I’m sure we are going to see weekly updates on these sites with supposed specs on new gear, one thing for certain though is that Sony, Nikon and Canon can be expected to make some major announcement in this time frame.

Sony looks set to bring an A77 to the market in July featuring their pellicule mirror technology to an APS-C camera with some decent specs to sit above their A55.

Nikon will be replacing the D3 and the D700 at some point.  It seems likely that at least one of these will be in August.  Before the Pixiq tradeshow was cancelled, Nikon and Canon were probably planning on releasing things at that show.

You guys know that for me it’s the Canon gear that I’m most interested in.  The website Canon Rumors has had so many conflicting reports over the months it’s hard to make sense of it.  We will certainly see an official release of the 200-400 f4 L IS which was announced as in development some months ago.  We have also been waiting for an eternity for a 24-70 f2.8 replacement.  Its been reported that there are several patents and test versions out there, some with IS and some without.  I’d say this one will finally come alongside some sort of 1dsMKIII replacement.  There has also been some reports that the 1d and 1ds line will be merged.  Not sure about that one!  And of course it’s about time for a 5dMKIII too.  On top of that there has been rumors of a 35mm f1.4 II and the much needed 50mm f1.4 II.  My bet would be on the 35mm to come first.

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Different sizes of photography business will benefit from slightly different routines. If you are running a huge photo studio with 10 employees working on projects constantly then check out Chase Jarvis’ site for info on that scenario. My business is relatively small in comparison because I do that majority of the work myself, shooting, archiving, editing and client delivery are all done from my workstation and most of the time done by me when I am around. So if you are a one-man-band then this will be a bit more suitable to your needs. There are plenty of other permutations on how to handle this but this is what works for me. I will go into specific downloading workflow and Lightroom work in future articles, this one is just concerned with backup.

Office scenario (when I am not traveling)

Used cards from the day’s shooting are stacked up on my desk in one pile. In turn I take each card and put them into my Sandisk card reader. I use Lightroom 3 to ingest the photos from the card and tag them with the necessary metadata for the shoot. I use the COPY command in the Lightroom import interface and this is VERY important. If you use the MOVE command then it will delete the files from the memory card after it has moved them to your hard drive. By using COPY I am creating a copy of the file on my drive, and the original shot still remains on the memory card for the moment. All the files from the card are copied onto my DROBO storage unit into a folder called “Photo Archive” where they are then put into another folder labeled with the year and then a further folder with the date in dd/mm/yyyy format. For every day of shooting then I have a separate folder. If you are not familiar with DROBO storage then I suggest a read of their website which contains extensive videos on their usage. Basically they are somewhat similar to RAID systems in that they make duplicates of your files so if one drive in the DROBO fails, the data is still available on another drive and you have not lost anything. So at this point I now effectively have two copies of the photos on the DROBO (because it creates duplicates automatically) and one copy still on the memory card.

After import I have Lightroom setup to automatically backup the catalog when I close it. The backup catalog is stored on the DROBO in a folder called “Lightroom backups” so this means that any metadata changes and image alterations I have made are stored redundantly on the DROBO as a backup. The actual Lightroom catalog is stored on the main internal drive of my computer. The internal drive on my computer is backed up every hour automatically using the built in Time Machine functionality in Mac OSX, This creates a duplicate of my computer internal drive onto a CalDigit USB 3.0 AV drive. That means a further backup of my Lightroom catalog is also available on that drive so there are effectively 4 versions of the catalog and we haven’t even got to off site backup yet.

Any file that I decide to export from Lightroom to send to a client is exported to my computers internal drive into a folder called Exports and then into a sub folder with the clients name. That means that I have two further copies of files that I deemed worthy of sending to a client. One in the Export folder on the internal drive and then another that is automatically created by Time Machine onto the AV Drive.

Drobo makes things pretty easy for your archival storage but you can’t stop there. What if someone was to rob your office or it got burned to the ground ? You would lose both your Drobo, and your Time Machine/internal drive. So you need to have your files stored off site too and until this happens I do not consider the files to even exist. There are some serious horror stories of photographers out there loosing a lifetimes work due to house fires. The thought of buying more drives to store your work off site can seem a bit daunting but I have come up with a cost effective solution that is working great for me.

There is two things to understand about the off site backup. Hopefully you won’t ever need them because you should already have at least two copies of everything in your office so that will protect you from drive failures. So the off site backup is there to save you from natural disasters, burglary and multiple simultaneous drive failure. All these are relatively unlikely so my personal opinion is that you do not need the off site backups to be redundant in themselves. So I don’t keep 2 of everything in my off site location, just single copies. Furthermore, you can save some money by having your off site drives be just simple drives that are not in fancy, expensive drive enclosures with built in power supplies. The partially empty off site drives get added to frequently, but the ones that are already full are simply spun up every mew months to make sure they do not seize and are still working. To use drives in this manner you will need a “Drive Toaster” or a SATA dock. I have a Thermaltake BlacX which sits on my office desk and has eSata and USB ports. You simply take the bare 3.5″ (or 2.5″) drive and slot it into the toaster where it mounts like any other external drive normally would. Its a very neat solution for under $50 and means you can save hundreds of dollars by buying the bare drives and not fancy ones in enclosures that are only going to sit there and get looked at once every six months.

The off site drives that I have are stored in a Pelican Storm Case iM 2075. It is deep enough to stand drives vertically and holds 7 or 8 3.5″ drives in anti-static bags. Because Drobos drives are upgradable in size, when I add a bigger drive to my Drobo, I take the old drive and use that one in my off site collection. The means you get more usage out of your drives you you otherwise would do and you are rotating your off site drives too to make sure there aren’t any ten year old ones in there! The Pelican case is brought to me every week (or after very important shoots) and the new photos are copied from my Drobo onto my off site drive using the toaster. Because my files on the Drobo are stored in folders labeled by the date that they were added to the catalog, it’s easy to see which folders need to be copied to the off site drive to have both archives match up. After I have matched up the photo archive I take another drive from my Pelican case which is used for an off site Time Machine backup. You cannot simply copy over Time Machine backup files like any other file so instead you need to select this drive as the Time Machine Drive and get your computer to do a full backup. Now my off site collection contains a full archive of all my photos and a copy of my computers internal drive. If the wort happened and all my office gear was stolen I could be back up and running on an identical computer with all my business files and photo archive in a matter of hours.

There is really no end to how many backups you can make but this is what I would consider the absolute minimum. I would not say bare minimum because I think this is a great solution but having both your computer drive and photo archive in multiple locations is a must.

The travel solution

Now what about when I am away from the office and I don’t have access to my Drobo? In this situation cards are copied onto a firewire 800 LaCie Rugged drive using the Lightroom import dialogue as before. This time I also tick the little box that says “make a second copy to….”. This means that Lightroom will put your files in two places, I set the main one to the LaCie drive and a backup goes onto the internal drive of my laptop. When I travel I still carry another LaCie drive that is used as my traveling Time Machine and that backs up the internal drive every time it is plugged in and hence also backs up the backup of my photos that were imported. So photos are now in three places. When this is done I am free to format that memory card. The reason that I still have a Time Machine drive with me is that I want to be able to restore my computer in a hurry if I need to. If my internal drive goes down while I am away I can’t afford to be without my Lightroom and Photoshop programs so I can restore it all from Time Machine by just buying a new 2.5″ drive.

Now off site backup while you are traveling is tricky. Rule number one is that you never EVER travel with all your drives on your person. When flying, one drive goes in my checked luggage and the laptop goes in my bag. The third drive goes in my jacket pocket. That way if someone steals my laptop bag it is no big deal. Even at your hotel, never leave all the drives in there together. Hotel room robberies happen more often that you would hope, so give one drive to someone else to keep in their room. Typically I carry one with me in my pocket too every time I leave my room. If a trip is costing tens of thousands of dollars, the small annoyance of a bulge in my jacket pocket is a small price to pay. Sometimes the third drive in my case is a Hyperspace Color drive which also has the benefit of a card reader to do it’s own backups. You can read a full review of it HERE on my other site. The final protection that I have is that I take my 5 star shots from a days shooting, typically 10-20 shots, and I use an FTP program to sent them to my server back home in Canada. That way if the whole hotel burns down or somehow everything else is lost I still have my banger shots back home. Last year I think it was, one of the largest bicycle companies was shooting their catalog on location. They had an editing studio set up in a hotel and the hotel DID burn down with everything in it. I believe they lost it all and had to re-shoot…….

While I am away all of the Lightroom imported files are put into a new catalog labeled with the name of the trip and as usual the catalog is backed up onto an external drive too. When I get home to the office, the catalog is imported onto the Drobo and the files synced with my off site drives. At this point I remove everything from the small 2.5″ LaCies ready for the next trip.

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Gear used in this article

Drobo

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Thermaltake BlacX

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Pelican iM 2075

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LaCie Rugged drives

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CalDigit AV Drive

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One of the first questions people ask when they start experimenting with flash is “why does my camera not allow me to use a shutter speed higher than 1/xxx second?”  If you scan through the specifications of a camera you will see one called x-sync.  Typically listed as between 1/180 and 1/250 of a second, this is the fastest useable shutter speed of your camera when using flash. The best way to get to grips with it is to understand exactly what is happening in that split second after you press the shutter button.

The cameras shutter consists of 2 curtains.  When the shutter button is pressed the first curtain opens exposing the sensor.  A fraction of a second later the second curtain follows the first, racing across the sensor in the same direction and blocking it from receiving any more light.  At slower shutter speeds, there exists a point in this cycle where the first curtain has fully exposed the sensor and the second curtain has yet to start covering it up.  At this point the sensor is entirely exposed and when a flash is fired at that point, its resulting light will appear evenly spread across the whole photo.  A camera’s X-sync is defined as the fastest shutter speed at which there still exists a point where the sensor is entirely uncovered and exposed.

At faster shutter speeds, the second curtain begins moving across the sensor before the first curtain has finished opening.  The result is that at any one moment in time, only a portion of the sensor is exposed at once.  The “slit” between the 2 curtains rolls across the sensor exposing the final image evenly but at no point is the entire sensor exposed at once.  Any flash fired during this process would only effect the portion of the photo being exposed by the slit between the 2 curtains.  This causes dark bands to appear on your photo where light from the flash was blocked by the curtains from exposing the sensor.  Most SLRs will automatically limit you to using the maximum X-Sync speed unless you are in manual exposure mode or using remote strobes which is where this tip comes into play. If you are shooting in a situation with bright ambient light where the strobes you are using are only lighting a small portion of the frame then there is not necessarily a need to expose the whole image to the light from your flash.  The black bands I described above would only appear if there was no ambient light to expose the area where the bands are.  If you can position your subject in an area of your frame that is exposed to the the flash between the “slit” then it doesn’t matter if the rest of the frame did not get exposed to the flash. Take this image at the top of the post for example.  I shot this while working on an ad campaign for the ski resort Whistler Blackcomb in British Columbia.  The shutter speed was 1/640 which is far above the 1/250 x-sync speed of the Canon 1dMKIV.  But the key thing here is that I only wanted to strobe the skier at the top of the frame.  The ambient light is exposing the rest of the frame, but the strobe is needed on the skier to fill in his shadows and really make him “pop” against the background.  I know from experimentation, which areas of the frame are exposed to the flash burst at various shutter speeds.  In this case a horizontal band covering about 1/8 of the image at the top will be exposed to the flash burst.  By positioning my subject in that safe zone, I can work with a much faster shutter speed.  This has the compensating benefit that your overall exposure is vastly different to what it would be if you were limited to 1/250.  Overcoming the ambient light with your strobe power is a constant battle for location photographers and squeezing every last 1/3 stop of shutter speed is very useful.

In this image above, the same technique is applied where the subject is at the top of the frame and the shutter speed is 1/400.  In this shot though you can also see the strobe that is providing my fill flash on the subject.  Looks like it didn’t even fire right ?  Well it did !  If you image those shutter curtains moving across the sensor, then simply imagine one of the curtains blocking out my Elinchrom Ranger flash head at the exact moment it fired.  The “slit” between the curtains was positioned over the skier.  And you don’t have to have the subject at the top either, you could have them at the bottom, and simply hold the camera upside down!  Or if you are shooting in portrait orientation then your subject would need to be off to one side.  If you shoot with a camera with a large enough resolution you can even shoot horizontally with the subject at the top or bottom, but with the intention of cropping a vertical shot out of it.  On my Canon 5DMKII the 21MP images are often big enough to crop a vertical shot out of a horizontal one so that gives you 4 options of placement of the subject in the flashed area.  Left or right side by rotating the camera , or top and bottom by shooting horizontally and cropping a vertical shot from it!  Get creative and see what you can do with it!

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A note about the updated Elinchrom Quadra RX

When Elinchrom first released the Quadra it was met with some mixed reactions.  It appeared that there had been a couple of glaring omissions by Elinchrom’s designers.  Firstly, no protective caps were included for the Quadra heads and secondly, the tiny little display on the pack was totally unreadable in daylight.  This really had me scratching my head?!  How is it possible to design something like this, with such an obviously fragile glass tube upfront, and not design (let alone include) anything to protect it.  Especially given that all other Elinchrom heads come with such protection.  Secondly, for a device that is designed for portability and flaunted as a location lighting solution, how did it make it through initial prototyping and testing with a screen which, and I say this with no exaggeration at all,  cannot be read whatsoever in  outdoor light?

In order to save some face, Elinchrom quickly released the freshly titled Elinchrom Quadra RX.  Designed to fix these two issues and also at the same time integrate their updated Skyport RX receiver.  Customers in the US who bought the original Quadras were also offered free protective caps for their heads.

The version of the Quadra that I had for testing was the early version that had the dud screen, as Elinchrom has now fixed this issue I will not let it taint my final review in any way except to say that it does not give you much confidence in how the product was tested before release.  It is immediately obvious that you cannot view the screen outdoors and it was the single worst performing LED screen I have ever seen.  There was literally no way to tell if the unit was on or off unless you cupped your hands over it and peered though the cracks in your fingers to trawl through the menu system.  The photo to the right gives you some idea compared to my aging Ranger RX which you can view perfectly, guess the power setting of the Quadra??.  Like I said though , it’s been dealt with, they have fixed it on all versions with a serial number greater than 4000 so we can move on….

Elinchrom heads

The very first thing you notice about the Quadra heads is that they are very very small.  Roughly 1/3 the size of FreeLite head for the Ranger RX.  They also weigh very little (280g), much less than an on-camera flash like an SB-900 or 580-EX.  The whole rear casing of the Quadra head is made of plastic which contributes greatly to the weight difference as the FreeLite heads are encased in a cylindrical metal tube with a plastic handle.  The standard reflector that comes with the Quadra heads can be removed to make it even smaller.

Much like the bigger FreeLite heads, the Qadra RQ heads are available in two versions.  A standard RQ S Flashhead and an RQ S Speed Flashhead.  The difference being that the A head has a much faster flash duration of up to 1/6000 of a second when used in the lower powered “B” port though physically they are identical.  The price of the RQ A head is currently about $65 more than the RQ S head and for that difference you may as well get the faster head considering the whole setup is going to be costing you well north of $2000 anyway.  A faster duration never hurt anyone, but one that is too slow can really make for less that perfect images.  Incidentally I would recommend the same thing if you decided to purchase the bigger brother too.  I have only ever used the A head on my Ranger RX and it has worked very well.

If you already have a collection of accessories for regular sized Elinchrom heads then there is an adapter available for the RQ head that allows retrofitting any of the other softboxes and reflectors for the FreeLite heads.  I did not have this to test, but some searching on the internet suggests that natively they are not that strong and need some modifications to hold the weight of larger softboxes.  On top of the standard 13.5cm reflector, a 15cm grid reflector is also available but that is all they offer right now.  A specialized RQ Ringflash was also introduced recently which is much smaller in size than the standard Ranger Ringflash.

On the FreeLite heads the cable is permanently attached and comes in a 5m length.  The cable is considerably bulkier and heavier than the RQ head cables for the Quadra.  A major benefit to the Quadra is that the cables are removable from the head.  Not only that but they feature a male termination on one end and female on the other end meaning you can join them together to make a longer cable of you need it.  Extra RQ cables are available in a variety of lengths from 1m to 10m so you can space your heads out as needed.  Remember there will be a reduction in flash power if you start running huge cable lengths above 5m though.  This is one of my favorite advantages to the Quadra, packing the FreeLite A head can be cumbersome sometimes with the huge cable hanging out of the back of it.  On top of that there is only one length of extension cable available for those particular heads and they are extremely expensive (hundreds of dollars!).

On the left is the diminutive little Quadra head and on the right a Ranger A-Head for the larger RX units.

A pair of Ranger Quadra “A” heads

Battery Packs

As you can see in the shot below, the Ranger RX battery is about twice the size of the Quadra battery.  The Quadra takes more shots at full power and also recharges to from empty to full in about half the time that it takes the Ranger battery to do so.  The battery for the Ranger RX slides into the main body of the pack whilst the Quadra battery just clips onto the bottom of the pack.  The clips for the Quadra battery are solid so there isn’t any chance that it would come off during a shoot, in fact quite the opposite, I had to fight to get the battery removed on more than one occasion.  The spare fuse on top of the battery pack is a nice touch though.

Battery pack size comparison.

My personal Ranger RX kit and the borrowed 2-head Quadra kit

As a generalization, a Ranger RX and one FreeLite head takes up roughly the same volume in your pack as a two head Quadra kit with a spare battery.  The Ranger RX kit is a bit heavier but in terms of bulk and space needed to safely pack the gear that’s how it pans out.  Note that in the photo above I have not included the spare Quadra battery or the head cables.

The Skyport system

The Quadra comes with a 4-channel Skyport receiver built into it and the newer Quadra RX allows you to connect your computer to the pack in order to control the power functions.  With a Skyport transmitter on your camera you can remotely control the power level of the strobes and also operate the test flash and the modeling light.  If you are using multiple packs you have the option to set up multiple groups and hence control the power of individual groups of packs.  The antenna on the transmitter seems like it might break off at any moment though so take good care of it!  I performed some rudimentary range testing with the Skyport and a Pocketwizard connected and with the PW placed on top of the pack it had a very small advantage.  A much greater advantage though is that the Pocketwizard can be positioned away from the pack and up on a lightstand and connected with a sync cable which greatly extends its usable range.  For studio use and location portraiture you would have no range problems though and the overall the Skyport system appeared to be solid.

I just can’t do it, Captain. I don’t have the power

iso 50 , 1/320 , f11 - Ranger RX at 1100Ws

Judging by the questions I get about strobes, the first thing people want to know about the big strobes is can I overpower the sun ?  People shooting different subjects from me might be less worried about this but in general everyone wants to take control of the lighting situation they are shooting with.  So can you overpower the sun with a Quadra ?  Well that depends how close you put the head to the subject.  You can overpower the sun with an on camera flash if you put it close enough!  I’m going to tackle this question in two parts.  One for those of you who are interested in the specific type of photography that I do, ski and snowboard.  And then secondly speaking more generally for those of you who have stumbled across this review without knowing and/or  not caring exactly what it is that I do for a living!

At 1100 Ws the Ranger RX is right up there with the biggest in terms of power.  A lot of other action sports guys use the Profoto 7b which is 12oo Ws but I much prefer the Elinchrom as it is about half the weight!  With 1100 Ws I can overpower the midday sunshine when the flash head is about 7 or 8 feet from the subject when shooting with my 1-series Canon bodies which will sync at 1/320.  The shot on the left if a good example of this as I was able to underexpose the background by a couple of stops to prevent blurring and add to the drama a little bit.  This was shot with 1 Ranger RX at full power and it was positioned behind me a couple of feet and slightly to the left.  Could I have achieved this exact shot with the Ranger Quadra ?  Probably not.  The flash head would have had to be so close to the subject that with the wide angle of the lens it would probably be in the shot.  You might have been able to do it if you had an assistant holding the flash head on a boom directly above my head but that is quite a stretch.  For shooting fast moving action at slow sync speeds like 1/250 or 1/320 you need to underexpose the ambient light by anywhere between 1 and 3 stops to prevent ghosting.  The impression of ghosting will vary greatly depending on the angle at which your subject is moving in relation to your camera sensor.  If they are moving towards you, much of the blur will be towards the camera and hence not visible.  If your subject is moving across the image very quickly as in the shot on the left, then you will have to underexpose more to prevent that blur.

iso 50, 1/320, f10 - Ranger RX at 1100Ws

If you are not familiar with this concept then I recommend reading up on it to fully appreciate why you may or may not need a 1100 Ws strobe over a 400Ws like the Quadra.  So there are ways in which you could still shoot a skier of snowboarder in a halfpipe like this with the Quadra, but you would need to shoot along the length of the pipe so that they are coming towards you and not across the frame.  That would allow you to have the ambient light a bit brighter.  The photo on the right shows the exact same skier in the same quarter pipe but this time he is coming towards me.  In this instance I was still using a Ranger RX at full power BUT I believe that this shot would have been possible to re-create with the Quadra, whereas the other one would not.  I know this is somewhat speculative but you’ll have to trust me on that one!

Continuing on with my type of work I often get asked if I can overpower the sun when shooting a big jump during the day.  If it is a sunny day then the answer is no, not even with the 1100Ws Ranger RX.  As I said above the head needs to be about 8 feet from the subject and when the skier or snowboarder hits the jump they are going to be much higher in the air than that.  Consequently the Ranger Quadra will not be able to achieve this either.  But the majority of my jump shoots are not done in the daytime anyway.  Most of the time we wait until the sun is setting, or very occasionally when it is rising.  Ambient light levels fall off dramatically in the hour before sunset and the angle of the sun also creates much more contrast in the surroundings, and often some very nice colors.  As the light levels fall in the evening, there comes a point at which it is possible to begin to shoot using a flash.  This point is defined by the exposure you can achieve with your fastest sync speed with your flash at full power.  When the ambient exposure matches this exposure then you are about ready to turn the strobes on, but normally you need a couple more minutes to allow the ambient to become less than your flash exposure to prevent the ghosting we talked about before.  In this situation, the advantage of the bigger Ranger RX is that with about 1.5 stops stops more power (1100Ws vs. 400Ws)  you would be able to start shooting with your flash long before you would be able to with the Quadra.  The time difference would be however long it takes the ambient light levels to fall by 2 whole stops.  So in this situation with falling light levels you will always be able to shoot with the Quadra and get the shot, but you will have less time to do so.  For comparison, roughly speaking a Canon 580EX flash is a further 1.5 to 2 stops less power than a Quadra, depending on the zoom position of the head.  VERY roughly speaking that makes it equivalent to about 100Ws of power although I have seen it called as little as 64 Ws before.  The Quadra puts out a much more even light pattern though and that causes some variety in how the results would be measured.  Either way you would need 4 or 5 580EX flashes to compete with the Quadra.

This past spring I was shooting an ad campaign for the ski resort Whistler Blackcomb.  I was able to take the Quadra up to the shoot and test it out alongside the Ranger RX.  I did not use it for the whole shoot though because I only had the standard reflector for the Quadra and really I needed to have a tighter beam of light that it provided, but below is an example shot.  You can see how the standard reflector is spilling way too much light.  In the final shot that I did with my Ranger RX I used a sports reflector which spits out a much more concentrated beam of light.  To use that reflector on the Quadra I would have needed the adapter that I mentioned above due to the lack of reflector choice for direct attachment to RQ heads.  To my eye there is no difference in the actual quality of the light from either the Ranger RX or the Quadra though.  If you can use the Quadra in a situation where light levels are low enough then you can get awesome results.  Whether or not the extra time that you can use the bigger Ranger RX for is worth the extra weight of the kit is something only you can decide though.

iso 320, 1/160, f5.6 - Ranger Quadra at 400 Ws

For nighttime urban shooting though there would not be a lot of difference between using these 2 setups.  In that scenario it would come down to how much depth of field you want for the shot.  The bigger RX would be able to get an exposure with a greater DOF at a lower ISO than the Quadra, through frankly with the high ISO capabilities of today’s cameras I think you would be able to get plenty of DOF using a 400Ws pack at a very acceptable ISO.  Something else to consider is the strange way that the Ranger RX flash duration varies with power setting.  Unlike a lot of other strobes where duration speeds up as power decreases, the RX is opposite.  Its fastest flash duration is at full power.  This means that I almost always use it at full power.  In a multi-light setup where I am using Nikon speedlights for fill, it can be a pain to have the RX at full power because to balance the exposure out you have to put the ranger a long way away from the subject and/or put the speedlights very close to the subject.  With the Quadra being much lower powered it would play much nicer with my speedlight collection.  Other situations where I think the Quadra would be beneficial over the Ranger is shooting skiers on stormy days in the trees.  It can often be so dark on those days that having the big Ranger RX on full power again is just overkill because you could actually overpower ambient on those days with a couple of speedlights!  The 400Ws Quadra would be a nice compromise for stormy day shooting and if I just packed 2 lenses and 1 camera body you can carry the pack and one head all in one bag.  If I use the Ranger RX and one FreeLite head I have to take a second bag and either take an assistant, or get the athlete to help carry things.

I also used the Quadra for a few shots while covering a downhill mountain bike race in my home town of Whistler.  Whilst it was overcast it was still pretty bright but the little Quadra did the job nicely.  I only used the one head , but you can see in the example below how it adds to the shot and helps to balance the brighter background with the darker shaded area in the foreground.  This was taken at full power and pixel peeping it shows me that there is no discernible ghosting, so the flash duration with the A head is quite suitable for this sort of work.  I think bike photographers would get on really well with this setup because riding a bike with a larger Ranger RX is not really an option.  The compact nature of the Quadra really pays off here.

iso 200, 1/250, f7.1

Another advantage of the minimal size of the Quadra kit is that you can set up a miniature studio in a very small area.  I used the 2-head setup with a reflector to shoot some images of products that I was reviewing for this site.  I set the shots up very quickly on my kitchen table (!) and I deliberately didn’t bother with softboxes to see what sort of light quality you can get with such a super simple and quick setup.  Example shot can be seen on the left.  By using the built in Skyport wireless receiver and the Skyport transmitter on my camera’s hotshoe you can have a 2 light setup up and running in under two minutes from getting it all out of your bag.  This hassle free factor will likely have you using it more often, and that can only be a good thing!  So product photography would be a great way to use the Quadra as you can often get the heads nice and close to the product where 400 Ws is plenty of power.  An area where the Quadra would really stand out though is quick location portrait work and I can see wedding photographers making great use of them for portraits of the bride and groom.  Group shots would be a bit more difficult if it was a bright sunny day as you might struggle with a lack of power when the heads are set back far enough to cover a large group, but for shooting one or two people it would be a good, quick solution.  You can easily carry the pack over your shoulder with the very comfortable supplied shoulder strap and even hand hold one head off to the side while you shoot with the other hand.  A bit of a guerrilla method but very achievable with a head that weighs so little.

Build quality and construction

Having used the Quadra in a few different situations, and used the Ranger RX for several years I have quite a few things to say on this subject.  My trusty Ranger RX has seen it’s fair share of adventures to say the least.  I regularly leave it standing in the snow during heavy blizzards and never worry about it when it gets wet.  I have seen the FreeLite head collect 15cm of snow on top of it and keep on ticking like it was just a normal day.  For my pack and head, that IS a normal day.  This past winter on an assignment in Alberta I used it every day for a week when temperatures were below -30 Celcius.  The battery cells still held a charge without issue.  Both the head and pack are dented from being carried around in backpacks and thrown around by airport baggage handlers.  Even after all of that it all works as advertised and I have never had even a single problem with it.  What I LOVE about the Ranger is that I do not have to baby it.  I trust it’s solid build and it is one less thing to worry about on my travels.

The Quadra on the other hand is simply not designed to be as rugged as the bigger Ranger RX.  When I first saw photos, it seemed rugged enough with its big rubber bumpers and a similar top panel to the Ranger which is devoid of any large physical buttons.  Unfortunately, on close inspection when it arrived several concerns developed for me.  Now before I go into the details, remember that I have very specific demands on my gear and it is not the same as most people.  So for many photographers these things will be a non-issue, but I want to make them clear for all the other ski and snowboard shooters out there and anyone else that wants to maybe use this kit during inclement weather.

Firstly the rubber bumper that surrounds the top of the pack came off in my hand when I was removing the Quadra from the case.  It is not permanently attached like the one on the Ranger which is glued and screwed on.  Instead the Quadra’s trim clips on with some very small plastic clips which do not hold it very well.  Every time I used it I found myself having to re-fit the rubber trim.  As you can see from the photo to the left, once the trim comes loose there is direct access for moisture to get to the internal circuit boards.  Even if the rubber did not remove itself, it seems that any liquid which might collect on the top panel could run straight into those holes beneath the trim as there is a channel for the water to get trapped in.  The second weather related concern I have is the open recharging socked on the side of the battery.  On the Ranger RX, the battery charging socket is protected by a solid metal screw in plug.  On the Quadra there is nothing, not even a rubber bung to plug the hole.  For a device that is labeled as a location lighting solution this seems like a strange omission.  And the third concern I have is caused by the design of the snap-on battery.  In the larger Ranger the battery slots INTO the bottom of the pack.  Not exposed to the elements.  The Quadra simply clips onto the bottom of the pack and this means that the electrical connections that join the pack and battery together are almost entirely open to the elements.  The photo below shows the gap between pack and battery when they are connected.  If snow or rain were to get in there I’m sure it would short out and possibly cause some major damage.  Next to the charging socket you can also see the fuse it right there too and open to the elements.

Now Elinchrom never makes any promises about the ruggedness of the Quadra, but I wanted to point these things out just in case anyone was assuming, like I did to begin with, that it was going to be in the same league as its bigger brother.  After all, the prices are not that dissimilar.  It’s nice to think that you could keep it dry when it’s snowing but in reality snow and water has a habit of finding its way into everything during a good blizzard.  And one of my favorite things about the Ranger RX is that I can shoot in a blizzard if I want to, and feel confident doing it.  If I had a Quadra I would never use it in such conditions.  For most normal uses though like location portraiture these things will likely be a non-issue but I would treat it carefully.

Conclusion

Wow this turned into quite the essay….. !  I’ll try and keep this wrap up a bit shorter then.  The Quadra is a great little unit for a lot of uses.  Location portrait shooters, wedding shooters and action sports guys like skateboard and mountain bike photographers will be very happy with it.  With the RQ “A” heads I was impressed with the flash duration which is something very important for shooting moving subjects.  I was much less impressed with the overall design and build quality though which was definitely several steps below the bigger Ranger RX series.  The Ranger series is roughly 30% more expensive though but the Quadra is still not cheap.  In a world where it is becoming increasingly expensive to fly though, photographers are searching for ways to travel light.  Being able to pack a 2-head kit with a spare battery that is lighter than a single head Ranger RX kit with only one battery has some major benefits.  I always have to pay excess baggage fees when I travel with my Ranger so a Quadra kit could almost pay for itself after a couple of busy travel years!  I also really liked having the Skyport receiver built into the pack even though I normally use my Pocketwizards.  I found the Pocketwizards were able to sync a bit faster on my Canon 1D MKIV at 1/320 where the Skyport was limited to 1/250 to achieve full flash exposure on the whole frame.  For outdoor work this makes a difference so I stuck with the PWs.  But for quick indoor shooting I preferred using the minimally sized Skyport transmitter with its remote power controls.  Even outdoors, you could use the Skyport transmitter as a remote to control the power level.  And then simply fire the strobe with the Pocketwizard.  The kit that I was using is sold as a package including a spare battery, both heads and the transmitter for about $2300.  Similar in price to a single head Ranger RX kit but the 2-head Quadra kit makes it far more versatile for the price.  Still a premium priced product in my opinion but much less expensive than the Profoto Acute B battery pack which most people would consider to be the Quadra’s competition.  The 600 Ws Acute B is slightly more powerful and offers more flashes per battery but it is also heavier and costs twice as much for a single head kit with their new Li-Ion battery.

I am going to stick with my trusty Ranger RX kit for now because there are times for me when the extra power comes in handy.  I hope Elinchrom update those packs to include lithium-ion batteries instead of the current heavier lead-acid packs.  But if you need something a little lighter weight then you should definitely take a look at the Quadra.  For the extra money of the Ranger RX you are getting a considerably better built product, but if you have no desire to put your gear through the wringer then I wouldn’t let it affect your decision too much.  If you want to move fast and take lots of photos the Quadra is several steps above using regular speedlights and if weight and portability is important to you then it will be the best choice.

If you are thinking of purchasing any of these products please help me to continue adding to this site by using the links below.

Elinchrom Quadra products at B&H photo

Elinchrom Ranger products at B&H photo

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Nikon AF-S VR 70-300 f/4.5-5.6G IF-ED

Renowned wildlife photographer Moose Peterson called this lens “Nikons best kept secret” and if you are a Nikon shooter on a budget this is a great option as it comes in at less than $600.  It weights next to nothing compared to the other long lenses on this list but it still produces a very sharp image while working with all the full frame Nikon cameras.  Remarkably sharp for the price.  It would be nice if Canon had a lens in this range that people of the caliber of Moose or Joe McNally could rave about, but sadly they don’t so i’ll be skipping the Canon 70-300s.  They just don’t cut it.

Canon 300mm f4 L IS

This is a great lens , and one that seems to get overlooked by a lot of people.  Its design is fairly old and as such it doesn’t have as good weather sealing as modern L lenses but it is very very sharp.  Especially when stopped down to f5.6 and smaller.  This was my first long lens and I loved every shot I took with it.  The auto focus is not as fast at the 70-200, especially with fast moving objects that are close to the camera, but for shooting skiing and snowboarding at a distance ( big mountain lines) it does an admirable job and is great value.  It handles the 1.4x teleconverters decently too, as long as you have enough light to stop it down to f8 or even f10.  Another benefit is its light weigh, coming in at just 1.19kg

Canon 400mm f5.6 L

I know of at least 2 professional snowboard photographers that use this lens on a regular basis.  Personally I prefer the 300mm f4 because I have found 300mm to be of use on many occasions but the 400mm does produce a much sharper image than the 300mm f4 + 1.4x teleconverter combination.  Due to it’s age it lacks IS and weather sealing but it manages to pack 400mm into a respectably small package and it only weighs 2.75 lbs which is very appealing if you like to hike or go ski touring with you gear!  There are of course 2 other 400mm lenses in the Canon lineup but the 400mm f2.8 is far too big and heavy for skiing and the 400mm DO…. well image quality can be questionable and the price is fairly prohibitive.

Canon 100-400 f4.5-5.6 L IS

This is an odd lens firstly because of its age, its 12 years old and in most people’s eyes long overdue an update.  It utilizes a “push-pull” style zoom which personally I can’t stand and reportedly sucks dust into the lens over time.  It seems as though this lens also suffers from hugely varying build quality because there are many conflicting reviews out there.  Having said that it does go all the way to 400mm and with such a long zoom range it has versatility on its side.  If you already have a 70-200 though, you have some focal length overlap going on though and it performs very badly with teleconverters.

Canon 300mm f2.8 L IS

Amongst the pro Canon shooters in the industry this is the most popular of the longer lenses.  It is unspeakably sharp at all apertures and also works very well with the 1.4 teleconverter giving you a 420mm f4 L IS that still locks on super fast with the autofocus and if stopped down to f7 and smaller, is still amazingly sharp.  It even works well with the Canon 2x TC if you have enough light to get it stopped down to f10 or thereabouts.  This is something that I was very surprised with when I tested my own personal 300mm 2.8 in Alaska recently with the 2x TC.  I made some great images with this 60mm f5.6 (you lose 2 stops with the 2x tc).  Seriously, they didn’t even need sharpening in post production! The versatility of this lens is one of its major strong points.  A definite negative is its size and weight compared to the 300mm f4 IS and the 100-400 though.  It weighs in at 5.6lbs which is a noticeably heavy chunk of glass in your pack if you are skiing or snowboarding all day with it.  You certainly have to think hard about what other gear you want in your pack on a day when you take this lens out with you, but the images you get from it will always put a smile on your face.  In terms of sharpness and contrast this is probably Canons best ever lens.

Nikon 300mm f2.8 ED VRII

This MKII version was released by Nikon at the tail end of last year and reports are favorable.  It improves marginally on the sharpness of the first version and adds a stronger implementation of the image stabilization.  It’s worth noting though that currently (april 2010) there are still large stocks of the old MKI version of this lens which was also very very sharp, and now selling for more that $1000 less than the MKII version!  Size and weight are comparable to the Canon version mentioned above and it also works well with Nikons teleconverters.  In fact it was specifically designed to pair with the new Nikon TC-20E III

Nikon 200-400 f4 IS

This is a monster of a lens weighing in at 7.2 lbs.  Its size and weight means that its not that practical for ski and snowboard photography but I had to include it because it is simply the most impressive long zoom lens ever produced, and it covers the focal lengths we are discussing.  A constant f4 aperture makes this a physically large lens, but it maintains its sharpness throughout its range. On top of this, Nikon JUST announced version II of this lens.  Which adds better image stabilization and Nikon’s nano crystal lens coating for improved sharpness and less lens flare.

Please check out the rest of the Ski and Snowboard Photography 101 series HERE !

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1. Avalanche Transceiver

It’s not worth losing your life to get a shot so make sure you wear a transceiver while you are shooting in the backcountry and make sure you know how to operate it so you can save your friend’s lives if they get caught in an avalanche.  I have always used Orthovox transceivers and can highly recommend them, though there are plenty of other great manufacturers out there.  I recently had the opportunity to play with the Orthovox S1.  A really incredible piece of kit that graphically displays victim location on the screen to help interpret beacon signals.  Currently though , I am using the D3

2. A head torch

Not something that would immediately spring to mind as a useful accessory but I use this thing all the time.  If I’m shooting at night time I am absolutely guaranteed to lose either a lens cap or a very overpriced flash cable unless I have the head torch on.  Its just too easy to misplace all the little bits and pieces.  I also carry it in my pack when I’m sledding.  Snowmobiles are notoriously unreliable and you never know when you’ll be out in the backcountry for longer than anticipated.  I have a Petzl Tikka which seems to have great battery life and is plenty powerful enough for me to find those pesky lens caps when I drop them in the dark!

3. A 70-200 zoom lens

The 70-200mm range is by far my most used range for shooting ski or snowboard photos.  Take the time to save up for a good quality lens in this range.  Canon has 4 versions to suit many budgets and all of them produce great images.  Nikon and Sony also make very sharp 70-200 zooms.  Canon actually announced a new version of their workhorse lens last week , the 70-200 f2.8L IS II.  Apparently improving on sharpness and image stabilization over the previous version.  I used to own the original f2.8 l IS version myself but swapped it last year for the new f4 L IS version which was even sharper but also half the weight of its f2.8 cousin.  So far I have been very happy with my choice.  For me , the 70-200 f4 L IS is the best one for skiing with, its just so light!  And then I have an 85mm f1.8 for those times when i really need a wide aperture for portraiture.

4. Fisheye lens

The fisheye lens is the second of what I would consider to be an essential lens for this kind of photography.  Any other focal lengths between the fisheye and the 70-200 can be debated upon but this one should be on your list.  I use a Sigma 15mm fisheye and it produces some great results.  The Canon is comparable in sharpness and these days they are actually a similar price point.  The 15mm fisheye is only a true 180 degree field of view on a full frame camera such as the Canon 5dMKII.  On a 1.3 crop camera such as the 1dMKIV it still produces a pleasingly wide FOV but by the time you put it on a 1.6 crop camera like the 7d, it starts to lose a lot of the benefits of such a lens.  If you shoot with a 1.6 crop camera you would be best to consider a wider fisheye like the 10mm sigma or the Tokina 10-17 fish.  Nikon users can make use of their fantastic quality 10.5mm fisheye. I use this lens for everything from powder shots in the trees to urban rails in the city, it goes everywhere with me.

5. A good camera backpack

If you are going to ski all day with a heavy backpack then you need to make sure that it is comfortable and will protect your precious gear from the elements, and any mishaps you might have along the way.  When I first started to cart around a serious amount if gear I had trouble finding the right bag for the job.  There are several packs out there from Burton and Dakine but they lacked enough room for gear other than cameras and lenses.  If you are spending time in the backcountry you need room for a plethora of other gear such as safety equipment,food and clothing.  The solution comes from a company called F-Stop.  Now, full disclosure;  I am on the F-Stop pro team but I was using their equipment before that happened and it now puts me in a position where I can offer my advice as to what changes should be made to create the ultimate backcountry photo pack.  The result is the SATORI , the company’s largest photo backpack.  For those looking for a slightly smaller pack , they also make the Tilopa.  F-Stop packs are made from incredibly rugged material and the zippers that are open to the elements are seam-sealed to protect from rain and snow.  The internal camera block is removable and smaller sized compartments can be inserted to leave more room for non-camera equipment if you need it.  Having a comfortable pack can really make the difference to a long days shooting.

6. Plenty of hard drives

Hard drives will fail, it’s an absolute certainty because they are mechanical devices.  The question is when…?  It could be tomorrow or it could be in ten years time but at some point, you WILL lose your photos unless you have backups made on multiple drives.  If you store your photos on the drive inside your computer it will fill up rapidly.  With today’s SLRs producing images up to 22 megapixels , and the 7d producing 18mp images at 8 frames per second,that means that for every second of shooting you are producing roughly 200mb of images.  The general rule is that you need at least one backup of images to remain safe.  In other words, every 2.5 seconds of shooting will require 1 gigabyte of data storage!!!  Thankfully disk space has come down dramatically in price and there are now many easy solutions for easy backup.  The products from Drobo have been a huge hit with multimedia professionals and I can highly recommend both the products and the service that the company provides.  If you are unfamiliar with their products take some time to watch the videos on their site, they offer excellent piece of mind and totally hassle free redundancy of images.

7. A website

If you don’t have a website to display your work these days you are going to be making it very hard on yourself.  Gone are the days when you either needed to understand complex programming languages, or pay a fortune for a slick looking website.  If you can’t afford to pay a designer for an original site, there are several companies out there offering easily customizable template sites that integrate everything an aspiring photographer could need to display their work.  Check out Livebooks.com and GraphPaperPress for example.  Keep your portfolio site simple to navigate and please DO NOT put automatically playing music on them!!  That is the quickest way to get someone to leave your site!  Remember that your website will often be peoples first impression of your business and your photography so be careful which images you put on there.  Think quality not quantity.  I’d much rather see just ten great photos , than the same ten great photos with 20 mediocre ones mixed amongst them.  I do not consider myself to have more than rudimentary understanding of website design and yet I was able to create my entire site myself using only tutorials available on the internet so there really is no excuse for a shoddy looking website these days.

8.  Rocket blower sensor cleaner

Even though newer cameras have automatic micro-vibrating sensor cleaning functions, they don’t keep all the dust off.  There are several similar products available but the Giottos products do a great job and are available in many different sizes.  Due to their grenade-like appearance, expect to get some funny looks from airport security personnel though!  Continually changing lenses outdoors means that you will get dust buildup around the mirror mechanism but a few squeezes with the blower and you will prevent that dust from ever getting to the lens.  If you have more persistent particles check out the products from Visibledust.  I use their wet cleaning fluids every few months and also their statically charged brushes if the blower can’t shift the dirt.

9.  Two-way radios

Most consumer 2-way radios now all work on the same frequencies as Motorola radios so you can get away with buying some Walmart specials if you have to, but I’d recommend getting a pair of Motorola ones with a recharging stand.  A lot of riders will have their own radios so you might not always need both of them but at least it’s there if you need it and then you also have a spare battery pack for longer trips.  Motorola make a huge range of radios which have different ranges and features.  Some will give you weather reports and some will even charge up via USB ports which is a useful feature for the traveling photog as that’s one less charger you have to bring with you!  The MR350 is a great choice.

10.  Good winter gloves

Personally I can’t stand having cold,wet hands.  If I’m skiing all day and not shooting, my hands stay warm.  But shooting skiing or snowboarding rarely means skiing all day.  A lot of time is spent standing or sitting around waiting for the best light, or climbing through waist deep snow or building a jump.  If my hands are cold or wet I can’t think straight and its always the first part of me to get cold.  I would highly recommend having a spare pair of gloves AND a spare pair of liners in your pack.  Sometimes I shoot with the POW Photog glove that I have written about before on this site and sometimes I just use regular glove liners, removing my hand from my thicker glove when it’s time to shoot and replacing them immediately afterwords.  Obviously many companies make great winter gloves but I have always been very very happy with the goat’s leather gloves made by POW.  I get a new pair at the beginning of each winter and they easily last me a whole years shooting.  I keep a pair of their fleece lined mittens in the top of my pack for wearing at the end of the day on the way home.  Mittens generally keep you warmer but you obviously lose some dexterity so they are great for the end of the day when you are done shooting.  Trust me, you don’t want to get stuck out in the backcountry with one wet pair of gloves!

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In ski photography, flash is used in two key ways. Firstly, as a substitute for ambient light for instance shooting rails at night, or tree skiing on a cloudy day.   And secondly as “fill flash” to supplement the ambient light and fill in dark shadow areas where strong sunshine is creating undesirably high contrast or “harsh” light in the image.

If you have a DSLR then you will almost certainly have a pop-up flash. These are of very limited use for shooting action photos though. Partly because of the lack of control you are given over the settings, and partly because they are very low powered and only have a useful range of about 10ft. Up to this distance you can successfully use them for fill flash on static subjects but if you are serious about taking good photos then you need to buy a separate flash. Your camera won’t know that you are shooting action so be wary of it’s automatic use of the pop-up in some situations. It’s better to turn it off completely until you know that you need it.

With a hot-shoe mounted flash you are beginning to have the necessary control needed to start shooting some ski photos. These flashes have extremely complex “brains” inside them that evaluate the necessary flash output depending on the light situation. If you always have your flash set to automatic though, you will never learn anything new and I guarantee you that you are not getting the best possible photo.

Whatever type of flash you use, your camera will limit your shutter speed to around 1/250th or slower. For an evenly lit subject, the entire burst of light from the flash needs to occur during the fraction of a second that the shutter is completely open. This maximum shutter speed is called the x-sync and using a speed faster than this can result in a photo that displays dark bands of un-flashed areas. Some hot-shoe mounted flashes have a “ high speed sync” mode that does allow the flash to sync with the shutter at faster speeds. This is achieved by greatly reducing the power output of the flash, which in-turn shortens the duration of the flash burst. Less power means you need to get much closer to your subject so whilst it’s good to know how to use this mode, it’s not always the answer and careful setting of your camera and flash settings can often yield a better result.

In flash photography you effectively control two exposures at the same time. The first is the ambient light exposure, controlled by your shutter speed. The second is your flash exposure controlled by your aperture or by adjusting your flash power. As the shutter curtains open to fully reveal the camera sensor, your flash fires to “paint” your skier into the scene with a burst of light. The duration of this flash is much faster than the shutter speed though so the remaining time after the flash burst has fired, is left for the ambient light to “paint” in the background of the photo before the shutter curtains have fully closed. The action in the photo is frozen by the burst of light from the flash, and not by your shutter.

A single on camera flash is convenient, and a good starting point, but once you have mastered that the next step to creating professional looking shots is to learn about off-camera lighting. With today’s technology, the number of off camera flashes that you can add to a scene is almost endless. Radio transmitters attach to the camera and send a wireless signal to a receiver that mounts to your flash, allowing you to place it exactly where you want to capture the best shot. Many of my ski photos use 5 or more flashes synced to fire simultaneously and some guys take it even further than that. That much equipment is beyond the realms of most enthusiastic photographers but you can create incredible photos with careful placement of only one or two strobes. Learning to use off-camera flash creates those angles between the light and the camera that introduces shadows and texture to the scene, helping you to get a more realistic and three-dimensional look.

Techniques for multiple flash use and more information on x-sync and flash duration will appear in a separate article on this site in the near future.

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Some of my lenses

Continuing on with my Snow photos 101 section, by far the most common question in my in-box is “what camera or lens should i get?”.  You can view the equipment that I use HERE, but this doesn’t mean that you need all of this to make some great ski or snowboard photos.

Lenses

A professional ski photographer will own lenses that range from a 15mm fisheye all the way up to a 300mm telephoto lens.  Different shooting situations require different setups and they aren’t necessarily all carried at the same time.  By far my most used lens is my 70-200mm zoom lens so something in that range would be a wise choice.  When you are deciding which equipment to invest in, bear in mind that camera technology is evolving at a frantic pace.  Whichever camera you choose now, will be outdated in a years time. Lens technology on the other hand moves at a much more sedate pace.  Very little has changed over the last 10 years aside from the addition of image stabilization to a few lenses.  It therefore makes sense to spend as much as you can on your glass, if you treat it properly a good lens can last you a decade.  Typically you will see a more noticeable improvement in image quality by using higher quality glass, than you would with using a more expensive SLR camera.

Picking a single lens that covers the whole focal length range you need is not the best solution. The larger the zoom range the lesser the image quality so try and split it up into at least 2 or 3 lenses.  A wide-angle zoom such as a 17-40mm or 18-55mm and then a telephoto zoom in the 70-200 range will have you covered for most things.  Once you have mastered these, you can add specialized lenses to your lineup, like a fisheye or large aperture prime lens like the 50mm f1.8.  Prime lenses, those with a fixed focal length, will always yield a sharper photo than their zoom counterparts, but most ski photographers value the portability of a few zooms over a large collection of primes.

Cameras

What camera should I get?  There is no one right answer to this question; a good photographer can make a good photo with almost any camera. Don’t get sucked into the megapixel race though, the majority of images you see in ski or snowboard magazines up to 2009 will have been shot at either 8MP or 10MP and as you will have seen, that’s more than enough for most users.  I would however recommend sticking to the 2 big brands, Nikon and Canon.  Both companies make exceptional sports cameras for professional users and many of the features filter down lower in their product line for beginner and advanced photographers.

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Readers of SBC Skier in Canada this year will have seen my series of ski photography tips.  I have decided to put together a new section on my blog which initially starts off with the beginner tips featured in SBC Skier and then moves on further to more advanced information for readers looking for a a little more in-depth info.  Every few weeks I will add a new section to the tips until I have covered the things that most people ask me about.  Hopefully by the end there will be a good collection of information for people to reference.

If your ski photos look flat and the snow looks featureless, try shooting them early in the morning or late in the afternoon when the sun is lower in the sky. This will create shadows on the snow and reveal details and textures that are not apparent when the sun is overhead at midday. On a clear day much darker and richer colors will come out in the sky.

For the same reason, try to avoid having the sun directly behind you when you shoot. Creating an angle, even a small one, between you and the sun will introduce more contrast into the brighter areas of your shot by revealing shadows behind objects such as snow drifts, ridges, trees and even individual crystals of snow.

A common miss-conception is that you should never shoot into the sun. Whilst that might apply to some aspects of photography, it can be a great way to bring a dramatic look to your ski photos by creating a back-lit spray of powder or a silhouette against the sky.

Composition

The rule of thirds states that compositional elements and points of interest in a photo should be aligned with either the lines or the intersecting points of an imaginary 3×3 grid on top of your photo (figure 1).

Composing your photos in this way will usually create nicely balanced images that are easier on the eye. From figure 1 you can see that the centre of the photo contains no intersection and no line. A common mistake is to put your subject right in the centre of the photo but aesthetically this rarely works well. Try lining up horizons with one of the horizontal lines or putting your skier subjects at the intersecting points and you will come away with a much more pleasing image.

The “Rule of Thirds” is not a rule at all though; it’s a guideline. Depending on the content of the image, there might be cases where you can make a good image without it but if you are uncertain how to compose a shot, it’s a great place to start. You can also try and look for lines in the natural environment that will draw the eye towards the intended subject of your photo.

Exposure

Most people have experienced taking a picture of a beautiful snowy scene only to discover that the photo they see on the back of the camera looks dark, dreary and gray. Cameras are designed to expect an average scene with an average brightness and the huge amount of light reflecting off snow goes far above that expected value. The camera will often under-expose the shot, mistakenly thinking that the shot is overly bright when in fact there is just a lot more reflected light than an average situation.

Some smaller cameras have a “snow setting” hidden away in the menu, be sure to use this if your camera doesn’t have any manual settings. If you are using an SLR camera and shooting on semi-automatic settings like aperture or shutter priority, you can use your cameras “exposure compensation” function to dial in an adjustment to your exposures. The adjustment will vary depending on the brightness of the day so experiment and try to understand how your camera reacts do different situations, every camera is different. Learning how to read the histogram on the camera will let you know when you have nailed the exposure correctly.

(The use of the histogram and the theories behind light metering go far beyond the scope of this first article. If you are seeking more information please read my longer essay on the subject, available on the website in the coming months.)

Remember photography is about being creative; there are very few hard and fast rules, only guidelines. Get out there, experiment and have fun but these few simple tips will get you off to a good start.

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At first I just couldn’t believe how small and light this thing felt compared to my old one.  It weighs 760g compared with the 1470g of the 2.8 version but it feels even lighter and is fully half the diameter.  The difference in the weight of my pack feels considerable and everything fits inside much better now since i don’t have to carry the frustratingly large hood for the 2.8.  Below is a shot taken with this lens just yesterday in Whistler along with a 100% crop of the skier in the shot (Riley Leboe).  Just take a quick look, it holds plenty of detail.  So far no regrets, I have also picked up an 85mm 1.8 lens to fill the short tele large aperture gap that I had by selling the 2.8 and i’ll put that to the test very soon too.  For now though, this is my new favorite lens!

Support the site

• B&H Photo
• Amazon.com
• Adorama
• Zacuto
• Outdoor Photo Gear
• ebay
• Think Tank Photo -As a friend of this site, clicking through to the Think Tank site and spending more than $50 will earn you a FREE bag when you reach the checkout. Choose from several different accessory or modular bags for FREE!
• Borrowlenses.com
• DROBO Enter coupon code DANCARRPHOTO for up to $150 off on certain models.