So, that means I’ve got my excellent condition 430 EX II speedlite available for sale. I’ve owned this since July 2010, and it is in pretty much perfect condition (it is used, but has no visible scuff marks or dings). Includes all the boxes, manuals, pouch and stand

These are excellent little speedlites – powerful, reliable. I’ve used this in softboxes, umbrella’s, with Lumiquest products, gels – it’s never skipped a beat. I once had to do an entire outdoor location shoot with this as my one and only light after my only 580ex II took a tumble and it’s hot shoe fell off!

Shot with the 430ex II on a monopod, with a lumiquest pocket bounce as the only light!

These currently retail for $299 on Amazon, and resale prices on used speedlites tend to be good, with little drop in value.

$230 includes shipping – comment or contact me (paul@rt2photo.com) if you have any questions!

Mostly, I’ve been using my GoPro Hero HD. It’s got a built in intervalometer, is easy to setup and easy to use

Example:

To get some more animation in a timelapse, it’s handy to have some way to move the camera, and a slider or other mechanical systems can run to many hundreds of dollars.

Enter, the Camalapse.

This is basically an egg timer. However, it has a custom shell (and doesn’t “ding”) with markings and tripod mounts, and like any kitchen timer, it’s good for a one hour, full 360 revolution. Happily though, they have marked it up in 15min increments if you want to do something a bit shorter, or don’t need it to rotate the full 360.

It has a standard tripod screw on the top, and socket on the bottom – one dissapointment was that these are both plastic, so don’t over tighten them in case you screw up the threads.

So, how does it work? Exactly as you’d expect! I took this quick video this morning – camalapse on my desk, one hour, 360 degree rotation

I’m pretty happy with it – I can find uses at events, and shows I photograph to get some neat fusion video. For the $25 it’ll run you, it’s a nice, neat tool. It can be stacked on top of another camalapse too for some more neat effects.

Points to note:

It’s only capable of holding a small camera (no DSLRs)
It’s pretty light weight itself.
Plastic threads, don’t over tighten.
Not programmable or adjustable – 1h = 360degree, or variations up to that.
It’s dirt cheap. Enjoy.

Get your own here!

http://www.camalapse.com/

Several months ago, I was approached by Melissa

(Say hi to her second brain)

to see if I could shoot the Browncoat Ball of 2011 – Browncoats being fans, followers and slightly obsessed individuals who love the Joss Whedon show, Firefly and it’s movie, Serenity. Being slightly geeky myself (only slightly), I jumped at the chance to shoot the shindig ball on the Saturday.

http://browncoatball.com/2011/

Whats a shindig?

Think, big formal ball, classical music, dancing, gowns – and being a fan convention, costumes. Hell yes, I was in.

I’ve shot at the venue before – the Rotunda ballroom at the lush Crowne Plaza hotel in Rhode Island. The room is big, round, and above all, brown. Really brown. Brown carpets, brown walls – and from a photography perspective, even the lights are brown (well, orange) – tungsten bulbs give off a pretty gross orange glow – and this room is lit with nothing else.

So, what does a photographer who is relying on a daylight balanced flash do? Break out the gels – in this case, a full CTO gel – which takes my flash, and turns the light it puts out from a blue daylight color, to a close or similar orange – hopefully matching the tungsten bulbs in heavy use in the Rotunda. Of course, I also tell my camera to use Tungsten white balance – which helps – but still doesn’t do the job entirely.

So, what next? The photos from the event are great – I’m really happy with them – as you can see, they look great

But, when someone wants a print – I don’t want to run the risk of their skin tones coming out oddly – every single print order I make will be hand edited first – the resulting file sent to the printers – this is the difference

Enjoy the full slideshow:

On Saturday, I was shooting a Duathlon – for those not aware, a Duathlon is a multi-sport event. In this case, a run, then a ride, then another run. The racers went out for a 2mile run around Winchendon, before coming back into the parking lot, hopping on their bikes, doing a 9 mile loop on the bikes, then back in again for a final 1mile sprint to the finish line. The problem for a lone photographer is that there is a TON of stuff going on, in a TON of different places, and I needed to be at all of them at once!

So, rather than contract in a second or third photographer, for the Toy Town Duathlon at The Clark YMCA, I brought in robots

Well, kind of.

The gear:

For the parking lot (this would be catching runners leaving and returning, riders leaving and returning), I put up a GoPro Hero HD camera, with it’s time lapse mode set to take a shot every 2 or so seconds. This resulted in something around 650 photos.

I also wanted to catch the race finish line, so I put my trust first ever DSLR, a Canon Rebel XTI with a Tamron 28-75mm f/2.8 lens up high on a lightstand, with an intervelometer hanging off it set to take a photo ever 1 second. This resulted in taking almost 2500 photos!

This is the final result –

The editing:

Straight from memory cards, I imported all the photos into new projects in Aperture 3 and ran some batch job edited (curves and vibrance adjustments mainly), before exporting them all back out again – taking care to make sure they were named sequentially.

Then, using Quicktime Pro 7 (and *only* 7 can do this) – you open the first image in the sequence and pick a frames per second speed. For both of these, I used 10fps, but using a higher fps will result in shorter, but smoother videos. Then, save these files as .mov’s

Lastly, open them up in iMovie ’11, merge them together, add some bumper images, then export again as 1080p HD video files.

This is the final *final* result

In September 2011 I ran the Rugged Maniac race in Southwick – an adveture / obstacle race over around 5k of motox track. It was pretty brutal, even compared to other races I’ve ran! Of course, when I’m crawling through mud, jumping off walls and getting wet, I don’t carry a big camera – but I do take my GoPro HD on a Chesty mount, and grab video footage!

You may have already seen the 7minute, edited version that gives you an idea of all the obstacles I hit

But, you wouldn’t have seen the full length, ~40minute version yet. This is unedited, no music – I even left in the bits where I walked between obstacles!

Here it is:

Enjoy!

Dylan looking up at the sky

And why would I say this was taken with the greatest camera in the world?

It’s not the sharpest photo. It’s not the clearest photo. The dynamic range of the picture sucks, and I don’t have a RAW file to make edits with. The colors are muddy, and in hindsight, I would have spent some time with speedlites making that silhouette sharper.

This is why -

I was outside playing with Dylan, my 2 and a bit year old son, when he went on a wander up the hill to our front lawn. It was about 6pm on a gorgeous August evening and the sun was setting behind him. We both heard an engine noise, and looking up we saw a small prop plane circling around, getting ready to come down and land at our local small airport.

As we watched, the picture formed in my mind .. I knew he’d only be interested for a few moments, not enough time to run into the house to grab either my DSLR or my high end point and shoot. If I went looking for my speedlites and light stands, he would have got bored and wandered off, or the plane would have landed. The memory card for my DSLR was in my computer, so I’d have had to go find that. Would I have shot this with a wide angle lens, or moved back and zoomed in with a telephoto?

If I spent any time at all thinking about those things, or hunting for that equipment, I’d have lost the shot. It’s not a shot I can recreate again either. Dylan won’t stare at the sky for me for long, and that sunset will, eventually, set.

So, this photo was taken on an iPhone 3Gs. It was in my pocket. I used the Camera+ app, and even just waiting for that to open almost lost the shot for me. Sure, I’ll never be blowing this up to a large canvas print (I’d love to), but at least I have it – that moment in time – my two year old boy looking to the sky.

Never forget, it’s not the gear, it’s not the camera, it’s not the equipment – use whatever you have to hand, and don’t miss the moment.

Spartan Race is next weekend!

What does this race mean? For me, two things – it was my first adventure race (at time of writing, I’m 6 races in, with 4 more on the calendar!), also it was my first taste into sports shooting, something I’ve been doing a lot more of this past 12 months.

An adventure race, or mud run – they go by many different names – is typically a race between 3 and 12 miles (3.1 miles / 5k is a very popular length), held on and off road, with obstacles as you go through. These obstacles could be walls, tunnels, mud, throwing things, jumping things – every race is different and every race is a unique set of obstacles.

Spartan Race in 2010 was the first race I ran that wasn’t a typical, point A to point B road race, and I got hooked. Since then, I’ve ran the Rugged Maniac (5k), the Ruckus Boston race twice (4 miles), Hopping Mad Mud Run (10k) and Warrior Dash (5k) – this weekend will be the second running of the Spartan Race.

As a sports shooter, I’ve contracted with a national company to shoot triathalons, epic adventure races (Tough Mudder in VT) and several road races (the Tufts Womens 10k comes to mind) – I’ve also independantly shot some local 5ks and kids races, with more on the calendar – it’s a unique challenge to get out there with a zoom and a monopod and get awesome shots!

Me too! @ the FitCon annual 5k

@ The Clark YMCA kids tri

@ the Tufts 10k for Women

@ the Tough Mudder VT – I’ll be running this in 2012!

So, Spartan Race is special to me – the races keep me motivated to stay fit and active (I wasn’t always!), and shooting sports lets me stay involved in the field, and I hope that the photos I take of people doing these amazing things just may, one day, inspire someone else to go out and do something amazing too.

I’ve just spent a full day in a studio (http://www.erricostudiophoto.com/) seconding to the wonderful Michael Baxter. He had four bellydancers from the New England area lined up for photoshoots, and as is typical from these events, I came away inspired, educated and generally, a better photographer for the experience. Big thanks to Amy for organizing the trip, and bringing me in!

Much of my photography (especially in 2011) has been done on location or outdoors, primarily due to a lack of space and equipment to make the kind of studio photos I see in my head – but watching Michael working with studio lights, using a variety of softboxes and then improvising and building out sets that you would never imagine could come from simple lights – I’m inspired all over again

On top of simple technical skills, Michael’s ability to work with his model – Amy and I joked that Michael could run an entire workshop solely on “schmoozing the dancers” – it’s always great to see someone who is so passionate and involved with the process!

Of course, this gushing post wouldn’t happen if it wasn’t for Michaels openness. His willingness to share – something frequently lacking in the photography community – is what makes him unique in my experience.

So – a simple day in a studio, under the guise of being there to move lights and do bulb runs, turns into an education, an experience, and a good time hanging out with friends – sign me up for his next trip

You can find even more about Michael Baxter here:
https://www.facebook.com/pages/Michael-Baxter-Belly-Dance-Photography/125678561728

Why, shoot a video for a Japanese rock band, of course!

Check this video out – 250 Canon 60Ds, with what looks to be a wide variety of speedlites and strobes in their hot shoes (I even see some old Vivitars in there at the beginning of the behind the scenes video) – all custom wired and programed to flash

And check out the behind the scenes version

Amazing stuff. I can’t help wonder though – if they had the budget for 250 new 60Ds, why couldn’t they afford 250 580exIIs to go with them?

What? You didn’t know I have a blog? Yep!