How Keith Robins Photography photographs WOW factor drips of water!
Taking photos of drips takes time and patience, plus a little bit of know-how. For instance, try lighting whatever is being reflected in the water and not the water. In fact keeping the water in the dark is probably one of the best tips I can give you.
Try firing a hotshoe flash across the liquid's surface and lighting up something as simple as a reddish coloured festive dinner mat, a photograph from an old TV Times, or a pale yellow toughened glass cutting board, which are the items I've used in these three examples.
This is a technique I learnt underground during my caving days. (Goodness me, that's nearly 30 years ago!) Keeping the water dark always returned better photos than when the flash was pointing directly at a dark muddy pool and backlighting came out far better for moving water shots. Ripples also showed up better with backlighting, or when reflecting a cave wall or a caver is beyond and carefully lit so there is something tangible to show up as a reflection.
Camera settings of 1/200th or slower takes care of the flash side of things while an aperture is chosen to go with the flash power setting.
By reducing the power to 1/16th the duration of your average hotshoe flash is reduced to around 1/5,000th, which is plenty short enough to capture the fastest of drips. Surprisingly, the aperture is still up around the f5.6 to f11 mark, even at 1/16th power.
These ultra-fast flash durations, requiring reasonably wide apertures, dictate narrower depth of field so focusing has to be spot on.
I set the camera on manual focus and zoomed in on the markings of a steel ruler which was right under the drip, then pulled the zoom back and framed up.
A tiny pin hole in the base of the plastic bottle is necessary to allow a drip at around a two second interval, just about slow enough for a battery powered hotshoe flash on reduced power to recycle in time for the next drip. It's easy to get carried away and take hundreds of photographs once you've started capturing good shots
The idea is to count the drips out loud and nod your hand up and down in time. In your hand is the shutter release for your camera and your thumb is also keeping time with the count, but only actually pressing the button every other drip, (flash tubes can overheat with fast repeated use). Keep an eye on the camera preview screen and adjust your count very slightly to capture drips in different stages of falling and splashing.
Within ten minutes you should be getting pictures like these. Of course all the kit takes a while to find and assemble, plus the setting up takes an hour or so. Even finding a pair of pliers and a needle to pierce the bottle took me over twenty minutes!
Hanging your bottle from a lamp shade with a rubber band and clothes pegs works surprisingly well. And if you can't find a large black seed tray then maybe a bin liner dipped between four lengths of wooden batten will probably last long enough for this exercise. A cat litter tray will do, but watch out for unexpected puddles from Tiddles.
Does the floor get wet? Yes, but not much. Is this exercise time well spent? Yes, most definitely! Telephoto lens? 60mm to 105mm is best. Mirror lock up? No, the flash is way too fast. Coloured water? Not neccesary, just rely on the background that you're lighting to give you all the colour you need. Angle the flash from one side to reduce glare in the reflection. Also angle it slightly upward to keep the water dark, we want backlighting only via bounced light. With the flash set to manual extend the zoom to avoid stray light touching the water. Keep checking the front of your lens for splashes.
This last image shows a short length of four inch soil pipe as a support for the flash, a toilet pan connector is holding the magazine along with a pair of enormous clips from the garden. The magazine is sagging, which I deliberately left to illustrate how nothing has to be spot - on except the exposure and the focus.

Sharpening images in Elements 4 without halos. Keith Robins Photography has written a previous post referring to a rather unusual method of sharpening in Adobe CS3, but as most photographers seem to prefer sticking to the basic Elements I thought I'd try an alternative technique using Elements 4 with very similar results. Go up to Image in the top toolbar and choose Greyscale and your image turns black and white.
Now go to Filter - Sharpen - Unsharp Mask and move the percent slider up to 300%, yes really! The Radius stays around 0.8 and the Treshhold remains at Zero.
Save As under a new name so that you can reopen the same image from your files and folders, but this time you're going to keep it as a coloured photo.
Use the Move tool and hold down Shift while you drag the black and white picture into the colour image and then select the Overlay mode for this new top layer.
The colour of the lower layer shows through the black and white sharpness of the upper layer.
By clicking on each photo in turn you should be able to see which of these images has been sharpened.

Keith Robins Photography tries sharpening with a big difference! Black and white photos of men can stand a lot of really gritty sharpening. I absolutely love these B andW pictures of Ollie, especially the biting sharpness. Ollie was a former member of Yeovil Camera Club back in the 7o's and willing posed for us.
I tried using unsharp mask but wasn't keen on the resulting halos and colour fringing often associated with normal everyday sharpening.
I vaguely remembered reading an article on the web last year suggesting Lab Colour mode as an alternative method of sharpening - so I gave it a go.
First thing is swap to Lab Colour mode, which is found under Image in the top toolbar.
Next, click on Channels in the Layers palette and select the Lightness layer. The other three layers will turn off when you do this. Find the normal everyday Unsharp Mask and whizz it up to 300% - don't worry it'll turn out just fine! (Obviously this 300% is not set in stone so just use that as a starting point, I have used as much as 500% with extremely good results.)
In the Radius box just beneath I went for 0.8 pixels and the bottom box, Threshold, was left at zero - click OK.
Click on the top layer to open up all the other channels again, then go back to Image and swap back into RGB mode. Select Layers as opposed to Channels and you're back in the world of good old layers which we all known and love.

In case you haven't realised I'm a supporter of Jpegs - I have tried RAW but found it decidedly soft and absolutely everything needed working on wityh evry single image - time wasting! I'll continue to let the camera do the donkey work and I'm not tempted to bother trying RAW again, thank you very much. I take around 400 pictures a week, mostly experimenting with lighting and unusual effects and I want to see them right away, full screen.
Besides, I can still use all the Adobe Camera Raw tweaks on my Jpegs prior to opening them in Photoshop. However, if you want to prove me wrong - go on then, I challenge you to make a better picture via Raw in the camera!
After sharpening these photos were changed to black and white using a Black And White adjustment layer in CS3 and moving the red channel slightly to the right and the yellow channel a little bit further. This lightened up the shadow detail in Ollie's features without blowing the brightness of his shirt collar.
I guess one day I'll get used to how Actions operate and that'll speed things up enormously, but for now I enjoy using Photoshop so I'll plod along slowly. Even so, each of these images took less than ten minutes to start looking really good, then I started playing around with oval selections, inverting them, feathering to 130 pixels and finally using another adjustment layer, Levels this time, to introduce a little darkness around the outer edges.
I also use the same 130 pixel feather to make a selection and then press Control + M to bring up the Curves adjustment box and then drag the line down a bit to darken, make another selction and use Curves again to make that selection slightly lighter. This seems to work in a more pleasing manner than using the Dodge tool or the Burn tool.

There were two lights used here, one via a shoot-thro brolly and the other bounced into a silver sunshield. Originally designed for a car windscreen on sunny days this £4 makeshift reflector is now supported on a couple lengths of plumbers piping. (See a previous post for info on how to make this easily assembled gadget.)
Ialso used a black blanket background supported on plumbers waste pipe and a short length of plastic guttering fixed atop a single lighting stand. I designed that litle gadget over twenty years ago and still find it extremely quick and simple to erect.
The tip of the brolly was less than eighteen inches from Ollie's nose and to camera left, while the reflector was about two feet away to camera right with the flash only just out of camera view. These lights are ancient and rather warm in tone so I either use a DIY colour balance card, or carry out a custom white balance which is easy on the Canon camera, plus just a little tweak in Adobe Camera Raw before opening up into CS3.

A setup like this uses very little space and most living rooms / lounges / or a large kitchen can be utilised. The studio flashes used here on Ollie are thirty years old and have no power controls, so my alternative set of Elichrom D-Lite 200watt would have been an absolute dream to use.
I ought really to sell those old lights on EBay but hey, old habits die hard. Alternatively, I could have used a couple of old hotshoe flashes with equally good effect. What I'm trying to say is, use whatever lighting you have lying around and instead spend your money on a better lens, or some versatile software such as CS3, or maybe a more patient or attractive model.
Incidentally, I recently spent a couple of hours making up a whole arsenal of tiny diagrams to suit my own lighting needs. These are saved as a huge number of layers and kept as a PSD file, which enables me to move them around, rotate, turn off the ones not needed and flipping over those facing the wrong way. I love Photoshop!!!

One radio transmitter and three triggers for £40. What a bargain for Keith Robins Photography!
Amazon is the place to visit for a fast efficient service. I ordered the triggers on Wednesday and, even though there was a Post Office strike in action, the packet was delivered on Friday. the Vivitar 285HV flashgun which I ordered the same day came a couple days later, well packed and in good nick. Thank you to the postmen for what I term a pretty good service in your hour of strife.
How do the triggers handle in use? Brilliantly!
The normal place for a radio transmitter is in the hotshoe along with a trigger mounted beneath a remote flashgun - this arrangement fired one of my Vivitar 285HV's at up to 50 metres, a lot further than the advertised 30 mtrs. I was more than pleased with this result.

For the next test I added an optical slave into the chain, just to explore the limitations. One Vivitar on the camera, then at 30 metres distance the radio transmitter was slotted into an £8 optical slave, a second 285HV was then slotted into one of the three triggers and placed an additional 30 metres from camera. The equipment all works together just fine, which is fantastic!

Next, I wanted to know whether a flash in ETTL mode would operate the remote flash. I placed a Canon 550EX in ETTL mode on top of a Canon 5D, which in turn was set to manual. The optical slave was connected directly to the Vivitar 285H. This system failed miserably!
A flashgun in ETTL mode, or a pop-up flash, sends out a small pre-flash before the shutter opens to calculate the strength of flash exposure needed to light the main subject. Of course this pre-flash will also set off the remote flashgun operated via an optical slave unit before the shutter is open. When the main light fires a few milliseconds later it's too late for your remote flash as it has already gone off and is still in the process of recharging.

Maybe this is why some photographers, new to the world of flashguns can easily be lead into thinking that multiple flash is beyond them, especially as their images consistently portray dead flat lighting from the on-camera flash.

Fear not, there is a way around this most irksome problem!
You may have noticed that when taking a photo a half press on the shutter button causes focusing / exposure info to pop up on screen for about 15 seconds.
The trick with using an ETTL flash as a master to fire remote flashes on radio triggers is to half press the shutter button to bring up this information, then press the star button which fires the tiny pre-flash along with the remote slave flash. Meanwhile the shutter is still closed.
Now wait about 10 seconds, but no longer than 14 seconds, before fully pressing the shutter button to take the photo proper. If you're using newish batteries this should be long enough for the remote flash to recharge and both guns will now fire while the shutter is open and give whatever power you have set on them.

However, when the on-camera flash is set to manual there is no pre-flash and both guns will fire as one light without any trouble.
I also tried using aperture priority and it worked great.
Carrying out the same test using shutter priority I found that the Canon 5D limited the speed to 1/200th with the end result coming out spot on.
All this exploration took several hours and I'll need to repeat this type of testing a few more times before it sinks in - remember I'm new to ETTL and the Canon 5D as maual flash has been my staple diet since the early seventies.
Hope this is some help in your flahs photography - Keith Robins.

Studio flash outdoors - at night! Okay so maybe it's been done before via an extension lead. However, Keith Robins Photography is adventurous enough to investigate the great outdoors as a backdrop and discovered that full length portraits do not need rolls of expensive background cloth / paper. Nor is there any need to flag any of the flash heads to prevent stray light illuminating those annoying creases which seem to occur in even the smoothest and blackest of background material.

In a few of the recent posts of YeoPhotoGroup, an off-shoot of Keith Robins Photography, you may have noticed us using a generator to power a pair of Elinchrom D-Lite 200's. Handling that heavy beast of a generator took two men to carry it plus two more to carry our camera gear and all the other boxes and bags of lights, stands, reflectors, modifiers, softboxes and assorted cables necessary to operate an outdoor studio.
Eventually, in a rash spur of the moment decision, I splashed out on a caravan inverter plus a new 12 volt 45 amp battery for my works plumbing van meaning there is now a spare battery in fairly good nick going spare. We can now operate two powerful studio lights from a small two wheeled shopping trolley containing this make-shift 230volt power supply.

Elinchroms are renowned for their 0.7 second recycling time which allows you to capture that fleeting expression of relief just moments after the shutter has fired which is when some models appear to briefly relax during the often daunting task of posing for the camera. During this two hour bridal shoot the recycling time for our D-Lite 200's remained very close to manufacturers specs and never went once over two seconds. An additional benefit is that once the really short time the lights take to recycle, the drain on the battery drops to such a minimal amount that it would probably last a whole weekend before the old van battery needs recharging.


In the first image here, Hannah is sat on a plastic sheet to keep her dress clean. A softbox front left and quite close created a soft main light and another Elinchrom with an alloy reflector lit the bushes behind her. Grace joined Hannah for the second and third pictures and revealed the difference our lights made to the texture of their lovely dresses. A silvered sun shield from a car windscreen mounted on a framework of plumbers 15mm copper pipe helped illuminate the shadows on the right. (More details on this DIY gadget in a later post)
Using 1/200th of a second shutter speed caused the background of Sydney Gardens in Yeovil to go black, while f11 at ISO 200 controlled the lights. All this was between 8pm and 9pm on 9th September, hence the lack of available light.
Our next challenge is to get a little more ambient light into the background, probably a seaside sunset along with a striking silhouette.
Then it'll be a portrait session with a firework display going on behind, okay so we could handle either of these tasks in Photoshop but where's the lighting challenge in that? We'll probably revert to our hotshoe flashguns for this one although I am very tempted by the much stronger Elinchroms which can handle a softbox or a large brolly without losing too much light.

Hand held fairground night-time shots are nothing new for Keith Robins Photography, but now we're trying the same technique with the addition of a flash.
Camera settings for these shots are half a second exposure at f5.6, 100 ISO and my motorcycle battery powered Vivitar 285 HV on 1/16th power. I asked Grace to stand about six feet in front of me with the brightly lit fairground ride another twenty feet beyond and hand-held my Canon 400D.
I've visited the Great Dorset Steam Fair on many occasions over the last thirty years but only ever used flash successfully back in the seventies on slide film.
Now, with digital you'll be thinking that things are a lot easier - not so! When you love pushing the boundaries of flash photography nothing is easy, or is it? I practised with a flash plus a small twisting curl of the camera body in the first image, then used the same settings for the remaining images which gave me time for a flash plus zoom (the second image).

For the third image there was plenty of time to wave the camera in a small semi-circle without a flash.
Although I did have a Manfrotto tripod with me I just had to try this little experiment without it. Besides my tripod was being used by another member of my little group who had accidentally left his at home.
On the third image I managed to carry out all three manoeuvres while the shutter was still on half a second.

This final image shows Grace lit by 1/16th powered flash quickly followed by zooming the lens towards the telephoto end and tilting the camera slightly downward. Okay, so it took a few attempts to get the fourth shot but the final result works for me and to hear Grace's gasp of astonishment when she saw it, that was reward enough.
Next challenge for YeoPhotoGroup members is a gritty urban portrait using both my Elichrom D-Lite 200 studio lights on a single 12 volt battery. Yes, of course I've tried this rather extreme approach - it works fine - he said with fingers crossed. Look up a new post in a week or two to see how we get on with what are basically indoor lights in an outdoor environment.
http://www.keithrobinsphotography.co.uk

Flash and blur in the same shot! I said it was possible, but we did take over an hour to perfect it. Second curtain flash was already agreed long before we arrived on site, although why my Canon remains fixed in the first curtain mode regardless of menu settings does baffle me.
With a gale blowing like a demon we were on top of Hamhill frantically holding onto my Elinchrome D-Lite 200's. The softboxes nearly blew away, the rainclouds threatened but the wet stuff held back just for us.
We got beeped at by grinning motorists and Nicki received a quiet yet complimentary wolfwhistle. Meanwhile the shots mounted up as we struggled with shutter speed and panning techniques until Kelv's preview screen produced this super picture with the elusive blur.
1/20th of a second at f11 on 200 ISO - Fantastic! I've even framed it in my excitement, plus I have added a little escapism for the front wheel.

Now I wanted just that little bit extra umph. Lifting the D-Lite head off the lighting stand, which was tied to a 'No Waiting' sign to prevent the wind whisking it away, I then mounted it on the end of a decorators extending pole . I managed to hold the light with its dished reflector about six feet above Nicki's head and another six feet in front.

At some twelve feet long the unwieldy pole proved quite a handful, even though the flashhead weighs next to nothing it was over ten feet away from my hand and being whipped about by a gusting wind.
After twenty attempts we managed to finally get a natural looking background blur and becoming frustrated with trying the judge speeds and distances with one second shutter speed in second curtain flash mode
We ended this challenging shoot in damp darkness at around 9pm and were glad of our yellow safety vests which kept the traffic at bay.
I am definitely more than happy with these great results and am now busy planning the next challenge which is a flash lit subject, plus movement of some sort of ambient light or available lights in the background. Maybe the Great Dorset Steam Fair will help shed some suitable lighting. Keith (Strobist) Robins

Elite Junior Triathlete Nicola Morgan looks fantastic here, almost as good as in real life. So much confidence in one so young!
As leading light of YeophotoGroup I was originally thinking of using hotshoe flashguns for this shoot, but I'm glad now that we went for the Elinchrom studio flashheads instead.

Although it's extremely heavy the 2.8 Kwatt generator was also a good move. With hardly a break in the rythm it kept up with the Elinchrom's power demanding 0.7 of a second recycling times for nearly two hours of solid shooting.
With the wind picking up part way through the shoot there were a few time when I was glad of the milk carton counter weights keeping the lighting stands stable. Trevor suggested sand as ballast as water could leak away in transit and leave us without the safeguard of stability for our delicate lights.
Even after years of using high shutter speeds along with fairly high apertures to make the sky dark I never cease to be amazed at just how creative photography can be when using several flashes at an angle to the camera.
The choices of whether to use hotshoe or studio flash depended on the light in an early evening sky, would it be too strong and overbearing in its intensity.

You can't argue with f 16 as a means of keeping that bright sky under control. The pictures below demonstrate the point perfectly, although some would say that we've gone way over the top and I've made it too dark. My response is - show me how you can improve on these shots and I'll listen, maybe I'll even learn something new. I do like to push the boundaries though as the limits are.... what exactly???


Meanwhile, I love the high contrast between Nicola and clouds and know for sure that next time I'm on a serious shoot I want studio flash, I want great backgrounds, texture, vibrance, correct skin colour and above I want eye-popping pictures.
Many thanks to Crusader Corperate Workwear of Lufton Trading Estate, Yeovil for printing these Hi-Vis vests which make us look so professional and dedicated. Also many thanks to Nicola and her dad for their time and effort to help all of us achieve a most exciting evening. Hope you like the pictures Nicki and best of luck on your next Triathlete event.

Can't wait until the next shoot as I want to use floodlights on the background so that with a careful chosen shutter speed we'll get blur. Half the fun of photography is visualisation and then planning. The second half is adapting your plans as the situation changes and new challenges arise. Try to be prepared with an alternative method of lighting up your sleeve, just in case the genny won't start, the lights fail, a fuse blows.
Keith (Strobist) Robins.

My flashgun suddenly starts bellowing smoke!! I connected a 6 volt motorcycle battery via a 4 foot length of wire and it didn't whine when I turned it on. Now that's funny, it's supposed to make a whining sound - hang on a minute, what's this, smoke? Oh Nooooo!!!
I had shaped two blocks of wood to act as dummy batteries in one of my old flashguns plus one of Trevor's guns - trust me to pick up the wrong one!
I had just soldered the ends on and then connected it up without double checking the polarity - silly!!! Always check, double check and then triple check that the polarity is exactly as it should be before turning on the power.
I took ten screws out of the casing and yanked the electronic innards out thinking this was the end of my Starblitz flash, but could see no signs of burnt circuitry. The smoke? Thankfully it was merely the insulated card at the bottom of the battery compartment getting rather warm due to a dead short. Also there are now two battery springs with hardly any springiness left in them. Luckily it's the two that I don't need.
Oh, and yes I pressed on and connected up, correctly this time and Bob's yer Uncle there's that good old familiar whining sound from the flashgun, a little orange light comes on. Yippee!!
Now to see what this baby can really do. Full power recharges in about three seconds. In the mid auto position this drops to about one second and in the low auto (weakest) I can just keep on hitting the firing button and the flash keeps up, the orange light stays on continuously.
Will I ever go back to normal AA batteries again? I doubt it. It's not a cost thing it's all about speed of recycling. I want a flash that recharges quickly, before the client starts to think that you've finished taking photos and wanders off. There is nothing worse than waiting, waiting, waiting for a flashgun to recharge.
High energy AA's are okay for around the twenty flash mark but then they begin increasing the length of down time, then after forty flashes we're up around the half a minute depending on temperature, battery age, flash power setting, etc.
Total number of flashes per six volt battery charge is up around 500 at full power and over 1,000 at low auto setting on the Starblitz. The Vivitar produces over 400 full power flashes but closer to 2,000 on reduced power setting! Now that's what I call Rocking, Man!
The photos accompanying this article are of my Vivitar 285 HV which I successfully converted last year.
Things to watch out for? Short circuits if you carry one of these six volt batteries in your camera bag, picking up the wrong block of wood, dropping the battery on your foot - Ouch! Hop, hop.
Some of you have asked how I clip this battery onto my belt. Two pieces of old car inner tube, they're like heavy duty elastic bands. One goes twice around the battery top to bottom while the other splips inside near the top, down through my belt and out around the lower half of the battery. So quick, it never jumps off and whacks your foot, plus it will hook over one of the adjusting knobs on a lighting stand. I used to work in a tyre company over forty years ago and I still had an ancient inner tube in the shed, 155X13 from a Ford Cortina I believe. Never throw anything away lads!

Nicola is an Olympic triathlon hopeful for 2012. On Sunday the 2nd August she won a bronze medal in the London Junior Elite Triathlon - Wednesday evening I spot her picture in the Western Gazette sports pages and intend asking her ref photos. An hour later and she is in our studio ready for a few portraits. Are we fast movers or what!!!
This is my favourite image from about forty studio flash shots taken last night. Okay so it's not in colour - you should know by now that black and white and I go back a long, long way.
It's now five-thirty Thursday morning and I can't sleep, so I fire up the computer, make a drink and open Photoshop.
I produced this black and white soft focus image of young Nicola via the amazing Black And White filter in Photoshop CS3 by lightening the Red and the Yellow channels. Two stages of softening were added along with a couple of masks and finally, drag in our YPG copyright slogan. I'm sorry we have to do this but there are people out there who think our work is so good that they'd rather pinch than take their own photos for their websites. Bit of a compliment in a way I suppose, although I'd prefer they accredited the images to YeoPhotoGroup, in which case I'd probably give it to them for free.
Levels and curves produced an improvement in the overall lighting, which was a little below our normal high standard due to there being six people in our cramped little studio.
We also tried some daylight shots, (left), plus the shadows are filled using a silver surfaced sun visor for a car windscreen costing just £2-99 at Aldi supermarket - it's held rigid by a large 'H' shape of 15mm copper tubing (what else?).
The gorgeous catch-light in the lower half of Nicki's eyes is a reflection of this 2 foot by 4 foot reflector which I held horizontal just above waist level while Kelv took this image. Kelv definitely knows his Nikon camera and his grasp of lighting is growing week by week.
We're both impressed at how incredibly successful this reflector is in producing soft fill-in lighting and I shall certainly be using this gadget during all my outdoor portrait sessions. Will post up the details of how to build my 'Super Silver Bouncer' as soon as.

Meanwhile, Nicki wants some sponsorship photos of herself in action which is going to produce its own set of challenges as far as lighting is concerned. Flash and daylight balanced, the shutter speed right down around 1/10th of a second for blur and my Vivitar 285HV on full power for main lighting at a three o'clock position. A Starblitz at seven o'clock position for fill lighting - Nicki would be running left to right in this particular setup.
I want to go for late evening, brow of a hill, running and cycling past at various speeds, use second curtain flash to capture a sharp shape with a faint blur trailing behind Nicki due to the slow shutter speed. I want sharp detail on tracksuit, logos, and Nicola's lovely features.
Must also leave enough room around Nicola so that the background, lit by really weak daylight, is attractively blurred but not over-lit. Over this blurring will appear the sponsors logos etc.
This is going to be some shoot! Anyone willing to help carry the kit and hold up the lights and reflectors on this shoot? You'll certainly learn a lot about lighting on the hoof!
I might even try my Elinchrome D-Lite 200's outdoors by running them on a borrowed 2.3Kw generator.
Once I know the generator is capable of handling the power requirements then I might get around to making up a lighter, more portable 12 volt power inverter. I mean, how difficult can it be to knock one of those up in the shed!!? Now come on, don't jest, I'm serious! Watch this space.

Eyes in the lower third of a vertical portrait! What??? I didn't think it would look good, the balance would surely be way out, it would appear upside down. top heavy, a bad move! How wrong I was.
The eyes in this picture of Abigail are truly magnetic, they draw the viewer in so much so that all else diminishes to the point where you do not notice just how opposed to traditional composition this shot really is.
Not sure about the strap though. Is it even noticeable? Should I take it out, or would I fail to make it disappear without trace? To my mind those amazing eyes do not allow my own eyes to wander enough to even see a strap.
Black and white photos have been popular since the year dot when cave men used charcoal sticks and nothing has changed for me - black and white rules in almost every case (see below).

I worked on this image in Photoshop, which was originally taken by Sandy at our studio, and tried to make a soft focus picture reminiscent of the 1940's, but I think we went over the top with too many lights. Just goes to show that not all photos are capable of becoming black and white masterpieces.
However, it does make a very reasonable colour portrait which has the potential of becoming a pretty good high key shot. Gaussian Blur with reduced opacity and a small amount of masking has produced a beautiful portrait which both Sandy and his model Abigail, and her mum should be especially proud of.
I love working with these old lights because I have to move them, feather them, modify them with white net curtains and I'm kept really busy helping the others take better and beter photographs. They're brilliant workers and I enjoy making sure they are learning something new all the time
Roll on the next studio session!!!
Keith (Strobist) Robins.

Portrait photography is my all time favourite. There can be few pleasurable pastimes more rewarding than being able to show someone just how beautiful they look, and as for being able to give them a print to prove it, wow!
Black and white has been one of my loves since the seventies, I guess most of us who have seen an image appear from a blank sheet of printing paper in a darkroom feel the same. Even in this digital age there is something riveting about a good black and white.
I had great deliberations over this first picture of Charlotte, do I make the most of Photoshop CS3's black and white filter by bringing in just a hint of colour, or leave it pure black and white?
So I did two of the same image. In this copy I brought back some colour in Charlotte's eyes and lips - which one do you prefer - which one will Charlotte choose to give her boyfriend, or her mum?
When I first started working in a girls school attended by girls from all over the world between the ages of 13 to 19 I thought I could tell a real beauty when I saw one. Wrong!!!
They reckon a camera doesn't lie - wrong again, sort of.
The camera can be told to record an image in the way you tell it to and what better way than to manipulate the lighting to reveal the more attractive features and let the rest languish in shadows. I've found the best way to achieve this is with studio lights, or hotshoe flashguns if working outdoors.

Making the most of lights and the modifiers which go with them takes a lot of practice which over the years builds into what's known as experience and it's this experience which I want to pass onto you followers of YeoPhotoGroup before I pop my digital glogs.
Photographing two girls under studio lights can be fraught with shadows hiding features which should be more prominent. What can be used to light up this shadow and what can I do about a missing catchlight? Exactly where to put those lights, how strong, whether to go for wide or snooted light, or should it be bounced or gridded, will a reflector help or hinder - these are all questions to which the answer is practice, practice, practice!
With so many variables of required lighting and an even wider range of lights and modifiers on the market, what to buy must seem mind boggling. Of course you could spend hundreds and find the lights are way too powerful for the size of studio available to you, or you could start by using someone else's cast offs which is what YeoPhotoGroup has done, although you'd have a job to tell by looking at these pictures Charlotte and Emily.
I think that with Emily's hair hanging slightly over her left eye that we should keep her right eye as the main point of focus. So that this remains the focus point throughout I often use centre point focus and try to concentrate on keeping that nearest eye as the very centre of my images. (The BBC camera crews always use the neasest eye as a point of focus for closeups of faces)
Cropping in Photoshop's Lightroom takes care of composition later, plus, I can go back into Lightroom as many times as I like and recrop the same image. I can also change it from colour to black and white and back again as Lightroom never effects my original Jpeg images, which means this is not the final image of Emily. There will probably be half a dozen different copies of this lovely picture over the next few weeks, each one with it's own merits.
Of course by then we'll have taken loads more on lots of different locations, under a variety of lighting conditions and all the while we are learning. In fifty years time we'll still be learning but it will be someone else pressing the button by then, building up their experience, shaping their own portfolio and hopefully their career as a photographer.
The best of luck in building your experience and if I can help then please ask.
Email my your problems, thoughts and a couple of your more successful images to:- robinsrepairs@btinternet dot com I'll leave you to take out the gaps and replace the dot.
I also use a set of Elinchrom DLite 200 watt lights with softboxes - they are robust, versatile, fan cooled, adjustable by five stops, the stands are very stable and I love them. Don't confuse the 200 watts with the power of an old fashioned photo floodlight - 200 watts is the recharge rate which they manage in an incredible 0.7 of a second and tells you it's ready with a little bleep, which can be turned off. The softboxes take a minute or so each to assemble and the same to dismantle. The kit comes in two slim very manageable bags, one of them is a much stiffer hardcase for the lights. They don't come with reflectors so I ordered one and wished now that I asked for two, plus two grids which just slot in the front a 12 degree and a 20 degree which I use frequently. The bulbs are protected by the two hard plastic cone shaped covers which are included. Power leads are very generous and are the 'Kettle' variety so a radio trigger will plug in between at the flash head end. An unexpected bonus was that each flash head came with a built-in cooling fan which hadn't been in the original specifications. However, they really do prevent the heads overheating and I wouldn't be without them. Photos and details of my home setup will be in a later post.

Take a £7 shower curtain, plus 12 feet of copper tubing and make a 3 foot by 6 foot reflector.
My wife sewed a pocket at each end of the curtain from the bathroom department of a DIY warehouse leaving an access point at one end. Into these pockets I slipped two lengths of plumbers 15mm copper tubing with a 'Tee' joint soldered in the centre of each

Cut off a seven foot length of tube and about a foot in from each end bend to almost ninety degrees, 75 degrees is best as ninety allows the joints to come apart during use and too straight an angle makes it difficult to assemble.
Use a drill to remove any excess solder from the empty socket of the 'Tee' joint which may prevent easy entry of the main support pipe.
After bending the pipe you'll need to cut the ends back until you can assemble the framework without struggling yet still keeping the material taut.
There are several benefits to bending the pipe, easy assembly, creates a natural spring which keeps material taut, easy dis-assembly, and less of a sharp shadow caused when using as a sun diffuser.
There is very little twist on account of the two bends and the positive way they lock in place whereas the mark one model suffered a lot from twisting in even a light breeze as it had no bends at all.
It's light enough to be held out level from one end with two hands and the addition of a clamp and wing nut makes for easy adjustment.
Total costs - about £15. Time to make - a couple of hours one Sunday afternoon. Assembly of the finished DIY reflector takes just twenty seconds and packing it up takes thirty. The very first time it took half a minute to put up and has since worked out at a constant twenty seconds. Rolling up the material and slipping on an elastic band takes a little longer as I try to avoid creasing the shiny material - I've taken longer to find a spare memory card!
okay, so the main pipe is rather long and unwieldy but a small price to pay when similar sized reflectors cost around £150.
A lighting stand makes this a very versatile reflector / diffuser for portrait work under all sorts of difficult lighting conditions.
I'm now working on a half sized reflector with a light spraying of golden orange paint on one side as I need a smaller reflector for helping capture golden sunrise portraits similar to those I've seen in magazines, plus I'd like to bounce a flash out of it.
Hmm, a smaller one would probably fit into that 27" toolbag I picked up in Jewsons Building merchants for £14, along with all the other bits and pieces we strobists seem to carry around on photoshoots
Keith (Strobist) Robins

Newcomer Liz learnt how to use a single studio flash really fast. Okay, so in this first relaxed picture of Jane, one of Yeovil Camera Club's prettier members, there is a small hair light at two o'clock high but then we dispensed with that and tried to be as creative as possible with just the one light.
Positioned less than arm's length to camera left and using a shoot-through brolly this light has certainly seen some faces in the last 30 years, but it's still capable of producing the goods.
Yes, I do own a set of Elinchome D-Lite 200's with soft boxes but I rarely use them for any of these YeophotoGroup posts as the idea is to press home the point that you do not need to spend lots of money to have fun with your photography.
For this second shot of Jane I think we should have moved the light a little nearer the camera, although the brolly edge might then have intruded into the specs as an unwelcome reflection.
Note how Liz has just managed to keep the whole of Jane's eyes visible behind the rims of her specs. Always try to get the whole eye / eyes as these are the make or breakpoints of beautiful portrait work.
The latest addition of a Black and White filter in Adobe CS3 is fantastic, all it needs is a slight lift in the red and yellow channels followed by a faint touch of black paint in the white mask box to bring just a hint of colour into Jane's lips, eyes and hair. For a first timer regarding portrait work Liz did exceptionally well with these three shots.
When it came to lighting a couple we decided to add a reflector.
A white shower curtain from Aldi supermarket cost me £7, add on 12 feet of 15mm copper pipe and a couple of joints and I have a six feet by three feet shiny white reflector for a total sum of under £17 - a post on how to make this will be coming up soon.
About ten shots into the couple sequence Liz caught this lovely pose of Jane and the YCC chairman Sandy perfectly. Some might say those fingers on the right are intrusive but with a simple soft edged vignette I think Liz has a competition winner here.
Well done Liz, hope to see you here again at the YeoPhotoGroup studio
Keith (strobist) Robins.

My Vivitar 285 flashes over 4oo times instead of only 60.
Take a six volt motorcycle battery, a block of wood and about four feet of wire, a couple of clips and Hey Presto, an external battery pack at a total cost of less than £30.
I successfully carried out similar adaptions to three of my caving flashguns back in the seventies, plus three video cameras during the nineties so I guess it follows suit that now it's the turn of my digital lighting equipment to be, shall we say personalised via a little cheap DIY.
I think the most complicated part was soldering the mid-wire joint together - these are commonly used for radio controlled car power leads as they are capable of carrying plenty of current, yet are quickly detachable in the event of smoke emerging that very first time you connect up your delicate electronics.
Be Very Careful to get the polarity correct and use a multimeter frequently during this build.
I went to Maplins for the electrical bits such as a Maplin six volt - 4.2amp battery at £9-99, charger at £11-99, twin wire, HF10L spade terminals and FE65V plastic teminal covers, a two part snap joint with part numbers GZ99 and JG05 = £30 the lot.
Incidental extras consisted of block of wood, two pan-head screws, a soldering iron, saw, screwdriver - all of which I found in my shed.
As with any alterations to any photo equipment the warranty becomes void if you go tampering within the guarantee period - that said then go for it!
First off you have to figure out which are the positive and the negative contacts inside the battery compartment. Two of them merely carry the power from one battery to another and will show a dead short when both are touched with the two multimeter probes.

Set the multimeter on Ohms for this test and a reading of zero means there's a dead short, or a figure one in the digital display means open circuit, any other reading means there is something electrical or electronic component between the probes.
If you're new to the use of a multimeter try testing a 100 watt household light bulb. First off try touching the two probes together and you'll get a reading of zero. Now touch the two blobs on the base of your bulb and you'll get a reading of approximately forty ohms as the filament is acting as a resistor between one terminal to the other, (think electric fire bar glowing red, that is one heck of a resistor, meanwhile the bulb filament glows white hot).
Let's test the terminals inside your flashgun. If it's a Vivitar 285HV like mine the two terminals closest to the front are linked and this shows up pretty clearly via bright shiny metal. The other pair of contacts are what carries the battery current into the flash unit, but which is neg and which is positive? The answer is to look at the battery assembly where each battery is clearly marked with a + sign, it's the pointy end. Of course most other flashguns have neg / pos diagrams marked in white paint inside the battery compartment.
Right, grab a piece of wood and make it the same size and shape as the interior of your battery compartment. For a Vivitar it's rounded on three corners and square on the fourth corner. There's a saw blade width groove running down one face of your block which will slide over the protruding plastic down the front facing side of the battery compartment.
Fit two screws into the end of the wooden block which will be carrying your external power supply. These go towards the rear face of the compartment with positive terminal closest to the hotshoe. Check the polarity with a multimeter before inserting it that first time!
Go to either the battery assembly, or the battery + markings to figure out which screw on your wooden block is going to be positive.
The length of wire for my setup has been kept long enough for the flash to be 8 feet up on a lighting stand and the battery on the floor, this way it can't fall any further and risk damage to my rather marvelous 285HV flashgun.
You can either leave the battery door open a little to allow entry of the wire or, for if yours is the hinged sort, file / drill a hole on the door edge. To facilitate this entry point you will have to drill a hole for the wire right down through the wooden block at an angle, from one edge nearest the door catch down to the centre being careful avoid the screws.
Recycling time for the flash on full power remains at 7 seconds for a couple hundred flashes and very gradually drops towards 15 seconds over the next two hundred. Compared to normal AA batteries this is a Godsend, a whole wedding without waiting an eternity for the damned flash to recycle!
One of these pictures shows a caving battery belt, actually an old car seatbelt on which I used for abseiling, caving and to carry a twelve volt burglar alarm battery for video cameras, (I try to save money where possible, but I must try to go get hold of one of those lightweight gardening belts for this flash battery setup).
The wide metal plate belt loop in the same shot is so I can be totally portable with my Vivitar 285HV and my DIY brolly bracket, (see a previous post for those details).
Before, with AA batteries, I was waiting thirty five seconds within twenty full power flashes and a whole minute after fifty flashes!
I do tend to use the Vivitar flashgun on 1/4 power for brolly photography and recycling time is just two seconds. Without the brolly I'd be using 1/16th power which means recycling time is virtually instant. I am far more than happy with this little bit of DIY.