Welcome new students!

Hey everyone!

Just wanted to welcome the new students and give them some information. Some of my students may already know this, and some may have been looking for it.

First, the ways to find me. I'm here obviously, but I'm also here: http://www.frankwisephotography.com/ which has had some new work posted so please come take a look. And I'm here: http://www.flickr.com/photos/frankwise/ along with many other members of the Tri Community Tribe. And I'm here: http://www.modelmayhem.com/frankwise

And sometimes I'm here: http://www.supershoots.net/portfolio.cfm?ID=368 and of course I'm ALWAYS here: http://twitter.com/FrankWisePhoto but you will probably never find me here: http://www.myspace.com/frankwisephotography. So where can we find you? Feel free to tell us where to find you in the comments below.

I have created an Amazon store which is down to the right over here------------>

that has some helpful links to items we have talked about and things I use and recommend to make it easy for you to find. Now obviously you don't have to buy them from there, but I couldn't think of an easier way to do it.

Now onto some more interesting stuff. Coming up this week in my classes.

Monday night in Beginning Wedding we will be discussing "Shooting the big day"

Tuesday night in Lighting on Location we will be working on getting everyone comfortable with setting their cameras and flashes for off camera flash.

On Wednesday in Advanced Wedding I was asked quite a bit about meters and lighting, so we will cover how to use a meter, and we may have some hot lights to play with, "ala Jerry Ghionis"

As for navigating around the blog, I have included a list of links to places and people that are relevant to our passions, please visit them. They include fabulous photographers, products I use, sites dediated to rating cameras and lenses, and photoshop tutorials and actions.

Here are some interesting things I have come across this week:

http://www.pixelatedimage.com/blog/2009/06/a-question-of-definition/

http://my.alltop.com/frankwise

http://blog.chasejarvis.com/blog/2009/06/someones-got-to-be-first.html

http://strobist.blogspot.com/2009/06/on-assignment-hcac-dancer.html

Many of you know the model at the top of the page as Wendy. This is from a shoot we did in a very interesting location that has a funny story about it, but that will be saved for another date.

Stay tuned, I hope to update again before next weekend.

Just so you know, most of the blog posts are much more focused, but I try and do something like this at the beginning of every semester t get everyone new up to speed. Hope it helps, and see you in school!

Frank

1st month with the Canon 5D MKII

I have had the new Canon 5D MKII for a month now, and let me just say, WOW! I will preface this by saying that I don't shoot test charts, and I have only used the camera in real world photographic situations. It has been used for engagement shoots, several studio shoots, a Star Wars characters shoot with my class, and chasing my kids around. It continues to impress me with it's low light capabilities, and obviously it's large file sizes are a pleasure to work with. Here are my impressions:

The low light capabilities are awesome, and I haven't even utilized them that much. See my prior blog post of model Rachel Rankin and Star Wars images for the proof, they were shot hand held, and after 8:00pm. With just a slight tweak to the white balance, I was able to create what I feel is an otherworldly appearance, exactly what I was hoping for. For a Canon shooting wedding photographer, this camera has got to be high on your list of must haves.

I have had my old 5D for over 3 years, and one of my biggest complaints has always been the poor LCD screen and it's very blue tint. That has finally been resolved, the new LCD screen is beautiful, and much better and accurate for judging color tones in an image.

The large file sizes are a blessing, and a curse. If you tend to shoot loosely, they leave a lot of room for cropping. But when opened in Photoshop, they open to 60mb's. Add a layer or 2, and you better have some serious horsepower to work on the images, or expect a painfully long wait while filters or actions are running. And expect to add hard drive space quickly and often. But the images will handle a bunch of manipulation.

This camera is also very critical of the lenses you use with it. As a father, when chasing my daughter around at soccer or her horseback riding lessons, I like to use my 70-300mm IS lens. It works amazingly well on the old 5D. On the new MKII, the camera out resolves the capabilities of the lens. Expect to need L series lenses. The 24-70 2.8, 70-200 2.8 IS, and 135 F2 all work beautifully on the camera though.

I have not experienced the low light hunting that many have been complaining about on the net, although that could be due to my familiarality with the old 5D. I will say that this is probably the weakest part of the new 5D though. I really wish Canon would steal a page out of Nikons book, and upgrade the 5D series autofocus to it's sibling 1D series system.

Another feature that I would love to see is the ability to remotely fire your speedlights from the camera without having to buy a master unit or the STE-2 trigger. Just sayin...

I didn't get this camera for it's video features, so I can't speak to that. I only shot 1 small video, and it looks impressive, but I am in no way an expert there.

I also didn't get this camera for it's speed. This camera is not a speed demon, Canon has other models for that. It is not the camera you will see on the sidelines at sporting events, it doesn't do 10 fps, this is a portrait shooter or studio shooters camera.

You can see alot of images I have shot with it here on my blog, (Star Wars, Brian & Michelle Engagement) and on my Flickr site, here: http://www.flickr.com/photos/frankwise/

As a special note for iPhone/Canon users, you can get your camera manuals on your iPhone through iTunes, a handy feature while your out in the field with a new camera.

Another feature I love is the ability to assign custom settings to the command dial using C1, C2, & C3. Like to shoot b&w's occasionally, but don't want to dive in to the menus? Set up C1 with your favorite B&W set up, and it's a dial turn away.

I am still undecided on the high light priority setting, I have shot several samples with it on & off, and haven't pixel peeped deep enough to see a noticeable difference, and it locks you in to using ISO 200 as the lowest setting.

Expect this post to be added to in the future.

Pros: Low light, better screen, large files, great color rendition, beautiful skin tones, easily customizable.

Cons: Autofocus system hasn't been upgraded, requires use of L glass (is that really a con?)

I also have a barely broken in 40D for sale if anyone is interested. It has only been used as a 2nd body during wedding shoots. If interested, send me a shout.

Frank

So what did you shoot this week?

Wow, what a frenetic week I had! And what a vast array of images I wound up with. It started last Saturday with the engagement shoot of Brian and Michelle, the off to the deepest depths of the universe with the members of the 501st, a sexy shoot with Rachel Rankin just to mix it up, and another engagement type session with my class on Thursday. Throw in some images of my daughters swim class, and a very well known porta-potty (who knew it was famous?) taken with my iPhone, and it is a very ecclectic mix of images, with a vast array of high and low quality gear. I didn't use my camera Friday, we needed some time apart, we both needed to charge our batteries :-)

Please don't forget that I LOVE to get comments down below, positive or negative. As I am still new to this blog-o-sphere, the comments may help shape the direction we head in.

Now off to the week in images. From Saturday, Brian & Michelle

Taken with my iPhone on the way to the shoot

Another iPhone snap

From Sunday with the family at the Arboretum:

My daughter in the Bamboo Forest looking TALL!

Monday, in a Galaxy far, far, away:

Available light, ISO 3200, 1/20 sec

Tuesday, back in the studio:

Available light, ISO 2200

Wednesday at my daughters swim class:

Her 1st jump off the diving board unassisted!

And finally, the most famous porta-potty in West Covina:

So what did YOU shoot this week?

Also this week in class, we spoke about Lightroom actions. You can find them here:

http://mb-photoprofessional.com/

And go read Chase Jarvis' entertaining blog post "Someone's got to be first" here:

http://blog.chasejarvis.com/blog/

Since this is the last week of the semester at school, we will be doing review, and hopefully having pot luck in each class. This will be a fun week. Please remember to bring in images, there are still a lot of students that have not contributed images to our models.

Now get out and shoot!

Frank

Some days are easier than others

Some days are definately easier than others. Take yesterday for instance. When I left the house at 11, it was pretty gloomy outside and sprinkling. When I got to West Hollywood to do this shoot, it was beautiful. The gorgeous couple you see posted in this blog are Brian and Michelle. I stumbled into them quite by accident. One of my students asked if I could assist her on an engagement shoot. She is in my wedding class, and we have been discussing engagement shoots for awhile. Now while I normally don't take up

many offers to assist, she assured me that this couple would be worth it. Boy was she ever right!

Thanks for letting me Tag along Jennifer.


Now the amazing thing about this couple, was that they were both prepared and ready for a great day of shooting. Outfits choosen, hair and make-up done, manicured, had several locations already scouted. Made the day easy. It is also refreshing to work with a guy who had ideas for how he wanted his images, and they both took direction well. Not your typical stiff couple.

A little about the work flow here. I typically don't use Lightroom much, normally all Photoshop, with all the blemish removal and things that are normally required when you are working with non-model types and no professional make-up artists. But as I was reviewing the images and making my selects (in Lightroom, which makes this process easy) I realized I wouldn't have to do a lot of post process work. This allowed me to play with some presets I wanted to try, which you see here.




One of the main reasons I don't often use Lightroom is because of 1 of it's strengths. It makes changing things like exposure or whitebalance to a large group of images at once very easy. But as a typically outdoor location shooter or wedding shooter, I don't often have a large group of images I can adjust all at once.

I normally have to tweak individual images seperately.





Almost all the images you see here were done by using some free presets I found on the web. If you have Lightroom, do a search for free Lightroom presets. You will come up with a lot, and some of them are excellent. Here is a good starting point:

http://www.lightroomkillertips.com/

and:

http://www.ononesoftware.com/detail.php?prodLine_id=33


Of course, even doing this, I still always finish everything in photoshop, that's is where I do my final cropping, sharpening, and image sizing for various outputs. I normally live in photoshop, but with this particular shoot, I was able to make my selects, and edit them down to 68 final images, and have them burned to a cd in about 3 hours utilizing both Lightroom and Photoshop. Unheard of, and my wife and kids are thankful I will be able to go play with them today.

On a street in West Hollywood. Available light, cloudy day didn't hurt

















A random wood door found on Santa Monica Blvd. Available light






























Michelle and Brian have a friend that owns a club. They allowed us to shoot inside before the club opened. 1 Alien Bee shot though a beauty dish, and a 1/15 sec shutterspeed to get some light on the bottles.
























Available window light in a very dark club


















Brian was very particular about this yellow dress, he wasn't a fan. But I think we made it work in this image.









I love this shot. I had to shoot this because she looked so cute standing on the brick to help us get a good shot. Michelle is just a tiny bit of a girl.

Coming up this week in class:

Monday Star Wars shoot

Wednesday perhaps we will cover teh workflow for this shoot

Thursday, does anyone have a couple that wants to come in and shoot?

See you in class,
Frank

The lighting class

Hi everyone!

Here is the picture everyone wants to see. I want to thank my lighting on location class for induldging me and my inner geek for letting me play with some new toys.

This image was created using the new DSLR Remote app for the iPhone made by onOne software. (click image for larger version)More here: http://www.ononesoftware.com/detail.php?prodLine_id=38

It currently only works with Canon DSLR's, but they are working on adding other camera manufacturers as I type. Basically, it allows you to manually control your camera from your iPhone, and change ISO, f-stop, & shutterspeed, gives you live view, and triggers the shutter from your iPhone. Then it sends the image to your phone for review. The camera has to be tethered to a computer, as this all works through a wifi network. It installs a small program on the host computer, and lets you set up an ad-hock network, so if you have a wi-fi capable laptop, then as long as you have cell service, you can get this to work. El Mirage anyone?

For this image, we have 35 students, 33 Canon and Nikon flashes that fired, an iPhone, a Canon 5DMKII, and a whole lot of fun. An ode to the "Strobist"

I will be doing a lot of shooting this weekend, so I will be posting again before Monday.

Don't forget, Monday night will be a special treat, we are expecting 8-10 members of the 501st, a Star Wars character group, to be at Tri for the shoot of the year. Thanks goes to Lilo for setting this up. I even think we may have some other Tri teachers tagging along... (Jeffery?)

See you then,

Frank