YeoPhotoGroup by Keith Robins

2011-11-29T00:12:00.001-08:00

Just been on a 'Subtraction of Light' course with Mark Cleghorn of PhotoTraining4U fame in Cardiff.
Seems like the addition of flash is not quite as necessary as I'd previously thought.
In fact, during the five day course we were starting at 6am and photographing with extended exposures of up to two minutes. On a pier in low lying mist by 10am and then later we went under the pier to discover the equivalent of studio lighting!
Mark's 'Subtraction of Light' course has changed my whole outlook on how I take portraits with the purchase of a Canon 85mm F1.8 lens. I've also begun using the 'Picture Style' modes on my Canon 5D with black and white plus a red filter being my favourite.
Candid photography has never been one of my favourite pastimes, but it is growing on me. Street portraits however, turned ot to be far more rewarding than anything I've previouly tackled with many new contacts each time I take to the streets.
Portraits in the woods now makes me look for 'window light' and a reflector is higher on my list of accessories than a tripod ever was.
But don't worry I'm going to forgo the benefits of using a flashgun.
I'll try to keep you posted on a more regular basis with plenty of results form my YeoPhotoGroup course which now takes place on a Tuesday evening. This is a free range group with no charges, no officialdom and no real rules apart from the basis of, 'We all help each other to enjoy our photography and don't give any negative comments'.
We now have a facebook area and regularly post results, ideas, and hints.
Keith.

2011-05-02T23:41:00.000-07:00

Miniscule portrait studio at 1.5 m by 1 metre!
A narrow shop doorway, model four feet away and flash bounced off a four inch wide door reveal.
Okay so there was a bit of help from the sun which illuminated Lola's left cheek via the white wall outside. For some of these photos I also used my Canon 580 EX with head reversed bouncing off a white tee shirt to my left. Flash on ETL, camera on manual so I could control the daylight.
Getting Lola to look towards somewhere darker helped to open up her eyes and it's the eyes that can make or break a good portrait.

I came across Lola via 'Model Mayhem' a sort of online modeling agency where you sign up, wait for approval, and eventually if they think you're good enough you can send out friend requests followed by email contacts with the models where MM act as intermediaries, a sort of buffer zone. Lola is a newbie to the site as a model but I've had nearly forty years behind the camera as a portrait photographer and decided her portfolio needed a boost. Besides, I neede the practice plus I can't remember ever having photographed a girl with such beautiful red hair. Mostly, though, I could see the possibilities of some amazing photos with Lola and on that count I was definitely proved correct.

We arranged to meet at a carpark in Glastonbury on May 1st and blow me the roads were closed due to a series of fun runs, the carparks full but I somehow squeeze in. Lola's mum came along to help hold a flashgun as I could only carry one lighting stand along with all the other stuff us photographers consider important - so why do we not use it all?
I often carry two large bags and pull a kitchen waste bin on a shopping trolley full of lighting stands, brollies, reflectors and tripod, but this time it was just a bagfull of four flashes, stand adaptors and triggers.

'Proper Job' supermarket carpark provided a small area of shade under a tree set in the pavement which I used to keep the brilliant sun off Lola's gorgeous red hair - I wanted to create my own strobist lighting arrangements, my own sunlight if you like.
One stand, a Vivitar 285 into a small brolly, a second 285 held by mum replicated the sun to great effect. Both guns fired via cheapo radio triggers from China at £60 for a set of three recievers and one transmitter. The benefits are that Lola's blue eyes opened up as she looked into the shade. What appears to be sunlight shining on Lola's cheek is really a Vivitar at 1/2 power, the other 285 bouncing into the small brolly also set to 1/2 power but without a modifier it resembles direct sunlight.
You wouldn't think that a carpark would make any sort of decent backdrop but it does. Not having access to a studio should not put you off taking beautiful portraits like these, it is possible almost anywhered to create a work of art using flag lights. Strobism rules!
Then we moved on to a narrow shop doorway where Lola faced into the fairly dark interior with a weedy backyard and a whole mess of rainwater pipes in the background lit by sunlight.
Okay, so I didn't stay true strobist with the Vivtars for this part of the photoshoot as I wanted to push my understanding of the capabilities of Canon ETTL and whether I can still influence this modern automatic lighting technology, or does it take over and mess up everything creative. To which the answer is - without my strobist knowledge of how to juggle exposure controls these photos of Lola would have suffered big time.
Canon's interactive ETTL with more than one flash has moved further down the list of things to absorb my precious time!
During the two hour shoot I took 115 photos and Lola will get all these on a CD to go on her Facebook page and on her MM portfolio and I'm only too pleased to help this delightful young lady on her way as a model who is a joy to work with.
Will I use Model Mayhem again? Yes, without a doubt! Although it's a rather long winded method of contacting suitable models but it's for their protection and I can see why it has to be this way.
Will I be photographing Lola again? Yes, most definitely, can't wait!!!!

2011-04-24T04:56:00.000-07:00

Popstar and strobists in the bluebells!
This late evening popstar photoshoot required three flashguns, nothing technical though as time was short.
We were also short of an actual popstar so Trevor leaped in with a borrowed guitar.
Photo one gives an idea of the location and the little Vivitar 285HE of which I used two. These run on 6 volt motorcycle batteries as they are allergic to rechargable AA's. Third gun was a Miranda from Ebay at £2 which does run on rechargables. I've got two of these lovely little Miranda's and use them a lot.

All the lighting stands, camera kit and other parphinalia we strobists think we really need, but hardly ever use, is carried in a kitchen waste bin fixed to a collapsible trolle with gaffer tape and bungee straps and is seen here standing in for Trevor while he puts on one of my old movie making wigs.

The trolley wheels folded up on the last photo trip and the weighty kit had to be carried back to the van. The buggy has since been adapted with a solid bar axle for just £2, but at only £12 from Maplins for the trolley I still ended up with a bargain.
I wanted our lively popstar to leap in the air and look as if he's bellowing a few lyrics - He's a few years younger than myself so his knees can take the strain. A tip for those with spare cash and the means to transport it - how about a three foot diameter trampoline from Ebay for twenty quid?
Mounting the flashes onto a Bowens stand, an Elinchrom and an Interfit stand, (Yes I like variety), requires the use of hotshoe to lighting stand adaptors at £6 each off the internet. As nothing we strobists use ever seems to be compatible I've Araldited a DIY metal hotshoe foot on top of each of my flashguns, including my two Canon 580 EXlls, which has the bonus of bringing the flash window right next to a brolly shaft.
But then the breeze catches one of the brollies and a few swear words spring to mind. I now carry a tube of superglue and a few spare brollies.
By keeping one flash in shot the illusion of an outdoor stage venue was a last minute addition which we both liked, then decided that adding a CTO filter made it resemble the sun setting through the backdrop of trees, which we liked even more.

To retain the daylight level, which revealed detail in the bluebells, I used ISO 400 and a shutter speed of 1/80th. I did try 1/20th at F8 but the resulting blur was too distracting plus it darkened the flash too much.

Remember, shutter speeds control daylight and apertures control flash strength - higher shutter speed makes the sky/background darker and lower makes it lighter. ISO changes effect both flash strength and daylight levels so I usually leave the sensitivity set on 100 ISO.
Although the aperture effects both ambient and flash it is primarily the flash strength which is controlled via the F numbers - higher F number darker flash. Of course you could always move the flashgun further away to decrease the strength, or turn down the power setting.
I'm not going to go into how to use highspeed shutter sync right now as cameras and flashes vary so much. Best to study the techniques of this along with multiple dedicated flashes in your flashgun instruction book.
Of particular interest is the Nikon CLS (controlled lighting system), or the Canon equivalent. I've used multiple hotshoe flashguns for thirty five years and find the process simple, straight forward and easy - but these dedicated lighting systems are something else! Bear with me though and when I have sussed out how to use it successfully I'll pass the info on in this blog.

Meanwhile, an aperture of F5.6 returned the best images making full use of the three flashes, of which the Vivitars were set to 1/16th power at six feet front and back and the Miranda on full power at around twenty feet. Keeping all the flashes in sync was an IShoot radio transmitter on the camera sending radio signals to a set of three IShoot receivers on the three flashguns.

I bought this set of Ishoot triggers and the transmitter for £60 from a fellow photographer who wanted a Nikon fit, but then he found there is only Canon fit available.
I've since used these same triggers with Nikon, Olympus and my Canon cameras with equal success as I'm guessing all the little contacts don't actually do anything. They also work superbly with my Elinchrom studio lights and having four channels is a real boon in a busy studio environment.
Meanwhile Trevor is having a ball, leaping and shouting and I'm loving how these three amazing strobes are working together - absolutely wonderful lighting!

Okay so next time we'll add a few more coloured filters and maybe a smoke machine, maybe even try adding a real sun filtering through the trees along with a studio flash to really challenge the sun's strength, but being an emergency plumber means time is often short.
Thank you Trevor for being a great sport and he says he is available for bookings, but don't ring him - he'll ring you.

2011-03-17T23:44:00.000-07:00

Flash on the battlefield!
Maiden Newton At War re-enactment presented absolutely loads of flash opportunities.
Recently a Canon 580 EXll flashgun arrived in the post, from my wife who thankfully encourages me in my photo endevours.
Along with my existing 580 EX mark one I now have the makings of a portable studio which I can control with an ST-E2 Canon gadget that clips into the camera hotshoe and which I picked up for a song.
Now you may think this is getting away from pure strobist flash techniques and you're right, but I'm not going to apoligize for trying to conquer yet another milestone in the ever expanding challenge of photography. This is modern technology and is going to take a lot of getting used to, so thank heaven I've had thirty five years head start as a genuine strobist. I'm a knobs and levers sort of bloke and some of these modern menus sometimes baffle me.

My learning of ultra-modern flash techniques started off with just one Canon 580EX flash at Maiden Newton 20th of June 2010.
I set the camera on Manual mode, the ISO to 200, F8 in aperture priority and the flash set to ETTL at 1/3 rd under exposure so as not to overpower and appear obvious, this is admirably demonstrated above with the title shot of my day out.
Being a really bright day the shutter speeds soared above the sync speed of my flashgun, but by pressing a combination of buttons on the back panel of the flash I found highspeed sync. This sends out the flash in a series of pulses relating to the shutter speed and exposes all parts of the sensor evenly meaning I didn't get the normal black bar across the lower part of each image. Operating the menu requires fairly small fingers, but eventually I managed it with my builder's sized digits.

I was surprised to find that some photos were taken as high as 1/800th, which causes the flash to be so weak it's usless at anything more than three feet! I should have realised this and gone for an aperture of F11 and lowered the sensitivity to ISO 100 before ruining 20% of my daylight flash balance efforts.

Going back to the camera being on manual and the flash on ETTL, the flash knows what aperture I've set on the camera, it even knows what ISO setting is being used and produces light accordingly. This is all very clever and so beyond most of us that I'll excuse you for throwing your hands in the air and saying; 'Oh Sod it! I think I'll just use auto and be damned!'
However, stick with it and before long the penny begins to drop. But, beware! Just when you think you've grasped the know-how and beginning to master this daylight flash balance malarkey, then something will go wrong, you'll be stumped again and wishing you'd stuck with manual strobist guns.

To soften the flash indoors I've got a Stofen to send the light around the room and sends out enough until the camera agrees with the output and turns off the flash, but outdoors Stofens just don't cut it.
Instead I use the lid of a large emulsion paint tub which I've cut and shaped to fit the flash head. The angle of 45 degrees sends out a fairly soft edged light which caused a lot of interest on the battlefield. Mind you, should I happen to lose it there are another five paint tins lids in my shed.

Many thanks to all the WWll re-enactors who helped make my day.
In the next post I'll explain a little more about ETTL on location and hope I can make it easier to understand - for both of us!

2010-05-25T23:47:00.000-07:00

How to take portraits outdoors in the dark!
You'd be forgiven for thinking these portraits were taken in a studio - whereas actually they were amid the bluebells of Sparkford woods around dusk.

Here's Bob, one of YPG's newer members, studying the results of his experimenting with a fibre optic ring flash while the main studio light is set off via my radio trigger. Okay, so I should have made more of the gorgeous bluebells, but I've been there, done that. Besides, portraits are my favourite area of photography.

Running a studio light away from any mains electricity is usually extremely expensive. Not anymore!
This picture of Charlotte was powered by a 12volt car battery, through an invertor and has no trouble powering a single Elinchrom 200watt D-Lite.
A Kenro five-in-one reflector helped lighten the shadows and eliminated the need for a second Elinchrom head, although maybe next time I'll use both - just to prove it can be done on the cheap.
There are posts elsewhere on this blog showing two heads are better than one - and we're still running them off a car battery!

Laura, who's never done any sitting in front of a camera before, came along too and with a little verbal encouragement enabled us to capture this lovely semi black and white photo. I said that her eyes were one of her more attractive features and that I'd try to show them at their best.
I love playing around in photoshop and creating these semi black and whites with a softness produced via Guassian blur along with a layer mask.
For instance this one of Laura has a blurred copy layer, but the semi black and white effect is the result of leaving the blur at 50% then highlighting the lower layer and using the Mono button of Colour Mixer in CS2.

I love the way Emily's face is illuminated from a long way around to the left and only creates a small nose shadow in the shot on the left, plus how she's looking straight up at the large white reflective brolly. Shoot-thro brollies seem to lose a lot of power by not reflecting all the light so I'm really glad I snapped up this bargain brolly at a photo sale.
Meanwhile, the nose shadow across Charlotte's cheek doesn't look right here and I should have got her to tilt her head the opposite side.
However, I still like the colour, the softness and especially the twinkle in her eye. Notice how the reflector casts a catchlight in her left eye?

My favourite shot of the evening is this one of Emily with it's superb soft lighting, a smile that's not over the top, a good sized catchlight in both eyes, plus the way her tumbling hair is surrounding her face adds even more beauty to the finished photo.
Bluebells? What bluebells? They were there in the background, promise! I'm more than happy with these results and look forward to the next time with this trio of amazing girls.
Keith Robins.

2010-04-05T12:26:00.000-07:00

Stuart's only had his Canon 5D mark ll one week and wants to explore flash!
He used my Canon 550EX for this pair of snaps.
Placing the flash into the hotshoe, setting the camera to manual and the flash to ETTL means that no matter what he uses as the aperture the resulting exposures will be identical.
The flash is able to read what aperture Stuart has set on his camera and automatically sends out a weaker powered flash for the second photo where he used f8 instead of f16
Even if he'd used a higher ISO setting the flashgun would still have picked this up and allowed for the less sensitive settings.
The shutter speed could have been anywhere between 2 seconds and 1/200th of a second and it would not have made any difference to the exposure as shutter speeds have no effect on flash photos, as long as they stay below 1/2ooth.
For the next challenge we tried a darkened room and used a pair of Miranda flashguns which someone was throwing out.
(Took me a whole afternoon with a soldering iron to adapt them to work on my radio triggers.)
Both guns at arms length, one behind my head and the other to camera right. The f14 was due to both guns being on full power manual. I also needed to use a thumb across the flash window as a light modifier on the one lighting my face, which means the one behind me shows a little stronger.

2010-03-31T00:04:00.000-07:00

Seaside flashers! Balancing daylight and flash is not the easiest of challenges, in fact less than five percent of photographers really understand how and why flashguns work in conjunction with available light.
This blog is a mine of information about exactly that.
I'm hoping that by reading all the posts in this blog that you too will be able to handle this most creative of lighting combinations.

Burton Bradstock in early March at around 5pm is the first photo. A flash on that rock in the foreground would have given added interest and help balance the picture.
Second photo is about an hour later. I definitely should have used a flash here - set on minus 2/3rds of a stop so it is not at all obvious - which is surely the whole point of this exercise. Must clean that front filter more often!
It's getting damned cold and my trouser legs are wet through kneeling in the wet shingle with a wide angle lens. Next time I'll bring a pair of wellies, or better still a pair of fisherman's waders.
Brian is seen here struggling with the principles of daylight flash balancing, but he's a fast learner and is soon able to take pictures just like these.

I used F18 at 1/160th on 200 ISO with my canon 550EX on ETTL. Strange to say that the camera, a Canon 5D, was in the manual mode - so too was the lens which is focused on Brian.
Even though the camera is in manual mode it does not effect the ability of the flash to operate successfully in ETTL.
Why manual mode for the camera? I wanted complete control over both aperture to control the flash, plus shutter speed which governs the intensity of the daylight. Now I can make the sky as dark and threatening as I like, mean while retaining a good exposure of my maim subject - usually a figure or a portrait.

This goes against the normal everyday trend of photography where one speed up equals one aperture down to get a similar exposure.
I feel completely at ease with flashguns and this rather unusual way of operating the settings on my camera and flash and have done so for over thirty years. Some of my old manual flashes needed light modifiers such as the lenses from a pair of old Polaroid sunglasses, several layers of handkerchief, or just a thumb placed in front of the flash lens. Nowadays there are auto modes via so many menus it's baffling, plus these modern things seem to have a mind of their own and often refuse to co-operate.
The copyright was added with one click of a brush and then toned down using Opacity.
Hold down the Alt key and type 0169 in the right-hand numerical keys to get a C symbol. type your name - select it with a rectangle - go to Edit, Define Brush Preset, click OK and your logo is the very last brush in the brush palette. Open a new layer before adding your logo, then use Transform to adjust or rotate.

2010-03-30T14:10:00.000-07:00

Brian discovers how to flash in my kichen!
Brian is reasonably new to digital photography but he took less than an hour to discover the relationship between available light and flash light using apertures and shutter speeds.
His Olympus bridge camera is able to talk to Olympus flashguns and we had two guns to play with!
This first picture took one gun aimed at the wall behind me - no wires and no little slave, not even a radio trigger in sight. The popup flash on his Olympus did the talking but needed a crisp packet turned inside out to reflect the signal towards the ceiling so it didn't effect the image.

For the next one I held a flashgun in each hand at arms length out to both sides. The one in my left hand was full power while my right-hand thumb was across the middle of the other flash lens reducing the output by a whole stop. This is a trick worth remembering when using totally manual flashguns which can be picked up from E-Bay for virtually nothing - I got a matching pair for 50 pence each.

This last photo Brian took was from about four feet away and used one flash plus a silver faced gift bag about twelve inches away to camera right in my left hand.
Brian was absolutely over the moon at these results as you can imagine, but he agreed to let me do the black and white conversion using the Black and White filter in Photoshop CS3.
Next time out is a trip to the seaside for a sunset plus flashing session.

2009-12-27T04:35:00.000-08:00

How to photograph WOW factor drips!
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.

2009-12-19T09:39:00.000-08:00

Sharpening images in Elements 4 without halos. My previous post referred to an unusual method of sharpening in Adobe CS3, but as most photographers stick to 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.

2009-12-16T22:28:00.000-08:00

Sharpening with a difference! Black and white photos of men can stand a lot of really gritty sharpening. I absolutely love these B&W 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!!!

2009-10-31T10:33:00.000-07:00

One radio transmitter & three triggers for £40. What a bargain!!
Amazon is the place to visit for a fast efficient service. I ordered the triggers on Wednesday and, even in this time of Post Office strike 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 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. 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 a 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 12 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.

2009-09-13T01:11:00.000-07:00

Studio flash outdoors - at night! Okay so it's been done before via an extension lead. However, for those of you adventurous enough to try the great outdoors as a backdrop you'll know that full length portraits do not need rolls of expensive background cloth / paper. Or that there is no need to flag the lights to prevent stray light illuminating those annoying creases which occur in even the smoothest and blackest of background material.

In recent posts YeoPhotoGroup have been using a generator to power my Elinchrom D-Lite 200's. Handling this heavy beastie takes two to carry it plus two more to bring our camera gear and all the other boxes and bags of lights, stands, reflectors, modifiers, softboxes and assorted cables.
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. 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 moment of relief just after the shutter has fired which is when some models appear to momentarily relax during the often daunting task of posing for the camera. During this two hour bridal shoot the lights recycling time remained very close to manufacturers specs and never went once over two seconds. Also, the drain on the battery amounted to such a minimal amount that it would probably last a whole weekend before recharging became necessary.

In the first image Hannah was 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 1/2o0th 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.
If you live in the /Yeovil area and want to come along to a meeting go to Google and search for Yeovil Camera Club. Glastonbury is another of my favourite local clubs, again go to Google and search for MidSomerset Camera Club.

2009-09-06T07:41:00.000-07:00

Hand held fairground night-time shots with 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 curl 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 it was being used by another member of YeoPhotoGroup who accidentally left his tripod at home.
On the final image I managed to carry out all three manoeuvres while the shutter was still on half a second.

This 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.
Keith (Strobist) Robins.

2009-09-06T06:46:00.000-07:00

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

2009-08-16T12:11:00.000-07:00

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.

2009-08-08T13:29:00.000-07:00

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!

2009-08-06T00:12:00.000-07:00

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.

2009-07-29T12:31:00.000-07:00

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.

2009-07-22T22:19:00.000-07:00

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.

2009-07-21T00:23:00.000-07:00

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

2009-07-06T00:36:00.000-07:00

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.

2009-06-27T12:04:00.000-07:00

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.

2009-06-17T23:56:00.000-07:00

Portrait lighting experiments lesson one. Broad lighting is a good place to start off with when you're new to portrait work. By broad lighting I mean the main light should be coming in from the same side of the model's face as the most prominent ear you can see from your camera position.
Here, Trevor and myself are using YeoPhotoGroup's new studio for the very first time and immediately found ourselves on a steep learning curve of real-life lighting arrangements. You have to remember that until now we've never had the room, or the time, to setup and alter the lights around quite as much as this. This first image is probably only about ten minutes into a ninety minute session and proves that lighting skills is a little like riding a bike, you never forget how it's done.
To off start with we sorted out the white balance as these lights are absolutely ancient, (30 years plus), and haven't been used for twenty years. Next we explored the possibilities of using a shutter speed which could include some of the window light, but as this revealed a ridiculously low 2 seconds we chose to ignore daylight altogether and settled on a pretty standard 1/200th of a second. The ISO is at 100 and an aperture of f14 was settled on.
YeoPhotoGroup is all about doing every thing on a shoe-string budget and these old lights have no power controls, although they do both have built in slave units. Of course there is the old fashioned 'power modifiers' of altering the flash to subject distance, either a shoot-through brolly or a bounce brolly which allowed us to retain some degree of control over flash output.
We decided that a reflector would help light the darker side of my face so a smooth white emulsioned board was held about 12 to16 inches off to camera left. Also, the fairly sharp shadows created by the full-on studio heads with built-in reflectors needed rectifying.
For the second image we added an old faded white shoot-through brolly at two feet from brolly tip to my face, which softened the shadows beautifully. (I must remember to remove that string from my glasses next time.)
An Edison screw mini flash, which has its own slave unit built in, became our hair light and was positioned about three feet behind me. In some situations it can help to use a pocket hanky as a method of light reduction - one layer equals one stop and two layers equals two stop.
A second ancient studio flash is lighting the background from tight in to one side of the textured blue sheet and low down, creating a graduated tone behind me, (keep this to the same side as the nose for best results).
The reflector was held a little higher and angled downwards to help reduce glare in my glasses, (see third picture). As the reflected light wasn't quite strong enough we angled the brolly so it aimed halfway between me and the white board.

The complete lighting setup is shown here revealing just how small a space can be used to produce perfectly acceptable portraits.
The high voltage flashes were fired by Trevors 550EX canon flash set on 1/125th power and pointing up at the grey ceiling. I did once blank my Canon by firing these monstrous studio heads direct off the camera contacts. Since then I've got hold of a radio studio head trigger for £42 from PhotoDeals UK.
All in all a brilliant evening's work with many lesson learnt. We even had time for some outdoor flash merged with daylight the results of which will be coming up in a later post.

2009-06-16T22:31:00.000-07:00

My DIY brolly bracket was designed and made in about an hour late Sunday evening. The first outing with this monstrous gadget was Monday at the second evening of Yeovil camera club's Summer Programme. I'm encouraged by these super results, especially the lack of sharp shadows. Also as the flash is now so far above and to one side of the lens the modelling of subject's features have more character and the lighting appears so natural that it's not obvious whether there is any flash fill-in or not. All in all a great success!
All three of these photos were taken with a shutter speed of 1/200th at f7 with an ISO setting 200.
As the flash was firing through the small translucent white brolly it was turned up from its normal 1/16th power to 1/4 power.
Why I use a flashgun set so low? By using a lower power I can achieve a recycling time of just one second and it's possible to shoot off about six photos before I need to briefly pause while the flash capacitor fully recharges.
Note the soft shadows in the picture of Liz and Perta.
Ian's jumper and especially his nearest hand is not burnt out.
Cyril, our oldest member at eighty four, was the only one sitting in direct sunlight and turned out to be the most difficult to get the exposure right. I like this shot as he appears not to have been obviously fill flashed. His picture gives the impression of having the shadows lit via a large reflector.
The strange phenomenon of using this tiny translucent brolly is that the light appears equal in front, behind and off to both sides. This means there would be a fair amount hitting a low ceiling and bouncing back into the picture, great for groups. This makes my brolly bracket even more versatile than I first thought.
More experiments and results with the brolly bracket will be posted up soon. Keith Robins - strobist.

2009-06-14T22:34:00.000-07:00

£5 flash bracket for brolly lit portrait work.
Take a flat 6mm alloy plate with 1/4 inch by 20 pitch tripod thread screw to fit any camera base and add a 15mm tank connector. Now get hold of a set of pipe benders plus about two feet of 15mm copper tubing and create a double bend. Really tighten the joint as the last thing you are likely to be carrying around is an adjustable spanner when you're out photographing,
Add a hot-shoe to lighting stand swivel adaptor on top, then a specially adapted Vivitar 285HV flashgun (See an earlier post).
The reason I adapted this gun was on account of the flash ended up way too high above the extra small shoot-thro brolly, which comes free with the swivel joint when it's bought from Hong Kong. I guess you could use a normal sized brolly but your flash bracket would need to be that little bit taller - no great shakes there.
I was pleasantly surprised at just how nicely balanced the whole contraption is. Also, for those with access to a length of chromed pipe you could make a really flash looking bracket.
The most difficult part of manufacture was drilling a large enough hole for the tank connector which is some 18mm. A very coarse round file comes in handy for this as alloy tends to clog up finer files.
You have probably noticed an odd attachment beside the tank connector, this was the connector for my mark one version which I've used many times over the last thirty years for portraits and weddings etc. Trouble was it never catered for attaching a brolly, in fact I never even thought of it until I bought this fantastic swivel head flash stand bracket for hot-shoe flashguns which comes with a spring loaded tube ready for a brolly shaft and it's even set at a slight angle so the flash fires into the centre. Plus it comes with a small translucent brolly as you can see here! What more can you ask for?
Note - the Vivitar flashgun which is mounted upside down via a stick-on lump of plastic, (go to another post to see what's involved there).
Tools required are a vice, electric drill, 10mm bit , large coarse round file, two adjustable spanners - I'm a plumber so these were readily available. Bits you'll need are about two feet of 15mm pipe, a tank connector, a strip of 6mm alloy plate, and a 1/4 inch 20 pitch thread bolt which you might be able to get from Keene Electronics who also sell the most comprehensive range of photographic filters ever. Not dealt with them for a few years but they're still going.
If you buy your swivel adaptor from Amazon, which is slightly cheaper, you won't get a free brolly with it. However, one of my older posts gives details of a white milk carton flash bounce card and yet another post shows how to make a small grid which fits neatly inside the flash window of a Vivitar 285HV.
If you've got a cheapo radio trigger you won't have dangling wires getting in the way. And if you do use a radio trigger be aware that they can be rather ungainly as there will be a lot of joints between camera and flash which can work loose and could lead to expensive repair bills, which is another reason why I glued a piece of plastic on top of my flashgun.
I get just as much fun out of making these gadgets and sharing my successes, and failures, as I do taking photos. There is a certain satisfaction in getting great results without spend great amounts. See you all soon with the next money saving post - Keith Robins.

2009-06-07T01:45:00.000-07:00

Adding a "Copyright" logo to an image is pretty straight forward. Here's how it's done.
With your image open in Photoshop click on the Text tool and a new text layer opens above the original image. Hold down Alt and type on the numerical pad at the righthand end of your keyboard the numbers 0169 which brings up the copyright symbol ©.
Now type part of your name or logo in front and the rest after, click on the Tick in the top toolbar to accept your text and you have the basics of an original copyright logo.
Click on the FX symbol in your layers palette and choose Drop Shadow, push the top and bottom slider across to the right just a little, then tick the Bevel box.
By taking the Fill of this text layer down to zero and the Opacity down to 40 - 60% you will only see the drop shadow and a very slight distortion of the image below due to the Bevel effect. To resize, move, or rotate your new logo, hold down Control and press T to bring up the Transform box around the text. Now you can stretch the logo and distort it in all sorts of ways, plus lower or raise the Opacity to suit each image before clicking Save As and save it as a PSD.
To use this same logo on another image open both images and with the logo image highlighted click on the text layer with the Move tool and drag it over to the new image and only that layer will transfer to a new layer with your new picture. Move this new layer to the top of the layer stack, if it's not there already, and alter the size, opacity etc to suit. Again, the Transform tool can rotate, resize and reposition, plus the Opacity control is right there in the Layers palette.
Did you know that when saving as a Jpeg there is no need to flatten the image first? All the layers automatically merge into one. you complete your Save As and save it as a Jpeg. Then, once it's saved, all the layers seperate again so you can do more work on the image before saving it as another Jpeg. Very useful for building AV's where an image needs to progressively change. There's an example of this type of AV here. This AV is zipped so it won't be carrying any viruses. You'll have to download and Save As, then it can be scanned with antivirus software before unzipping it. Okay, so it takes a minute or so but the biggest benefit is that these AV's can be viewed full screen, full res, unlike its YouTube competitor. If you want a bit of fun there's another AV here.
This portrait of me was taken by my good friend Trevor Kirk. I'm holding a Vivitar 285HV at arm's length in my left hand and a 24" inch Lastolite white reflector in my right-hand about 12 inches away. The background was bright sunlight but reduced by taking the shutter speed up to 1/250th of a second- the aperture was f8 and the flash on 1/16th power - ISO 100.

2009-05-30T12:04:00.000-07:00

A short lighting stand for about £3. Not everyone has a set of pipe-benders but there's not many plumbers who would refuse to knock this little gadget up for you for the price of a pint.
About one metre of 15mm copper pipe is all you need. The straight brass union is so I can add a much longer piece instead of that six inch stump making a normal hieght lighting stand for less than £5.
The swivel head costs £14 from Hong Kong.

2009-05-30T10:02:00.000-07:00

A camera radio remote trigger for £14. What!!!
Okay, so it started life as a mere flash trigger from Hong Kong. I took a 'Cheapo' PT-04 TM flash trigger and soldered a mini-jack socket onto the side of the receiver. Steady now, this does effect any warranty!
Drilling a hole in the side involved being careful not to harm the interior circuits, same too with the soldering iron - don't leave it too long in contact with the board connections while tacking on the two extra wires linking new mini-jack socket to the original pair of wires going to the hotshoe.
There was a length of cable with a mini-jack plug on one end in a box of junk under the stairs amounting to about 5 metres long, pity it wasn't longer, but hey it was free! The reason I wanted it fairly long was that I can also use this same gadget as a hand operated remote via an ancient slide projector handset, (see last photo). This too needed the addition of a mini-jack socket.
With a small iron I soldered a second mini-jack, from Maplins, to the bare end of the cable and plugged it into the remote socket on the side of my Canon 400D. I have to admit that the very first time I did this with fingers crossed.
Now, with the wireless trigger receiver and camera linked, I can fire my shutter from around fifty metres. First press focuses the lens and second press fires the shutter. Exactly the same happens with the altered projector handset, focus, fire.
The second image here shows a polycarbonate base into which I screwed a 1/4" inch UNC (tripod thread). This gadget is not shown in it's best role which is as an ultra short free-standing hotshoe flashgun support.
Price of these gadgets:- polycarbonate from a glazing merchant costs £1, tripod head from Jessops at £12, mini-jack socket £3, cable freeby, Radio trigger £14 plus postage at another £6.

2009-05-25T09:33:00.000-07:00

Making and using a DIY colour balance card is not as hard as you might think.
These is no reason why you cannot use a colour balance card you've made yourself in Photoshop. Come to think of it why not use this one? Simply copy, paste and then print.
I wanted two products in one, a quick and positive custom white balance checker, plus an exposure indicator. It was because of the later that I went for 50% grey instead of the traditional 18% grey.
Dividing the image into four I filled each rectangle with black @ 0, the shiney white @ 255, the matt white @ 225, and the grey @ 126.
Let's deal with the exposure side of things first. Take a photo of the balance card, bring up the image along with a histogram and see whether you have one peak on the left, the black - two peaks on the right, the two whites - and one peak in the centre, the grey. If all the peaks are off centre towards the left it's under exposed, if they're off to the right it's over exposed.
Okay, so you have an image which appears well exposed. Now go to the menu on your camera and find the Custom White Balance setting, press Okay, (or Set on some cameras), and the last image you took, the colour balance card, should come up on the screen.
Chances are this image will be looking a little off colour like this yellowish one above, which is the result of using a daylight setting under tungsten lights.
At this point my Canon 400D displays a 'Custom' icon in the top left-hand corner of the screen with the word 'Set' beside it. Press the Set button and an orange warning notice will flash up saying 'Set WB to Custom'.
Now press either the Menu button or half press the shutter button before changing the 'AWB' to 'Custom White Balance'. If you're like me you'll now take another picture of the balance card so you can double check the results, which should resemble the next correctly balanced image below.
Even if you turn off or change the camera battery this custom setting will remain valid, but only for as long as the lighting remains unchanged.
If the sun goes in, or the hour gets late and it's well into sunset, or you move from open shade to an area where overhanging trees create a different coloured shade, then you'll need to set up the custom colour balance all over again, although it doesn't take any more than a couple of minutes.
In an effort to keep my camera bag tidy I've printed off the last image here and cut the print into strips of two, just to keep them clean.
This idea has kept me on the straight and narrow for over a year now, all I have to do is remember it's in my bag, and that I need to set the white balance onto Custom after I put my card away.
Happy button pressing from Keith.

2009-05-24T09:17:00.000-07:00

A flash bounce card for nothing!! A full on flash gives harsh shadows which to say the least appears unflattering in any portrait. This is where a flash bounce card can come in handy and if you can make up one for nothing then there's something left over for a graduated filter, or better still, a second flash, or maybe a faster memory card.
Most milk cartons are translucent plastic and you'll loss a fair bit of reflected light, but a Cravendale milk carton is virtually a solid, photographic, white and won't upset your daylight colour balance. Okay, so you're probably still on auto white balance, we'll discover how to control that in an upcoming post.
The part of a recycled 4 litre milk carton opposite the handle makes a superb reflector, is easy to fold, retains is shape and tucks neatly into a camera bag while still attached to the flash head with a rubber band. In use it wraps the flash around a plant giving an amazing backlighting effect. A typical exposure would be around f11 at 1/16th flash power, plus 1/200th of a second to make the background really dark, or as low as 1/30th yet still not need a tripod. In the photo you can see the stability benefits of those slivers of wood glued to my Vivitar 258hv. Just discovered this link where these fantastic gun are still available and although the quality did drop for a while they are now much more reliable. Another gun worth looking at is the LP120 from the same suppliers.
Did you know that 'For Sale' signs are made of Corex board? These are extremely useful to us strobists as flash lighting modifier grids. When you want only a small part of the scene to be lit by your hotshoe flashgun you could use a snoot. An early DIY snoot for me consisted of a piece of white mountboard folded into a retangular tube which restricted the output to a small pool of light. The trouble was this twelve inch monster took up a lot of room in my camera bag.
A month later I discovered an alternative, a grid! Creating my first grid took an hour of cutting out strips of Corex board about three inches by half an inch and sticking them together with double sided tap, then trimming the whole thing until it slots into the reccess of my Vivitar flash window.
What happens now is the light has to travel down lots of tiny square tunnels, okay, so these tunnels are only half an inch long, but they do tend to do a very similar job to a twelve inch snoot without the space consuming size.
I didn't really go around cutting bits off the edge of 'For Sale' signs, mine came from a local recycle center for the princely sum of 10 pence, which was for enough to make fifty grids!
Flash photography needn't be expensive. This little second gun setup cost just £30 plus a bit of imagination. The old flashgun was registering 84 volts, far too high for my digital camera which should only be handling 6 volts and under.
Radio triggers are also vulnerable, although the voltage limits are slightly higher, hence I'm still use a tiny slave unit from the 1970's costing £5 new on my second gun. A modern slave is not much more expensive now, according to this website, so I'll be treating myself someday soon.
The short sync lead at just 30 pence consists of a mini-jack plug soldered to an oldfashioned pc sync connector and even this DIY adaption harks back to the 1980's.
The plastic mechanism of three of my old Photax lighting stands are now held together courtesy of pieces cut from a wire coathanger holding the legs in place, these robust old stands cost all of £19 each 25 years ago but were worth it, although without the wire repairs they would probably have been scrapped a fair while ago.
£1 for a DIY plastic flash bracket complete with swivel and a brolly shaft hole was a bargain and has served me well since 1976. However, the modern equivalent, a Lastilite Tilthead Adaptor costs £16 plus postage from Warehouse Express and is far superior.

2009-05-22T11:33:00.000-07:00

Why are there bits of wood glued to my Vivitar flashgun?
And what's with the elastic band? I wanted to fit a DIY reflector to my 285hv, but it kept falling off due the flashhead design. Three slivers of wood, a tube of Araldite Rapid and the area which supports any sort of reflector is increased.

Take a piece of white mount board and cut out your reflector with a pair of scissors, then fold it as per the image here. I have tried sticky tape to attach it to my gun but it soon became messy, hence the elastic-band plus a small blob of BlueTac between the base of my home made bouncer and the rearmost strip of wood reduces any movement.

The softening of my flash photos came out so well that I made a much stronger reflector out of a ten litre emulsion paint bucket lid. But, as this over engineered item refuses to fold into my camera bag comfortably I keep it for studio use and I now use a far more flexible portion of white milk carton for on location shoots. A section cut from a four litre Cravendale seems to be a good size and folds neatlyinside my camera bag while still attached to the flashgun.

There is something else glued to my Vivitar flash head, a small block of plastic which is sort of hotshoe shaped. A flash used together with a radio trigger receiver means the flash tube is positioned about 200mm above the stem of a shoot-through brolly - result - poor coverage.
The plastic plate fits beautifully into the hotshoe lighting adapter I bought from Hong Kong for £16. When the box arrived it also included a free 450mm diameter shoot-through brolly. Of course with such a small brolly the flash head peeped over the edge once the trigger was attached.
The last image here shows a temporary strip of Velcro holding the brolly stem in close to the flash tube, it was the only way I could use the flexible adapter without a more permanent solution.
After this experiment I made the flash shoe plate and glued it on to the top of my Vivitar. Now I can use the flexible adapter with its brolly shaft hole and keep the flash head really close so I get full coverage of the brolly, yet still retain the radio trigger function. Must get round to Aralditing hotshoe plates to all my other guns at somepoint.
This hotshoe to lighting stand adapter will fit most lighting stands, or a tripod screw thread, or it'll fit onto a piece of 15mm copper pipe bent to form a really short lighting stand, (ideal for illuminating backgrounds). The hole for a brolly shaft, (in pink), is set at a slight angle enabling the flash to reach maximum coverage of the reflective material.
There's also a thumb-turn flexible joint so your flash brolly can be altered to a wide variety of angles. The £14 radio trigger receiver is indicated in blue and the swivel joint of this superb hotshoe flash to lighting stand adapter is indicated in yellow.

2009-05-21T23:47:00.000-07:00

Make a reflector from a Walkers crisp packet.
A small reflector which fits most camera bags can be modified from a Walkers crisp packet. Turn it inside out and simply put your hand inside to bounce light back into the face for a portrait shot like this one taken by my friend Dave Thomas. Dave is new to strobists methods but he's keen to learn and emailed me these two shots taken during a field trip with MidSomerset camera club.
My crisp packet has the lid of a margarine container inside to stiffen it. Okay, so it could be larger, like for instance using a family sized crisp packet, but I just happened to have the smaller one in my pocket.
Holding a flashgun at arms length is pretty standard for me and is something I've done for 30 years, even before I took up cave photography. Look on it as being similar to using a fog light to increase the 3D effect and give more texture. It probably stems from not having a hotshoe on one of my cameras as a youngster. Yes, I've been involved with photography since 1964!
I'm holding a Vivitar 285HV in these shots which is set on 1/16th flash power resulting in an aperture of f11.
To make the sky appear darker than it actually was Dave increased the shutter speed to 1/200th of a second and kept the ISO at 100. He could have used a speed of 1/30th and still got an acceptable shot and although the sky would then be a lot lighter it would still result in a good picture with my face being expose exactly like is is at 1/200th.
Some club members are finding it difficult to grasp the techniques involved with using a flashgun when there is also available light present, whether it's daylight or tungsten floodlighting. The main thing to remember is that your shutter speed controls the available light - while the aperture controls the flash intensity.
In all other lighting situations if you lower the shutter speed it is necessary to increase the aperture - as if the two controls are holding hands. However, bring a flash into the equation, along with a secondary source of illumination, and the two are free to lead completely separate lives, leaving you in total control!!
Aperture = flash control.
Shutter speed = daylight control.
And don't forget that although manual settings over-rule these two obvious settings, do make sure your camera hasn't accidentally gne into Auto ISO settings, which will spoil everything you're trying to achieve.

2009-05-21T00:34:00.000-07:00

THE CHALLENGE OF FLASH VERSUS DAYLIGHT by Keith Robins

Trying to sync your camera with a flashgun means the shutter speed needs be less than 1/200th of a second, or 1/250th on a few cameras.

For most cameras if you go higher than this top sync speed a black bar begins to appear at the bottom of your image area. This is caused by the second shutter curtain already starting to cover up the sensor before the first curtain is fully open, which is when the flash normally fires. The flash must fire while the whole sensor is uncovered - 1/200th or less to be on the safe side.

The shutter curtains always travel at the same speed, regardless of what shutter speeds you've set - at 1/1,000th of a second there’s a gap of only five millimetres travelling down across the sensor. Flash strength is controllable by four methods which relate to each other:- the aperture (also known as the f number), the ISO seting, the flashgun power setting or the distance away from the subject.

There is a fifth camera control, the shutter speed, but this has no effect whatsoever on the strength of your flash and how it lights the main subject you are photographing. Whay it does control is any daylight / available light, such as a floodlight, illuninating a part of your picture.

Take a portrait outdoors on a dull day and brighten it with your automatic pop-up flash while the camera is in program mode and the chances are the background and face will both turn out correctly exposed. Sometimes though, we might want to be much more creative by getting away from the auto settings - a bit like growing your own veg instead of visiting the supermarket.

So I’d like you try something for me - set your camera on manual aperture and shutter speed, change the speed to 1/200th of a second and the aperture to f8, then take that same portrait again. Even with a pop-up flash you can experiment with the daylight by altering the shutter speed down a few stops. Does the background become lighter?

If you try this with an off-camera flash, connected to the camera via a modern ETTL coiled lead, both the camera will talk to the flashgun and automatically alter the strength of your flash lighting. Your pop-up flash will also be controlled by the camera’s aperture, even though the camera is set on manual, but hopefully you’ll notice a difference. Now move the shutter speed back up. Does the background become darker while the flash lighting on the subject remains exactly the same strength?

However, if you try this with your modern flashgun set to manual, or even better use an older flashgun using an old-fashioned pc sync connector, the equipment will still fire okay but the camera will no longer be able to tell your flash that it should be altering the exposure automatically - you end up in total control of the exposure! It's possible to make that same portrait have a fairly dark sky, maybe even so dark that you think it’s going to thunder down any second.

By using your camera and flash in manual mode you can create any mood you want, from dark and gloomy to bright and cheerful. The background is changed from light to dark by going to a higher shutter speed and made to go brighter by going for a lower shutter speed. Meanwhile your suject lit via the flashgun remains exactly the same intensity. If you can grasp this you have conquered the technique!

Assuming you’re using a fairly high aperture, (ie:- f11) the shutter speed is able to control all continuous light to the extent that it becomes virtually black at 1/250th. Or you might wish to use 1/8th to create slow-motion blur of the background yet the main subject remains relatively frozen due to the flash going off at around 1/500th on full power up to 10,000th of a second using one of the auto settings of the flash.

Meanwhile Beware! Some older flashguns can produce quite a high voltage at the contacts capable of frying your digital camera. There is a saviour, a little gadget called a Wein (just Google it in), which reduces voltages down to less than the safe 6 volt limit. A Wein costs £45 while a radio trigger from Hong Kong is less than £20 including postage. (Google in radio flash trigger).

I was lucky enough to purchase one of the new Vivitar 285HV flashguns before they went bust. These wonderfully versitile guns give out only 4 volts - there are four autosettings - four manual settings, plus a tug-out zoom lens with three ranges. All in all one of the best investments I’ve made, especially at the cost - £49 from John’s Cameras in Hong Kong via the internet. (The British suppliers were always out of stock for some reason). I am now in total control of my flash photography! There is a saviour in the shape of an LP120 available via MPEX in America - view info on these at Strobist.

I recently discovered that little flashgun grids are available which act similar to snoots. This promted me to make a ten inch snoot out of scrap photomount board, which lit up a fuzzy edged rectangle on a church wall from over a hundred feet! I’ve since made a tiny, more camera bag friendly, grid by gluing strips of Corex board together (cut from an old 'For Sale' notice) and can now focus all the flashgun’s power into a head and shoulder portrait sized area from fifteen feet - also useful for side-lighting flowers against a dark background.

Do you have to mathematically work out which aperture / shutter settings to use? No! After the first few times of using trial and error as your guideline it will become second nature. However, I did suffer a slight hiccup when about fifty shots were spoilt due to my ancient pc sync leads playing up, they needing resoldering. After the forth times of resoldering those pesky wires I decided enough was enough and binned the old sync connector. I’ve now got a remote flash trigger that doesn’t play up and I’m having so much fun exploring the world around me via flash mixed with daylight without any wires dangling ready to be tripped over. The scope for new photographic ideas combining the two forms of lighting is virtually endless.

All this must seem rather daunting when you first start using a flash outdoors, so I suggest you read this article and try a couple of experiments. It costs only a few pounds to purchase an old styled flash via Ebay, whether it’s pure manual or has a few auto settings doesn’t matter. So take the plunge, lash out the price of three pints for a cheapo flash and start exploring the enormous range of possibilities. Of course if there is a modern Canon 580EX languishing at the bottom of your camera bag and it's still in its cellophane wrapper, maybe now is the time to break it out and change the style of your photography, for the better.

The chart below shows the five variables which control an exposure when using a digital camera. The first four columns effect the strength of your flashgun and each setting is equivalent to one stop.

Shutter speeds only control the daylight / background, they have no effect at all on the flash stregnth.

ISO	F No’s	Flash gun powers	Flash distance in metres	Shutter speeds (These do not effect the flash side of your exposure in any way)
100	f4	1/64th	2	1/200th of a second
200	f5.6	1/32nd	3	1/100th
400	f8	1/16th	4	1/50th
800	f11	1/8th	6	1/25th
1,600	f16	1/4	8	1/13th
3,200	f22	1/2	12	1/6th
6,400	f32	full power	16	1/3rd
Tip for advanced users - Turn your camera upside-down for sync speed of over 1/250th. The sky will hide the black bar which normally grows from the bottom of image at higher shutter speeds.

ISO’s increase by doubling the previous number and each is one stop more sensitive.

(Watch out for Nikon's nasty habit of going into Auto ISO settings just when it’s not needed.)

F numbers have a weird method of ascending where alternate figures are doubled. This can help when using a flashgun’s guide number to work out distances. (Double the distance = half the F number). The higher the F number the less light reaches your camera sensor.

Flashgun powers are fairly logical, each number equals one stop. (Although some guns try to fox you by going up in one third increments) You can also use the flash zoom to control the strength ie:- 28mm is about one stop weaker than the 80mm setting.

Distance. To calculate your F number, divide the flashgun’s guide number by the flash to subject distance to reveal the correct aperture. Forget the old fashioned 'Inverse Square Law' in relationship to altering the flash to subject distance, your aperture numbers have already done the maths for you. Twice the distance equals two stops, which, strange to say, means f16 become f8. That is so simple, double the distance = half the actual f number, it's what guide numbers are all about and is why they seem to make no sense.

Guide number divided by distance equals F number. Guide number divided by F number equals distance. On the back of your flashgun multiply any distance by the F number next to it and you should get exacty the same guide number

The guide number for a Canon 430EX flashgun is 43 in metres, divide this by four metres and F11 is a good starting point, as long as you’re using ISO 100 and the flash is in full auto mode and the flash zoom is set at about 50mm. Move away from the subject to eight metres and you’ll have to drop down to F5.6 which is half of F11 (8 X 5.6 = 44.6 which is so near your guide number of 43 it’s unreal!)

Should your flash be too strong, reduce the aperture by going higher on the aperture scale, go down the ISO scale (both of these lessen the sensitivity), or move the flash further away. Alternatives are a couple of fingers across the flash lens, or a layer of white cotton hank is equal to one stop while two layers will equal a two stop reduction in flashgun output.

If your flash is too weak and you can’t go any lower in the F number department, move the ISO setting up, or move the flash zoom head out to a telephoto setting, or move the flashgun closer to your subject.

By now you should be feeling like you know more than you did an hour ago. Time to go out and try a few experiments. First off explore some of the variables of flash by lighting a couple of flower heads on a window cill where you can vary the shutter speed to control the available light behind them, then try it with some close-ups in a hedgerow before going for a portrait against a setting sun. Try making the clouds look really dark and threatening by controlling the flash and daylight seperately. This is done by leaving the aperture set for the flashlit subject and altering the shutter speeds which change the strength of the available light. Now try portrait work using daylight as the main source and fill in the shadows with a flashgun.

There is a method of filling in shadows, called the Monte Zucker technique, which is used mostly in film and video work, but it's just as applicable to us digital photographers. Imagine a length of string passing right through both model and photographer, keep the sun and the fill flash on the same side of the string and the resulting lighting looks so natural that few will be able to tell where sunlight finishes and the flash takes over. Taking this one step further involves placing a large reflector on the other side of the string to continue wrapping the flash / sunlight around the models face / shoulders / torso.

I hope this article has given you food for thought and that you persevere with the techniques of flash / daylight balance. I belong to two camera clubs, Yeovil CC and MidSomerset CC. where I help others learn as much about flash work as I have discovered over the last thirty years.

2009-05-19T23:49:00.000-07:00

World's smallest, simplest and cheapest flashgun!
Remember the old fashioned Magicube flashes that sat on top of a Kodak 110 mini instamatic camera? They were surprisingly powerful, equal to a Sunpak GT32.
Inside a Magicube is a tube full of oxygen which when tapped by the internal spring would shoot up and mix with the zirconium foil in the glass orb and instantly give off a really bright light. 180 degree spread of light lasting about 1/30th of a second, just right for illuminating a waterfall but without freezing the moving water, brilliant! With a guide number of 80 in feet at 50ASA, because that's what 200 comes down to when underground, this was one of the most powerful guns available without going overboard with the costs. Remember, this was the late seventies and almost everyone was on the breadline.
The little alloy plate and galvanised sheet tin holder / trigger cost less than fifty pence and took me only an hour each to make. All three of us in the AVRG cave photography group had one or two and is what most of the caving pushbike was lit with.
This was back in 1978-82 when over a four year period I went caving 400 times and took one roll of film each trip. I can hardly believe that I ended up with 15,000 slides on Ektachrome 200. Being a self develope film the costs were kept to a minimum at £19 per hundred foot roll, enough for twenty times thirtysix exposures. Add on the tiny expense of a developing kit, plus hours of fun chattering and twiddling the films in their tanks, sometime three at a time with the chemicals being poured from one tank to another. We talked photo and took photos and there was little time for anything else, but then, what other hobby is so versatile in the areas into which you can lose yourselves for hours on end?
Obviously there was great excitement as super picture like these were revealed after fifty minutes of twiddling. God, it's fantastic that nowadays we can download five times that number and see the results straight away and print them off before an old slide film was anywhere near dry.
The hieght of our cave photography was taking a pushbike down Swildon's Hole on the Mendips. This was to be for an audio visual to show at the Bristol University caving conference. Once word got out the main lecture theatre was bursting at the seams with almost double the fire safety recommended numbers crammed into every corner, even sat on the stairs because they'd heard of the content. What!? Took a pushbike down through Swildon's!!! Definitely our happiest hour!
I'll be trying my best to put this AV on the net and let you have the link as soon as I can.

2009-05-19T01:15:00.000-07:00

Fifty foot flashgun trigger for less than twenty quid including postage from Hong Kong. Absolutely the best gadget for using an off camera flash ever!!! I've just sent off for a second one so I can fire two flashes without having to resort to a mini slave unit, which don't always work 100% when working near sunlight.
Ebay has plenty of these triggers listed, just make sure it is a radio trigger and not infra red operation as these can cause problems outdoors. Go to :- John Camera Shop
You get two AAA batteries with each trigger but they don't last long (about 500 operations before they're flat - you'll notice this when the working distance starts dropping dramatically) Duracells should last for several thousand flashes. There's a fairly rare battery in the transmitter but Googling in the details finds a replacement without a problem.
After using this for a few months and finding that the working limit really is about fifty metres I took a soldering iron to the reciever, added a mono mini jack socket, made up a 5 metres lead and can now use the transmitter to fire my camera from over a hundred feet (useful for birds / wild animals / motorsports etc).
The first press focuses the camera and the second press fires the shutter. Am having great fun with this setup as you can see by my self portraits.
Inside the top of the reciever are two wires connected to the hotshoe. I joined both of these to either side of the mini jack socket and can now use still use it for either flash or camera, obviously not both at the same time or your flash will go off before the shutter is fully open. I've not set this up alongside a speed camera, yet, but you could have some fun and maybe save a life by giving it a whirl.
You'll have noticed that the hotshoe only has two contacts so it works my Vivitar 285HV no problem. Those of you with a Cannon 580 / 430 or a Nikon type flash would have better results by slipping in a piece of plastic from a sandwich or cake casing available from your supermarket, or use a section of milk carton. Cut out a tiny square with a hole in the centre for the middle contact of your ETTL / TTL flash, into the hotshoe before fitting in the gun.
I'm guessing that you are by now beginning to get the hang of using your flash and camera both in manual mode as us strobists do, if not I will be posting up how you can learn this fascinating technique soon as time permits.

2009-05-16T01:29:00.000-07:00

Make your own triptic frames. I found some almost dried up emulsion in the shed along with a few sheets of rough textured art paper. Using a short haired brush I roughed out three red rectangles and photographed it.
Okay I should have scanned it but some things are so simple that I forgot that it's possible to scan these sort of things.
Going into Photoshop I opened the red image, went to levels, selected the Red channel and turned it near enough black. Back into RGB channel and clicked on the White and then the black eyedroppers to get my pure black triptic.
When you turn the Layer Mode to Screen the black still looks black, but really it's only an opaque window until another image is placed behind it. Now go looking for some suitable pictures.
The flowers seem to work better than some of my vintage vehicle images.
Bring each new image into Photoshop, move it down in the layer stack to below the black rectangles, then move it around until you have a satisfying result. Bring in the next image and do the same. If two of the images overlap in a window use the rectangular selection tool on the piece you don't want, hold down Control and the C key, which is Cut. This takes away the offending area. I use Cut so that if I make a mistake I can Paste it back in and have another try.
Why did I use red paint? It was the darkest emulsion in my shed.
For those who have no paint or no shed, click on the black triptic, save my image to your files and use that to experiment with this impressive technique.
You might also decide to make a greetings card by placing some text in one of the windows on top of, say, a gaussian blurred image of a plant.

2009-05-14T00:40:00.000-07:00

Land yacht with a difference.
Here's a photo of my dad (in the boat and note the steering wheel which operates the rear wheel) and Uncle Tony pulling him on the way from Yeovil to Ilchester for a spot of sailing on the river. Picture was taken by one of their "Runners", a sort of hanger-on, of which they had quite a few. Runner would race alongside with a camera, spanners etc, just so they could feel involved in some of the lunatic DIY things my family got up to - funny thing is it's been very similar with me and my friends. It's wonderful being eccentric! Must see if I can find those pictures of dad and his homebuilt glider - meanwhile have a look at this litle youtube video of dad's propellor car in the early fifties. It was originally shot by Pathe News and shown at the Odeon in Yeovil and I can remember standing next to it during a photoshoot for the Western Gazette.
Take a look at Dad's unusual three wheeler here.
Growing up with access to all sorts of wierd and wonderful tools unusual gadgets must be what made me a sort of inventor come eccentric. I too had a pushbike with a steeringwheel, a hundred and ten mile and hour three wheeler, a motorbike and sidecar on which I tore around on two wheels. I've settled down now though, but am still inventive and curious to know how things work, which is why I'm so into photography with it's many facets and opportunities for gadgets and adaptions.

2009-05-13T14:12:00.000-07:00

A bit of flash - daylight balance.
This is more like it! Settings were 1/250th at f11 and 200ISO. My £50 Vivitar 285hv costing fifty quid was turned down to 1/16th power at about 18 inches. One small addition was the DIY grid made from an off-cut of a corex "For Sale" sign. I cut slices about 12mm thick and stuck then together with double sided sticky tape, then trimmed the outer edges to be a snug fit in the flash window of the Vivitar. This inexpensive grid casts a pool of light about 10 to 12 inches across at 18 inches distance.
As I've not had much luck with flash leads I've now got a radio trigger from John Camera Shop in Hong Kong costing £14 and it works beautifully from five inches up to fifty metres! Go to John Camera Shop (The trigger is on page two)
I've since taken a soldering iron to the reciever of this trigger and added a mini-jack socket so I can also fire off my camera from fifty metres, which in turn fires off the flash via a second radio trigger fitted in the hotshoe. I'll put a post up soon along with a couple of photos of that adaption.

2009-05-13T14:02:00.000-07:00

Silhouette shots have always been popular and despite the branches intruding slightly there's still a lot of impact with this shot. I exposed for the brightest part of the sky and then closed down one more stop,or maybe even two stops. Of course you don't just take oneshot in situations like this, you take ten and keep changing the subject position, the camera position, or alter the camera settings. There is never a perfect exposure for something like this, but you soon learn what works and what doesn't. In case you're wondering, Dave Thomas is wearing a woolly hat - he wished he'd worn kneepads like me after kneeling on a thistle.

2009-05-13T13:53:00.000-07:00

I surprised myself with the exposure for this one - 1/2000th sec at f11, probably because I was using 800ISO.
Coombe Woods is okay regarding footpaths and parking, but I was into video for a number of years and find it difficult to get away from the "Tiny details make a better story" type of photography. Maybe I did miss a few really good "general view" styled shots, but I'm more than happy with my results of this dandelion head. I was handholding the camera with my head in the stinging nettles and loose change falling out of my pockets as I wriggled and rolled into position so a lighter patch of sky was right behind the plant. 200mm Canon lens.

2009-05-13T13:38:00.000-07:00

This is at Coombe Woods near Street, Somerset.
I love this style of flower photography! There's a certain calming feeling about plant photos where the stalk gradually merges into the background before it reaches the lower edge of the image frame. By using f8 to f11 at about three feet the depth of field is around pretty good at between 12mm to 16mm, yet still allows all else to go out of focus. There were a few strands of grass which needed trimming and a thistle prickling my behind, even though I was wearing a boilersuit!
Canon 400D, 28 - 200 lens, F8, 800ISO, 1/250th sec. Why did I use 800ISO? I can't stand using a tripod, too restrictive. I was lying down on my side with camera about two inches off the ground. Without a tripod I'm only there a couple of minutes, whereas a tripod would have added another thirty minutes to each picture. Meanwhile the sun is on its way down, fast!

2009-05-08T23:45:00.000-07:00

Self portrait of Keith Robins, strobist and tutor of YeophotoGroup.
Main light is a £55 Vivitar 285hv from Hong Kong with DIY Corex board grid costing just 10 pence over my right shoulder. Fill-in flash is an ancient Starblitz 3000bt bounced into a Lastolite white reflector from low down. f11 - ISO100 @ 1/30th to record the daylight on the background. If a darker background was required I would have turned the shutter speed up to 1/200th or even 1/250th.
To fire the camera shutter I used a Canon wireless shutter release, which unfortunately only works from the front and has a limit of about ten feet. It is possible to use one of these gadgets from behind the camera by bouncing the infra red signal into a Mr Kipling mince pie dish stuck at the right angle on top of a Canon with Bluetac.
A £14 radio trigger fires the Vivitar and a 20 year old slave operates the Starblitz. And yes there is hot tea in the mug, it's just visible in the reflection in my glasses! This was the third shot out of about fifty - must have fell asleep with my finger on the trigger!
How to convert one of these cheap radio triggers to operate a Canon camera is posted on a newer blog.

Keith's Keyboard Shortcuts. Most of these will work in Photoshop Elements 4 upwards, plus CS, CS2, and CS3.

D = Background and Foreground default to pure white and black.

X = swaps Foreground and Background colours. (Ideal when painting in Layer Masks)

M = Marquee selection tool.

Q = Quick Mask

G = Graduated filters

Alt + Backspace = fills the selected area with the foreground colour. (Great for silhouettes!)

Control + Backspace = fill the selected area with the Background colour

Shift + Move tool to centralise an added image

Control + A = Selects all

Alt + Backspace = fill the selected area with Foreground colour

Alt + Layer Mask icon creates a black mask you can see through (Reveal All) - white paint to hide.

X key to alternates between Foreground and Background to correct with black paint.

Control + Alt + C = canvas size / resize dialogue box.

Create New Layer icon = inserts a transparent new layer above the highlighted existing image

Control + Create New Layer icon = inserts a transparent new layer below the highlighted existing image.

Control + J = inserts a Copy layer above the highlighted existing layer.

Control + Shift + J = creates a transparent new layer containing just the selection, plus it turns the selection in the original layer transparent.

Control + D = de-selects the existing selection.

Control + O = Fit To Screen

Control and press the + (plus) key makes image zoom in closer, bigger

Control and press the - (minus) key makes image zoom out, smaller

Double click on the Hand tool = fit to screen

Double click on the Zoom tool (magnifying glass) = view at 100%

Control + H = hides selection lines (to view the finished effect as you’re making adjustments) Control + H to bring the selection lines back again, (otherwise you’ll be wondering why you can’t pick up any other tools)

Control + X = selection goes Transparent, to see the next layer down through what is essentially a hole.

Control + X also = Cut

Control + V = Paste

Control + C = Copy

Control + Z = goes back one step at a time, as many times as you like in the History palette.

Control + Y = goes forward one step at a time, as many times as you like in the History palette.

Control + U = Hue & Saturation dialogue box.

Control + C = Copy.

Control + V = Paste

Control + S = Save.

Control + T = Transform (hold Shift to keep width / height ratios while dragging a corner box during resize)

Control + Alt = Transform but it’s on a separate layer not the original.

Free Transform too big to see? = Control + 0 to see all four corner handles.

Using the Brush tool? = Right click to bring up the brush palette for Hardness and Size adjustments

Adding more area to an existing Selection = Hold down Shift and make additional selection which merges with previous area.

Removing an area from an existing Selection = Hold down Alt and select the area you don’t want included in your selection.

Increase your Canvas Size - go to Image - Canvas Size - position the Anchor square where you want your image on the new canvas - tick the Relative box - enter the required amount of increase in inches, centimetres, or pixels etc - click OK.