Instant Happiness

Set up yet another 'Polaroid' booth during the evening reception of a recent actual day wedding shoot.


The response was good, unfortunately most of the polaroids - or 'fuji'-roids, to be precise, were taken by the guests as keepsakes despite gentle prodding that they are meant as momentos for the bride and groom.

Oh well.

If there's one saving grace, the chaps from Blackcurrantworkz did a fab job on the wedding animation that left most of the guests in stitches.

Rugby

Sulking on the sidelines with a super telephoto lens is one (boring) way to shoot field sports, with cookie-cutter results - limited depth-of-field and tightly cropped photographs.

The M1 Women's 7s rugby carnival, held on a fine Saturday morning at the Yio Chu Kang stadium presented an ideal opportunity to try going 'wide' - but without the awkwardness of juggling multiple cameras - by installing the wide angle lenses on floor remotes.

Only problem is, with only two remote cameras to spare and a huge expanse of ground to cover, the chances of a remote camera capturing a slice of the action is... well... really remote.

Nonetheless, some 20 minutes later a portion of the field (try area) was staked out by two remote cameras, a 20D and 30D coupled with 10-22mm and 17-55mm lenses respectively.

Since it is a 7s game, well, tries should be a plenty. They just have to score in the right areas!

Out of the 90 frames captured, one of them is useable (barely): -

It's pretty much a game of patience and numbers - set up the remotes often enough and once in a while something nice should pop up.

En-lighten-ed

2008 has been another tumultuous year on the photographic front.

Some thoughts: -

The shock waves generated by the debut of video-enabled DSLRs are slowly reverberating but have yet to hit home. Nevertheless, the transition from film to digital will pale vis-a-vis the leap from still to motion pictures.

“Strobism” is in full steam and sticking a light off-camera is getting passe.

Slowly but surely sensor sizes are converging towards 135 format. In the not too distant future, the thought of using a sensor smaller than 36mm x 24mm (or paying the obscene amounts for the privilege of using one) would be a really bad joke.

On a more personal level, Polaroids are going the way of the dinosaur – thank goodness Fuji is still in the thick of it with their excellent Instax integral film.

With that, here's looking at an exciting (for better or worse) 2009. May we all lead a more en-lighten-ed year... =D

Polaroid madness

Only... it isn't taken by the ubiquitous Polaroid, but, may we dare say, something better.

The Instax mini camera by Fujifilm was an instant (haha) hit at a recent lunch ROM reception. Combining the gratification of digital photography and the "feel" of film, the results are sharp and colours vibrant.

Guests intuitively pen their well-wishes on the credit-card sized photos and the newly wedded couple receives much more than a photographic record to relive that special moment of their lives.

For couples or anyone interested in the spontaneity of instant photography coverage, do give us a buzz!

A City Hall Romp

Back to shooting cheerleaders after a two-week hiatus. The subject for this Sunday morning is Yirong, a graduating member of the team and arguably the one that kick-started the photography sessions for the NTU ACES squad.

Managed to get my ass and the gear on location by eight-ish – some members of the team were putting up a performance for the SHAPE Run 2008 which meant I’ll be shooting Yee Yong around the City Hall area, post-performance.

We settled on an open space beneath the Esplanade Bridge, aka “Falun Gong corner” to those who frequent the area.

Things got off to a slow start, but the pace picked up when we moved to the old Supreme court. Here’re a few outtakes and setup shots: -

A lot of light, but not much clue... =P

Underneath the Esplanade bridge

Padang on Sunday morning - Hot, in more ways than one

All set for the nth jump





All-in-all, a productive morning and I'm pretty happy with the output.

Speedcycler

Lugging a big ass strobe when shooting sports is sometimes not viable - but you still need decent flash recycle times.

Enter the Multimax's Speedcycler function, enabling sequential flash firing and consequently reducing the workload of each flash. It's a function that I've yet to use (in a meaningful way of course...)

Seat-of-the-pants testing gets me continuous half-power pops @ 2~3fps by cycling three hotshoe flashes. We'll see how this pans out in an actual shoot.



*EDIT*
After some thought, this is an overly complicated solution - it would be much easier to add more flashes and fire them simultaneously. I suppose the Speedcycler function comes into its own say on a fashion runway when the subject moves in a predetermined fashion and lights can be placed in sequential order...

'Chip'

Another shoot with the NTU ACES, although this was more of a clean-up session: some graduating members of the team weren't present a couple of weeks ago.

The weather did not favour allow for an outdoor shoot, so it was back to the safe (but a tad boring) pose against white white/gray-ish backdrop wall shots.

Nevertheless, Agnes (otherwise known as 'Chip') proved to be a revelation; it took only three attempts to get the SOTD (ok ok, Shot-of-the-Day, i made it up on the fly).

Shot 1 - The basic idea



Shot 2 - Almost there, pointy toes, pointy toes!



Shot 3 - SOTD



Here's a quick 'n dirty look at the set-up:



EOS 30D
EF-S 17-55mm f/2.8 IS USM

AcuteB600 w/ Softlight Reflector White
2 x 580EXII (Background lights, Flagged)
1 x SB-80DX (Rim light, Flagged)

3 x PW Multimax, 2 x PW Plus II Radio Triggers

Porta-Brace

Ever since man moved that lil' hotshoe flash off the hotshoe, so began the eternal quest to find that perfect 'light' bag.

Yes, the bag that swallows 1,000 lightstands, super clamps, umbrellas, flags, magic arms and other assorted whatchamacallits.

The bag that you grab and go without packing (because its never unpacked...) and arrive on location with everything you possibly need. And then some.

In a short span of two years I have bought, sold or disposed four lightstand bags -three SLIK bags (one busted, one sold, one given away) and a Lowel (too big, sold). And the search went on.

Till today.

Boy, this bag absolutely STINKS... of quality. Porta-Brace clad this bag in rugged blue Cordura, with enough room to swallow four lightstands (or three and a tripod), miscellaneous clamps, digital transcievers... and a design that STAYS open when its supposed to be OPEN.


Yup, stays open. Look Ma, no hands!


Mine was inspected / crafted by Vicki S.


Thanks Vic - from a bunch of grateful Manfrotto lightstands... =P