Archive for October, 2009
Nuit Blanche
Despite feeling like the installations were a little lack luster, well those that I managed to see, I did have fun~ I ended up riding around the city with my friend Santiago from 9:30 pm till just before 4am when we ran into the Rivoli for a drink before close. UM THEY RAN OUT OF MOST BEERS .. we had stella light … boo that.
This year NuitBlanche was different than every other year I’ve been. First off, I’ve never seen so many people on queen street in my life.. it was insane . I think the overload, the sheer assault on the senses being surrounded by so many people kinda made me loose focus of the art and I became much more aware of the people.
Here are some of the photos from the night, I started shooting the night with my fixed 50mm 1.8, brought out my 24-70 a little later and took a couple shots with my flash on but i really wanted to play with ambient only. There is something about natural light that is becoming more and more intriguing to me as I get more confident with my camera. I also think I took more pictures of bikes around the city including mine (parked in front of the no parking sign) than I did of actual instillation’s!.. lol
Recharge my life
Posted by admin in Camera Gear, Technology on October 3, 2009
OK im not sure why it seem like the whole battery charging issue is a mystery but it is .. even to me .. and I’m on my third charger!
My first charger was a sony 15 min quick charger (i had a few overnight chargers before that but I’m not counting anything under $50 bucks). I found the sony batteries DIED and DIED fast (tyo 2500mAh), however the charger worked well when i was using it with the energizer batteries and it worked until I actually lost it ..
I bought my second charger about a year later and It was an energizer 15 minute charger which defiantly came with better batteries but by that point all my batteries were starting to show signs of aging and an inherent flaw in both the Sony and Engerizer chargers became apparent. ONLY 1 LED for the 4 batteries and it could only charge them all together .. no individual charging!!..
So what dose that mean. Well for starters if one of the 4 batteries are BAD (no longer holding a charge) well the charger just flashes its light and .. none of them get charged.. not to mention .. you don’t even know which battery .. 1,2,3 or 4 is the bad one. This may not seem like a big deal but for the $80 the charger cost me at henry’s i think i should have at least got 4 LED lights on them, in fact I WISH the had an actual gauge on it to tell you how charged the battery is. Anyway I took my charger to Europe with me and low and behold the first time i plugged it in .. BLAMMO.. and all I smelt was burnt .. charger.
The 3rd Charger… I just picked up a new charger the Lenmar Mach 1 its a one hour charger BUT!!!.. it has 4 lights on it and it charges the batteries individually! although i would have liked a tester on it (available on another model ?? WTF that shit should be on all of them since a tester cost 5 bucks but the one that had it was not as robust and was rated for 2 hours full charge double the Mach 1 charge time.)
anyway I will be reporting on the charger but so far it’s already proven to be a time saver, because i can pop in 4 batteries and they all charge, if one is bad i pull that one and replace it and
it dosent start the whole charge cycle again and i dont have to manually try them one by one till i find the one that’s giving me the finger.. excuse my french.
But most of this charging stuff is a mystery to me and the manufactureres don’t seem to want to help clarify things they all have their own stats and terminology and no one is setting a standard well at least not the big players, Sony /Energizer/ Duracell because i think their stuff is kinda crap and the less
we know about the technology the more likely we are to buy.. that crap.. and we won’t ever even know we’ve been swindled.
Beauty Shots
I just shot some headshots /beauty shots for a friend Eva K and they are stunning ..but that’s partially because she is .. stunning. and just like in cooking the better the ingreadients the better the dish ..potentially that is, unless you go and F**K it up by burning it or putting too much sauce on it..lol
But Beauty shots are not as simple as they might appear to be, i know because my first few attempts looking back were disastrous. But that was because I didn’t know what the hell I was doing.
The best light for beauty is usually a very soft light (big softbox) above and in front of the subject (not too high because you want to have a nice reflection in the eye to keep her face bright), and if your doing a straight shot .. try to keep the light as evenly balanced from one site of the face to the other to help with overall symmetry, Oh and don’t forget to soften those shadows even more with either a white board to reflect the light back up or a second light below the subject a few stops darker than the main light.
here are samples from my shoot with Eva K.
