T-Day Speedlinks
If you are a turkey, today is a good day get out of town. Horrible, unspeakable things are happening to your kind on Thanksgiving Day here in the US. I shot this guy in the woods of Northern Virginia, while doing a story on turkey hunters. Came by me at about 40MPH. Being a sports photographer really helps in a situation like that.
Most people in the US don't hunt them -- they just go down to the grocery store for theirs. My mouth is starting to water just thinking about later today.
Have a happy and safe Thanksgiving. And after you are done feeding your face, don't forget about the big plate of speedlinks for dessert, after the jump...
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• Pixsylated has been on a tear lately, with this high-speed sync tute, and an in-depth field test of the RadioPopper RP-1's.
• If you have a teenage daughter, you probably know about Twilight, the juggernaut book series and new teen flick. Wanna guess who shot the movie posters? (We interviewed him a ways back, here.)
• How much work does it take to be a success in microstock? Way more than you probably think.
• As a result of user feedback, MPEX's Strobist Kits have been updated. Out: Batteries and chargers (which you can get just about anywhere.) In: White shoot-thru's and kit cases.
• Guinness Book of World Records, white courtesy phone please: Peter Emmett tests out the entire Rosco sample pack. Words fail me.
• From Malaysia, a new modular speedlight modifier kit.
• Not lighting, but the best reminder in a long time to always buckle up: A Nikon D3 sequence of a speedboat drag racing 200 MPH crash sequence, courtesy Mark Rebilas. (Scroll down for the good stuff.)
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by David, at 12:00 AM.
28 Comments:
Oh man, David - I wish you hadna gone'n dun that! :)
Peter Emmett is a legend for posting those pics. The time and effort involved is astounding, but SUCH a useful resource.
Makes you wonder why the manufacturers don't do this!
Now I want an entire set of gels... dang it! For a site that is supposed to be about low budget lighting - Strobist sure has cost me a lotta money!
Keep up the great work, David, and happy T-day. :)
Cheers,
Matt
wow, testing all those rosco gels! insane
While it's true that it's "harder than you think" to be successful in micro, pointing to arcurs.com is a bit overboard. Keep in mind when reading his site that Yuri doesn't qualify as "successful." He qualifies as "the most wildly successful microstocker on the planet today." Being successful can mean anything from making enough to pay for a couple of new kit items next year to bringing in the million USD Yuri's going to do in '08.
Thank you, thank you, thank you MPEX. I've been umming and arrring about getting a strobist kits cos they had stuff I needed and stuff I didn't.
Nothing holding me back now!
Howdy Mr. Hobby -
This really isn't the best place to ask, but I'm at the end of my rope. I've filled up my hard drives and it is time to stop living by the skin of my teeth - I need to transition to storing my photos in a method where a hard drive failure doesn't make me decide to stop being a photographer. In case of non-digital catastrophe I'll lose all the negatives too and consider myself in league with all those greats who have had studio fires and floods.
I thought I knew what I wanted (RAID, eSATA, USB2) but after days of reading I'm unsure. Most other photographers I know have a stack of unwieldy Lacie drives that they mirror manually. I just don't trust myself with that. Anyways, this isn't a lighting question, and I don't expect a post about it, but I've checked the Strobist forums and I haven't read any posts that either jive with what I'm searching for or come from anyone I trust.
I guess what I'm asking is can you just give a quick rundown on your personal storage solution?
Thanks,
Rob Fitz
That speedlight modifier kit looks interesting - anyone tried it?
For Nikon shooters, here is a link to a YouTube tutorial on "Auto FP", Nikon's version of high speed synch:
WOW! Those Peter Emmett shots are just awesome!
A superbe visual mosaic of the gels. Just love it!
I notice Yuri Arcurs is using your flavour of the month on axis fill in his studio work in the form of an overhead softbox :)
The sad part of me doing those gel shots is that I still have another 180+ to go!
But the saddest part is that I actually enjoy doing it - that's the reason for the slight insane smile!
So 6 hours down and 6 more to go. I need to go now I think I hear the marriage counselor at the front door!
Cheers/Peter
As always, thanks for the great info, and have a Happy Thanksgiving DH!!
David,
I have been reading your blogs and visiting your site for a few months now. Being Thanksgiving may make it an appropriate time to tell you how many times I was inspired, educated, entertained, refreshed...and so on, reading your blogs and studying the tutorials. They are helping and inspiring me to turn a hobby into a business.
Thank you very much for hosting such an inspiring blog.
Cheers, Arpad
@Rob Fitz,
The whole process you are referring to is called DAM (digital asset management). The best source of information for this can be found at damuseful.com
I suggest reading "The DAM Book written by the Peter Krogh which answers in great detail all your workflow and storage questions.
Tony S.
Rob, my suggestion would be to call the guys at Other World Computing http://www.macsales.com. The external drives they sell work with either mac or windows computers and they build them in house with quality and tested drives. That means they plug it in a use it before they send it out to make sure it works.
They have a very nice external plug and play mirror RAID unit called the Guardian Maximus, that plus another standard external of the same size for off site backup should keep you pretty well covered. That way you have your photos on 3 different drive in 2 different file structures. A mirror raid doesn't prevent accidental deletion, the separate file structure does. :) And if you have a drive failure you still have your stuff on 2 drives.
A more expensive solution would be a RAID 5 device, but again... you need that off site backup to prevent accidental deletion.
Or you can purchase a RAID control card for your computer and if you have extra drive bays set up an internal RAID.
I know I just added a bunch of confusing crap to the pile, but seriously, call those guys at OWC. They know what is available and what works well and what doesn't.
David, If you get a chance will you check these out to see if they are any good. http://www.adstudiosolutions.com/Products.html
and
http://dstudiosolutions.blogspot.com/
Debbi
weee, speedlight pro kit looks cool! thx for link.
have you tried the viewfinder photo kit maybe?
http://www.viewfinderphotography.co.uk/product.php?cid=134
Photography aside...Happy Thanksgiving to my neighbours (with a "u") south of the border.
-P
Thanks for the speedlinks Dave! Strobist for life....
Cool stuff as always thanks for sharing.
@Rob Fitz
FWIW, 2 DVD backups in separate locations, 2 hardrives, and on the PC. As memory prices continue to hopefully come down, this should only get easier. Hope this helps.
Happy Thanksgiving! Turkeys are really wanted.
Nice shots!
Hi David,
I'm Sam from speedlight pro kits, on behalf of our management team in KL, Malaysia; we would like to thank you for linking us to your site!
Sincere thanks!
wireless trigger and walkie-talkies.
http://robertbenson.com/blog/archives/860
So that's who it is!
I always like the Twilight posters, thanks for linking the photog! As much as I loathe emo-vamp-chick-lit, the promo images are pretty slick. He's got a great style. Nice to see someone so young so deep in the advertising world.
_Nathanael
http://www.flickr.com/groups/strobist/discuss/72157601335034685/ leads to another Rosco Gel demo site by Bill Poff. 137 over there.
That post about the rosco gels is great. Unfortunately my local lighting shop only stocks the Lee filter books. Luckily I found this link to a cross reference chart for Lee to Rosco numbers.
http://www.rosco.com/australia/technotes/filters/lee_equiv.asp
The link to the Speedlite Pro Kit still doesn't work for me, I think your recommendation must have bombed them out of all their bandwidth, but I've googled around and it seems interesting enough. They should sell their stuff separately though, since it's only the grids I'm after, and it would be completely daft to buy two kits just for the grids and then have double the amount of unused snoots.
So I'm still leaning more towards the Honl grids, which come cheaper at 30 euros a piece
Martha:
I've got the Viewfinder Speedlite Snoot and it works pretty well and looks professional as it's pretty solid.
I really want to try the reflector dishes but I can't justify their price tag for a piece of tupperware.
I wanted to know the highest speed sync on a D300 with a sb800 off camera using PW`s... I already know you can go all the way up with the sb800 on camera, but no info at all using it off camera and with PW!!
thanks
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