Tuesday, August 23, 2016

Using Micro Four Thirds for Event and Commercial Photography

Hey guys, today I want to share a video that I just made, explaining all the gear that I carry for shooting commercial as well as event photography(and video too).

On a nutshell, I use Panasonic Lumix GX8 and GX7 as you may already know, along with Panasonic 12-35mm f/2.8 and Olympus 75mm f/1.8; each lens is attached to a single body and won't get taken off to avoid lens changing. Other lenses that I bring and might use are the Panasonic 20mm f/1.7 and Olympus 45mm f/1.8.

I also carry speedlights, YongNuo YN560IV and YN510EX. For quick light modifier, I bring two Rogue FlashBender bounce diffuser for run and gun style portrait on the fly.

Other accessories includes my Apple Macbook computer, my LED light to replace one of the flash, and my audio kit which includes a Zoom H1 recorder and a Sennheiser ME2 lav mic.

I also have other gear that aren't included in my video. Those are my tripod, my lightstand, my shoot-thru umbrella, and some of my other lenses. Depending on the kind of shooting that I need to do, I might need to bring them. But most of the time, I can survive without those tool just fine, and that's why I didn't include them in the video.

Here's the video, if you have any question, feel free to comment here or in the video. Hopefully you'll find this video useful.



Thank you for watching, God bless you :)

Wednesday, August 3, 2016

How I Shoot It #7: Strobist Environmental Portait, Tokyo Skytree

Hello everyone, today I want to share another "How I Shoot It" post. Today we will discuss my favorite type of photography: strobist environmental portrait. Basically, what that means is, you shoot a portrait with a scenery, and add some off-camera-speedlight(flash) to light the subject, so that you can control and expose the subject and the scenery separately.
  
Now why on earth do you need to do that? Have you ever encountered a back-lit situation, where the scenery/background seemed to look so bright, that if you expose for the background, the subject will look very underexposed, and when you try to expose for the subject, the whole scenery just looked totally white? Well, off camera flash is your answer to making sure that you have control over both exposures: the subject and the background.
  
Now you may ask again, why off camera flash? Because it will give that 3D look on your subject rather than the usual flat, harsh, fake look that you always get using on camera flash or built in flash. When the flash is fired from an angle and not straight forward from the camera, you'll get a very interesting sculpting light that will enhance the feel of your portrait subject. Depending on what you are after, you can make the light more dramatic by introducing shadows to your subject. This is done by severing the angle more to the side of the subject. But often times, you want the subject to look more toned down, and thus you might need to aim your flash from a slightly straighter angle. More on that here.
   
This kind of environmental portrait is actually very important to understand, because this could be the perfect technique that you might need when you are doing travel photography. You could photograph your loved ones using this technique and get an excellent, repeatable result, using just a camera, a lens, a speedlight, and someone to hold your flash.
  
Now, without further babbling, here is the picture that I want to share:
Strobist Environmental Portrait, Tokyo Skytree
This picture was taken last month on a trip to Japan with my friends. The huge tower behind me is actually Tokyo Skytree, a very famous tall tower in Tokyo. My friend actually took this picture(thanks Marsha!), and another friend held the speedlight to light me from the side(thanks Charlotte and Carissa!).
   
The key concept here is just a portrait with a scenery on the background to provide context of place and time. The Skytree tower provides the place context, while the afternoon sky provides the time context of the photo. This is a very typical travel photograph that you will take, and doing this using the technique that I will explain will actually help you take a better travel photograph compared to just your available/natural light environmental portrait.
  

Technical Details

Camera Setting

I shot this using my favorite camera ever: The Panasonic GX8, using my favorite lens ever: Panasonic 12-35mm f/2.8. This was shot at f/8, shutter speed of 1/320sec, and ISO 100. It's all full manual, and it was based on a trial exposure that I took before hand of the scenery.
  

Technique

To be able to understand how to shoot using speedlight in bright sunny day like my picture above, you have to know the limitation of using speedlight in bright sunny day: shutter speed. Your camera can't register what your flash shoots above a certain shutter speed. This shutter speed limit is called the flash sync speed. This is what you need to know from your camera, AND you have to try to break that sync speed too and see if it really is correct.
  
In my GX8, the known sync speed is 1/250s, which means anything above 1/250s will cause the camera to not register the flash exposure. This means if you shoot 1/500s or 1/1000s, there will be some dark/black bars on your picture, caused by the shutter plane not moving fast enough to catch up with the flash. But I experimented with my GX8, and I found out that I can still shoot 1/320s without that black bar appearing, so I can safely say that my particular GX8 has a 1/320s sync speed(yes, I'm one lucky son of a beach hahaha!). Your GX8 might not behave the same way unfortunately, so you have to test it by yourself.
  
Moving on, I first checked the exposure of the scenery. To do this, I need to put the camera on full manual(sorry, no single automation allowed folks!), and I set the shutter speed to 1/320s. I then adjust the ISO and aperture accordingly until I find the right exposure or 0EV as dictated by the metering system of the camera. In this case, I was shooting on a bright sunny afternoon, so I want the lowest ISO possible. I then set the ISO to 100(it's the lowest ISO on the GX8, but not the lowest native ISO), and set my aperture accordingly until it reaches 0EV. The ISO and shutter speed gave me f/8.
  
After I took care of the ambient exposure, I started messing with the speedlight.I don't use modifier in this picture, except for a 1/4 CTO gel that is permanently attached to the flash, so I don't need to compensate the power for the modifier. I began by testing the flash exposure on my friend, with the flash positioned 1 meter away from her, at camera left, almost 90 degrees from the camera angle to get the most dramatic lighting on me as possible.  I started at 1/4 power, and then adjust my flash power from there. Took a test shot, apparently 1/4 power was too much, so I dial down to 1/8. I tested again, still too much, so I set it to 1/16 and it was perfect!
   
I then asked my friend to hold the flash, and frame my composition. Once I'm done, I asked my other friend to compose as I did, and then I posed and she took the picture immediately.
  
Composition wise, I want to have the Tokyo Skytree to appear very dominant in the image as a scenery, because it's the main context of place in the picture. I want it to fill the frame, while I want myself to fill just half or a quarter of the frame. I used 12mm on my 12-35mm, that is like 24mm on full frame. Anything wider than that will make the picture looks distorted, but anything tighter than that will make it difficult for me to get the whole skytree in the frame. So 12mm is a sweet spot in my opinion.
   
I tried to include foreground elements such as the roof of the building in front of the skytree, as well as the fence to enhance the picture a bit, so that the picture can have more elements that provide more context to enhance the Skytree. One thing to keep in mind, don't clip the top of the Skytree, clip just the bottom part of it, like in my picture. It looks better that way, trust me!
  

Post Processing

I always shoot RAW, just in case I messed up so bad in my image. Think of it as sort of an insurance. You pay a bit to cover the risk. In this case, you pay for a bit of storage space, but you'll gain very flexible images that are very tweakable and hopefully repairable when you messed up.
   
Thankfully, this image is already near-perfect and is very close to what I have in mind. Also, since we are using speedlight, there isn't much thing that needs to be done in the post processing, because the speedlight improves the quality of the light in the picture dramatically.
      
The only thing that will require a bit of slider-action is the Skytree itself. We are exposing for both the Skytree and the sky, and as the result of the metering of the camera, the Skytree appeared a bit dark. So we need to raise the exposure of the Skytree. All I did was to raise the shadow by about +30 or +40, and drop the highlight a bit by about -20 or -30 to balance the sky with the Skytree. Compensate for both the shadow and higlight repair by adding some contrast to the image, and we're done.
   
If you are feeling ballsy, you can shoot this in JPEG with your desired picture profile, and not post process your image at all. It can be done, but don't mess up, because once you messed up a JPEG image, it's actually messed up forever and you can't repair it.
    

How to Improve?

I could have used a large modifier like an umbrella to make the light softer, and compensate the power of the speedlight by both using a leaf shutter camera and firing the flash at full power. That will give a better light quality on me. Unfortunately, it will also means a significant amount of gear that I need to carry. It's also inconspicuous, that kind of setup will make the security guard comes close and stop you from taking the picture.
  
I could also choose a more proper time of the day, when the sun is lighting the Skytree tower from the front, and thus having both the sky and the Skytree in the same range of exposure without the need to raise the shadow and to kill the highlight. That way, the speedlight also doesn't need to work as hard, and can be used to light from a different angle and makes the whole picture more interesting.
  
But overall, I'm very happy with my result of this picture. I hope this picture will inspire you to take great travel portrait of you and your travel buddies with great scenery in the background.
   
Leave me any comments if you have questions or suggestions.
  
That's all for today, cheers and God bless you :)