I wanted to test a few things: the High Speed Sync, speed of operation, and a comparison of the eTTL system versus the manual flash adjustments that I usually do. I used a flash 580EX flash on my camera acting as the master unit with a Radiopopper PX transmitter attached to the top of it and two 550EX acting as slaves with the Radiopopper PX receivers attached.

This is what I envisioned when we went to the park. I used the Radiopoppers to transmit the fire signal and the manual flash adjustments while keeping my shutter speed at the 1/200th top speed that the Canon 5D allows for traditional flash systems.

This image was taken using the high speed sync allowing for a much more shallow depth of field.

I really liked this image. Ky loves soccer and is really excited for MLS to be coming to Seattle (Sounders FC season starts March 19). For this I used the eTTL system rather than manually setting the flash and I was pleasantly surprised at the nicely exposed result.

This is more what I expected from eTTL. The camera saw the bright lightsource in the frame and didn't use enough flash power (even though the fired) to make a proper exposure.

In this image, I switched to manual flash exposure and I had a much better exposure. This image is processed identically to the image before it so that it is an apples to apples comparison.

This image shows the shallow depth of field that is possible using high speed sync and a fast lens.

Same as the image before, but with the focus on his face rather than his hands.

Another using the high speed sync to make him pop from the background.

Testing the range. I was about 150 feet away. Really all that I need it to work at would be this range. The system is supposed to work at 1700 feet. Nice, but not necessary for me!

The front of his jersey. This image was shot at 1/6400 of a second with a full power flash.

This image of my amazingly handsome son was taken at f2 for the shallow depth. Again using HSS.

Again using the two flashes and HSS. The shallow depth of field throws the trees and sky out of focus and makes them shapes rather than trees.

These last three images are for illustration of the Manual versus eTTL. The first is taken with manual flash, the second is eTTL. The third is eTTL with +2 stops of exposure compensation.

My conclusions are that the Radiopopper PX system works really well for doing portraits. The system fired the flashes every time the flashes were ready and charged. It works well at distance. It provides a reliable system to use the HSS (high speed sync) allowing for flash and shallow depth of field at the same time. And it allows me to change my manual flash settings without going over to the flash and pushing buttons (I can push buttons from wherever I am with the camera).

Where it falls down in my mind is the difficult installation (you actually have to semi-permanently attach it to the flashes you are going to use rather than take it on and off at will) and the fact that it is limited to speed of operation of the Canon wireless flash system. I tested it on motor drive and was able to get only four out of 12 to fire at 1/128 power at three frames per second (frames 1, 2, 3, and 9 of the 12). This was because the Canon master flash was not ready, not because the Radiopoppers or the receiving flashes were not ready.

Finally, I found that I got the results that I wanted most consistently when I used manual flash exposure. The eTTL was right about 75% of the time, but for me being wrong 25% of the time doesn’t cut it.

It is a very cool time to be a photographer with all the awesome equipment available!

And a random photo…

The second is a photo organization that can help to promote your business.

photographik – the elite photographers network – features only the most talented wedding photographers in the United States and beyond.

Regular LR 1.3

LR 2.0 with selective area editing to make the sky darker and more saturated.

Very cool. Lightroom 2.0 is out in Beta. Download it!

I was just on a forum reading about the unfortunate events that have happened to a photographer.  Basically, his airlines for a destination wedding went out of business.  He was out the airfare and the other options were for thousands of dollars that he didn’t have.  I completely feel for this guy, who is a real nice person and got stuck with a bill for thousands that he wasn’t expecting.  My issue, which is cold and callous, is that no one running a business should ever have so little cash on hand!

When I am consulting with photographers that are starting their businesses, I always recommend that they keep 6 months of all their expenses in the bank.  Not in stocks, bonds, real estate, or anything else that can make it inaccessible or could take a nose-dive in value.  You can call this your “rainy day” fund, or be more realistic like myself and call it your “Oh, crap I broke my hand and can’t hold a camera fund.”

Often, when I propose this idea,  I get the reaction that it would be hard or impossible to save that kind of money.  Followed by horrified reactions when I explain that a BMW is not a necessity.  Or that eating out is optional.  Or they try not drinking coffee at Starbucks and brewing their own at home.  So…stop buying cameras, lenses, monitors, computers, drive an old Kia, whatever it takes to get your rainy day fund so that you can afford to be in business on a bad day.

I get asked all the time – by professionals as well as amateurs – how I get my images to look so sharp – so clean and crispy. Well, there really is no secret (well, there’s one secret you’ll see in a minute). Getting that crisp look is a combination of several factors. I hope this brief explanation helps, let me know if it does!

(1) Make sure your image is properly exposed. In my opinion, this is probably the most important factor in getting a crisp image. Get in the habit of taking a quick test shot and look at your histogram. While the shape of the histogram will vary according to the lighting conditions, the one thing you want is for the shape go all the way to the right side of the chart, like this:

Now take a look at this histogram. You’ll clearly see the data does not go all the way to the edge of the histogram, it’s about one stop underexposed.

Yes, you can adjust the exposure slider in your image editing software of choice to stretch the chart to the right. You’ll need to do this to produce an acceptable image, but the drawback is that when you stretch the data to fix an underexposed image, it gets muddy. I’m not a techie so I can’t explain exactly why, but just do your best to get the exposure correct in the camera.

Since I usually shoot in aperture-priority mode, the way I do this is take a quick test shot, then look at the histogram. 90% of the time, if shooting indoors I’ll need to add some positive exposure compensation, often a full stop or more. If I’m shooting a bride in a white dress in a room with white walls I know for sure my default camera setting will be +1 exposure compensation. Don’t trust the image in your camera’s LCD! It will often look okay even if severely underexposed. Just trust the histogram. Lastly, don’t worry about blown-out highlights if they occur on non-critical areas of the frame (windows, light fixtures, etc.). It’s more important that your subject be properly exposed.

(2) Hold that camera steady! Camera shake is another enemy of sharp images. Find a technique that works for you. I form a little tripod with the camera pressed against my forehead and my two elbows anchored against my torso. Then I shift my feet so they are spread apart, with one foot in front of the other. Finally, I exhale then press the shutter. Try practicing by setting your shutter speed to a slow setting, like 1/15th, and see how many sharp images you can get.

It also helps a LOT if you have gear with image stabilization, either in the lens or in the camera body. Most professionals use either Canon or Nikon, which have lens-based IS, while Olympus, Sony and Pentax use in-body stabilization. In theory, lens-based IS is slightly superior. However, in reality many lenses – particularly prime lenses – don’t come with IS, making in-body IS superior in my opinion. Come on Canon, get with it!

(3) Speaking of lenses, get yourself some sharp ones! Lenses are more important to image sharpness than the camera body. What’s a sharp lens? While there are always exceptions, as a general rule primes are sharper than zooms, and zooms with large apertures (f2.8) are usually sharper than consumer-level zooms that start at f3.5 or smaller (the exception being the Canon L series f4 zooms, which are known to be pretty sharp).

You don’t have to spend a lot of money to get some really sharp lenses. Both Canon and Nikon have sharp prime lenses under $400. Sigma makes a great little 30mm f1.4 prime that’s super sharp for $389. Tamron makes a super sharp 28-75mm f2.8 zoom for $359 that some say is sharper than the Canon L-series equivalent that costs over $1,000. This little Canon 50mm f1.4 lens is the sharpest lens in my bag and it costs $289:

(4) Lightroom and Photoshop CS3 have a new slider called “clarity”. It adds some local contrast adjustments that make the image appear sharper. It’s right below the contrast slider. I move the clarity slider from 20-40 on every single image:

(5) Pre-sharpening. I go through 2 levels of sharpening on every image, one in Lightroom and then another in Photoshop. For my pre-sharpening, I use the lightroom defaults that you see here:

(6) Use large apertures to isolate your subject. This seems counter-intuitive, given that lenses are generally at their sharpest at f5.6 – f8. However, for most general shooting in a non-studio environment, shooting at a wide open aperture (say, f2.8 or wider) will blur the background so that the eyes will register the subject even sharper than it really is. In other words, the contrast between the subject and background is enhanced, making the subject pop out of the screen. In this example, I’m focusing on the leaf at f2.5 with a Canon 85mm f1.8 lens. The leaf isn’t really that sharp when viewed at 100% – it is slightly out of focus. However, since the rest of the image is blurred from the wide aperture, it appears really crisp:

(7) Of course, there’s the importance of proper sharpening in Photoshop. Don’t be afraid to sharpen! DSLRs come with an anti-aliasing filter that’s used to smooth out jagged edges that might otherwise make your image look pixilated. The AA filter blurs the image, so some degree of sharpening is needed to bring it back to normal. I’m not bashful when it comes to sharpening. Even if it looks slightly over-sharpened on a computer screen, I know it will print beautifully. Okay, here’s the secret I told you was coming: I use Kevin Kubota’s “Magic Sharp” sharpening action on every single image. I’ve tried virtually every method there is to sharpen over the years and in my opinion this is THE best method. I can’t tell you what the formula is because that would be unfair to Kevin. Just go to his website and buy it! It is in his Production Tools Volume 1 and costs only $69. I would have paid 100x that amount just to get this sharpening action since it makes such a huge difference in my images.

I hope this post was helpful. Follow the 7 steps and I’m sure you’ll achieve your quest to find the elusive extra crispy look:

One last thing to think about here. Please don’t get hung-up on image sharpness. I think it was Henri Cartier-Bresson who said that image sharpness was highly overrated. This image – taken by my second shooter Kip Beelman – was used as a full-page spread in one of my albums. It was taken in a dark room at a slow shutter speed and definitely has motion blur. It also has a lot of high ISO noise so it’s anything but crisp. However, I still think it’s a great image. I’ll take a shot that conveys a touching moment over a boring crispy shot any day!

The new thing about these bags is that they are waterproof and will protect your gear in a rainstorm. This makes sense for me and Jim that are from the home of liquid sunshine here in Seattle. Also, he came out with a new, smaller size for someone wanted to carry one large or a couple smaller lenses stacked. Very cool. I see myself taking that one on vacation more than shooting because I shoot primes and switch out my lenses fairly often.

One more thought on the Boda is that Jim has done a great job of branding the bag. A couple of the photos I took were specifically to show off the number of times it says Boda on this thing. I counted 10 on the outside not counting the strap and the interior which say Boda repeatedly! Nice marketing!