This is a quick post but while the weather is bad here i’ve been working on learning some new skills. I decided to learn how to make 360 degree sperical panoramas. Here is a link to the first one that I tried out, click and drag with the mouse to view the room. Created using 8 photos. 6 photos from left to right to make up 360 degrees , and then one photo straight up and one straight down. Stitched together using a program called PTGui with a bit of time and patience….. Shot with a Canon 5dMKII ( though the resolution if it is overkill, the full frame is important) and a Sigma 15mm fisheye. You need to make a few modifications to your tripod setup though so the camera rotates around the lens’ nodal point (or no-parralax point depending on who you ask)
Always good to have new skills to fill in your spare time, you never know when this will come in handy.
Ok guys, you asked for it….. I’m always getting people wandering about the gear I use so without further delay here is part 1. A quick video to show you my lighting kit in my Pelican 1610 case. Below is also a list of whats in the case and some photos too. Bonus!
One off shots in magazines are nice, but i’ts even nicer when you get a collection of shots together for an article. Last month Fri Flyt , one of the major ski mags in Norway, ran a few of shots of mine in an article about filming in Whistler with Theory-3 media. The article was written by a good friend of mine, Andreas Amble. Check out his blog here. He is also a very talented graphic designer. Check out Theory-3s movie “The Journal” in all good ski stores or pick it up online from the website linked above.
Today Poorboyz productions released the official trailer for their new movie Everyday Is A Saturday. With the most comprehensive list of athletes ever featured in one ski movie this is a guaranteed hit. For the last few months I have spent a lot of time with the crew up here in British Columbia shooting rails, backcountry jumps and lines. Let me tell you right now, this movie will be ridiculous! Check out a few behind the scenes photos below, click for larger versions
UPDATE:Â Read my review of the TT1 transmitter HERE.
Today the makers of Pocketwizards announced two new models to add to their lineup. I’m not going to go into details about what the current PWs do, if you don’t know then this isn’t going to be of interest to you at all….
First the good news, the new TT1 and TT5 are backwards compatible with the old models so there is no need to go out and replace the whole lot! The big new feature is that with a TT1 or TT5 on your camera and a TT5 on your canon speedlight – you can do wireless remote ETTL. Great for some people but whilst I do own a Canon speedlight , it hasn’t been out of its bag in 2 years so this feature would not make me buy the new models. So what is there in here that might be useful to a action sports photographer like me? I always use all of my remote strobes in manual mode so the ETTL capabilities are useless. But hidden away in all of the technical jargon and PR speak in the press releases is something VERY interesting and it’s called Hypersync……
It sounds like wizardry to me but the long and the short of it is that the TT1 (or TT5) on the camera can be programmed to fire your flash a few microseconds BEFORE your old pocketwizards could. They do this because they know when you are about to fire the flash and you can program it to jump the gun slightly. The exact amount of time can be programmed by hooking it up to your computer so that you can experiment with finding the best timing for your strobes. What this does for you is allow you to typically find a setting that will allow you to shoot with a higher sync speed than you normally would be able to.
Shooting action with strobes is a constant battle with ambient light (unless it’s dark). You have to under power the ambient enough that you wont have any ghosting in your action image but this can be a struggle in full sunlight, especially if you are shooting with fairly low powered strobes. Using the new Hypersync technology will enable you to shoot in brighter light with your strobes! For owners of the 5dMKII like myself, this could be a huge benefit , with its lowly 1/200 sync speed its mostly useless in bright light unless you can get your strobes right next to your subject. On the other hand, this will also enable me to sync at 1/500 with my MKIIN which would be a huge improvement! Becauause all of this wizardry is done in the transmitting unit, you only need to buy one of either the TT1 or TT5 to take advantage of Hypersync with your old PW system. There are also 2 custom programmable settings in the transmitter so that you can store two Hypersync offset values for say 2 different cameras or 2 different strobe setups. It sounds to me like this Hypersync offset is something that will take some experimentation to get right, every camera and strobe will need a different timing offset but once perfected, this will make a huge difference to the versatility of strobe work. Initially they are only available for Canon cameras (fine by me) but Nikons are soon to follow and I will be doing an in-depth test of how the Hypersync works as soon as they hit the shelves so stay tuned!
I have a love hate relationship with Pocketwizards. When they work there is nothing better for triggering your remote strobes. But take them up in the mountains, put them in negative temperatures and things can quickly go awry. Triggering distace can drop to mere metres and misfires occur frequently. From the pocketwizard site today is a teaser for new triggers to be revealed on Monday. Most likely these will simply be a challenge to the radio poppers , allowing wireless ETTL. But you never know….. maybe they will have something cool up their sleeves.
A couple of months ago I was invited to take part in the Deep Winter photo challenge here in Whistler, BC. The idea behind the competition is that 5 invited photographers assemble a team of riders to shoot with for 3 days and the resulting photos are combined into a slideshow of approximately 3 minutes. The shows are judged by a panel of photo editors from various magazines and all the shows are played to a crowd of hundreds of people at one of the hotels in Whistler. We shot the photos between the 6th and 8th of January and predictably for whistler, the conditions were incredibly challenging.
The first day was blowing a blizzard, quickly resulting in a lot of very very wet camera equipment. On the second day the freezing level went up to the alpine leaving all the fresh snow feeling like you were skiing through custard on top of that it was raining at some levels. The third day was somewhat nicer, a few rays of sunshine poked through but snow conditions were less than stellar and the alpine areas of the mountain remained closed due to avalanche danger.
Before the competition began i was somewhat apprehensive. Normally its a good days shooting if you get one or two great shots but to get enough shots to fill a 3 minute slide show in only 3 days was going to be a challenge. Add to that the unknown weather conditions and well…. you get the idea. It’s TOUGH! By the end of the third day we were exhausted and I only had a few hours to put together the show. In the end I was driving to the hotel to deliver the DVD while it was still burning in my laptop on the seat next to me!
I picked a couple of local skiers for my team , Leigh Powis and Pierrot Bernier. A bit of local knowledge was going to be a much needed asset for this comp. When it was all finished up I was pleased with what we achieved. The winners crown on the night went to Jordan Manley, with some incredible lifestyle work in his show and some great skiing by Chad Sayers. As part of my show I tried out a new rig to provide a different perspective on things. Mounting my Canon 5dMKII on a Manfrotto Magic arm and firing it remotely with a pocketwizard gives an interesting close up view of things. See below for the setup and example photo. This was certainly the toughest few days photography of my career, the atmosphere at the show in the evening was incredible. Its a great feeling to see a huge room full of people get so excited about photography!
I have been pretty busy the last few weeks so appologies on the lack of updates but expect a few more this coming week as I catch up on things!
The snow has been falling in Vancouver, and that means its time to shoot urban! I took a break from shooting stills yesterday though to film for a couple of minutes with my 5DMKII to see just what sort of video you can get with fast moving subjects and panning. I think I have a lot to learn about video if i’m to put it to good use. As usual, pointing a camera at a snowy scene provides less than stellar results from autoexposure mechanisms. Snow is typically rendered 2/3 of a stop or more underexposed as the camera exposes it for a neutral grey instead of white. If you are shooting stills you can just shoot on manual but the video on the 5DMKII doesnt allow this so generous application fo the exposure compensation dial is in order, with hindsight i might have been a touch heavy handed with this example…. but I did learn something. The exposure compensation dial in movie mode seems to adjust the ISO setting and not the shutter speed or the aperture. I haven’t figured out if this is the same in all situations yet though. Click here to view the HD version.
5dMKII test from Dan Carr on Vimeo.
To me it looks like the shutter speed it picked for this shot was too slow? It was very dark , far far darker than this video would have you believe. The sun was long below the horizon. But I haven’t found a way yet to check what shutter speed was used after you have shot it. I think the results would have been far better in brighter light. Perhaps I will give it another try next week.
The day that this town has been waiting for finally arrived. I’m going to keep this post short, it speaks for itself. Were the conditions great up there? No , far from it. Was it great to be back on skis? Ohhhhh yes. Judging by the height of the snow pack , we are still a couple or three weeks from being ready to get go filming and shooting round here but it’s on its way. The new Peak to Peak gondola system is an incredible feat of engineering and I will be attending the official opening on December 12th. The new gondola station for it on Whistler is almost as large as the restaurant complex!
