Hot Car Day Tomorrow

Cottesloe Civic Center tomorrow, folks. Classic Car Day. They are doing it for charity and I am doing it for art.

The attendee's at Thorsten Overgaard's one-day workshop will also be there at some stage of the afternoon exercising their Leica cameras and lenses.

I do hope they remember the value of fill flash - I do, and whether I opt to take out the Nikon D300/SB700/Stroboframe rig or the little Fuji X-10/SB700/ Metz outfit, I should be able to soften the shadows under the cars - and see into their deep, dark interiors.

There will be crowds, so a wide lens setting is going to be necessary, as well as a sharpened stick to clear a space. If you see me coming, prepare yourself...

Man Conquers Sun - Pictures To Follow

A few posts ago I showed photos taken at the Vauxhall Car Owners Day and whinged about the sunlight. They were taken in the broad light of noon and had the unpleasant sort os shadows that obscure detail. Of course, when you are looking at Vauxhalls that can be a blessing...

Warned by this, I went out to take photos of the British Classic Day at Pinjarra Raceway yesterday. I knew it would also be out in the open in full sun - and thought out a different rig to tackle it.

Where the first foray had been with the trusty Fuji X-10, yesterday saw a run with the equally trusty Nikon D300, Nikon SB 700 flash gun, and Stroboframe PRO-RL flash bracket. And a hat.

Well, Pinjarra did not disappoint - smelly oval, smelly cars, and smelly owners. ( Horse poo, petrol leaks, and sweat...doesn't get better.) Broads sun and enough fill bouncing back off the freshly mown infield to act as a partial reflector. And the SB 700 to fire into the rest.

The Stroboframe rig lets you do landscape or portrait with a quick flip of the camera while keeping the SB 700 way up the top out of trouble. The flash can be angled down 30º to drop onto closeup subjects. No lousy shadows crossing the subject to break a good line.

The great part about day shows is you can run the ISO low and the flash fills beautifully. No fiddling with reflectors and diffusers either - belt it out. The subjects are colourful enough to repay the bright light. If you are going to be worried about reflections on the side of the car you can always throw a handful of dirt on it...

Note also that many owners at car shows open the bonnets of their prize vehicles to show off the wonderful engines. In the case of British cars they open the bonnet to show off the wiring and gain the sympathy of the crowd. I always like to stay for the ceremonial burning in effigy of the designer of the Lucas electrical system - one year they tried to set it off by electricity and we were reduced to rubbing two boy scouts together...

Boom boom.

Coming At It From A Different Angle

It always pays to investigate coming at a target from a different angle. Whether it is an oil refinery in Ploesti or a portrait subject in Perth, the unexpected yields results.

Likewise in the car game. There are a number of solid professionals who photograph cars for the Western Australian publications - magnificent productions for some of the magazines with dusk exposures, multiple speedlights, and reflectors all over the place. Every month's issue of Perth Street Cars is a visual treat.

Unfortunately, on the occasions I photograph cars in the field, I do not have the luxury of multiple lights. I make do with one speedlight and the sun. Sometimes it all works out well, and sometimes it doesn't. The sun can be hard to program. I have increased my chances of success with the Stoboframe camera brackets.

Initially I carried a Stroboframe Press-T with a Nikon speedlight on the top - a coiled TTL cord between camera and flash. All good, until I chanced to try the Stroboframe PRO-RL. Now I use the PRO all the time at the car shows.

The basic operation is self-explanatory. The frame holds the flash above the axis of the lens no matter how the camera is orientated, and you can slide it waaay on up there to drop the shadow behind the subject. It also means you never have red-eye on telephoto shots. You can angle it down to drop that light onto a close-up subject.

But you can also do the Ploesti on it - you extend the flash to the end of the bar, rotate the camera to the portrait mode, then shoot it flat in landscape orientation. The flash will be way out there on the right-hand-side of the lens. It is perfect for taking interior shots of cars when there is a glass window between you and the insides. You can get your lens close up to the glass to eliminate reflections and then the flash enters from the rear window. See the example of the '32 Ford Sedan. The whole interior of the car lights up without you infringing upon the vehicle.

This might also be the answer for interior shots in real estate.

Moment Of Force In Photography

The term " moment of force "used to bother me in high school physics. Actually, sitting down in the classroom and opening a Physics text used to bother me, and everything thereafter was just the icing on the urinal cake. But one day it changed.

I was in shop class and trying to free a rusted nut with a crescent wrench. I applied great force on a short hold - to control the application of the force - and got nowhere. Then I lengthened the hold on the wrench and applied mild force - still no movement. Then I applied a great deal of force to the outer end of the wrench handle and was rewarded with the thing turning rapidly and delivering my knuckles to the nearest sharp surface. A lesson writ in blood...

So, having understood moment of force by the most practical means, I was able to diagnose an equipment failure last Saturday night and remedy it in time to save the job.

My rig was the trusty Nikon D300s with the Stroboframe Press-T bracket attached and an SB 700 flash on top of this. My standard flash rig for the last few years when I need to move around at a bellydance show. I can flip the flash from landscape to portrait mode and still have it positioned over the lens axis.

This time I decided to gild the lily and add the Gary Fong Lightsphere II to the mix to soften the light blast. It was to be indoors so the top of the Lightsphere was also needed.

All worked well for a while as I played paparazzi at the party, but halfway through the flash started playing up. Nikon flashes don't play up - they are mega-reliable - so when the thing missed firing intermittently I looked to see if there was another explanation. Sure enough, I had over-egged the pudding with the Lightsphere. Out there on the front of the flash, it was perfectly balanced when in the landscape mode, but once it was headed sideways in the portrait mode on the Press-T, the extra weight of it pulled the contacts for the flash away from the corresponding spots on the hot shoe....no flash.

The moment of force was too great for the flash and shoe contacts.

Moral of this is that it is either one or the other - the Press-T and a bare flash for chasing stage events or the SB 700 mounted directly on the camera with the Lightsphere for interiors and people event shots. I quickly demounted the bracket, shifted the flash to the camera shoe, did the Fong Shuffle, and carried right on. My thanks to the decorator of the country club who decided upon white walls and ceiling.

Close Encounters of The Fun Kind - Stroboframe

I frequently buy items from our shop upon speculation - I do not know exactly how I will use them but I add them to the armamentarium on the off-chance that they will be just what I need. Here is a tale of one such device.

Stroboframe make brackets and flash holders for film and digital cameras - have done for years. Wedding photographers who used flash in the film era used them to drop the shadow from the flash down behind the subject. The simple geometry of the thing meant that faces looked clean and attractive and even quite small spaces could be utilised for set shots.

In a studio setting, the various flip mechanisms that Stroboframe make let people turn their cameras from landscape to portrait orientation without losing framing. A lot less shifting of tripods.

I had occasion yesterday to discover just how useful one of the larger Stroboframe brackets could be when I covered a model car exhibition. Think of these model cars in terms of close-up rather than macro subjects but stretch your imagination further to encompass your own work - and see if the brackets might be just as useful.

The bracket mounts my Nikon D300 with an 18-200 lens. The wide range of the lens is very useful when dealing with subjects that might be as small as your thumb up to full interiors or landscapes. In the case of the model car show I chiefly wanted clear illustration for my blog - "Here All Week" at hrhoa.wordpress.com. Thus meant accurate colours and adequate depth of field on the small cars - I needed f:22 if I could get it.

No problem with the Nikon flash system - the SB 700 flash has more than enough power for this task. The fact that I could mount it on the cross-bar of the Stroboframe in a TTL extension cord meant that there was absolutely no calculation or adjustment needed for the 170+ illustrations - I just selected a low ISO, a high f stop, and 1/160 of a second. Point, frame, and shoot...

The first wonderful thing about the Stroboframe is that if you need to do a vertical shot you just release the small red lever at the bottom and rotate the camera 90º. The weight of the camera steadies it in the new position and the flash angle does not change.

The second wonderful thing is the top flash bar also swivels down so that it will drop the light - and the troublesome shadow - even if the subject is tiny and close up.

The third wonderful thing is this same rotation can continue upwards for bounce flash and it is a damn sight easier than pushing the rubber button and swivelling the head. See the effect of a light bounce up on the Bonneville Salt Flat model shots.

The forth wonderful thing about this particular bracket is the peculiar rubber-covered handle on the front - it is very convenient as a carrying and support point for the whole rig - it is well balanced.

BEST NEWS - We've been having a Stroboframe sale these past weeks and we will continue it for a little while longer. 50% off is not to be sneezed at, particularly if you are a regular Camera Electronic bargain hunter.