I’m hardly the inventor of this – a Google search will turn up several folks who have built the same thing.  In fact, it was a Strobist post that provided the model back when I built my first one.  Unlike a number of DIY projects, you don’t have to be ashamed of the dish afterwards.  The component pieces defy casual identification and, when finished, the whole thing looks pretty darn professional.  And best of all, it works.

As you can see in the photo above, it’s a simple device.  The DIY version uses an 18″ bowl-shaped plastic planter for the dish.  The reflector plate in the center is actually the spindle enclosure from a pack of blank DVDs.  A hole has been cut in the bottom of the spindle that matches a hole cut in the plastic planter and a small auto-store mirror has been glued to the underside of the spindle top (see photo below).

The spindle enclosure is attached to the dish using 4x 1.5″ 10-24 bolts, with separate nuts to first tighten the bottom of the spindle to the bolts before passing through the dish itself, where another set of nuts locks it in place.  The bolts protrude from the back of the dish about .5″, which makes it possible to mount the whole thing to a flash adapter bracket.  I used wingnuts to secure the bracket to the bolts, which makes it quick and easy to remove (since until I get another bracket, this one gets used with both the beauty dish and my Speedlite softbox).

The nice thing about these flash adapter brackets is that they let you position the flash body in any direction, while keeping the head pointed into the modifier.  (I got mine from eBay, but there are other folks selling them as well.)  The not-so-nice parts are, one, that when the flash is turned sideways, the head doesn’t exactly line up with the hole I cut in the dish; and two, that with the flash body facing forward, the wireless sensor is blocked and the flash still doesn’t quite reach into the dish.  (I’m planning to make a short foam channel, lined with reflective material, that will fix this last issue.)

The hole in the dish was cut with a hobby knife, while spindle plastic required the Dremel tool (which was also used to drill the holes).  It was a simple matter of masking off the boundaries between black and white and then spray painting.  I used RustOleum, since that’s what the store had: flat black for the outside, and some really nice textured matte white for the inside.

Let’s do a quick recap:

18″ plastic planting bowl – $10 @ Lowes

DVD spindle enclosure – Free (since we all have a stack of disks at home somewhere)

Mirror – $3 @ AutoZone

10-24 sized bolts, nuts, washers, & wingnuts –  ~$4 @ Home Depot

RustOleum spray paints – $8 @ Lowes

We’re talking $25 and a couple hours worth of work.  Even if you have to spring for the flash adapter bracket, they’re $30 from eBay (and can often be purchased with a softbox for a little bit more).  So assuming that you start from scratch, we’re still talking $50 total.  Not bad at all.  Especially considering how nice it looks when you’re done.

Best of all, there are very few ways for it to fall apart, because there are very few pieces in the first place.  The whole thing is solid, yet lightweight.  (In fact, the first time I made one of these, it attached right to the Speedlite via a strip of elastic, although I don’t recommend that method, as it puts a lot of stress on the Speedlite foot.)

There you have it.  Stay tuned for the next post to see the test run!

But what the hell…sometimes it’s fun to tilt at windmills.

Basically I was bored yesterday afternoon and, being my last Friday off for a while, I felt obligated to do something fun with it.  Fun=camera in hand, so gathered up some little used gear and rode out to face the noontime sun.  The photo above is one of the better results, and one of the few photos that survived review.In reality there’s no reason why you can’t shoot during mid-day, it’s just not advised.  The odds are less in your favor and success is going to require a bit more work.  For the shot above, I parked the tripod-mounted 7D + 17-35L almost on top of the goldenrod, down at about kneeling height.  Landscape photography benefits from having subject matter in both the foreground and background; in this case the idea was to anchor the foreground with the plants and give the impression of peering through them to the mountain beyond.  The sense of distance is greatly aided by the line of clouds in the sky.

I’m shooting f/11 to keep everything in focus and I’m using both mirror lock-up and the 2-second self-timer to avoid any camera shake.  Got two filters in place, too: a circular polarizer (CP) and a graduated ND.  It’s that combination that makes it possible to balance the sky exposure with the rest of the shot.  It’s also the cause of the rather intense blue at the very top.  I could write it off as “artsy,” but it bugs me.  The fact that I kind of like it bugs me more.

Essentially the same setup here, although shot from a higher vantage point.  This shot got a bit more post-processing to make it behave (more to come on that soon), but even so it suffers just a little from that typical mid-day flatness.  There’s contrast in the scene, but it falls just short of being enough.  Yet try and kick it up in Photoshop and suddenly you’re back on planet Velvia.  The trick is trying to find just the right balance between too much saturation and too little contrast.

Or you can simply duck under some cover and try to hide from the sun:

I always think of dappled forest scenes as having “shotgun light.”  Sure, there’s plenty of nicely diffused shadow, but mixed in is that shotgun spatter of sunlight that makes it through.  And there just ain’t no way you’re gonna’ balance them.  From here it becomes a creative choice: do you shoot for the highlights and let the shadows become black holes, or try the opposite and accept a few blown-0ut spots?

The shot above is clearly the later, and the mid-image blow-outs catch the eye more than I’d like.  I used the grad ND filter here as well, even though there’s no clear horizon to work with.  Instead, I aligned it so that the gradation kicked in at about the same place where the focus began to fall off, compliments of f/3.2.

This is the time to set the WB to Shade, although if you study my image, you may notice that the white balance is still ever so slightly off.  That’s the filter’s fault – in addition to the CP and grad ND, I threw on a 1-stop ND as well.  No real reason for it, I was just playing around.  Turns out that stacking three filters gets you a strange red cast throughout the photo – and processing the red away leaves you with super-saturated greens.  Even after a lot of tweaking, it’s subtly out of whack.

And that’s what you get for playing in the mid-day light.  It’s certainly possible to make images, but it’s a challenge.  The next time you’ve got a free afternoon, give it a try.  Better yet, shoot in the afternoon and then come back again as the magic light starts and compare the two images.

Another boat image from this morning’s outing, still working with the 7D + 17-35L on the tripod.  I liked the scene itself, both because of colors and content.  Since I was already setup after the first shot, I fired off a quick 3-shot bracket so I could try it as an HDR later.  (Proof that I can actually think ahead without first having coffee in the morning.)

With the processing finished I still like the scene, although I’m a bit on the fence deciding which version I like better.  The second image is the HDR; I tried to keep the processing subtle, but I think that it’s still slightly obvious that it’s a composite.  (The way you see them here doesn’t do them justice, but even after setting the color space to sRGB, some of the vibrancy vanishes online.)

Been shooting a few landscapes lately – got the urge all of the sudden, and after working at 300mm for several weeks, suddenly stepping back to the 17-35mm range is pretty amazing.  The longer you shoot any particular way, the more accustomed you become to seeing the world that way.  I think it’s artistically healthy to shake it all up from time to time.

And since I’m shaking things up, I hauled my little-used tripod out of the trunk and worked with it for a while while the light was low.  Shot with the 7D + 17-35L @ f/11, ISO 100, in Av mode with a Cokin graduated ND filter.  The idea was to get everything from here to way-over-there in focus, and since I was already on the tripod, the extended shutter speeds hardly mattered.

Have you seen the list?  New super-telephotos, new teleconverters, two new lenses, and the 60D.

Image by Canon USA

I’m underwhelmed.  Gee, thanks Canon…Honestly, I wasn’t all hyped up in anticipation of this announcement.  I check out CanonRumors.com when they post new stuff but nothing coming down the pipes really lit my fires.  And they sure aren’t flaming up now.  Let’s review:

We got two new super-telephotos, with news of two more on the way.  Cool, yes.  But we’re talking about four already great lenses that are so expensive that most of us can only ever dream of owning one of them, and only then if we sell a car (or a kidney).

We got an update on both the 1.4x and 2x teleconverters.  Not sure why they needed a version III update, but apparently they did.  Although that begs the question, “Why didn’t Canon get it right the first (two) time(s).”

We got two new L lenses: the 8-15mm fisheye and the 70-300 IS.  Now granted, the fisheye sounds kinda’ cool, and is a clear case of Canon playing catchup with several third-party manufacturers who have had ultra-wide fisheyes for a while now.  The 70-300, on the other hand, completely baffles me.  It’s essentially the current 70-300 IS repackaged as an L lens.  But what for?  It doesn’t have a faster aperture, and they’re a little vague about any weather-sealing, instead beating around the bush with the statement that it includes “environmental protection.”

And to top it all off, we got the 60D, which at first glance appears to be the bastard child of the line, falling into an ambiguous area between the 7D and Rebel line, while at the same time managing to be less-capable than it’s predecessor, the 50D.  Several key features have been dumbed down or removed, while little has been added.  (What’s the deal with the flip-out screen on a SLR, anyway?)

So here’s my question to Canon: where are the real lenses?  You know, the ones that might actually be useful to many of us?  We haven’t seen a new non-L, EF lens in quite a while now.  How about an update to some of the more popular EF lenses (28mm, 50mm, 85mm)?  Or heck, we’d even settle for a standard-range L update (28-70, 24-105) or even a brand new lens in the range.

Mostly what we want is something that’s useful to portrait/wedding/event photographers.  Something that isn’t just an update of an already excellent lens.  Something that won’t make us sell our first-born to afford.

Wishful thinking?

I often forget that Merli-Sarnoski Park exists, which is shame, since it’s a nice park quite unlike any other in the area.  For a county park, it’s actually quite sizable, with the most extensive collection of mountain biking trails around.  But my area of interest is the pond, which sits in a hilltop depression, which means that the surrounding environment is a bit more conifer-centric than usual.

So I guess it’s no surprise that the little yellow bird I captured on “film” turned out to be a Pine Warbler.  It always feels good to come home knowing that you’ve added another new critter to your life list, and just goes to show the absolute worth of visiting varied environs!

This is the Wild West, come to town; the fair is filled with Stetsons and jeans, work-shirts and cowboy boots.  The sun sets, the grandstands fill, and in the dirt ring, all hell breaks loose in the form of half-wild horses and men determined to ride them.  It’s classically American, and even if you don’t like country music, there’s something captivating about the ritual of it.I grew up in Vermont, far from the western range; I saw a single rodeo as a child.  But, combined with a hundred John Wayne flicks, it caught a hold of me – this was year three at rodeo night and it still excites me.  And while I suspect it’d be one hell of a time to climb onto a buckin’ bronco myself, I’d probably break my neck.  So I stick to shooting from the grandstand, which is less of an adrenalin rush, but still a ton of fun.

Rodeo photography has been an evolving process for me: I started with a 28-135mm lens, then switched to the G10 the next year, neither of which produced satisfying results, being too short to reach the action mid-ring or beyond.  So this year I brought the 300L – problem solved!  Actually, a little too solved…  Turns out that while 135mm is too short, 300mm is really a bit too long; a cowboy and bucking horse fill the frame pretty well from across the ring, but from mid-ring in, they’re too big.  (After this year’s experience, I’m convinced that the 70-200L is the perfect lens to shoot this.)

What I know for sure is, f/4 is the smallest aperture you want to try this with.  In past years I was at f/5.6, so gaining a full stop was a big help.  But even so, I was shooting ISO 1600 under the ring lights and underexposing by about a stop to get 1/100 sec. shutter speeds.  You can clearly see in the photo above that 1/100 isn’t enough to freeze the action (although I was pleased with how the blur looked in the end).  I shot with the 400D this year; it’s enough smaller and lighter than the 7D that I was happier carrying it around the fair.  But I think that next year’s ideal kit will be the 7D + 70-200L f/4 IS.

When the action got too close to shoot, I turned the lens on the staging area, which was chalk-full of material for some good portraits.  Like this guy, who’s thinking that maybe he should have stayed home and watched football on TV instead.  Given the low light, the files really responded well to processing – I pulled the RAW exposure up about a full stop before loading the images into Photoshop and converting to duotone for the vintage look.  From there it took a levels adjustment to bring the midtones up, finished out with a slight curves adjustment for contrast.  Given all that, the noise isn’t very apparent – amazing, really, since ISO 1600 is the highest setting on the 400D (which consistently surprises me at high ISOs).  And really, any noise that does show fits in with the whole vintage look anyway, so it’s an easy win.

This was one of those miracle captures.  It’s hard enough tracking a horse and ridge coming across the ring at you; doing it in portrait orientation was damn near impossible.  For this keeper, there were 30 junk files.  But it was the only way to keep the horse and rider both in the frame as they drew near, and when it worked this time, boy did it work!  I only wish more had come out,  because of all the shots I took, it was these barrel-racing ladies who had the greatest expressions.

I’ll finish off with one last shot, from the final event – bull riding.  Yeah, that’s right – if you thought that everything else was intense (crazy), then bull riding pushes it right over the edge.  You can see that even the cowboy gave up his Stetson in favor of a helmet.  The shot’s a bit more cluttered than I’d like, some more separation between the bull rider and the background would have been nice.  But I did like how well the real thing matched up with the poster!

One of these days I’d love to find a contact who can get me ring-side access to a rodeo.  But until then, I’ve had great luck shooting right from the stands.  I love the rodeo, and I’m already looking forward to going back again next year.

Last year I only took the little G10, deciding that I wanted to just have fun and enjoy the fair, and let photos be secondary.  It worked out pretty well, although I think I did the same amount of image making as I would have otherwise.  I didn’t even bother making decisions this year – just grabbed the 400D + 17-35L and went for it.  I figured that the wide-angle was the perfect lens through which to view the evening – if you’re shooting amid general chaos, you might as well take it all in!For me, the fair is about the exhibitions – I go to visit the animals, to see the oversized prize veggies, and peruse the art entries (with some occasional muttering under my breath regarding some of the ribbon-winning photos).  I prefer to enjoy the midway from a distance.  The lights and music make for a great backdrop, but I don’t care to step in close.

So here’s a challenge for you – how to shoot the prized poultry in their cages.  There simply isn’t enough room to build a good distance ratio and focus past the bars, so the only real choice is making the best of it.  So long as the focus is sharp on the eyes, there’s a chance that the image will work.  Beyond that, you can either take in the whole environment, or try to get in close and minimize the cages as much as possible.

Close or not, I really shouldn’t have cut this guy’s feet off.  I’d actually been trying to photograph his neighbor, who was far less than cooperative.  When I looked over and saw this gal damn near posing, I spun and shot.  Yeah, better composition would have made it a solidly good shot, but you know what they say – shoulda, woulda, coulda.

The good news is that the larger animals are easier to work with, at least in the sense that their pens are less intrusive.  Doesn’t matter if we’re talking goats or cows, you can shoot down in at them, or through the slats.  The trouble here is dynamic range – no matter what I do, I can’t reconcile the indoor light with the outdoor.  Just like the cages, it becomes an either-or, whatever works at the moment.  In the shot above I simple said “the hell with it,” and metered the side of the cow, using exposure lock to hold the settings while I recomposed and shot.  Got some nuclear sun outside, and some pretty intense lens flare down at the bottom of the frame, but the shot works.

Just for kicks, here’s the other side of the coin – exposing for the highlights (more or less), and letting the shadows fall where they may.  Again, not something you see prescribed a lot in instances like this.  It seems the most people these days want images with even exposures across the whole thing, but short of running an image like this through HDR software, that ain’t going to happen – and there’s no reason it should.  The display ring had great side lighting, and so what if the stands fall into shadow?  There’s still enough detail remaining to make out the people, and the shot’s not about them anyway – it’s about the cows.

Away from the critters, I’m always drawn to displays like this.  But I find that the real challenge here is finding new ways to capture them.  After a few trips to the fair, you start to find a growing series of “stuff on shelves” shots, one much like another.  I’ve tried angles, tried changing orientation…this time, I shot f/3.2 to introduce blur with distance.  Does it make the photo more dramatic?  I think so.  At least, as dramatic as jars of jam can be.

I’ve wandered all over the place in this post, but the overriding point I’m trying to make is this – shoot photos that make you happy.  Shoot photos that are fun.  That isn’t always easy to do, and so many photogs get into situations where they feel that their subject material is restricting them.  Heck, I do it myself.  But when you go to the fair, all those rules go out the window.  Fairs are about fun.  They’re about people’s achievements.  And they’re filled with great light and subjects.  No reason not to have fun with them!

Since the sun has been rare, I overcame the temptation to spend Saturday morning in bed, and instead hauled myself out to the county park to meet a photog friend and see who was around.  The bird scene is still a bit out of kilter here, with far fewer around than there were a month ago.  But I’m seeing signs that the migration is getting started – we’ve had a few uncommon transients pass through, and there’s flocking behavior going on.

The Killdeer are still here, however, and I was finally able to get a shot of one near the water.  I mentioned the need for rain – the grass you see sticking up at the bottom is where the water usually is, snug up against the bank.  There’s over a nearly 18″ of exposed pond bottom now.

For now the situation doesn’t seem critical; there’s still enough deep water in the middle of the pond to keep the resident wildlife from getting too stressed.  Although I wouldn’t want to see what another 2-3 weeks of hot, dry weather would do to them.

But at least the frogs don’t seem to mind!  It’s normally a lot harder than you’d think to get a photo of these guys – as soon as they feel the vibrations from your footsteps, they’re heading for cover, leaving behind just a wet plonk sound and maybe a few ripples.  This time I just out-waited them.  Paul and I spent almost 20 minutes sitting at a picnic table chatting and, when we finally got up, the frogs had returned.  Sometimes it pays to be patient.

Here’s one last shot, moving away from the water.  Now here’s a guy who has the right idea – breakfast in the field!  I’ve got him ID’d as a Song Sparrow, although goodness knows that many of the sparrows looks so alike that it’s sometimes hard to be certain.  But I’m pretty sure – and was pretty dark happy that he stopped hopping around the weeds long enough for me to catch him.

This was one of the last captures from the Susquehanna Riverlands.  I’ve got almost no experience shooting butterflies, but I have seen some particularly nice shots of them.  If you’ve ever tried it yourself, however, I imagine you know the frustration that goes with it.  While it may be nice to watch a butterfly flit around your garden, it’s nothing short of maddening to try and track those random motions with a telephoto lens.

I gave up on in-flight shots and waited for her to land.