Panorama Tips and the San Diego Skyline

On Friday night I headed down to Coronado Island to shoot some images of the downtown San Diego skyline. I wanted to put together a panorama that I could use as art in my house. So I shot a series of photos (more on that in a minute) and stitched them together in Photoshop. I make ANY adjustments to this image whatsoever. All I did was stitch it together with Photoshop from Lightroom and then added the canvas area and some text.

Shooting Tips
If you want to get a pano like this, there are a couple of ways to go about it. First, you can shoot a photo with a wide angle lens and then crop it to simulate a pano. Second, you can shoot a series of vertical shots that overlap by about 20% of each other and then use Photoshop to put them together for you.

If you go the second route and shoot verticals, you will want to use a tripod if at all possible. This will help you keep your horizons level and give you more control over the camera. You can shoot it handheld, but you’ll need to leave a greater margin for error so that you aren’t cutting something important out of the photo when it comes time to crop. If you’re shooting at night, you’re gonna need a tripod, without a doubt.

You will also want to use some time of IR remote or cable release. If you don’t have one, then you can use your camera’s self-timer. This will help prevent camera shake which will keep you from getting blurry images since your shutter will be open for several seconds.

Last, but not least, you’ll want to start out with your camera’s white balance set to ‘Tungsten’ or ‘Incandescent’. You can play around with other WB settings, but your photos will likely look WAY too warm.

So there’s a couple of quick tips to help you shoot better panoramas right from the camera. Try it out next time your shooting. Let me know if you’d like more information on how to post process these images in Photoshop. If there’s enough demand, I’ll post a video for you guys.

Have a great week!

What’s Your “Best Kept” Photographic Secrets?

Yes, it was a trick question. I’m sure a lot of you heard about what happened yesterday over onScott Kelby’s blog and the ringer that a bunch pro sports photogs put Alex, Mike, and Scott through. What’s done is done and there appears to be light at the end of the tunnel. Read Scott’s update here.

Yes, the image above is a joke… I would never do or have such a thing as “best kept” secrets. In the case of what happened to Alex, it appears that a bunch of insecure photographers who shoot sports got a chip on their shoulder because of the fact that some “amateur” was going to be shooting on the sidelines with them.

Whatever. Those guys need to worry about their own photography skills if they think an amateur might come in and outshoot them. People who are confident in their own abilities will never do what those photogs did to Alex. That’s exactly why guys like Joe McNally, Chase Jarvis, David Hobby, and other photographers with the same mindset are willing to share everything they know. They are confident in themselves and know that they can give away all of their “secrets” and still be competitive.

I have nowhere near the experience that those guys do as I got serious about photography much later than they did. But I still won’t hold anything back from someone who has a question. So what if they take everything I taught them and go underbid me. They still won’t have MY style, just as you wouldn’t have Joe McNally’s style after spending a year with him. His images would still be unique.

So think about that when you’re out shooting and someone comes up to you and wants to ask you a question about what settings to use, what lens to buy, how to set up their lights, etc. You’ll feel good knowing you helped someone else out, just as someone helped you out when you were first bitten by the shutterbug.

Zenfolio is Bringin’ It!

I’ve got some cool news today about some of the happenings at Zenfolio! If you’re an Mpix customer, they have offered 20% off a new subscription to their awesome service! That’s right, if you sign up for a new subscription with Zenfolio, you’ll receive 20% off your service fee! Just enter the code MPIX20 when you sign up. This offer is good until September 21st, so hurry and sign up!

On another note, Zenfolio has just added some more exciting features to their service as well! Here’s a quick rundown:

• Drag N’ Drop Sorting of Photos
• Export to Flickr and Facebook
• Batch downloading of Original Files
• Added the Category: Sports > Watersports > Surfing
• Thumbnails now indicate whether or not the photo is watermarked

So if you aren’t using their service already, now is a GREAT time to sign up and save yourself some of that hard-earned money. What are you waiting for? Sign up! Image above courtesy of Mpix.

A Little NAPP News

Monday’s here and I thought I would pass on a little info. about what’s going on with the National Association of Photoshop Professionals (NAPP).

• This week is the last week to save $100.00 off of your Photoshop World registration. If you plan on heading to Vegas for Photoshop World, then I highly recommend you sign up this week if at all possible.
• Also, I noticed in my latest issue of Photoshop User magazine that the prices for new subscriptions to Kelby Training Online are going up soon. I don’t know when yet, but this issue is the September issue so that would be my bet. Monthly subscriptions will be $24.99 ($19.99 for NAPP members) per month. Yearly subscriptions are going up too, but I don’t have the details handy. If you already have a subscription, then your prices will stay the same.

Just thought I would pass that info. along to you guys. Have a great week!

Suicide Poster Contest News and a Big Thank You!

Happy Friday out there to the 3 people who read this blog. I wanted to pass along my sincere thanks and appreciation for all who voted for my team’s poster in the Navy’s Suicide Prevention Poster Contest. We were voted #1, thanks to your votes and support!

As the selected winners, our poster will be featured in the November issue of All Hands magazine. All Hands is a very popular Navy publication that is circulated to all Navy commands. As a Sailor who isn’t a Mass Communication Specialist, it’s a big honor to have our work published there.

Our CO gave us the day off because of a couple of recent certifications our ship has passed, so I’m spending the day working photography stuff, drinking coffee, and hanging out with my kids. We’re having a big birthday party for my youngest and his friend tomorrow and expect around 60 people between parents and kids… nuts.

Have a great weekend, get out and shoot, and don’t forget to back up your photos! I’ll see you back here on Monday!

CyberSync “Sledgehammer” High Speed Sync vs. Nikon CLS Auto FP

In my post from Saturday, I explained how you can trigger remote flashes at shutter speeds that are above what your camera’s max. flash sync speed is. I thought what I was getting was High Speed Sync, but according to my buddy David Hobby it’s not quite the case. Here’s what David had to say about it:

What you are getting is not HSS, but rather a single pulse that is timed to last throughout the time the slip travels across your frame on a <250th speed. That is why you are only getting f4 at that ISO in that close.

It does work (no frame blackout) but you lose so much of the power of the flash (wasted on the blocked out part of the shutter) that it is pretty much a wash vs the CLS way. In fact, dollars to donuts I would bet you get less light via the “sledgehammer HSS” technique used here.

That said, it does apparently work, if not very efficiently. Kind like frying one of those geese with one of your radars does technically make it a microwave oven …

So what I set out to do next was compare the CyberSync method to traditional Nikon CLS and see how the two stacked up against each other with regards to power. Both methods prove to be very inefficient, but will work in a pinch if you get caught in a situation where your ambient is just too bright to knock down with shutter speed alone.

The Results
I shot these outside in early evening when the sky was still nice and bright. I metered the background at f5.6 @ 1/800th ISO200. I put an SB800 with only a diffusion dome on a lightstand, another on my D90, and connected the CyberSyncs. I set my shutter speed to 1/1000th to underexpose the background a bit. The light was 36″ away from my subjects (my daughter and her friend) whom I was able to convince to stand still for a couple minutes. The SB800 on the stand was set to full power and here’s what I got:

Obviously, it was a little too hot so I stopped down 1/3 of a stop to f6.3 and recomposed. This is what I got:

Much better. So now it was time to try out CLS. I disconnected the CyberSyncs and then put the SB800 on the lightstand in Remote and put the SB800 on my D90 in Master. I set the remote flash to Manual mode at full power. This was the result:

If you notice where the kids are in relation to the trees compared to the shots above, you will see that I actually had them standing CLOSER to the SB800 when using CLS and the shot was a little underexposed.

What’s the Take-Away?
Although the “Sledgehammer” method (as David called it) is very inefficient, it’s actually a little better than the CLS method. However, so much power is being wasted here that my NiMH batteries for my Speedlights hurt just thinking about me putting them through this kind of abuse.

To be very effective at all, you’d need to have two or three speedlights (at least, more if you wanted faster recycle times) and your shooting pace would be rather slow. It would work if you had no other options, but it isn’t really a “go-to” solution.

My Hard Drive Is Back!

I received my new power supply today that I purchased from Unity Electronics up in the L.A. area and now my hard drive is back up and running. Photos stored on my MacBook Pro were backed up by Time Machine, but I’m glad to be back to normal as far as my photo workflow goes.

I ran across Unity Electronics on eBay while I was searching for the model number of the power supply for my Iomega drive. Apparently, Iomega had a bad run with power supplies and the one I bought has LaCie’s name on it. Hopefully this one lasts longer than the 9 months the old one did.

I had duty yesterday so I’m busy playing “catch-up” this afternoon. Lots to do!

High Speed Sync using CyberSyncs

So I get an e-mail from my buddy and fellow D90 shooter Levi, and his e-mail contains a link to a photo that he took of a couple of flashes, triggered by CyberSyncs, f11 @ 1/4000th of a second! I was blown away! I had to go and test it out for myself and low and behold… it worked! I shot the photo above with my D90, SB800 on camera @ 1/128th power with the CyberSync CST transmitter plugged in via included mini plug to PC Sync cable, SB80DX flashes @ full power triggered with CyberSync CSRB receivers, f11 @ 1/4000th of a second, ISO200!!! WOW! Wanna learn how? Read on.

What? No hack?
No. There’s no hack that you have to perform. You need a couple of things to even think about doing this. First, you need a Nikon SB800 or SB900 and a camera that’s capable of the Auto FP High Speed Sync mode. In this day and age, that means a D80, D90, D200, D300(s), D700, or a D3. (Some older Nikon bodies are capable, but I’m not going to list them all.) Of course you’ll need the CyberSyncs (CST transmitter and CSRB receiver). Lastly, you’ll need the included mini plug to PC Sync cable that comes with the CyberSyncs. This is how you’ll connect your SB800/900 to the CyberSync CST. See the photo below:

And this is what your flash will look like with the CST connected to it before you place it in your camera’s hot shoe:

Once your flash is mounted in your camera’s hot shoe, you’ll need to make sure that the Auto FP mode is turned on. (For D90 users, go to Menu > Custom Settings Menu > Bracketing/flash > Auto FP (e5) and turn it On. Once you’ve turned Auto FP on, then you can power on your flash. I then set my SB800 to Manual mode @ 1/128th power and positioned the flash head at 90 degrees (straight up). FYI, you could set the power higher and point it towards your subject for a little on-axis fill if desired. Then, as long as your other flashes and CyberSync CSRB receivers are powered on, you’ll be good to go and flashing away at ridiculously high shutter speeds that you never thought you could have with your CyberSyncs!

Got Power?
Look at the above test shot of Benjamin that I lit with 1 – SB80DX through a Lastolite Ezybox at f4, 1/4000th, ISO200. I had the 24″ x 24″ softbox in nice and close and you can see how quickly the light will fall off with a shutter speed of 1/4000th of second! Keep in mind that the SB80DX was at full power. To pull this kind of thing off with speedlights, you’re going to need more than one in most cases. If you can shoot really wide open, you might be able to get away with it… however you will need to have your light(s) in nice and close. This is where a Lastolite Triflash would come in REAL handy. To really do this right, you could use a high powered studio strobe like an AB1600 or the like.

Further Testing Needed
I only played around with this in the house tonight because it was already dark when I got the chance to have some fun with it. I want to test this outside in full daylight with a few more speedlights to see what I can come up with. I also ran into one small issue while testing this: if I put the camera down and it went into “sleep mode”, my SB800 would sort of “lock up” and my camera would default back to the max flash sync speed of 1/200th of a second. Not really sure why this was happening. I couldn’t use the power button to shut of the flash, but a quick opening of the battery door and closing it again did the trick.

So there you have it folks… High Speed Sync without using Nikon’s Creative Lighting System. RadioPoppers have been doing this for quite awhile now, but they are most well-known for extending the range of your flashes when using CLS. With the CyberSyncs, you have to do everything manually still, which is what I prefer. I’ll have more to follow later on this week, which will include testing this outside… in full daylight. Stay tuned!

ThinkTank Airport Security V2 Bag Review

Are you ready??? It’s finally here: my ThinkTank Airport Security V2 Bag review! Yeah, I can’t believe that I finally got to this either, but I actually did. In this review, I’m going to cover the features that I love most about the bag as well as give you my honest opinion about it overall. There are a couple great reviews from Zack Arias and Scott Kelby so there’s no real need to invent the wheel here. Also, I’ll show you what’s in my bag and where it’s located. Believe me, you can carry A LOT of gear with this bag, which I really love. (Image above courtesy ThinkTank Photo.)

First off, a look at what’s in my bag:

In the lid, I carry some gels, cables, and other miscellaneous accessories:

This bag is SECURE! It comes with three different locks to lock up your bag/gear/laptop. The first that I’ll cover is the zipper lock that locks up the main compartment. It’s a TSA approved lock, so it can stay locked while you’re flying with your gear and they can open it with their key if they need to do an inspection. It’s built right into the bag and keeps people from opening the main compartment and peeking (or stealing) your gear. Here’s a close-up:

The second lock is on a cable that attaches to the frame of the bag. It’s a combination padlock that allows you to secure your bag to something to keep it from rolling off (or being carried off). The cable is pretty hefty and so there is no way someone’s going to get your bag without at least a set of bolt cutters. It also works really well for securing for sea on a Navy ship should you happen to be a Sailor. Here’s a close-up:

The third lock is in the front zippered pocket and allows you to secure a laptop to the bag so that someone can’t walk off with it since your bag is already locked up. If you use a laptop bag, it will slide right into the front pocket on the front of the bag. Then you can loop the cable through a handle on the bag and lock it. Here’s a close up:

Another feature that I really love is the fact that this bag comes with a ID plate riveted to the bag with a serial number on it. If your bag is ever lost, someone can easily return it to ThinkTank and you can get it from there. More details here. I obviously blocked out my serial number, but you get the idea in the close-up:

Overall
This bag rolls like a dream. I don’t even notice that it’s behind me because it rolls so effortlessly. The wheels are very sturdy and they are not riveted on so they can easily be replaced if need be. The handles on this bag are solid and secure. I don’t have to worry about picking up my bag by the handles with all of my gear inside and having one of the handles come loose or even off. The bag is build tough, very tough. The zippers are sturdy and don’t snag. They aren’t the kind you’ll find on a cheap suitcase either. These things are VERY rugged. The Airport Security V2 also comes with a seam-sealed rain cover in the event you find yourself in a downpour. Very nice touch. I also love the fact that ThinkTank stands behind their bags and I won’t ever have to worry about paying to replace a part. Why? Because they will repair or replace any part on their bags. That’s a company that really stands behind their products! This bag also has a TON of storage. I carry 5 speedlights, a 70-200mm f2.8, a 24-70mm f2.8, two DSLR bodies, CyberSyncs, Justin Clamps, a Triflash, gels, gobos, snoots, camera straps, cables, batteries, chargers, and more. If I need a lot of gear on location, then I know I can carry most or all of it in this one single bag. I love that! This is all I could ever want in a rolling camera bag and I’m so happy that my awesome wife and kids decided to get me one for Father’s Day this year. They also got me the Airport Intelligence 15 notebook bag for my MacBook Pro, which comes in really handy and is a killer combo with the Airport Security V2. If you are in need of a rolling camera bag, you owe it to yourself to take a HARD look at this bag.

Note: I still have yet to fly with this bag and I probably won’t until November, in which I’ll update you on how my experience was with the bag. However, there seem to be lots of photogs that fly with these and have had very little trouble. It’s dimensions meet the FAA and US domestic airline maximums for carry-on luggage and so there shouldn’t ever really be a problem unless you’re flying on a regional jet or turboprop. Here’s a link to more info on airline travel from ThinkTank.

Friday Updates

Hey everyone! It’s great to be back at home after a few days out to sea! I’ve been catching up and hanging out with family tonight, which is always great. I’ve got a couple of quick things to pass along for you today before heading into the weekend. I promise you that I will get my Think Tank Photo Airport Security V2 bag review up on the blog this weekend. I know you’ve been waiting for quite some time and it’s way overdue. But for now, here’s a couple of cool tidbits for you:

Elinchrom Ranger Quadra Flash
This is one of the coolest little pro studio flash rigs I have seen in a LONG time. They are super light, powerful, portable, and just plain give off great light. The modeling light is made from LEDs so they consume little power and don’t get super hot. The modeling light is so good, it can be used for video light! The battery back for the flash heads weighs barely over 6 pounds! The heads are small but can still be used with softboxes, umbrellas, and octaboxes alike. You can check them out here at B&H Photo, but be prepared they come with a hefty $2,199.95 price tag. But if you’re a pro wedding or portrait shooter who wants studio quality light to go then this kit could be for you!

Zack Arias Inspires Again!
Do you remember Zack’s video, ‘Transform‘? Well, he received an e-mail yesterday from a viewer who got something different out of the video. You should definitely check out Zack’s blog post to read the e-mail and his response… AWESOME! UPDATE: Zack posted a killer video this morning that goes right along with his post! Check it out here!

That’s it for today folks. I’ll have the Airport Security review up tomorrow as I mentioned earlier so I hope you’ll hang in there with me. Have a great weekend and remember to format your memory cards!