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 p.1 #11 · Ring Flash vs. Beauty Dish | |
stuuke wrote:
What happened to Shatterkiss?
Want to know what Shatterkiss is up to nowadays? Just Google "Shatterkiss".
There aren't many successful professionals who earn 100% of their income from photography who hang out here regularly for the simple reason they are busy earning a living. Also Twitter, Facebook and simple to use blog hosting has also changed the paradigm. Most who become known well known enough to attract a following find it more efficient use of their time to use those social networks instead of this older and inefficient format which is modeled on Compuserve and the usenet forums of the 80s and 90s. I would lay odds that went down the list of threads on page one today that 95% of the questions have been asked, and answered 100 times before usually by the same handful of regulars who hang out here every day to answer them because on some level they like helping people learn and avoid mistakes they made, evidenced by the huge pile of old photo gear in the closet.
Fred wisely separated the "show my photos" and "talk about gear" forums here, so Lighting Technique isn't where you go to see how the tools are used by people like Shatterkiss, but rather to learn the cause and effect of how the tools work — which is mostly basic physics and common sense. If you hang out in People, Weddings, Landscape etc. and see someone's work you admire odds are nowadays they will have a blog.
The technical side of photography is more a trade like plumbing than a profession in the way that law or medicine are. The notion of Professional photographer with a capital "P" was the result of some very effective PR by the trade association most wedding and portrait photographer joined in the 50s and 60s, the Professional Photographers of America. I joined PPofA as a student while in college in 1971 to get window on the profession.
http://super.nova.org/TP/PPAmag1.jpg
http://super.nova.org/TP/PPAmag2.jpg
Two years later that same magazine published an article I wrote about my experience apprenticing with Monte Zucker. Did the fact Zucker wrote a monthly column have anything to do with me getting that article published? Hell yes. But joining PPofA and reading that column of his is how I knew how he was when I saw a help wanted ad he placed in the Washington Post in 1972. That same year I entered my first PPofA print competition at the Maryland state convention where Jay Maisel was guest speaker and judge and won third place, first place in the "Creative" category with the third place shot (gigged technically for retouching that showed up under the exhibit lights) winning the award for most creative across all categories.
The first place shot was this now faded "C" print of a big Clematis flower on a fence in Zucker's front yard I shot to have something to enter. I shot it on Ektachome but at the recommendation of the manager of the photo lab that was one of Monte's sponsors had a 4" x 5" internegative made to make the 16 x 20 print to avoid grain and enhance sharpness...
http://super.nova.org/TP/1973_FirstPlacePhoto.jpg
What I learned from Jay Maisel (Google him) and the others on the panel afterwards was it won 1st place because of the composition of the vine. If you look close between the V of the petals on the top you'll see the staple I used to create it. In case of selective tunnel vision I hadn't noticed it when shooting or in the print — until it was under the bright competition lights. Fortunately the judges didn't notice it either. The photo that won third and best in show was this one, matted as shown below with the title "Stand Up"...
http://super.nova.org/TP/1973_BLKPwr.jpg
I had shot that the previous year at college of an actor on stage using Kodak High Speed Recording film I'd found in the local Galesburg, IL photo shop and decided to experiment. It was what police used for low light surveillance in the days before night vision...
"Kodak 2475 Recording Film (RE 135), catalog number 163 2033, is described as an: "extremely high-speed, panchromatic film with extended red sensitivity. It is especially well suited for applications requiring low level illuminations or short-duration exposures such as law-enforcement photography". It is a black and white negative film with a nominal ISO of 1000. It is both fast and quite grainy." It could be pushed to ISO 2000 - 4000.
When processing the film I mis-loaded it in the processing real and the corner of that frame got stuck another part of the roll. I should have just run it through the fixer again to remove the undeveloped stuck spot but in my ignorance at the time I just scraped it off. Not having a darkroom to make my own B&W print for the competition I sent it to a lab for a print which didn't follow the instruction to burn in and hide the defect in the corner. With no time to reprint I was forced to fix it with retouching dyes, which I did routinely on our color prints, and that's what the judges saw under the lights. As it turned out it was the very last print judged and the judges seemed to take an eternity to judge it. I was really pleased it won third place in "Creative" and shocked when the judges also selected is best in show creatively. The long debate at the judges table was whether it's creativity trumped its technical flaws..
I was shooting weddings for a living, so why didn't I enter wedding candids? That's what I did for a living, and it wasn't very creative. The photos I entered represented what I did creatively for fun. Why did they win? In large part because of what I learned from Zucker about composition and based on his experience judging competitions like that what judges looked for and rewarded — something that was different from all the kids photos and wedding candids in the competition.
All of that is a fading memory in the rear view mirror. By the following year I decided shooting weddings or running my own business wasn't something I was interested in doing so I move to the reproduction side of photography for a living and pictorial photography became a hobby. Did I stop taking photos, buying gear and experimenting? No. In 2004 I bought a set of studio lights I really didn't need in part so I could give more balanced and objective advice based on first hand experience of the relative merits of speedlights (which I'd long advocated for hobbyists) vs. studio lights and share comparisons like this one of speedlights vs. studio lights ...
http://super.nova.org/TP/DIYvsSB.jpg
Or this systematic comparison of Dish vs circle masked SB I made and posted after getting my AB 22" dish back in 2004...
http://super.nova.org/TP/SBvDish/MedSB.jpg
http://super.nova.org/TP/SBvDish/MedSB_2.jpg
http://super.nova.org/TP/SBvDish/Dish22.jpg
http://super.nova.org/TP/SBvDish/Dish22_2.jpg
In terms of style the speed light vs studio comparison isn't much different than the very first artificial light session I did in high school with 150W bulbs in shop reflectors clipped to step ladders the summer after high school when I bought my Nikon F and 85mm 1.8 lens...
http://super.nova.org/TP/FirstPortraitsSQ.jpg
The "style" and lighting instruction to put fill over the camera came straight out of a 32-page "How To Take Portraits" Kodak book. It was the same configuration Zucker used with dual flash in the 70s an I still use and advice others to use today. Why? Because it's still technically sound and produces quite good results on a very limited budget with unmatched logistical simplicity. But that, or my experience which taught me that aren't obvious when I suggest people by a bracket and learn to get the most out of one flash before trying two and learning out natural lighting creates the illusion of 3D space and shape...
http://super.nova.org/TP/Egg.jpg
... and learning how to do the same with two speed lights...
http://super.nova.org/TP/StillLife1.jpg
... before attempting to do it with three...
http://super.nova.org/DPR/FourLightExercise/LE03.jpg
or four lights:
http://super.nova.org/DPR/FourLightExercise/LE04.jpg
Beyond the examples I've written about 50 tutorials on my web site like this one http://photo.nova.org/FourLightExercise/ which explain what each of the four lights actually do on a cause and effect level. The egg shot above was part of C&C for a guy struggling to understand how to light his pregnant wife without having her look like the the MetLife Blimp. I also drew and included this diagram...
http://super.nova.org/TP/Maternity.jpg
Why bother? What goes around comes around in life and I enjoy helping people lower on the learning curve improve things I've learned to do instinctively. Yesterday I spend 40 min. teaching a new golfer what a competent efficient and powerful golf swing feels is supposed to work in terms of physics and feel. It's actually quite simple once the cause and effect is understood, sort of like lighting.
In the good old days a person interested in photography went to the library or local photo supply store and bought some books. Today Amherst Media http://www.amherstmedia.com/ which specializes in photography books is an outstanding resource where you can find information on nearly every genre and niche of photography.
After reading books we would get off our asses and try the things they suggested. It wasn't a question of whether they worked, but actually understanding from doing and validating and believing it works. Some things, like neutral fill, often seem like a bad thing based on previous experience when suggested by someone with more experience. I remember being told axis fill was a terrible idea and not creative back in 2002 when I suggested it. Then a few years later Paul Buff marketed a $500 studio ring flash and the same people rushed to buy one even now the OP wants before understanding what its really good for. Suddenly even shadowless fill wasn't such a bad thing. It never was.
Gear and advice on gear has run in cycles like that for years. Flash brackets are coming back in style. At the State of the Union last week I noticed about half the photographers, including Obama's using one. You didn't see that a few years ago.
The learning paradigm has changed to people coming to the internet asking ad hoc out of context questions like: "Will my flash powerful enough to use outside in the sun". Duh, get off your ass go out into the yard with the wife and kids and find out. That's what I did 40 years ago and still do whenever a question I don't have an example to illustrate is asked.
Do I tell them that? No. I patiently explain for the 1,000th time how flash and diffusers work. Why, because I have time to do it because I don't do photography for a living. Do you need to be a "pro" for 5, 10, 20 years for advice to be valuable? No. I bought my Alien Bees vs more expensive brands based on feedback and examples from hobbyist like me. Most of the "pro" features of the more expensive brands I could live without.
Would a ring light be good to have? Yes. Would I use it much as a hobbyist? No. As it turned out I was one of the first to buy Buff's dish when it hit the market and posted my tests. My comparison and write up convinced many — mostly hobbyists — to buy one. Few pros bought one based on my advice because: 1) they used more expensive brands -- dish alone costing more than my AB800 light and dish, and; understood what they are good for and when to use them. I knew in theory from the physics and seeing examples how they worked. The tests I did after buying one validated what I knew and illustrated it for others.
A good "home grown" FM example of how good information can come from unexpected places is Chuck Carino on the People forum who started out about 5 years ago just buying a camera to document his kids growing and posting photos for C&C to improve his skills. Over the intervening years he has developed a distinctive style of capturing real life family events in B&W photos which have a fresh approach and a retro feel at the same time that even in the beginning when his technical skills weren't well developed was distinctive. His "fresh" approach was based on remembering the family photos when he was growing up. He's become a great role model and teacher for new photographic niche —family photojournalism— which he now discusses and teaches via his own blog with his own following. I'm not sure if he has quit the day job yet and gone from weekend warrior to 100% "professional" photographer, but as with a lot of other lines the Internet has blurred is that really important?
So when advice is offered don't judge it by where it appears to come from but by getting off your ass, trying it, and seeing if it works the same way for you. 
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). The catchlight is one aspect I can't get over, however, and the reason I go with a BD. The latter can be used either close to the camera or well off-axis, and give that magical hard/soft effect. The catchlight is quite pretty with an opal glass diffuser (if the option is available). The Profoto BD was my first modifier, and I replaced the opaque diffuser disc immediately.