Andrew Macpherson

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?

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

Ever since I bought my studio kit I’ve been kicking myself.  It’s nice, does the job, is significantly better than the older heads owned by the club, but

• It came with nice long sync cords rather than wireless triggers
• Adjusting the power output requires one to have ready access to the back of the head

An after-market wireless trigger was easily obtained online, and the units do have photo-triggers, so one can use a speedlite at minimum power as well, but the power settings, that was a serious PITA.

Nor did it help that every training video I watched had the presenter clicking up or down the lighting with their Elinchrom SkyPorts.   Obviously the Elinchrom SkyPort system is the way to go.

Then I noticed the next generation of the Elinchrom system I have the D-Lite IT 2 Go, comes complete with built-in SkyPort wireless trigger for just £200 more.  I didn’t notice what wasn’t being said, but I hope you have (continue reading…)

Yesterday evening was one of those interesting sessions at the camera club, with lots going on.

Kevin, the chairman, was continuing his occasional talks on Photoshop Elements for beginners,  Dave Woods was doing some HDR demos, with photoshop, Photomatix and HDR Efex (and possibly others), and we had 2 ‘studio’ sessions.

Bill was doing a macro session, and had 2 tabletop setups: a tent and a square area with backdrop and white walls, while I was trying out 3 portrait techniques with interested parties.

For my setup I had:

• 2 Manfrotto Autopoles, with hooks for paper rolls
• Manfrotto expan paper roll supports
• Black paper roll
• 2 x Elinchrom D-Lite2 heads (I would now spend the extra and buy the D-Lite it 2 Studio 2 Go Kit which includes skyport receivers and transmitter but is £500 vs the £300 I paid) [Changed my mind, see later posting]
• Aftermarket 120cm octabank for Elinchrom from E-Bay about £60
• Aftermarket 120cm x 80cm stripbank again E-Bay about £50
• Large reflector
• Triflector

Setting up the autopoles and paper is extremely fast, but assembling the softboxes is slow, even though they have one spreader pocket closed with velcro to make the job easier, the octabank really needs 2 adjacent spreaders set that way, as getting the ends of the final 2-3 spreaders into the flash head ring is murder when everything is under tension from the already placed spokes. (continue reading…)

Photo Recipes Live

Just picked up some excellent training. This book and DVD takes the ‘How to get this photo’ chapters from Scott Kelby’s “Digital Photography” series to the next level, and is a great resource.

Photo Recipes Live: Part 2

The format is a slim book in the standard American size for technical books (ie slightly too wide for speed reading) with a dust jacket comprising the DVD box.  The book is held in by spots of clear easily peeled sticky, which I immediately removed to avoid it setting hard over the next few years — there is no reason to suppose that the basic techniques explained are going to go out of date, even if the details of the equipment used, and the processing do change with technology.

The same remarks apply to the sequel .  Click on either image to go to Amazon in a new window.