[ratpack] Re: First shoot of the year (and a little issue with Canon service)
- From: "Jim" <jdos@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: <ratpack@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Fri, 15 Jan 2010 22:29:19 -0600
Nice report and explantions... thanks !
<G>
-----Original Message-----
From: ratpack-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx [mailto:ratpack-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx] On
Behalf Of Ray Buck
Sent: Friday, January 15, 2010 8:19 PM
To: ratpack@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: [ratpack] First shoot of the year (and a little issue with Canon
service)
I shot the Auto Expo today. I talked my way into a media pass (I'd
exchanged email with a guy previously and he told me who to see, but
I had to convince her...and I did. I ended up with a badge that said
"Ray the Rat" <G>) and started shooting before the Mongol Hordes
descended on the place. For those in Utah, I'll mention that it was
the South Towne Expo Center. I've shot shows there before...maybe 4
or 5 times. I've hated it because of the guard rails, crowds and
mostly the lighting. I decided to do things a little differently this time.
First of all, after a couple of shots, I decide that I wouldn't shoot
any white, silver or pewter-colored cars...and very few black
ones....well, very few. That made it like shooting wildflowers in a
meadow. The red, blue, yellow and orange cars were bright spots
interspersed among the jellybean lookalikes.
I used the 7D, the Sigma 17-70 f2.8, the 430 Speeedlite and a
tripod. I also used (mostly) a Sto-Fen diffuser for the
flash. Getting there early helped avoid the crowds for...well, to a
great extent. I don't think I'll be going back Saturday afternoon
when the place is crawling with untamed house apes.
As far as the guard rails, I did my best to adjust the height or
angle of the camera to minimize their intrusion. That left the lights.
In the past, the glare from a million different light sources gave me
fits. I could edit some of 'em out, but I still had a hell of a time
with 'em. This time, I decided to try making the lights work for me
instead of against me. I can't say I was 100 percent successful, but
not bad. A lot better than before. The diffuser on the flash helped
a lot too. Mainly I tried to integrate the pattern of the lighting
into the photo to draw the eye to the car or highlight one thing or
another on the cars. I'll have to find a good example of that to
post. I found that using the diffuser on the flash at a 45 degree
angle (sometimes 60 degrees) worked the best for most shots.
That's another thing. I tried to minimize the number of shots I
took, as well as minimize the amount of post-processing (leveling,
cropping, etc) so that I could just resize, add a watermark and save
the shot for use on the web. One shot, one kill sorta thing.
And another: I used long exposures without the flash (or some with
it, as well as a long exposure.) I found that between 6 and 20
seconds turned people into something that looked like dust clouds or
didn't show at all. I'd done this a year ago, but it's kinda hard to
do on a monopod. The attached shot of a Hyundai Genesis shows a
blurry figure looking at the spec sheet. It's just a shot that I
found as a quick example.
One more: I played with different exposure times on a Lincoln
Explorer clone...whatever they are. MKT is the model. A
crossover...or cross-eyed or something. I'm not sure if the shot I
attached worked or not. It might be like some that Paul's done by
blowing 'em up to 20x30. I'll try an 11x14 and see what happens.
As a summation of all of this, I'm pretty pleased with the way things
turned out. I'll have something on my server soon.
Last but certainly not least, I came home to find an email from the
Canon Repair Center telling me that it would cost $124 to repair the
broken lens lock on the 18-200mm lens. I did my best to explain that
it wasn't the result of mis-use, but rather an engineering defect,
since I'm certainly not the only one to report this...there are
several on Canon's own site stating it. All I could get was a 20
percent reduction in the charge. This one ain't over. I'm gonna
write a rather scathing review of the product wherever I can and then
forward the links to Canon, with hopes of getting the email to
someone other than a gatekeeper who'd just delete it and forget about
it. This ain't right. It's a lousy design; a cheap piece of plastic
and their attitude was, "we only warrantee factory defects." Stay tuned.
RtR
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