April 19th, 2010 by Calvin Jung
I picked this bag up at 
this weekend. All I can say is, “why didn’t I buy this earlier!?” While there isn’t anything particularly special about this bag, it does what it’s intended to. Well, sort of. The TB stands for tripod bag. But I won’t tell if you don’t! 
It makes life so much easier. Instead of having to carry three separate light stands, I can throw this bag over my shoulder and free up two hands. This may sound trivial, but it saves at least once trip from the car to the location. This is certainly a justified purchase at only $25.
Pictured above is the bag with three (3) Impact 8′ air cushioned stands with attached umbrella brackets and two (2) Vivitar 285HVs (I probably won’t keep the Vivitars in there normally, I just wanted to see if they fit).
The bag’s dimensions are:
39 3/8″x6 1/4″x7 7/16″
***Excuse the iPhone pictures in the last couple posts!
April 19th, 2010 by Calvin Jung
UPS had a present waiting for me today! And to my surprise, it was my ABR800 ring flash! I ordered a 13′ light stand the day before I ordered the ABR800, but both items shipped the same day. The item that was scheduled to arrived today matched the weight of the light stand, not the ABR800. So I was expecting to come home to a light stand (not that I wouldn’t be excited about that, but this is just so much cooler!). But I’m not complaining!
No test pictures yet. In fact, I’m not even going to assemble it (there’s not much to assemble unless you want to put it on a stand/tripod) until I finish my paper on the American mass media (hurray for political science, not).
I should have some test shots this weekend, though! Can’t wait!!!
April 18th, 2010 by Calvin Jung
Had a chance to shoot with Amanda yesterday afternoon. It wasn’t planned and the weather conditions weren’t ideal, but we managed to make it work. Thanks to Josh Delgado for being a champ by assisting me on this last minute shoot!
It was a very bland overcast day, not one of those ideal dramatic ones. So I decided to start off in this hall at Balboa Park.
X1600 in a 30″x60″ softbox boomed camera right, 580ex camera left behind subject
A gentleman playing his saxophone was kind enough to jump in for a couple pictures.
X1600 in a 30″x60″ softbox boomed camera right @ Amanda, 580ex camera left @ the gentleman
X1600 boomed directly over Amanda
Josh, Amanda, and I having a little fun before packing up!
Same setup as the previous
April 18th, 2010 by Calvin Jung
It took me some time to realize how useful an external light meter is, but I finally picked one up – and boy am I glad I did!
Light meters tend to have a negative stigma attached to them. They are often seen as crutches – but who said crutches are bad? Crutch or not, a hand-held light meter proves to be useful for both ambient and flash lit photography.
Well, you might ask, “what’s wrong with my camera’s built in light meter?” The problem is inherent to all reflected-light meters, including the L-358 when used in reflected-light mode, which “attempt” to provide an exposure setting to make the scene appear as it were a middle gray. Reflected-light meters read the light reflected (duh) FROM the subject. Incident light meters read the light falling ON the subject.
If you use a reflected-light meter to measure the light reflecting from a snowy outdoor scene, the snow will appear gray in the resulting image if you use the reading as-is. What’s happening is a reflected-light meter (i.e. your camera) will mistake the light reflected off the snow as too bright and will try to compensate by underexposing the shot, resulting in gray snow. Alternatively, if you were measuring a very dark subject in the same light (a black cat in a coal bin, for example), the subject would appear gray in the resulting image. And the opposite applies here, the reflected-light meter sees it as too dark and will try to overexpose the shot, resulting in a gray cat & coal. In both cases, though, if you used an incident meter such as the L-358 with the white hemisphere mounted, both subjects mentioned above would essentially appear the way you see them in real life. Reflected-light meters are easily fooled into giving you an incorrect reading when the subject’s coloring or reflectivity are not equivalent to a mid-scale gray.
Too many folks think that their magical automatic cameras should do it all perfectly, and that just does not happen.
Using a camera’s meter in any of the automated modes (anything other than “M”) turns the metering decisions over to the camera. Even if you dial in Exposure Compensation (EC), the camera is still doing most of the “thinking” and can change its reading (and thus the exposure settings for an image) when you aim the camera at a different part of a scene which reflects a different amount of light back to the camera even though the light source is not changing. For example, if you are shooting a portrait in Av (aperture priority, a semi-automatic mode), then you will notice the shutter speed will likely vary slightly from shot to shot even though nothing has changed.
This all said, a reflected-light meter can be used essentially as a pseudo-incident meter if the meter is aimed exclusively at a target of known reflectance. 18% gray cards are a common and popular alternative.
Now, as far as flash photography goes, I find a flash meter (i.e. L-358) invaluable. Until now I have been using the “guess and tweak” method because the camera’s meter is totally useless for manual flash systems. A flash meter eliminates all the guesswork and chimping. You don’t have to fire test shots and tweak or trust the LCD on the back of your camera. If you shoot similar subjects in similar environments repeatedly, there is no doubt that you will develop a sense of what settings and ratios to use. However, I don’t think this necessarily makes you a good photographer – just an experienced one. If you ask me, understanding the use of a flash meter makes you a smart photographer. And if you use one correctly in a practical situation, I believe you will be less focused on trying to dial in the settings for a correct exposure and more focused on shooting your subject.
April 15th, 2010 by Calvin Jung
Not a big baseball fan myself, but I trolley’d down to Petco Park with fellow photographer Adot White to snap the Padres game – too bad they lost and I didn’t get any decent shots of them.
Anyway, here are a couple from the set.
April 14th, 2010 by Calvin Jung
I called in my order for Paul C. Buff’s ABR800 Ringflash this morning. Just had to share my excitement with you all.
It should arrive some time late next week!