scene exactly as is was”, and using this as an excuse for avoiding any post-processing effort.  I’d like to have seen them have this discussion with Ansel Adams!

The reality of the situation is that no scene is captured “accurately” by a camera. Converting the 3-dimensional scene to a 2-dimensional photo has a dramatic effect all by itself, and this is further exacerbated by the choice of lens (and thus perspective).   Technology’s limits come into play too – both the dynamic range and the colours that can be recorded are determined by either the choice of film or the capacities of the digital camera’s sensors.  At this early stage the captured image is already a severely altered version of reality.

Furthermore, digital camera users who resort to JPEG mode have inadvertently decided to let the camera post-process their images for them,  in accordance with the preferences of the camera’s manufacturer.  The firmware of the camera will apply its own contrast curve, saturation adjustments, noise reduction, sharpening and colour balance to create a rendition of the image that is intended to be “pleasing” to the average user; it’s anything but “accurate”.  This is intentional – the results, aesthetically speaking, are more interesting than trying to reproduce the reality as accurate as possible.  Thus any personal attempt to capture reality has already failed – the camera’s done its best to create an improved version!

Those who prefer a RAW workflow take control of all of these aspects for themselves.  I believe that this is without a doubt the best approach for most serious photographers – I would never dream of letting my camera guess at my intentions when I create an image. Developing a RAW image is the first (and possibly last) step in the post-processing stage.  This is the point at which a photographer imposes his or her personal vision on a photo.

How far should one go with the post-processing?  Photographers will each have their own objectives; a journalist may indeed strive to create a neutral image that reflects the reality of the scene, whereas a fine-art photographer may change many aspects of the image.  The important point is that in all cases the photographer should be making these decisions and understanding his or her actions, rather than believing blindly that setting the camera to JPEG to avoid more work later is the right – or righteous – thing to do¹.

Since I’m a commercial photographer the post-processing phase is of utmost importance – it can make or break an image.  Advertisers don’t wish to convey reality; they wish to suggest something better – something that provokes an emotional response.  In my case the changes are often quite small, but they can make a huge difference to the final result.  The example in this post is from a recent shoot;  I’m loathe to show my out-of-camera originals – but hey, it’s for the greater cause. I’ve displayed the end result again for easier comparison.

Before

After

I’m embarrassed to show you the “before” version – it’s very rare that my original is quite so far removed from the final result, however as an example that demonstrates the importance that post-processing can have, it’s ideal.

Before the shoot I already had the final shot in my head, so I knew what I was aiming for.   This example is particularly appropriate because I couldn’t have captured the image I wanted without post processing.  The final image dictated that I use a wide-angle lens, but it would at the very least need cropping, and cropping is one form of post-processing all by itself².

I asked the model to wear a bright red t-shirt so that it would clash with the surroundings.  This would be easier to select in post-processing later, thus allowing me to make adjustments to the colour palette of the final image based on experimentation.

Although the original photo is well exposed, I decided to over-expose the final image to create the “raw” feeling that comes with high contrast.  Finally, I’ve warmed up the image by changing the white balance, added a little Lightroom clarity and a slight vignette, and I’m finished.

In the original the foot is blurred and the trainer’s dirty, the model has been decapitated and the colours are uninspiring, I don’t like the model’s overall body position or the composition. Nevertheless I was able to see past all this because I had an intention and because I’m willing and able to post-process my images. The actual post-processing work in this example is quite limited, however the result is dramatically different. It corresponds to both my intention and my personal style. I’m very happy to place the result in my portfolio.

1. It may well be the right thing to do for some photographers, such as a journalists who need to record many images and get them to the editor as fast as possible, but they of course understand this…
2. This is a major advantage of a high pixel count camera such as the 5D MkII.

So, I started to look around.  There is now an impressive array of web engines available for Lightroom, offering more and more advanced features, however it seemed that my particular – simplistic – needs weren’t to be met.

This is what I was looking for:

• A simple and elegant design that would fit well with my site’s clean look.  I didn’t want navigation bars or indeed anything else that would make the galleries feel out of place.
• A showcase for small collections of images, certainly no more than 30 at a time and probably less than 15.  No need for multiple pages – just an elegant presentation of each collection.
• No Flash.
• No Flash.

The last point is so important that I’ve repeated it twice.  I can’t abide Flash and I refused to have to use it again.  I have two big issues with it (aside from the colour management problem):

1. The visitor has to have an appropriately up-to-date version installed to be able to visit a Flash-based site site.  I want my visitors to have an easy viewing experience, not an aggravating one.
2. You can’t see Flash galleries on most mobile devices, including the iPhone.

I’d previously been obliged to use Flash due to the lack of a visually appealing HTML based web engine for Lightroom, but this time I was determined to find a better option.

Sadly, my search was in vain.

There was only one course of action left open to me – to write my own HTML gallery using Javascript for the “fancy” effects, and then struggle through the learning curve of creating a Web Engine for Lightroom that would generate the gallery.

In fact, I decided to go quite a few steps further.  I created my new web engine and then extended it far beyond my own needs, making  it highly configurable so that other people could benefit from it too.  This gallery is called Elegance and I’m making it donationware like I’ve done for all my Lightroom plugins.  You may download Elegance from the Photographer’s Toolbox.

You can see many examples by browsing my portfolio.   I’ve also created another look for The Bicycle as a sample.

If you use Elegance I’d love to see some results.

(Oh, and the cherry on the cake – not only are Elegance galleries viewable on the iPhone, they even support finger swiping gestures )

Anyone looking for the Lightroom plugins that I’ve created for my fellow photographers will now find everything they need in one place – the Photographer’s Toolbox.

Any feedback regarding the new site design is appreciated.

The obvious solution, and one that many location photographers use, is to Geoencode the photos.

Luckily many cameras have integrated GPS nowadays, it’s become a cheap consumer level component that’s easy to include in even the smallest compact camera.  Unluckily, Canon have taken their standard approach of sucking the will to live from its DSLR users, refusing to take the GPS module from their tinsy-winsy compacts and put it in their high-end and very expensive digital SLRs¹.  The only option the offer is to buy a very expensive vertical grip that has a socket to plug in a commercial GPS logger. Utter madness.

So, today I decided to try automating this process using Jeffrey Friedl’s geoencoding plug-in for Lightroom (he always gets the best plugin ideas, the fiend), an iPhone, and the Trails application.

The process was a pleasure.  The Trails application has a surperb user interface – you start recording a new trail and stick the iPhone in your pocket.  The application ensures that the iPhone doesn’t turn off, and even shuts down the screen automatically.  At any moment you can stop and start recording on the same route, which is very useful if you’re driving around and shooting intermittently since it’ll really save on the battery life.

Once the scouting’s over recoving the tracklog it simple – Trails will email to you.  How cunning’s that?

To geoencode the photos they first need to be imported into Lightroom.  Once this is done the images should be selected, and then Jeffrey’s plug-in should be invoked.  The plug-in can then be used to open the tracklog file², and by correlating the time and date information from both the tracklog and the photos the GPS coordinates for each photo can be estimated with a high degree of accuracy³.

Easy peasy.

1. A built in intervalometer is another example – easy to include in software, but then they couldn’t sell a remote shutter for €100
2. For the plug-in to open the tracklog I had to remove the .xml suffix that Trails generated
3. the caveat here is that the camera and the iPhone should have their time and date synchronised

All this has now changed. For the past few months I’ve been exceptionally well organised thanks to many services and technologies that have come to fruition, and these services are improving all the time. I hope that others my benefit from my tenacity in making this all work for me…

The major player in my newly organised life is Google. Google’s technologies are simply excellent for a number of reasons:

• They are very well thought out
• They have great user interfaces
• They are free of charge
• They are accessible from anywhere
• Most importantly, they are open.

Openness is an essential part of the Google philosophy; whereas many companies have previously tried to lock users into their system by using proprietary data formats and by limiting exportation of data, Google’s sensible “the data belongs to the user” approach, whereby the user can easily get their data out of Google, is one of the major reasons that so many people want use it!  Ironic, isn’t it?

I use Google as the synchronisation hub for nearly all my organisational needs.  GMail is my email service and also the central repository for all my contact information, Google Calendar is used to organise my schedule, Google Documents allow me access to information that I’ll need on the road, and I use Google Reader for reading my (long) RSS list. This is all well and good, but its the combination of Google with other technologies that makes this system work so well, so I’ll discuss each of them in turn in a moment.

The other key in my organisational arsenal is my iPhone. Having the internet, email, contact and calendars up to date and in my pocket the whole time is absolutely essential to the success of this system.

Email

In my opinion GMail is the best on-line email client there is. There are a couple of missing features (such graphical signatures) but these disadvantages are outweighed easily.  There are two killer features: the first is the unparalleled grouping of messages into conversations, and the second is the ability to send emails as if they came from external addresses. I have several email addresses that all feed into GMail (where they are labelled automatically), and when I respond the reply will be seen to come from that email address, and not my gmail.com address. This not only looks more professional, it also allows me to dissociate myself from GMail should I decide not to use the service in the future.

Obviously I can access my Gmail account from the iPhone. Since I wish to send emails from my own domain and not from the gmail.com address I used the iPhone’s ability to access GMail as a generic IMAP email server rather than using the built in GMail option.

Back on the Mac the obvious disadvantage of using a web based email client is that you don’t get handy message arrival notifications and you can’t drag and drop attachments onto the interface. One solution to is use Apple Mail to access the GMail account via IMAP¹, however you then lose the advantages of the GMail interface (better conversation grouping, labels, stars, archiving, spam reporting, etc). Fortunately there’s a fantastic solution to the problem – Mailplane. My biggest fear is that this app stops being sold….

Contacts

Until recently Google’s treatment of contacts was abysmal in that everyone that you ever replied to would be added to your contact list. In my case, since I reply to many support requests everyday, I had an enormous list of contacts that I didn’t personally know. Using Google as the central database for my contacts was out of the question.

This has all changed now. Google still stores all contacts (which does have advantages), but a subset of those can be manually moved into the “My Contact” list, and other lists can also be created. The “My Contacts” list is my central contact database, and this is synchronized with my iPhone using Google Sync Services.   Instantaneous over-the-air syncing is great – I rarely sync my iPhone with iTunes nowadays.  The only missing feature is the inability to synchronise groups other than the “My Contacts” list – I’m hoping that that’ll come soon.

I don’t personally synchronise my contacts with my Mac because I use Mailplane as the email client, but this is apparently possible.

Calendars

The Google Calender is a great example of using the web for collaborative purposes. All my calendars are hosted by Google, and it’s the same for my wife. I can see hers and she can see mine. It’s fab. Once again the calendars are synchronised to the iPhone using Google Sync Services. There used to be an annoying limitation of 5 synchonised calendars but this has now been lifted to 25 so the issue has become moot.

Note that Google Sync Services acts as an Exchange server to do its magic.  Since the iPhone can only connect to one Exchange account this would be a problem for those who already use one. The iPhone 3.0 software now allows you to subscribe to CalDav services (such as Google Calendar), so you can now continue to use Exchange and access the Google Calendars using CalDav. It doesn’t solve the problem of synchronising Google contacts however….

On the Mac I prefer to use iCal, and thanks to the excellent BusySync application I can synchronise my Google calendars with iCal.  BusySync is a very comprehensive and flexible calendar synchonisation solution for the Mac.  Another solution is the SpanningSync, but I don’t like this as much since is relies on access to their servers.

Tasks (To-dos)

Google has tasks, but for the moment I’m not keen on the implementation. Instead, I rely on the Remember the Milk service. My tasks are hosted there, and are synchronised with my iPhone in two ways:

• I use their iPhone Application to enter my tasks.  (I hope that they introduce push notifications soon).
• Tasks with due dates are subscribed to as a read only calendar (iPhone 3.0 software needed)

I tend to forget tasks easily if I don’t see them every day.  Again, Remember The Milk comes to the rescue with a GMail gadget that displays the tasks in the sidebar on the left.  I then use the Google Labs gadget that shifts the labels to the right hand side so that I don’t run out of vertical space.  Note that Remember The Milk also offer a firefox plugin, but since I want to see my tasks in GMail using Mailplane, I don’t use it.

I also Remember The Milk’s iGoogle gadget (more about iGoogle later….)

Finally, I subscribe to the tasks list from Google Calendar too.

Documents

Google Documents allow me to create and share simple documents, presentations and spreadsheets, and to access and edit them anywhere.  There’s no need to have appropriate editing software (such as Excel) installed on the machine. This is great for collaborative stuff.

When I wish to have full time access to native format documents (such as Excel spreadsheets) I use Dropbox. Dropbox allows me to maintain a centralised archive of documents and then have them automatically synchronised between any machines that I install the software on.  I can even read the docs on the iPhone.

RSS

By using Google Reader to read my RSS feeds I can, once again,  read and stay synchronised everywhere.  On my iPhone I use the Byline application to stay synchonised with Google Reader.

Bookmarks

Bookmark syncing is handled by XMarks.  This service allows me to synchonise my bookmarks between Firefox and Safari (and thus my iPhone) and also allows me to access my bookmarks directly from their site when I’m on another machine.

iGoogle

iGoogle is a customisable home page for Google, and I think it’s very underrated.  I use this as my home page, and it gives me a one page overview of my calendar, tasks (thanks to the above mentioned gadget), RSS feeds, etc.  I highly recommend it.

Twitter & Facebook

I stay in touch socially using Twitter and Facebook.  I’d never really used these services much before, but the iPhone changes everything…

A note about MobileMe

MobileMe may well be a great option for many Mac uses, and if offers some great services.  If I could pick and choose then I’d probably use it, however I don’t want to pay for a ton of stuff that I’ll never use.  GMail is a much better email web client, Bookmark syncing doesn’t work with Firefox, Back to my Mac is handled free by LogMeIn, and the free DropBox is better than iDisk in many ways.  If I could just pay for “Find my iPhone” I’d do that.

Summary

The above technologies work for me because my data is always readily accessible and always up to date.  Once set up it’s as smooth as silk and has been very reliable.  I’m sure that there are other options worth mention, and you can leave your thoughts in the comments.

1. IMAP allows email to be synchronised across all clients. For example, if I read or delete a mail on my iPhone it’ll be seen as read or deleted on the server or by any other client that I use. This is in sharp contrast to the utterly useless POP protocol.

Having had a good look at his book, I felt that I just had to blog about it. This really is a great Lightroom book; not only is it comphensive, it’s extremely clear and easy to read. Nathaniel has obviously thought long and hard about his presentation, and the result is simply excellent – the best I’ve seen. And the final cheery on the cake is that Nathaniel has separated the chapters with some wonderful colour images to inspire you to get out there and shoot…

I’d highly recommend this book to anyone wishing to learn more about Lightroom. And no, I’m not just saying that because he gave me a free copy!

To this end, over the course of the last few weeks I’ve been doing a lot of research into the various options that are on the market. Unfortunately I couldn’t find any resources on-line that grouped all facts together to help make the decision easier, so I’m sharing the fruits of my labour in the hope that it’ll serve other photographers.

Updates

I shall continue to update this post retrospectively to fix any errors or to add new information that I deem pertinant.

History

28 May 2009: Added importance of minimim flash duration to the discussion.
26 May 2009: Added flash duration for Acute Twin head, and discuss the use of two AcuteBs as a great starting setup.

The Contenders

There are battery powered flash systems available from all the major flash manufacturers, including Profoto, Elinchrom, Hensel, Bowens, Bron, White Lightning and Alien Bees. However, since Paul Buff’s White Lightning and Alien Bee systems are not readily available in Europe I eliminated them from my research. I also eliminated Bron since they’re far too expensive. That left Profoto, Hensel, Bowens and Elinchrom.

Criteria

In the comparison that follows I’ve compared the specifications of the various options available.

When considering a flash system some of the most important factors, price aside, are the power, flash duration, recycle time and the weight of the system, so I’m going to take a quick detour to discuss these points. The one thing that I don’t talk much about in this article is price – each photographer will have their own budget to consider.

Power

How much power should a portable flash have? This is a key question to answer when choosing a system because it’s going to have a direct consequence on the weight, and therefore the portability of the battery pack.

Questions to ask include:

Will you be shooting at the brightest time of day?
Will you need to overpower the ambient light, or are you just wishing to supply fill?
Will you be using a softbox or a reflector? Softboxes will require more light.
Will you be shooting in confined spaces or with wide apertures; will you need to turn the power right down?

To overpower sunlight using a softbox at 2pm in the afternoon on a bright day, you’ll need power, and you should definitely be looking at a system offering 1000Ws or higher. Most people consider 600Ws to be borderline for overpowering the ambient light, but depending on your shooting style this may not be an issue, in which case the 600Ws units are more portable and less expensive.

A good alternative would be to invest in a 600Ws system that offers a bi-tube flash head. When you need 1200Ws (or a shorter flash duration) you can put two packs together. When you don’t, you have more flexibility in the placement of the packs, and the ability to travel with half the weight when only one light’s needed.

Having lots of power isn’t necessarily a good thing however. Often the more powerful flashes don’t have a power range that allows them to be fired a very low power. The Bowens Explorer 1500 is such an example – it offers 1500Ws, but can’t be fired at less than 31Ws. When working with wide apertures or in circumstances where the light can’t be moved further back, the minimum power level can quickly become a real problem. I often stumble into this when using my 600Ws Bowens Geminis in the studio – their 6 stop range is limiting on the lower end. The problem can of course be address using ND filters, but it’s a pain.

Flash duration

If you need to freeze action then a short flash duration is absolutely essential. The manufacturers typically quote the ‘t0.5′ value for the flash duration, which is the total time that the flash output is above 50% of its maximum for a given power level. To equate the flash output to an equivalent shutter speed (for freezing action) we really need the t0.1 value (the total time that the flash output is above 10% of its maximum), and we can fairly reliably calculate this by multiplying the t0.5 value by 3.

For example, a t0.5 flash duration of 1/3000s is approximately equivalent to using a shutter speed of 1/1000s as far as freezing action is concerned.

The duration of the flash is dependant on the power level chosen. It is generally quoted that, in the case of portable strobes such as these, the shortest flash duration is achieved at the lowest power level, and the longest at the higher power level. This being the case, overpowering the sun (high power requirement) and stopping action (low power requirement) may be mutually exclusive.

During my research however, it’s become clear that not all the power packs behave in accordance with this rule. In effect, as the various capacitors are switched in and out to achieve the desired power level, this has an effect on the flash duration that’s difficult to predict. For example, the Bowens Explorer 1500 has its shortest duration at 1000Ws, and the Hensel Porty 12 at 300Ws. Also of note is that on asymmetric packs the shortest flash duration will normally come from the lower powered output.

Unfortunately this level of detail isn’t readily available. I’d be happy to add flash duration curves to this article if my readers can provide the raw data.

Recycle time

This is simply the time that it takes for the strobe to recharge ready for the next shot. Clearly, it’ll take longer to recharge when shooting at full power than it will at low power.

If your shooting style is fairly slow then this will probably have little bearing on your final decision, however if you’re shooting action it can be the most important criteria when choosing a pack.

Weight

The weight of the pack may well be very important for you. If you working alone and moving about a lot then a low weight system will have a huge advantage. A small flash pack that you can put into a backpack is a lovely thing to have.

On the other hand, if you’re doing large commercial shoots and have assistants and transportation at hand then the advantages of the larger packs will probably outweigh the weight disadvantage.

For this reason, many photographers may eventually choose to go both ways and buy different pack for different uses, and this foresight may well influence the buying process:

• Does the manufacturer offer both heavy and lightweight systems?
• Are both these systems appropriate for you?
• Are the modifiers compatible with both systems?
• Are the heads compatible with both systems? Is that important to you?

Facts and Figures

I shall start with a direct comparison of the fact and figures since they’re easy to compare. They don’t tell the whole story however, so I will follow with a more subjective comparison afterwards.

To make this comparison fairer, I’ve divided the various product lines into two groups – those of less than 1000Ws, and those of 1000Ws or more. If we don’t do this then many of the figures become meaningless; for example the Hensel Porty 6′s stunning 1s recycle time is very impressive when compared to the Elinchrom Ranger’s 3 seconds – but of course it only has to reach half the power…

Packs offering 1000Ws and higher

Packs offering less than 1000Ws

Other considerations

If there were one flash system that stood out as the clear leader then that would certainly make the buying decision a lot easier. Unfortunately this isn’t the case. Each product range has its advantages and disadvantages, and there’s always a compromise to be made.

Aside from the compromises that can be seen from the above tables (power vs weight vs performance) there are other things to consider too. Here I’ll look at each system and add my own subjective viewpoint.

Bowens

The Bowens Explorer 1500 battery pack offers excellent value for money, and may well be the best compromise for a number of people. The Bowens system itself is very extensive and their innovative “Wafer” softboxes are considered by many to be the best of any brand.

Pros

• Very short flash duration (1/5700 at 1000Ws)
• Very reasonably priced
• Highest power output available (1500Ws)
• Full asymmetry – both heads can be controlled independently.
• A total of 4 heads may be attached – 2 QuadX’s and 2 Gemini Esprit monoblocs

Cons

• Noisy fan
• Slow recycle time
• A friend of mine who uses this system tells me that RF noise it emits interferes with (US) Pocket Wizard reliability. Need to use Pulsars instead.
• No lightweight portable system alternative (TravelPak requires Gemini monoblocs)
• No option to remotely control the power levels
• Minimum power level is high (31ws), which may be annoying when working at wide apertures

Elinchrom

Elinchrom offers what is arguably the best overall system in terms of interoperability. The Rangers offer good performance with a much lower weight penalty than either Profoto or Bowens and at a reasonable price. The Quadra’s compliment the Rangers very nicely when portability is essential, and the Ranger heads can be used on the Quadra. Furthermore, the Elinchrom modifiers are plentiful and very well regarded.

That all said, most users appear to strongly dislike the mounting system, describing it as fiddly and error prone. There are plenty of stories of softboxes falling off because they weren’t attached properly! Also, the Elinchrom range stops short – when the Rangers don’t have the recycle time that you need, there’s no top-end product to turn to.

Pros

• Excellent all-round system
• Good choice of modifiers
• Reasonably short flash duration
• Light weight
• Skyport system allows for remote power adjustments
• Battery change is quick and efficient – very well thought out
• Weather resistant thanks to sealed push button interface

Cons

• Build quality often considered lower than the alternative – may be a little more fragile
• Slow recycle times
• Very fiddly mounting system
• Digital interface less convivial than analogue knobs (personal opinion)
• No very high-end portable offerings

Hensel

The new Hensel Porty stands apart from its peers due to its Lithium battery technology. Using Lithium rather than Sealed Lead Acid gives the Porty some major advantages in weight and recharge times.

If portability is the most important feature for your shooting style then the Hensel will be a great tool. The Porty 6 out performs the competition easily. However, if you’ll eventually need more performance then there are no options in the range that’ll match the Profoto B2, so this could be limiting.

Pros

• Very low weight
• Very quick recharge time
• Very fast recycle times
• Excellent flash duration for the Porty 6
• Hensel radio system allows for remote power adjustments
• Weather resistant thanks to sealed push button interface

Cons

• Mediocre flash duration for the Porty 12 – especially when looking at the other advantages. A real shame that they couldn’t do better here.
• Digital interface less convivial than analogue knobs (personal opinion)
• Uninspiring range of modifiers
• Less common, so harder to find accessories etc.
• Spare batteries are very expensive

Profoto

When reading forums and talking with other professionals Profoto stands out as the brand of choice. Profoto products are expensive compared to the other brands, but they’re renowned for their build, reliability and superb light quality.

All is not rosy however. As a complete system I feel that Profoto is somewhat behind its peers. The AcuteB offers great portability, but the autonomy is poor and the recycle times and flash durations are very poor compared to the Hensel Porty 6. They’re also limited to just one head, and that head isn’t comptable with the other products such as the B2 or 7b, so if budget is tight it’s going to be hard to build up a system gradually. Finally, none of the battery packs are currently compatible with Profoto’s “Air”‘ system for remote power adjustment.

Do they have any redeeming features? Yes, of course. In terms of raw performance the B2 is the absolute best in class with the fastest recycling time and the shortest flash duration, although the price one pays for this is the weight. Moreover, they have what is undeniably the best mounting system. It’s quick and easy to use, and it allows for the reflectors to be “zoomed”. By moving a reflector back and forth the spread and quality of the light changes, giving the creative professional a wealth of possibilities that simply don’t exist with the other brands. It’s possible to change the fall-off of light in a way that would be very difficult in any other way.

All this is very infuriating. With Profoto you get both the best of what’s on offer (performance, build, superb mount) and the worst (price, system limitations, no remote power control) in one package, and you have to pay the highest premium for it.

If budget isn’t an issue then all things considered, Profoto is an excellent choice because it’s the system that has the most room for expansion (e.g. when you need more speed, there’s a pack that offers it). If you have the means to buy into both head systems then the system disadvange goes away. However if budget is an issue then think carefully before investing.

A single B2 is a great place to start, but the 7b represents awful value for money, offering very mediocre flash durations and recycle times.

Another excellent starting point would be to buy 2 AcuteBs, one with the bi-tube (Twin) head. This set up offers a great deal of flexibility – the two heads are totally independant for complete control and less cable routing problems. When portability is paramount one pack is very light to carry about. When more power, quicker recycling times or shorter flash durations are needed then the two packs can be used to drive the Twin head.

Pros

• B2 offers best in class performance
• Very high build quality
• Easy to rent
• Best mounting system by far (can aslo accept adapted Elinchrom modifiers)
• Excellent range of modifiers

Cons

• Expensive
• B2/7b packs are very, very heavy
• No radio system for remote power adjustments
• Not at all weather resistant – care needs to be taken.
• The AcuteB is poorly spec’d compared to competition equivalents
• B2 is best in class, but also heaviest
• Acute and Pro heads aren’t interchangable

Conclusion

All the systems that I’ve looked at have their own advantages and disadvantages. There’s no one brand that stands out as the obvious choice, and each photographer will have his or her own specific needs. It’s an unfortunate reality that it’s very unlikely that any of the systems available today will meet all of them. For example, I’d ideally like a small, light weight, 1200Ws pack that offers a very short flash duration and an extremely fast recycle time. In practice I can have all of those things, but not in the same package.

Given the sums of money involved I feel that it’s very important to take time to examine the various offerings and to make an informed decision based on your own requirements. Many forum discussion include comments along the lines that the light quality is essentially the same from all of them, and that all the systems will do a great job. Such commentry may be true for the person stating his or her opinion, but don’t be so blindly led. You may be very happy with your Elinchrom Ranger until the day that the 3s recycle time drives you mad and there’s no better option to upgrade to. You may love your Profoto until you realise that you need another light and you can’t afford it. Hensel offer a great package – but can you get parts easily where you live?

My advice is simple: consider not just what you want to do with the flash now, but also what you’ll do with it in the future. Look at the whole system, be very aware of the compromises that you have to accept, then decide.

• Canon 5D MkII
• Canon 30D (backup body)
• EF 16-35mm
• EF 24-70mm
• EF 70-200m
• Macbook Pro (15″)
• All the various chargers, cables, card readers, etc.

That’s a fairly compact amount of kit, but it’s worth a bomb.  The absolute last thing that I want to do is check-in any of this equipment as luggage. Doing so would mean risking loss, theft or breakage, any of which would not only be extremely upsetting in its own right, but it would stop me from participating actively during the week.

So imagine if you will my chagrin when I read the carry on baggage rights with Turkish Airlines:

8kg? That’s just ridiculous.

I grabbed my lightest backpack, and I can effectively stuff in the Macbook Pro, the 5D and 2 lenses before I reach the limit.  What’s a man to do?  Stick the other lens and body in my coat pockets seems to be the only possible solution to the problem.

I’d love to hear how other solve this issue….

His conclusion is that for on camera TTL (including bounced flash) the systems are just different.  That’s all.

We often hear that Nikon’s flash system is better than Canon’s and being the curious fellow that I am I’ve tried many times in the past to get to the bottom of this question by searching the net.  Until now I’ve never seen a decent comparison – probably due to the fact that there are so few people who are intimately acquainted with both systems.

I personally use Canon’s ETTL-II flash extensively, and I’ve never had an issue with it. It’s always worked extremely well for me. Clearly understanding the system is key to getting good results in either case.

However, I was very interested to note Niel’s thoughts concerning the better ease of use of Nikon’s off-camera TTL, so I took a peek at the SB-900 manual…

Here’s my own feature comparison based purely on reading the Nikon manual, my own experience with Canon, and the things that are important to my own use of flash.

Initial impressions

I certainly like the way that the SB-900 presents the information to the photographer, and I also like the way that the system allows the photographer to have total control over each flash group independently (for example, placing one group in TTL and another in manual). It seems easy to understand, and certainly slightly easier to grasp for someone new to off-camera TTL flash than Canon’s user interface.

Full TTL

In a full TTL situation the two systems are very different.  With Nikon you control the flash exposure compensation of each flash group independently whereas with Canon you control the overall flash exposure and then the ratio between the A/B groups. Nikon’s approach is easy to understand.  If Canon has an advantage here it’s that its very quick to change the ratio (and thus the output of two groups at once) with the simple turn of a dial – and this is something that I do all the time.  It seems to me that the Nikon flash system would require me to alter each group in turn to achieve the same thing which may be less efficient.

In practice however I assume that both systems simply require the photographer to adapt.  Like for Niel’s conclusions regarding on-camera TTL, I think that the systems are simply different – not really better or worse. In this case they’re so different that I can imagine that frequently switching between them would require an uncomfortable amount of mental gymnastics. However for those of us that use one system all the time I don’t think that there’s really an advantage to either approach. They both have their advantages and disadvantages, and they’re both so advanced as to excel in the right hands.

Mixed TTL/Manual

Where Nikon’s approach shines is in its flexibility. The ability to mix manual flash groups with TTL groups at will is extremely nice.

The most common usage scenario for this would be to use manual flash to light a stationary background object, and TTL for the moving subject.  With Canon the nearest we can get is to use group C for the background. This group fires under ETTL independently of the A:B ratio, however since it’s ETTL it may change slightly between shots.

Nikon wins here.

Full Manual

The final scenario is that of full manual flash control of all groups via the master, and in this respect the two systems offer the same level of control, so there’s no winner.

Other differences

There are a couple of other small things that swing in Nikon’s favour.   The most obvious one is the ability to use the pop-up flash as a commander.  The second one is that the on-camera flash is in a group of its own (under Canon’s system it belongs to group A) thus there are four groups rather than just three; nevertheless I’m not sure how useful that is in practise.

Conclusion

Nikon’s flash system is perhaps a little more flexible for advanced users, however both systems are so well refined that the difference shouldn’t be blown out of proportion.

As for the all important flash exposure calculation, I’ve never had any issues with Canon – and I note that Neil didn’t bring up and issues either….

Twitter seems to be a perfect for this sort of thing, so I’m going to start twittering about the less consequential stuff.   If you’d like to follow me you can do here:

http://twitter.com/timothyarmes

• It either had to fit in my car, or be quickly and easily collapsable, so that I could take it on location.
• It needed to be relatively big – 1 meter wide plexiglass.
• It needed to hold reasonably heavy objects
• It needed to be in stock somewhere!

I couldn’t find any table that met all these requirements.  My research was leading me to choose between the Manfrotto 320 (too small), the Manfrotto 220 (too big) or the Elinchrom Multi-Table (too expensive).  Since the 220 and the Multi-Table were too big for the car once assembled, the time that’s needed to take them apart and put them back together would probably prove to be annoying.  This was all irrelevant in any case because I couldn’t find any French suppliers that had either of these two tables in stock.

The Multi-Table is made from Aluminium profiling, so it seemed reasonable that I could design my own made to measure table, and that’s exactly what I ended up doing.

I used the Elinchrom table as a basis (although I felt that one articulation was sufficient), using thick 8mm transparent Plexiglass for strength which supports a 2mm white Plexiglass sheet for the surface/background.  I bought the white Plexiglass from the local DIY store – the 1m x 2m size was absolutely perfect.

I designed the table using Google’s excellent SketchUp, and passed it to a local company that specialises in Aluminium profiling.  They then supplied me with everything cut to length and I just had to put it together.

The result is a table that fits perfectly in the car without having to take it apart (it’s just light enough to be lifted in by one person), and it fit’s comfortably in my garage studio (which suffers from a low ceiling). Thus, for me, it’s the perfect still life table, and it cost me about half that of the Elinchrom.  I could probably have saved money using wood, but aluminium profiling has several advantages:

• It’s light.
• It’s modular and there are lots of accessories available.  For example, I may add a rack and pinion system to allow for easier height adjustment.
• It’s can be easily reconfigured to meet different needs.  I’ll probably add a second transparent shelf soon, so the ability to move parts about without adding holes is appreciated.
• It’s very sturdy.

Here are a few more details…

With the back folded down it’s just off the ground so it can be moved easily:

The Citroën Berlingo may not be the most stylish car money can buy, but it’s incredibly practical. We wouldn’t be without it now….

In the car the front edge of the Plexiglass is held up using the shelf above the driver:

I’ll post some photos once I’ve used it properly…