Andrew Macpherson

Penalty Kick

On Saturday I had a welcome unexpected chance to go to a Harlequins home game, and saw it as a chance to try some of the ideas that I’ve been picking up from Scott Kelby’s blog though just from the stands, rather than the privileged sideline access of the professional.

Kick-off was at 17:30 a quarter hour after sunset, so this was strictly a floodlight exercise.  I quickly found that the exposure on the field of play was fairly constant, but there was huge risk of variability if one let the camera “do it’s thing”so went fully manual, f2.8, 1/800^th & ISO on H1 (12800).  The other half of this exercise was processing in LightRoom 4 beta, and the noise removal could only be better than the already good results one gets in Lr3. (continue reading…)

It’s very useful having a wish list somewhere that your friends and family can consult before the holidays or your birthday.  Luckily for me some did just that, so now I am the proud owner of Pixel TD-381 external 8 cell battery packs for 2 of my speedlights, that reduce the recycle time down to well under 2 seconds, from the unenhanced 7 seconds, a Wex 5-in-1 diffuser/reflector (which will not need explanation), and a Powerex 8 cell Ni-Mh charger/conditioner

The battery packs each have 2 banks of 4 cells, so you can use 4 or 8 cells in each pack, and when attached to the speedlight, these are what powers the flash high voltage / power section, while the internal batteries only run the logic and control circuitry.  Pixel suggests that they can run your speedlight for over 500 full flashes before needing recharged, (possibly more with the newer 2900 mAh cells) and another big advantage is that being flat they also have better heat loss properties than the bundle inside the speedlight, (and also a thermal cut-out) so reducing your chance of melting that expensive flash unit.

The plug fits both Canon 580, 580 MkII and Nissin Di866 Mk II.  There is a different model number for the Nikon and Sony compatible versions.

As for Games, I’m going to try to keep up with the LensProToGo 52 week challenge on Flickr, come and join in — as the adage goes “It’s not about winning, it’s about taking part” and maybe we’ll all be stretched along the way.

Lens Pro To Go, a US equipment rental company, have thrown down a challenge.

Joint them for a photo-per-week challenge on themes they set.  My photos will accumulate in this flickr set, and the  whole set of entries is in the Lens Pro To Go 52 week challenge.  The exercises are are as hard, or easy as you let them be, so it’s great fun.

Why not join in?

Front cover of First Issue

Kelby Media Group has just launched a pretty amazing new iPad-only magazine Light It with all the interactive features one might ask for.

It has it’s own iPad App, and will become a subscription service ($2.99/issue), but the first issue is free and amazingly high quality.

A bonus feature is that the content is downloaded, and available to peruse off-line (eg when travelling). Caveat, do not download the magazine itself until you are using un-metered WiFi, at 350M it’ll use half a standard Orange contract’s monthly data allowance of 750M on either of 3g or BT-OpenZone.

App Store link:
http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/light-it-digital-magazine/id455243692?mt=8

Was this why the 64G iPad was made?

Don’t get me wrong, the guys who do seminars are almost without exception extremely dedicated, skilful instructors who make the most of the teaching oportunity the format affords their students.  Such was the case with Scott Kelby’s “Light it, Shoot it, Retouch it” tour to Amsterdam.  I really enjoyed it and it also gave me a great chance to revisit a wonderful city.

iPad view from the 7th row

I did enjoy and learn, it was good value for money, but from the 7^th row the screens were fairly poor contrast and one wonders what one missed.  I’m delighted for Scott that there were around 250 attendees paying rapt attention to his training, but I don’t think one gets as much  out of a class as one might from a workshop where one follows along, and emphasises the learning experience by doing. (continue reading…)

Holiday Photo book

Inspired by Scott Kelby’s post on making soft-cover photo-books for each trip, I decided to follow suit and give iPhoto a go.  One swiftly discovered that he had upgraded iPhoto from the release that came with Snow Leopard to the new version from the App Store.

Scott’s video is great on showing the workflow of collecting the photos for the book in Lightroom, and exporting suitably sized finished JPEGs that will hold good for any book making project.  It’s worth calculating that your photos, especially that mega-panorama probably need restricted to approximately the pixels to fit vertically on the page (eg 8in x 300px/in) as that will immediately be ¼ the size (you do stitch portrait format shots don’t you?).

The iPhoto software / templates have a USP which it would be easy to overlook. Maps.  Lots of the layouts have a small map which you can annotate with your locations.  The other thing iPhoto does,which you have to work at with other book-publishing software is that it makes it very easy to span your photo across a double-page spread.

So why didn’t I go with iPhoto?  Well 2 reasons.

1. Taxes.  In Britain there is no tax on Books or printing (other than forms) Yet iPhoto proposed to charge me VAT at 20%
2. Flexibility.  I found the available layouts restricting.  I would have lived with this had it not been for the tax issue.

In terms of flexibility — I take lots of panoramas.  I also have a 1:2 portrait to landscape shooting ratio.  The templates are very much set up for standard landscape shots, and without the ability to add ones own.  This approach does have advantages in terms of ensuring that the book is well styled, but …

So I went back to Booksmart from Blurb