One of my students, Katja, have made a soundtrigger to catch these pictures when they are moving and hitting the wall.In her garage, she constructed a little studio. A flat surface, which is not  placed horizontally, serves as a glider for a skateboard on which five glasses are glued. The correct distance is calculated for the startingpoint of the skateboard.When the board hit the wall, the microphone picks up the sound and that triggers the camera. By  using backlighting, Katja creates a black border and the transparency of the glass. A nice touch, she uses food colouring chemicals for the effect in the glasses. Here you can find how you can make a soundtrigger. Have fun!

Sylights for iPhone is the most advanced app to create, edit and share your lighting diagrams.

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Okay, who out there has an f 0.7 lens?  Well, among still photographers no one I know has such a treasure and even in the richly financed movie industry, such an extraordinary piece of glass is very rare, possibly limited to just one – the one director Stanley Kubrick used to film the lingering candlelit scenes in Barry Lyndon.  For these moments, Kubrick had a 50mm lens built for NASA by the Carl Zeiss Company modified with a Kollmorgen adaptor used in still cameras.  No artificial lighting was used with all the illumination coming from the candles.  The warm light generated by the candles creates a compelling painterly look that is reminiscent of Thomas Gainsborough and other artists of the era in which this movie is set.

The movie focuses on the exploits of a scheming Irish rogue who wins the heart (and fortune) of a rich widow and makes a sideways entrance into 18th century aristocracy.  There are some powerful battle and dueling scenes but it is the candlelit scenes and meticulous composition that hold visual sway for photographers.  The frame is often held and the action allowed to develop within it.   Often landscapes rather than people dominate the screen.

The film runs 184 minutes.  In those three hours and a bit, I counted at least 22 scenes I would like to have recorded with a still camera.  It is impossible not to watch this movie and not want to indulge in some portraiture of your own employing candles, perhaps employing a few reflectors to spread the light.

You can find some video’s on You Tube how she works. Mostly she’s photographing herself.The postproduction is very important for her because this will support her ideas. There is one serial that is taken under water, she explains the simple method she is using.

It’s extremely thin, durable, and covers both the front and the back of the phone.

http://store.petapixel.com/products/Leica-Look%252dAlike-Skin-for-the-iPhone-4.html

The shoot that Adrian Weinbrecht did for Davidoff is a typical HSS (High Speed Sync) technique.Using a short shutterspeed to blck the sunlight. This is what he wrote:

I need 1/1600th Flash sync ! Why ? because I like to have choice when I’m shooting. The 3x images above are actually a screen grab from Capture One. So this is before any retouching, honestly.  We always strive to get it right in camera.

This was a shoot last summer for Davidoff. We had a super bright, hot and sunny day in London. (Yes they do Happen)  I wanted to show the muscularity of the model, obviously  the best way to do this is with lighting. The sun was so bright though, that I needed to shoot at a high shutter speed to bring the ambient light down, so I could then light into this shadow to create some form on the muscles.

Now it’s the Pushup set up.  The Technical stuff: I’m using Elinchrom Lights with a Phase One DF camera with the P65+ Digital Back iso50,  Schneider Kreuznach lenses.  The high-speed wireless  sync is achieved using the Profoto Air Sync Transceivers on the lights. I’m using a Phase One V Grip Air to send the signal, I laughed when Phase One sent me an early prototype of the V Grip. I did end up buying one though and I use it all the time, so they had the last laugh.