We know you’ve been wanting to see more. We know you’ve been wanting to know how they work.
Joe McNally has a set.
Joe McNally did a test.
©Joe McNally, http://www.joemcnally.com
Please watch this blog, our site, and Joe’s blog for further developments.
Filed under: behind the scenes, flextt5, minitt1 | Tagged: flextt5, minitt1, nikon | Leave a comment »
We recently released the latest official ControlTL firmware, version 5.10. Based on continued internal testing and feedback from users, it appears a couple of the exposure and timing data tables became corrupted somewhere in the process. We’ve had reports of improper exposures with several camera models as well as shutter clipping with the Canon 1Ds Mark III and 1D Mark IV. We have corrected the tables and the revised firmware is available as version 5.15 and can be downloaded via the PocketWizard Utility now.
We recommend upgrading to 5.15 as soon as you can.
The manual addendum for v5.10 is still the same for v5.15.
Filed under: ControlTL, news, technical support | Tagged: Firmware | 2 Comments »
Chris O’Connell first appeared on our radar when he set out to accomplish the first 500 shutter speed remotely-synched flash sequence in action sports, complete with HDR morph shot in RAW. This is the story of how he got there.
©Chris O'Connell
Virginia is not the first geographic location you think of when extreme skiing comes to mind. That’s where Chris O’Connell grew up and began talking photos at the age of 12 or 13, when his father gave him his Mamiya Sekor. O’Connell began shooting his friends skateboarding and riding bikes. “A lot of action stuff. I mean, that’s my roots,” he says.
Unaware he could make a living as a full-time photographer, O’Connell went to business school and moved to Colorado after graduation. His first job was at The Vail Daily. He also shot freelance. At that time, the area was the virtual epicenter of the snowboarding world. Ice climbing, rock climbing, and kayaking were not far behind. O’Connell shot them all, and then some.
Time in business school paid off for O’Connell. “I focused on the business end of things a lot. It made magazine editors feel comfortable when I started doing submissions and then I’d write little articles. I would package my slides very professionally. I think that gave me a boost over some of my peers at the time,” he says.
He became Senior Photographer at Snowboarder Magazine in the late 1990s, and began shooting many snowboard and ski events for editorial avenues around the world. “I had a few Senior Photographer gigs for different magazines throughout the world, and the commercial stuff came next,” O’Connell recalls. Corporations like Oakley, Nike, and Burton began hiring him for commercial work. He eventually left Colorado for the Tahoe area in Northern California. A few years later, he made a radical shift to Orange County, “to be away from the mountains but still closer to the action sports hub of the world, Costa Mesa,” he says.
His new home base is also home to many surf and skate companies, as well as snow gear brands and optical companies. Hurley, Billabong, Quiksilver, and Volcom all have headquarters there. “It’s a great place for an action sports shooter and catalogue guy like myself to be based, because I’m right here. A good percentage of my clients are within ten miles of me,” says O’Connell. He also cites his proximity to Samy’s Camera, Los Angeles rental houses, and the five hour drive to the Sierra Nevada mountains as further reasons for his location. Those mountains have “some of the most epic light and consistent weather patterns of any mountains I’ve been in the world,” he says. “Tons of snow, and there’s always a high pressure system behind it. Then we go grey a lot, so there’s really good opportunities to shoot around here as well.”
©Chris O'Connell
Exclusively a digital photorapher, O’Connell relies on digital gear to get it right the first time. “When you have a guy jumping off a 50 foot cliff and it’s super dangerous, you don’t really get two takes. When I get controlled environments, that’s when I can really excel. That’s why the catalog and commercial stuff is so easy for me because I’m so used to only getting one shot at a photo,” he explains.
Last September, inspired by his friend Chase Jarvis shooting in New Zealand, O’Connell got the competitive idea to one-up him. Jarvis shot 20 pops per flash at 250 shutter speed tethered. O’Connell’s mind quickly had gears turning. “I want to be able to do this and shoot it wireless. I can’t really speculate on why he did it tethered. When I started looking into the PocketWizard FlexTT5, I got the idea I could really push this to the next level and shoot RAW files with the wireless sync,” he says. “With action photography, one f-stop is everything, so that’s really what I wanted to do. I started researching it a lot before we shot it, but Chase was the inspiration, for sure.”
O’Connell’s big challenge finally happened on June Mountain in the Eastern Sierras of California, which provided a special jump for the complex morphing shot.
©Chris O'Connell
Pulling off such a technical challenge made O’Connell do a lot of homework, including investigating a multitude of manufacturers who might be able to execute this photographic feat. “I used PocketWizard Plus receivers, because I think they have better range and are a little bit more stable in colder weather than the MultiMAXs and even the Mini,” he says. “They’re my workhorses. If I’m going to be far away from a shot, I still go to those, even though I’m on the transmitting mode. The TT5 allowed me to shoot at 1/500. I’ve never been able to do that with the PocketWizard Plus. That usually maxes right around 1/320. I used the Broncolor, the Scoro A4 and A2S packs. Those packs are really quite incredible. They’re expensive, but the control you have over the flash duration and having a digital readout on the pack was integral in being able to make sure I was shooting it at a fast enough flash duration. When this shoot came down to it, it was all about magic hour. Things have to be functioning right, and I can’t have room for error. It gets cold at night in the snow, and it’s hard to change things around, so I think that was really integral, as was the TT5. I used Honda generators, the EU series. They’re quiet so I can hear when riders are dropping, and they’re just not obnoxious to use on a shoot; they’re clean and quiet.”
The cameras which helped him pull all this together were Canon EOS-1D Mark IV. “I shot Zeiss lenses. I’m sort of a lens geek, and I’m just finding that a lot of the Canon wides don’t do it for me. The 14mm is just pretty sharp all the way across, but when you get a rider or anyone, for that matter, up into the corners in some of the other Canons, they fail. I think the Zeiss are super expensive and they’re heavy. For a guy like me who has to hike around the mountains, your pack starts getting really heavy when you’re throwing a bunch of Zeiss in there, but the crispness of the lens all the way across is truly unmatched. You give up the autofocus, but I can deal with that. I don’t shoot a hell of a lot of autofocus anyway. That was one reason I chose to shoot the Zeiss. I was really happy with the results.”
©Chris O'Connell
O’Connell discovered a tip and would like to share it with our readers. “I see a lot of snow sports photographers all around the world have some misfire trouble. They just set their flash pack on the ground, have the head six feet off the ground, but not the PocketWizard. I set up a separate light stand, ran a long extension cord for my sync and got that thing eight feet off the ground. That dramatically increased my reliability on the syncing. The ground is bad enough as it is for the radio waves, but the water and snow I guess just really throw it off. I never really knew that in years and years of misfires. I always figured because it’s too far away or I was around the corner too much. But it’s really something that could dramatically reduce the amount of misfires is to get that thing. Buy a long extension cord for your sync and get it off the ground. Bring it up eight feet. That does help.”
O’Connell’s next challenge? To stop even smaller increments of time. “Basically this whole process has left me with the desire to learn more and push it more on how fast it could sync and what else I can do,” he says. “If I could shoot a sequence at 1/1,000 sec., I’d be elated. Maybe that’s my next project.”
Chris O’Connell Photography
Chris O’Connell blog
Chris O’Connell on Vimeo
Written by Ron Egatz
Filed under: behind the scenes, digital, flextt5, high speed, how-to, hypersync, off-camera flash, PocketWizard, sports photography, tutorials | Tagged: Chris O'Connell | 1 Comment »
Rick Sammon is a shooter we’ve admired for a long time. Last week he posted a great how-to article on his blog. Fashion Week Day 2: Try the KIS Lighting Technique has some serious gems regarding off-camera flash. Sammon details how he augmented the sun with his Cannon Speedlight 580EX II triggered by a PocketWizard.
Sammon includes the following gems, which we quote directly.
Great post, Rick!
Rick is currently working on an iOS app called Light It!, which is about, of course, lighting, and should be available in September. Always a source of great information, tips, and examples of great off-camera flash, don’t miss the regular posts to Sammon’s blog.
Filed under: behind the scenes, creative, how-to, off-camera flash, Portrait Photography | Tagged: Keep it Simple, Rick Sammon | Leave a comment »
Every now and then we manage to sneak out of the office to get behind the lens of the camera. Our need for an image to launch the new AC3 ZoneController for Canon seemed like the perfect opportunity. We made a few phone calls and put a plan in motion to visit a local craft brewery. Having always been told to pursue our passions, the opportunity to combine beer and photography sounded almost too good to be true.
Vermont is known for its legendary craft brewery culture, having one of the highest brewery to population ratios in the country. Switchback Brewing Co. based in Burlington, VT was founded in 2002 when they started brewing their wildly-popular, unfiltered Switchback Ale. You’d be hard pressed to find a bar in the greater Burlington area that doesn’t have this tasty ale on tap. Since then, they’ve started brewing a Roasted Red, a Porter and most recently a Slow-Fermented Brown Ale. The catch with Switchback is they only sell in kegs, no bottles. So you either enjoy it at your favorite watering-hole or you take a keg home and enjoy it with some of your closest friends. After getting a tour with the brewmaster and listening to his detailed explanation of what makes his beers different (he’s a former microbiologist), we discovered what makes their brews so good. But we have to keep that a secret!
The beer is the second reason why we went to the brewery; the classic German copper kettles and lauter tun used in the brewing process was the first. Switchback has two, 46-year-old, handcrafted copper kettles complete with a copper control panel all purchased from a brewery in Beerfelden, Germany. They were about to be sent to the scrap yard when they were discovered. Reportedly, it cost more to ship the kettles to Vermont than they were to purchase.
We contacted the owner/brewmaster a few weeks ago and asked if we could come in and take some pictures of the kettles when they weren’t in use. We wanted to get some shots while the kettles were empty so we could put flashes in them (safety first!). As luck would have it, that would happen the next day. We packed up some gear and headed off to the brewery for a few hours.
The image we wanted was pretty straightforward, highlight the kettles with lights on the inside and make sure the authentic control panel was in the picture. Getting the shot we wanted quickly was important as the temps on the upper deck hovered around a cool 95˚ F (35˚C). Normally they can easily hit 110˚ F (43˚C) when the kettles are in full operation!
The ambient lights were large warehouse fixtures, which made balancing them with our flashes a bit of a challenge, especially due to the reflective nature of the giant, polished copper and steel kettles. We started off working to control the ambient lights with two medium soft boxes powered by an Elinchrom Ranger pack and controlled with a PowerST4 Receiver. Our next step was to light the inside of the kettles with a few Speedlites and FlexTT5s, which ended up being a bit of a challenge. One of the kettles was almost twice as deep as any of us were tall. Needless to say, we were asking more of our light stands than they could offer! One strategically placed Justin Clamp later and we were in business.
Shooting with a 5D Mark II and 17-40mm lens, we borrowed a ladder to get the perspective we wanted, which was further exaggerated by the wide angle lens. After adding a few kicker lights around the back of the kettles we added some gels to the mix to give the image a little more punch. After a few AC3 power tweaks, we were happy with the image and we’re off to do some taste testing. The final image as seen below and on the homepage of PocketWizard.com was taken with a Canon 5D Mark II; f/8; 1/15 sec.; ISO 800.
Author, Dave Schmidt, VP of Sales and Marketing at PocketWizard, is also an avid photographer. He along with Ian and Zack, our tech support guys and avid photographers themselves, spent a few hours at the brewery taking the image which is featured on the homepage of PocketWizard.com.
Filed under: behind the scenes | Tagged: ac3, brewery photography, flextt5, minitt1 | 1 Comment »
MAC Group’s own Joe Brady was a guest on a recent Digital Photo Experience podcast. Hanging out with hosts Rick Sammon and Juan Pons for the first 14 minutes of the show, Joe explains what PocketWizard technology is all about. This is a great place to get a cursory and fundamental understanding of what PocketWizards do when you release the shutter.
Joe also discusses other topics for the following ten minutes, including color management and guitars.
Digital Photo Experience is a solid source of content, and worth checking regularly if you’re serious about getting better photographic results, regardless of your level of expertise. Sign up for for their podcast, learn, and enjoy!
Filed under: how-to, PocketWizard, podcast, tutorials | Tagged: Digital Photo Experience, Joe Brady | Leave a comment »
Wow, sometimes our distributors can come up with some funny stuff!
Check out the video they made announcing a promotion in the USA over on the MAC Group blog.
Filed under: flextt5, minitt1, PocketWizard | Tagged: $25 rebate, promotion, video | Leave a comment »
Husband and wife photography team Sean and Cathy Cayton of Colorado Springs, Colorado, have a new blog post about the PocketWizard MiniTT1 and the FlexTT5.
Stating he usually doesn’t do product reviews, Sean calls the system “my new best friend, seriously.” Looks like this wedding photography team is just beginning to enjoy their entry into the world of PocketWizard. Congrats, and welcome, Catyons!
©Sean and Cathy Cayton, caytonphotojournal.blogspot.com
Filed under: flextt5, minitt1, off-camera flash, Portrait Photography, Wedding Photography | Tagged: Cayton, flextt5, minitt1 | Leave a comment »
Finnish photographer Marko Saari was profiled on the Profoto blog in April of this year. He was kind enough to share his thoughts on the making of a new series of photos which utilized PocketWizard Plus II units. Here’s what he had to say, along with images and settings.
Stylist, singer and make-up professional Cemile Nisametdin had an idea to make photo sessions about the five elements and interaction between five types of energy: tree, fire, earth, metal and water. She was inspired by the beauty of different energies from elements and wanted to collaborate with me to make photos for the “earth” element. The concept was for the photos to be filled with expressive energies from nature and color, but still keep the entire story and settings relatively simple. Shades of brown, yellow and green were most linked to the soil element so we ended up using brown and green seamless background in studio. Green is a balancing color and contains potential energy. It also matches brown because they are colors from nature. The backstory had strong emotions linked to the soil element.
©Marko Saari. Model: Katerina Suokas. Make-up, hair and styling: Cemile Nisametdin. Nikon D300, 50mm lens, 1/200 second, f/9, ISO 200. Profoto Compact 600 R with 5' octa camera left. Profoto AcuteB with white reflective umbrella as fill camera right. Elinchrom style 400FX with grid for background behind model camera right. PocketWizard Plus II and optical sensors for triggering.
Katerina Suokas was chosen as model. I have worked with her many times, and with her dancing background and good variation of expressions she was an excellent model for the project. A strong and penetrating gaze in the photos was part of the mood we wanted.
©Marko Saari. Model: Katerina Suokas. Make-up, hair & styling: Cemile Nisametdin. Nikon D300, 50mm lens, 1/200 second, f/10, ISO 200. Profoto Compact 600 R with 5' octa camera left. Profoto AcuteB with white reflective umbrella as fill camera right. Elinchrom style 400FX with grid for background behind model camera right. Elinchrom style 400FX with stripbox for touch of kicker light behind model camera right. Fan camera right. PocketWizard Plus II and optical sensors for triggering.
©Marko Saari. Model: Katerina Suokas. Make-up, hair & styling: Cemile Nisametdin. Nikon D300, 85mm lens, 1/200 second, f/10, ISO 200. Profoto Compact 600 R with 5' octa above & front of camera. Profoto AcuteB with white reflective umbrella as fill below it. Elinchrom style 400FX with grid for background behind model cam right. Elinchrom style 400FX with stripbox behind model camera right. PocketWizard Plus II and optical sensors for triggering.
The kimono dates back to at least the fifth century in Eastern cultures. Cemile originates from eastern Tatar culture as well, and that’s why she also wanted to preserve the restrained grace and femininity of the kimono dress. The kimono has a definite style and character. Books on the history of kimonos point out they have their own ethics and can also tell the marital status of the wearer. That’s why the use of a kimono was an essential part of this project. The woman wearing the kimono expresses harmony and natural flexibility.
©Marko Saari.
©Marko Saari
Filed under: behind the scenes, how-to, Portrait Photography, Uncategorized | Tagged: Marko Saari | Leave a comment »
When Southern California native Jasmine Star married her high school sweetheart in Hawaii, she flew Santa Barbara-based photographer David Jay in to document her wedding. Not only was she starting a new life as a married woman, but this vendor in particular helped influence a change in her career choice. “Seeing what he did, and how passionate he was, and how he had created a living for himself was incredible,” she says. “By seeing him, that’s what actually turned me on to photography.”
f/1.8 1/5000 100 ISO. ©Jasmine Star
Finding a wedding photographer who will not only document the most important day of your life, but inspire you to follow in his footsteps is something brides don’t set out to do consciously. Star did a Google search on “wedding photojournalism.” On page 67 of returned results, she found Jay, who was chosen above island-based photographers. “I just became smitten with who he was, not necessarily who he was as a photographer,” she says. Going with her instinct, she valued the relationship with the photographer as an individual above the samples of photographs he presented. “I felt like that experience has made or set the precedent for the type of experience I want to establish with my brides. I would prefer they would become interested in me as a person and then become interested in me as a photographer. I think that’s become a defining point in my business structure.”
f/2.0 1/1000 125 ISO. ©Jasmine Star
Exclusively a wedding photographer, Star knows her clients are purchasing her services one time only, and much hinges on the relationship she builds with future brides. Being the same age and interested in many of the same things helps establish the bond she seeks with new potential clients. “The more we are alike, the more she’ll value her experience, and therefore her photos,” reasons Star. In October of 2006 she shot her first three weddings. In 2007 Star shot for 38 wedding clients based on word of mouth.
f/1.8 1/200 250 ISO. ©Jasmine Star
A strong believer in social media, Star has embraced an online persona which has at times threatened to be more visible than her in-demand photography. This started simply by her blogging about the journey she undertook to become a photographer, from learning how to use her new camera to her first solo shoot. “For some reason, people started reading,” she recalls. “Those people started referring their cousins or their friends. It became a source of business and a megaphone for who I was as a person, not as a photographer because back then, I really wasn’t a photographer. I was struggling to become one.”
f/1.2 1/1250 320 ISO. ©Jasmine Star
If Star has hitched her wagon to her brand, social media is the road the pair travels. “I put myself on the Web every single day,” she reveals. “I’m constantly updating my Web site. I blog every single day. I’m updating Twitter a few times a day. I have a Facebook fan page with over 1500 people, and I want to make sure conversations are going on there.” She also dropped her maiden name for her middle name to help her brand. “Jasmine Star is my first and middle name. I think it works very well for the business.”
f/2.0 1/800 250 ISO. ©Jasmine Star
Star attended Whittier College and got a degree in Business Administration. Dating her future husband J.D. throughout her college years, they started the photography business together. As a gift, he would rent her time in darkroom when he could afford it. J.D. also bought her the first digital camera she owned in 2005. She now shoots entirely digitally. The two travel together and work weddings as a team. “He kind of stands in the background and puts on a 70 to 200mm lens, and he just shoots the day away,” she says. “I love his eye. It’s great. We balance each other.”
f/1.2 1/800 250 ISO. ©Jasmine Star
Shooting a Canon EOS 5D Mark II as her main body and a series of prime lenses, including a 15mm f/1.2, an EF 24mm f/1.4L II USM, and an EF 85mm f/1.2 II USM. She claims being forced to physically move toward and away from her subjects creates a level of connectivity with her clients which has helped define her style.
f/1.2 1/1600 200 ISO. ©Jasmine Star
Seeing herself as a photographer, and not a Photoshop artist, Star tries to achieve her goals in-camera before post-processing work begins. “Just because you can run an image through Lightroom, then process it through Photoshop, then add textures and add saturation, doesn’t mean you should,” she says. “I’m constantly looking for good light and constantly working on my exposures.” She tries to emulate film as much as possible while shooting.
f/1.2 1/800 100 ISO. ©Jasmine Star
Always aware of light, Star works with what she’s provided during daytime weddings. “I try to look for what I refer to as natural reflectors: a natural reflector coming from any sort of wall or gravel on the floor—any time I can find a reflective element that has any type of warmth. I’ll prefer to use a not‑so‑great location with amazing reflective light, versus a great location with mediocre light. A brick wall or terracotta walls or that kind of orangey-type of gravel on the floor that can still reflect sunlight and pop light back into my subjects face, I will move my clients to that light to kind of get that feel.”
f/1.2 1/2000 200 ISO. ©Jasmine Star
Despite calling herself “a natural light photographer,” Star is inevitably in situations where she needs to augment the sun. She mounts a Canon Speedlite 550EX on top of her camera, and uses a custom rig at the bottom of the camera for a PocketWizard Plus II. Star positions an off-camera flash to the side of the dance floor near the band or DJ. She’ll use this configuration, rarely moving the latter strobe throughout the night. “Because of our clientele and the price point we have, most of the time there’s uplighting in the room, and they have pin lighting and extensive setups,” she says, “so I don’t want to bring my flash all the way around the room. I just will keep the flash in one location.” Claiming most of her reception photos are shot on the dance floor, she simply works her way around the light source.
f/1.2 1/1600 100 ISO. ©Jasmine Star.
Shooting the way she does, Star’s workflow relies on off-camera flash mobility. “The PocketWizard provides the freedom for me to still stay true to my overall aesthetic without feeling shackled to the use of artificial light,” she explains. “I’ve had those little babies since the inception of my business. They’ve been with me since, gosh, 2007.”
Often asked about her custom hardware she uses for her PocketWizards, Star didn’t feel comfortable using Velcro, which was her first thought on how to jury rig what she envisioned. Walking into Samy’s Camera, she explained what she needed. It was built for her there, and she continues to use it faithfully. Asked exactly what kind of configuration they built her, she laughs. “I tell people I have no idea,” she says. “I just say, ‘the guys at Samy’s made it for me!'”
f/1.2 1/500 160 ISO. ©Jasmine Star
Star cites her ongoing connection with her clients as paramount to her success. “I wrote a post about the permission to be fabulous,” she says. “Sometimes girls don’t feel it’s okay to feel beautiful. Part of my job is to make them look beautiful, but in order for somebody to look beautiful, they have feel beautiful and fabulous. As a photographer, I wanted to make a point it’s so important to what we do to let people know, give them permission. As a female photographing another female, I want her to know that I’m not behind my camera judging her or thinking, ‘why is she doing that,’ or ‘what is she doing?’ I often tell my clients I want to create an arena where it is okay for you to feel beautiful and be fabulous. When they feel like that, all I have to do is simply capture them when they’re uninhibited. That is the mark of a true and beautiful picture.”
Jasmine Star Photography
Jasmine Star Blog
Jasmine Star on Twitter
Jasmine Star on Facebook
Written by Ron Egatz
Filed under: creative, digital, Plus II, PocketWizard, Wedding Photography | Tagged: Jasmine Star | 3 Comments »
PocketWizard Blog 