Zeikos ZE-260F Deluxe DSLR Soft Case Review

Here is my old video review which I managed to publish on YouTube only recently.


In a nutshell this is a great value case offering little to no protection from the elements.  I use it to store and transport my video camera and audio recorder with accessories.

Seamless White

Recently I did my first full length portrait on a seamless white.  I like simplicity and uplifting spirit offered by seamless white.  I hope it will offer my customers a timeless look which is not likely to go out of fashion anytime soon.  It is also simple to implement.  I wish I had seamless paper roll.  In that case grey would be in option as well.  In my case I just used a king-size bedsheet - good enough if you want to just overexpose it, but not for anything else.
But first about my model.   Leif Hansson was pretty awesome - bright, inventive, easy to work with.  Extremely easy to direct.  I look forward to opportunity to shoot more images of Leif.
Now back to technique.  Here is Zack Arias' definitive Seamless White Tutorial.  Almost immediately I ran into the need to prevent  background flashes (2xSB800) from lighting the subject directly.  Zack uses folding doors for that.  I used the same material I used on the floor to create a V-flat which I used for this purpose.
My key light was a small flash (SB600) in a beauty dish - I discussed the dish in this blog before. For a catchlight I used another SB800 which also driving other flashes through CLS.

Videoshoots for ACM

I was fortunate enough to shoot San Francisco Bay Area ACM events.  Here is just one of them.

Event: Hanukkah Celebration

Hanukkah concert photos are published here.  If downloading photos is too much hassle for you - ask around - I passed along a couple of CDs.

Study in Dishes. New Flash Mount.

A new mount cost me $2.37 in parts from a big box store.  All the thumb screws were reused from the original mount.  New mount designs allows for shallow and deep insertion of the flash into the dish.  Shallow is still deeper than the original mount allowed for.  This does not help the quality of the light much though.  On the other hand deep insertion position (flash just about 1".5" from the internal reflector) creates a nice focused light pattern which I love.  Installation of the grid results in a smaller light spot yet.  Diffusing sock softens the light as expected.

Study in Dishes

Nowadays it is all about light control for me. My first modifiers - umbrellas off course - were spilling light all over the place.  I still resort to umbrellas for location shoots if the spill does not affect the picture.  My current studio favorite though is a cross of umbrella and a softbox.
Therefore when I started looking for a beauty dish, a grid was a must-have.  After all how else can you control the spill, right?  I did some research and settled on this eBay package: 16" Beauty Dish With Grid for Speedlite. Today I received it and learned that this is a Cowboy Studio product.  Indeed they have similar thing on their web site.

The first thing I did was to examine the light pattern under different flash zooms, with no fabric diffuser or grid installed.  I used both normal and recessed position for the front diffuser.

Street Photography with Brian Tramontana

Brian Tramontana and William Henderson of Hold the Eye Images led a street photography workshop which was both challenging and fun.  It all started well and went to great.  What worked:

• D600 is easy to handle.  Dynamic range is amazing.  Which makes it tolerant to my exposure mistakes.
• 35-70 f2.8 zoom lens is nice.  Right focus range for street candids, sharp enough when focus is in the right place.  Need a hood though, flair is a problem in direct sun.
• Aperture-priority mode for a change.  Just set the -1 compensation to avoid blow outs.
• Shooting from the hip.  With the camera on my neck I can talk on the phone and use thumb to shoot "from the hip".
• Sit (or stand) and they will come.  I picked a location with good light (dark background and a spot of sun in front of it) and just stood there.  Worked well.