Lemon Drops

So here we are on a wet Thursday afternoon. Middle of Golden Week, the national holiday of springtime Japan. It’s chucking it down with rain for the second consecutive day, and it’s my job to entertain & educate my two small boys, and their mates. Let’s have a bit of fun with flash:

We’ll take this PET bottle and cut it roughly in half lengthways. A fishtank would have been better, but we just didn’t have one lying around. We’ll put some towels down on the floor, and another towel on this low table. Lay the bottle on top of the towel, and light. A Nikon SB26 in the front, set to 1/16th power, and a Metz 40MZ in the back, at 1/32nd power. Fill the bottle with water, and find some colourful fruit……

Having these Nanostands makes life quite simple. The Metz in back is fired by a radio trigger, and the SB-26 simply has an integral optical slave unit, which explains a lot of its popularity, I think. In the setup pic above, I put a black poloneck shirt on top of the towel, to try to make the background a more continuous black. We hung a black canvas background behind the set. Much as I would LOVE Black Sabbath curtains, I can’t see the missus going along with it.

Find a willing participant – no shortage of small boys wanting to get wet and lob fruit around. Great! This guy’s even colour-matched his pajamas to the lemon. Take aim, and fire at will:

Missed! No fancy laser beams or sound/light triggers here, just a degree of ever more accurate prediction of impact. Just a fraction of a second later, and I would have nailed it. But the beauty of this little setup is, you can have as much splashy fun as you want. The camera and shutter speed are largely unimportant…….because, as I explained to a group of students last week, the only light in this shot, is coming from the flash. Which is burning for only perhaps 1/2000th of a second. Maybe even less. You just want to make the exposure based only on the flash, ie a low enough ISO, small enough F stop, and high enough shutter speed, to completely exclude available light. All shot at 125 asa(iso), started at 1/800th F5.6, and ended at 1/1250th F8. Just experimenting really. I should add that I shoot with the Nikon D1x, whose flash sync speed is unlimited. Most current cameras can’t sync beyond 1/250th, but with dim available light, that shouldn’t present a problem.

Getting closer

Ah-ha! Perseverance pays off. I’ll own up to being a grumpy old curmudgeon and say now that there are a number of things I’m not happy with – could always use a little bit more depth of field with the water drops, some of the ribs in the PET bottle have distorted the light, there are lots of ways that this could be improved but yes, we had fun, my two sons both have their own DSLR cameras and got involved with shooting, which was half the battle really.

And yes, he really got his teeth into our little project…..still scratching my head about that. Happy trails!

I’m confused about flash…..

People say to me ‘I’m confused about flash’. Here’s how I look at it: it’s just like a very small sun, that you can put in your pocket. It only burns for an instant, but you have complete control over it. How great is that?

The Main Event

If you live in Tokyo, the impending Tokyo Marathon is just around the corner. It’s a great opportunity to get out in the streets and shoot some pictures. The route passes through quite a wide selection of neighbourhoods, though with a little planning, you can usually get to several different spots during the course of the race. What I generally do, is pre-ride the course, in the week leading up to the event. I’m a big fan of cycling in Tokyo, and usually bike between shooting spots on the day.

As far as equipment goes, I like to pack light. One tele lens, one wide lens, 2 bodies, and a flash. And nothing very extreme either, in terms of the telephoto lens. A lot of people I talk to seem to form the impression that sports photography is always about huge telephoto lenses. I shot the image below on a 180mm lens:

I used a teleconverter with this shot, so the 180mm lens with 1.4x converter about equivalent to a 250mm lens. Adding the crop factor of the DX format camera, about a 375mm in fullframe. The disadvantages are, the AF slows down because of the reduced light into the camera, and the image quality is compromised. With top flight AFS prime lenses, the converter isn’t perhaps so much of a problem, however for the older ‘screwdrive’ lenses I really can’t recommend it.

The Tokyo Marathon bears like every other large city marathon, a number of fancy dress runners. Our Lord Jesus, for example:

Then there’s the Salaryman, every Disney, anime, and cosplay character you can think of,  the list is endless. All richly entertaining, given the often inclement weather.

I’ll be shooting from around sunrise till noon, and you’re welcome to join me if you have a bike to get around on; I’ve got a job to shoot in the afternoon, at the Russian Embassy, so I hope not to get too dishevelled in the morning!

Taxi!

On Route 20 west out of Tokyo, a busy four lane highway, with a further 6 lanes expressway some 30 feet above. Pedestrian bridges are common at large intersections, so it makes sense to use them to get a cleaner image. Keep it simple, stupid. By shooting from overhead we can eliminate the distractions of a typical urban background. I’ve been in the habit for a while now, of going out with just one body and one prime lens. It seems to focus the mind more. This one was shot with my elderly D1x, and the 35mm F1.4 lens, albeit stopped all the way down. You can can really only make this picture at a certain time of day; when taxis starting lighting up, but while there is still ambient light.

A night at the races

A night at the races.

 

Shot at Oi-Kebajo racetrack in Tokyo last year. They hold night races over most of the summer; I’ll be organising a visit here for my students this year; plenty of photo opportunities – the racing, the staff, the punters, the atmosphere. Panning is a technique learned & not forgotten – rather like riding a bike! This was the best image out of just 3 panned shots. Sports photography isn’t always about huge lenses, this was taken on a humble 85mm lens. Just need to know what you are doing 🙂

Why don’t you teach?

My friends sometimes ask me ‘why don’t you teach photography?’ And this is something I can ask myself as well. I have done it, on an ad-hoc basis, many years ago. And it was very enjoyable.

Teaching, for me, comes with a huge duty of care. It’s not just about handing down judgements or showing off to adoring students. It’s a lifetime, condensed into the few weeks or months that your student wants to commit. And trying to condense a lifetime is, well, a pale imitation. Ever had powdered mashed potatoes? Just not the same, is it? No matter how much milk or butter you add, something is missing.  So I guess we just have to set our sights a little lower.

I think that is my biggest barrier to teaching: I seek perfection – whereas teaching can only set the ball in motion, tease out a creative interest, or fuel an active imagination. Perfection is the horizon. An unattainable goal, set at infinity, beyond the reach of we mere mortals.

So perhaps I should challenge myself, outside of my comfort zone.  To teach in the pursuit of perfection, but without the overriding, crushing self-criticism, that has crippled my artistic life up until now.

Hey Mister, you have a lot of cameras.

One of the questions I am often asked: why do you have two cameras?

Lots of reasons really: Things break, or stop working when you don’t want them to. Electronic cameras are no more or less unreliable than mechanical cameras, in my opinion. But they are impossible to coax back into life, once they stop (assuming it’s not a simple battery issue).

Dust: one lens on each body, means you don’t need to change lenses, which is time consuming, and potentially exposes the camera’s sensor to dust and other airbourne particles.

Versatility: Each camera that I own, has its own specialities. The D1x is fantastic for flash sync. While the D300 has fairly good high ISO performance.  Some pictures will require both characteristics, so it’s good to have both cameras to hand.

Card failures: By having two bodies, you minimise the damage from card corruption or failure. Whatever brand of memory card you use, sooner or later, something is going to fail. It’s the law of averages, and the more you shoot the more likely it is. I also like to use lots of small capacity cards, which again distributes the risk.

Actually I have 3 bodies, the D70 is fairly small & light, still with excellent flash sync, and I can use it as a radio-controlled remote, without worrying too much about the replacement cost.  My kids can easily hold and use it too.

 

Pictures – in a flash

Sandwiched somewhere in time between traditional film, Polaroid print film, and digital, there was a unique photographic medium: Polaroid Instant Slide Film. Introduced in the early 1980s, this allowed users to view 35mm colour, black & white, or line film transparency images in under 3 minutes – compared to an hour or more for conventional ‘E6’ process film, or weeks for Kodachrome, this was positively (sorry!) space-age.

Taking Polaroid’s idea of coating an exposed print with instant developer one stage further, this process required a Polaroid Instant Processor – a light-tight plastic box around 10″ long, and a roll of Polaroid Instant Slide Film. Each film came with its own ‘chemistry pack’, which was inserted into the Processor.  Cranking a handle wound the film onto a spool, along with a film-like leader, coated with instant developer, from the chemistry pack. Wait a minute or two, then reverse the direction of the hand crank. Open the Processor – now we have developed (and fixed) 35mm slide film. Incredible stuff, in those pre-digital days!

There were several types of film: black&white, colour, and something called PolaBlue, meant for photographing line drawings, producing white lines on a deep blue background. The best part about the b/w film was, it was silver-halide based, meaning that the final image could be toned exactly as though it were a print, on traditional b/w paper.

Wendy O (RIP), London 1985

 Wendy O’ Williams performing at London’s Hammersmith Odeon, 1985. Wendy was a larger-than-life, in your face kinda girl, so this treatment suited her perfectly: shot on Polapan 125asa, developed normally, then Polychromed & Solarised using a toning chemistry called Colorvir. 

Do I miss Polaroid instant slide? Undecided. It was around three times the price of a roll of Kodachrome, grainy as all hell, with unstable emulsion and occasional dud chemistry packs. Only in 35mm. But it was FUN!