jlw
Rangefinder camera pedant
Yesterday I gave my R-D 1 its first serious tryout at studio photography, in a gruelling 5-hour session of promo photos for press use and (eventually) a 4-color brochure.
In the past I've done these sessions using a Nikon D100 and a 70-200 VR Nikkor, mounted on a tripod, dumping filled memory cards into a laptop computer as I shot.
This time, I decided to try shooting the whole thing with the R-D 1 (although I did have the Nikon stuff out in the trunk of the car, just in case.) Instead of the laptop, I took along my recently-acquired Epson P-2000 photo viewer. I got the P-2000 partly because it's easier to lug around than a laptop and card reader, and partly because (until more cataloging software gets updated to support the Epson ERF format) it's the only way I can do quick onsite reviews of shots in raw format!
I'm happy to say that the experiment seemed to work well, and I did not have to go get the Nikon out of the trunk!
[To see some sample shots, click here. ]
However, I encountered a few quirks and unexpected situations which I thought might interest other R-D 1 users. Here's how it went:
Basic setup: The client (I'll call them a client even though I volunteer my time for this group) wanted the shots done in a very simple environment with a plain white background. (Yes, the white background can be a bit drab, but newspapers love it because it helps conceal how lousy newspaper photo reproduction usually is!)
To get this effect, I used a roll of 9-foot-wide white seamless paper, lit separately from the subjects with three electronic flash heads. The subjects were lit with a main light in an octagonal softbox, positioned at a 45-degree angle, and a less-powerful fill light with a shoot-through umbrella over it, positioned at about a 45-degree angle on the opposite side.
The way you get the white-background effect is to first take incident flash meter readings at the backdrop, adjusting the heads until you get even lighting across the backdrop. Note the metered reading, and then open up 2-1/2 stops (no more, no less.) Adjust the power of the lights on the subject to give correct exposure at this opened-up setting. If you get everything balanced properly, this will give a correctly-exposed subject with a clean white background and an evenly gradated horizon in between.
Equipment: I used the R-D 1 with a 50mm f/1.4 Canon lens. I've learned from past experience that with the lighting setup described above, you need an effective lens hood to keep the background lighting from scattering into the lens, reducing contrast. Fortunately, I had the correct clamp-on hood, acquired some time ago in a swap from a friendly RFF member.
I took three batteries for the R-D 1. During the session, I ran down one battery all the way, and the second battery about halfway. I don't have a spare battery for the P-2000; its battery made it all the way through the shooting (about 3-1/2 hours) but began to poop out afterward while we were reviewing the shots (aboutr 1-1/2 hours.) Fortunately, I had its AC adapter, so it was no problem to plug it in and continue. In a "field" shoot, though, I would have run out of juice.
Procedure: I shot all the pictures in raw format. I have two 512-mb memory cards for the R-D 1; each of these holds somewhat less than 50 raw-format shots, so I wouldn't have been able to get through the whole session (about 280 shots before culling) without dumping them onto the P-2000.
In practice, I'd shoot a group of poses on one card -- maybe 20-30 shots -- then take out that card, put it in the P-2000, put the other card in the camera, and continue shooting. I kept alternating, shooting on one card while the P-2000 dumped the other; this gave a very fluid pace to the shooting.
Once we had finished the shots, I plugged the P-2000 into a handy TV set via its A/V output, so the directors and I could review the shots and select the "keepers" to be converted in Photoshop once I got back home. We made these selections by using the P-2000's "album" function, creating a new album and copying the selected images into it. More on this later.
Overall impression: Shooting the session with the R-D 1 worked out really well. It accomplished what I had hoped it would accomplish: making me more productive by letting me work handheld (which saves time when responding to changing shot situations) and helping me feel confident (it's a huge advantage to be able to watch the flashes fire while looking through the viewfinder, especially when trying to catch action shots.)
Now some problems, unexpected results, and "gotchas" --
Well, that's my "field report" on doing a studio shoot with the R-D 1! If anyone has any suggestions for the problems I encountered, I'd appreciate hearing about them!
In the past I've done these sessions using a Nikon D100 and a 70-200 VR Nikkor, mounted on a tripod, dumping filled memory cards into a laptop computer as I shot.
This time, I decided to try shooting the whole thing with the R-D 1 (although I did have the Nikon stuff out in the trunk of the car, just in case.) Instead of the laptop, I took along my recently-acquired Epson P-2000 photo viewer. I got the P-2000 partly because it's easier to lug around than a laptop and card reader, and partly because (until more cataloging software gets updated to support the Epson ERF format) it's the only way I can do quick onsite reviews of shots in raw format!
I'm happy to say that the experiment seemed to work well, and I did not have to go get the Nikon out of the trunk!
[To see some sample shots, click here. ]
However, I encountered a few quirks and unexpected situations which I thought might interest other R-D 1 users. Here's how it went:
Basic setup: The client (I'll call them a client even though I volunteer my time for this group) wanted the shots done in a very simple environment with a plain white background. (Yes, the white background can be a bit drab, but newspapers love it because it helps conceal how lousy newspaper photo reproduction usually is!)
To get this effect, I used a roll of 9-foot-wide white seamless paper, lit separately from the subjects with three electronic flash heads. The subjects were lit with a main light in an octagonal softbox, positioned at a 45-degree angle, and a less-powerful fill light with a shoot-through umbrella over it, positioned at about a 45-degree angle on the opposite side.
The way you get the white-background effect is to first take incident flash meter readings at the backdrop, adjusting the heads until you get even lighting across the backdrop. Note the metered reading, and then open up 2-1/2 stops (no more, no less.) Adjust the power of the lights on the subject to give correct exposure at this opened-up setting. If you get everything balanced properly, this will give a correctly-exposed subject with a clean white background and an evenly gradated horizon in between.
Equipment: I used the R-D 1 with a 50mm f/1.4 Canon lens. I've learned from past experience that with the lighting setup described above, you need an effective lens hood to keep the background lighting from scattering into the lens, reducing contrast. Fortunately, I had the correct clamp-on hood, acquired some time ago in a swap from a friendly RFF member.
I took three batteries for the R-D 1. During the session, I ran down one battery all the way, and the second battery about halfway. I don't have a spare battery for the P-2000; its battery made it all the way through the shooting (about 3-1/2 hours) but began to poop out afterward while we were reviewing the shots (aboutr 1-1/2 hours.) Fortunately, I had its AC adapter, so it was no problem to plug it in and continue. In a "field" shoot, though, I would have run out of juice.
Procedure: I shot all the pictures in raw format. I have two 512-mb memory cards for the R-D 1; each of these holds somewhat less than 50 raw-format shots, so I wouldn't have been able to get through the whole session (about 280 shots before culling) without dumping them onto the P-2000.
In practice, I'd shoot a group of poses on one card -- maybe 20-30 shots -- then take out that card, put it in the P-2000, put the other card in the camera, and continue shooting. I kept alternating, shooting on one card while the P-2000 dumped the other; this gave a very fluid pace to the shooting.
Once we had finished the shots, I plugged the P-2000 into a handy TV set via its A/V output, so the directors and I could review the shots and select the "keepers" to be converted in Photoshop once I got back home. We made these selections by using the P-2000's "album" function, creating a new album and copying the selected images into it. More on this later.
Overall impression: Shooting the session with the R-D 1 worked out really well. It accomplished what I had hoped it would accomplish: making me more productive by letting me work handheld (which saves time when responding to changing shot situations) and helping me feel confident (it's a huge advantage to be able to watch the flashes fire while looking through the viewfinder, especially when trying to catch action shots.)
Now some problems, unexpected results, and "gotchas" --
Flash gotcha: One unexpected problem I've discovered using the R-D 1 with studio flash equipment: its PC socket is polarized. That means that if you use flash gear that has a standard household-type "H" connector for the sync cord, the flash may work when the connector is plugged in one way but NOT the other! When I first plugged in the camera, the flashes wouldn't fire; at first I thought I had a bad sync cable, until it occurred to me to try it again with the connector turned around.
Previewing problems: The big advantage of digital photography vs. film is the ability to check your results on the spot. But I had an unusual amount of trouble with this --
-- For some reason, I found it really hard to evaluate the lighting on the R-D 1's display. Even when my meter readings told me the foreground/background lighting balance was correct, it didn't look correct on the LCD. The same shots viewed on the P-2000 looked okay, so I decided to grit my teeth and proceed, and fortunately they did turn out to be OK. I'm still not sure why this was happening; the very bright background may have had something to do with it, but I can't think what.
-- All the digital-photography articles say that if you want top quality, you must shoot in raw format. I understand the reason for that, and I endorse the theory -- but in practice, I'm beginning to waver. The problem is that there's no way to field-review raw images without going through the time-consuming process of rendering them out in Photoshop; otherwise, previewing -- whether using software or hardware such as the P-2000 -- only shows you the image's embedded JPEG preview image.
What you can do with these preview images on the P-2000 is pretty limited. You can't rotate them; when we were reviewing the images, I got around this problem by tipping the TV up on its side! And you can't zoom in on them -- which would have been very handy when we were trying to make sure people had their eyes open and didn't have goofy facial expressions. I'm still undecided on whether it's better to have the extra image quality of raw format, or the extra reassurance of zoomable, previewable images in high-quality JPEG format.
P-2000 frustrations: Speaking of the P-2000, it's a very slick little piece of hardware. But its software, particularly the file system, is abysmal!
Imagine if, when you downloaded or copied a file onto your PC, the PC operating system immediately assigned it a new, arbitrary filename. Now imagine that if you then copied this file into another folder, the operating system would give it a different filename. And suppose that you weren't allowed to edit these names! There's no way you'd put up with that -- yet it's exactly how the P-2000 works.
Another pet peeve about albums: You can name them on the P-2000, but once it's hooked up to your computer, they just show up as ALBUM001, ALBUM002, etc.
I still feel the P-2000 is a good device for dumping memory cards and handling ERF files, but I need to do some more thinking about an efficient way to manage files on it.
Image Quality Conundrum: Generally I was very satisfied with the quality of the images I got from the R-D 1; they seemed at least as good as the photos I've shot under similar conditions with the Nikon D-100.
If you look at the samples, though, you might notice that many of them seem to have a bluish cast in the areas away from the main lights, producing somewhat cold-looking skin tones. I had noticed this in my D-100 shots as well, but the effect seems more pronounced with the R-D 1.
I tried a lot of tricks for removing this bluish cast during raw conversion and in Photoshop, but didn't find a completely satisfactory solution. (I'm sure it won't bother the client, but I'm a little pickier...)
The only theory I can think of for this is that it's caused by UV radiation -- either directly affecting the camera's imager, or causing white materials in the shot to fluoresce in a way that the imager captures differently than film would do.
So next time, I think I'll try using a UV filter over the lens. (My 70-200 Nikkor does have a UV filter on it, so this may be why the effect was less noticeable with it.) That should reduce the effect if the problem is the direct action of UV on the camera imager.
Unfortunately, if the effect is caused by fluorescence of the materials in the shot, a UV filter won't help -- the fluorescence would be in the visible spectrum, not UV, so a filter wouldn't eliminate it. My flash heads do not have UV suppression -- and I can't afford to replace them with ones that do -- so if that's the problem, I'll just have to live with it. (I'd prefer to eliminate it by shooting in black-and-white, but the clients won't always sit still for that!)
Previewing problems: The big advantage of digital photography vs. film is the ability to check your results on the spot. But I had an unusual amount of trouble with this --
-- For some reason, I found it really hard to evaluate the lighting on the R-D 1's display. Even when my meter readings told me the foreground/background lighting balance was correct, it didn't look correct on the LCD. The same shots viewed on the P-2000 looked okay, so I decided to grit my teeth and proceed, and fortunately they did turn out to be OK. I'm still not sure why this was happening; the very bright background may have had something to do with it, but I can't think what.
-- All the digital-photography articles say that if you want top quality, you must shoot in raw format. I understand the reason for that, and I endorse the theory -- but in practice, I'm beginning to waver. The problem is that there's no way to field-review raw images without going through the time-consuming process of rendering them out in Photoshop; otherwise, previewing -- whether using software or hardware such as the P-2000 -- only shows you the image's embedded JPEG preview image.
What you can do with these preview images on the P-2000 is pretty limited. You can't rotate them; when we were reviewing the images, I got around this problem by tipping the TV up on its side! And you can't zoom in on them -- which would have been very handy when we were trying to make sure people had their eyes open and didn't have goofy facial expressions. I'm still undecided on whether it's better to have the extra image quality of raw format, or the extra reassurance of zoomable, previewable images in high-quality JPEG format.
P-2000 frustrations: Speaking of the P-2000, it's a very slick little piece of hardware. But its software, particularly the file system, is abysmal!
Imagine if, when you downloaded or copied a file onto your PC, the PC operating system immediately assigned it a new, arbitrary filename. Now imagine that if you then copied this file into another folder, the operating system would give it a different filename. And suppose that you weren't allowed to edit these names! There's no way you'd put up with that -- yet it's exactly how the P-2000 works.
Another pet peeve about albums: You can name them on the P-2000, but once it's hooked up to your computer, they just show up as ALBUM001, ALBUM002, etc.
I still feel the P-2000 is a good device for dumping memory cards and handling ERF files, but I need to do some more thinking about an efficient way to manage files on it.
Image Quality Conundrum: Generally I was very satisfied with the quality of the images I got from the R-D 1; they seemed at least as good as the photos I've shot under similar conditions with the Nikon D-100.
If you look at the samples, though, you might notice that many of them seem to have a bluish cast in the areas away from the main lights, producing somewhat cold-looking skin tones. I had noticed this in my D-100 shots as well, but the effect seems more pronounced with the R-D 1.
I tried a lot of tricks for removing this bluish cast during raw conversion and in Photoshop, but didn't find a completely satisfactory solution. (I'm sure it won't bother the client, but I'm a little pickier...)
The only theory I can think of for this is that it's caused by UV radiation -- either directly affecting the camera's imager, or causing white materials in the shot to fluoresce in a way that the imager captures differently than film would do.
So next time, I think I'll try using a UV filter over the lens. (My 70-200 Nikkor does have a UV filter on it, so this may be why the effect was less noticeable with it.) That should reduce the effect if the problem is the direct action of UV on the camera imager.
Unfortunately, if the effect is caused by fluorescence of the materials in the shot, a UV filter won't help -- the fluorescence would be in the visible spectrum, not UV, so a filter wouldn't eliminate it. My flash heads do not have UV suppression -- and I can't afford to replace them with ones that do -- so if that's the problem, I'll just have to live with it. (I'd prefer to eliminate it by shooting in black-and-white, but the clients won't always sit still for that!)
Well, that's my "field report" on doing a studio shoot with the R-D 1! If anyone has any suggestions for the problems I encountered, I'd appreciate hearing about them!
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