:: PhotoMatrix ::

Today's....

Anil — Fri, 28 Mar 2008 10:36:08 +0000

....fallen leaf. and a visitor oh, and today's sunset colors.... lovely.

SoFoBoMo participation

Anil — Tue, 26 Feb 2008 02:04:16 +0000

An interesting project to do in April. All related pages and posts can be read here.

Pulling it

Anil — Mon, 04 Feb 2008 01:34:29 +0000

Pulling the zoom [18-200mm VR Nikkor] while triggering the shutter on a slowish speed like this one at 1/40 sec gives this image the streaked look. The streaks are from the small lights which were strung in rows on the back wall. On-camera SB800 and flash sync set to rear-curtain.

More: Lensbaby and D2Hs tests

Anil — Wed, 30 Jan 2008 08:18:43 +0000

Testing, having fun, and making new images with the Lensbaby 2.0 The creamy out-of-focus bokeh this little lens does to the not so distant tree and foliage behind the wall, and the sharpness in the area of sharp focus are pretty darn good too! Lensbaby 2.0 with f/5.6 aperture ring, on a Nikon D2Hs.

Lensbaby 2.0

Anil — Sun, 27 Jan 2008 07:28:13 +0000

Just got a Lensbaby 2.0 and the first few images were amazing already! A real fun lens to use. A bit difficult initially, as the rubber bellow has to be controlled for focus and tilt using two [steady!] fingers - this definitely will take a bit of getting used to before I have control over [...]

Color me, neon

Anil — Wed, 23 Jan 2008 02:16:10 +0000

While photographing Laila Plamondon at a show recently, I deliberately overexposed a few frames to experiment with cross-processing the images in PS-CS. I wanted to get a «poster» type look for these images. In order to overexpose Laila but not the background - I opened up the aperture and increased the flash power up to overexpose [...]

Pick of the day, Jan 7th.

Anil — Tue, 08 Jan 2008 14:10:00 +0000

The pick of 9 shots from yesterday... Made use of the HighSpeed flash sync capability of the D2Hs / SB800 combo with a SC28 TTL cord to get the flash off-camera. The setup file is here: lightingsetup This one of those images where I saw it before i made it. I wanted to make a dark B&W of [...]

On to Enid Blyton

Anil — Tue, 01 Jan 2008 06:46:43 +0000

Reading time after a nice dinner out in downtown KL.... A single SB800 with a orange gel filter, off-camera, at camera right facing slightly into the back wall and up into the ceiling to spill some even light and add to the ambient from a few low evening lights in the hotel room. Camera white-balance set [...]

Water diamonds

Anil — Tue, 25 Dec 2007 15:40:42 +0000

Night time in the pool, no time to place a flash off-camera so this is one of those «sacrilege flash» ones - yep, guilty of straight-on on-camera light.... but I still do like the water diamonds captured against the black. Standard manual flash exposure: 1/80th at F6.3 rear-curtain sync, and flash on manual at 1/2 power.. [...]

Breaking codes

Anil — Fri, 21 Dec 2007 19:17:47 +0000

Testing out the knowledge learned about flash Guide Numbers and practicing the inverse square law of lighting. Slow shutter at 1/25 sec for ambient light of the lamp, and a strobe with a tight snoot on Mannat. Unable to balance the color of the two different light sources though because I did not add a orange/yellow [...]

Cool in the back

Anil — Wed, 12 Dec 2007 10:50:27 +0000

My [un]willing model, Mannat rollerblading in the house. Shot with a orange-gelled SB800 with the front covered with black tape and just a 1/2inch slit left open to get a sharp/hard light. WB set really cool so that the background and areas lit by ambient light go blue and the areas lit by the flash [...]

That time of day...

Anil — Fri, 30 Nov 2007 16:42:05 +0000

when the crows go home... sunset at Ashulia 11/30/07

Round midnight

Anil — Thu, 29 Nov 2007 02:39:21 +0000

one of the many birthday cakes. 11/28/2007. Two strobes setup diagram AA006706 This remote wireless strobe setup works well at small parties where there are not too many people milling around. The direction of the 2 lighs makes it possible to shoot quickly almost any direction the person is facing. One light becomes the main and the other [...]

Changing colors

Anil — Tue, 27 Nov 2007 15:33:16 +0000

Origami leaves. Changing color with a orange gelled strobe. The original with flash. Light skimmed across the paper. Nice contrast and colors true to the original paper. With a orange gel on the flash, light skimmed across. Colors change to orange and green where the orange light strikes the purple and the blue paper.

One at a time...

Anil — Sun, 25 Nov 2007 18:50:09 +0000

Wanting to start the photo-a-day thing, I asked Mannat what I should start with... knowing [thinking] that she would say «NO, not me!» but she got in behind the mosquito netting canopy that hangs over her reading chair and gave me some really nice poses. One wireless strobe at right shot through the netting - quite [...]

Old Stuff New Stuff

Anil — Sat, 24 Nov 2007 04:18:46 +0000

I had decided to split the original blog and leave that as an ongoing journal, and create this separate blog for photography related stuff. I'll start posting my photographs, links to other photography related web sites and blogs.... etc. It would be nice, for me, to start doing a-photo-a-day and I'll start posting here as soon [...]

Big flat lighting

Anil — Thu, 15 Nov 2007 17:32:56 +0000

2 remote flashes triggered by Cactus V2's. One SB800 gelled orange on a 8' stand faced straight up into the ceiling, one SB80DX with a snoot faced straight at Mannat. WB adjusted to compensate for the orange gel on the SB800.

What a lot a little bit of Photoshop can do

Anil — Thu, 15 Nov 2007 07:46:29 +0000

Today the weather turned nasty and Tropical Cyclone 06B.SIDR was begining to blow strong. Wind speeds were extected to exceed 180 kmph. Did not have camera at office, so I used a Nokia cell phone's camera to take a quick photo and then let the magic of Photoshop CS3 do the rest. Not bad! Could not [...]

Keeping it Green

Anil — Wed, 17 Oct 2007 03:06:30 +0000

The wall paper was a nice pale green, the light low light from table lamps gave the room a warm feeling. I wanted to capture the ambient light on the background and use the flash only open up shadows. So I used a very slow shutter speed and the off-camera flash was at very low [...]

A little bit of practice

Anil — Wed, 10 Oct 2007 02:57:44 +0000

Mannat practicing piano, the room was darkened, except for the light from a few low lamps. I wanted to light her face and the white piano keys and let the background go dark in the photo.... I used a SB with a grid which was atop the piano aimed at her face, and another SB facing [...]

And another....

Anil — Tue, 02 Oct 2007 18:39:08 +0000

Continuing from the previous post, here is another photo of Mannat from a few minutes later to the earlier one... December 10th 07 update: Friend Ujwala did a beautiful pen and ink drawing of Mannat. I just love it!

Plastered, on the front page

Anil — Tue, 02 Oct 2007 18:24:58 +0000

A SB800 with a Stofen diffuser high up on a 8' stand faced into the opposite corner at a 45 degree angle so that the light bounced back from the corners and also spilled back from the ceiling. This caused the walls and ceiling to act like a massive soft-light reflector to the flash. Soft non-directional [...]

Achtung, Baby!

Anil — Tue, 02 Oct 2007 13:39:17 +0000

Finally one of Achtung... He was watching me set up a light and umbrella and kept posing. He knows when the camera is out and strobes are being set-up it is picture time. Here is a quick snapshot.

How to Float a Ball

Anil — Thu, 27 Sep 2007 11:40:09 +0000

We setup a remote flash facing a white wall in the driveway while Tejas was bouncing and catching a tennis ball. The intention was to get a photo with the ball mid-air. It was surprisingly easy to accomplish without having to resort to a continuous-frame burst. The timing was important, and the flash froze the ball [...]

Fun evening, picture taking time

Anil — Fri, 21 Sep 2007 04:17:50 +0000

A few photos by Ujwala and me from last evening, with 2 speed-lights setup wirelessly... Ah! and we had couple of a voice-activated light-stands to hold the flash...

Soft lighting, experimental

Anil — Thu, 13 Sep 2007 05:58:35 +0000

Checking out various materials as light-modifiers to soften the light and create a wrap-around effect. A SB80DX shot thru a combination of white satin and cheese-cloth with a slowish shutter speed [to show slight movement] worked pretty well -

snap-portrait

Anil — Mon, 03 Sep 2007 08:45:23 +0000

Ujwala, an artist friend, willingly [oh ok, we had to coax and cajole her a bit] hand-held a wireless flash to her face for this photo Thanks Ujwala for letting me post the pics here.

metal exercises

Anil — Fri, 31 Aug 2007 12:28:49 +0000

continuing my attempts to understand how to photograph metal.... zippo

mouse-ing around...

Anil — Thu, 30 Aug 2007 17:07:47 +0000

just playing with lighting setups.....

GI V2 modification

Anil — Thu, 30 Aug 2007 12:52:40 +0000

Gadget Infinity wireless flash trigger. Added an external antenna to the GI V2 wireless flash trigger and got a massive improvement in effective range. The antenna came from an old SMC internet wireless router. The antenna can be screwed-off and removed when not needed. It can be oriented vertically or horizontally.