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Monday, January 31, 2011

Filed under: Market Served •Extreme •Nature •Sports •Stock •Travel •Products •Camera Support •

Panos made easy with BH55 PCL

Tom Bol | 01/31

Use the Really Right Stuff BH55 PCL Pano Head for easy panoramic images.

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I have been on the road the last three weeks shooting an assignment, and had a chance to use a new tripod head.  If you like to shoot panoramic images, then you should take a look at the Really Right Stuff BH55 PCL head. This tripod head has a fluid rotating head on top of the standard tripod platform. There is a bubble level on top. To use the head, simply level the tripod head using the bubble, then loosen the rotating head controlled by a small screw.  Then shoot your images giving about 30 percent overlap in each shot. Remember to keep things consistent with each image; no polarizers, adjusting exposure, changing apertures…you need consistent shots to merge in Photoshop. Using the head this way does not compensate for the nodal point, but RRS has a bracket for this as well.

Creating your panos in the computer couldn’t be easier.  Just put your images in a folder, and then select this folder in CS5 using the File-Automate-Photomerge feature.  I use the ‘auto’ setting and get great results.  No third party software needed.

An added bonus using this head is panning with video.  The rotating fluid top is very smooth, and gives you an option to pan with subjects using video or even shooting stills.  The only trick is they have to be moving level and in a straight line relative to the tripod or they will go out of the frame.

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Use gels on your flash for special effects.

Tom Bol | 05/11- 05:35 AM

Adding gels to your flash and changing white balance creates unique images.

I like to follow this principle.  “The more skills you have, the better your chances for success.”  I used to use this principle as a climbing instructor when teaching students rope systems.  Inevitably on some climb something wouldn’t go right, maybe a simple thing like getting a rope stuck.  The more rescue and climbing systems you knew, the better your chances of having a solution to fix the problem.
The same is true for photographers.  Every photographer has a story about a ‘photo shoot gone bad.’  Strobes don’t fire, talent doesn’t show up, permits aren’t in order.  What separates one photographer from another is how they deal with these situations.  Clients like photographers who have solutions, not problems.  Knowing more technical skills behind the camera also helps.  And one of my favorite things to do is add gels to flash to spice things up.

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Creative Use of High Speed Sync

Tom Bol | 04/29- 10:11 AM

Use high speed sync to add mood to your shot.

When most people think of high speed sync, they think fast shutter speeds and freezing the action.  True, shooting at 1/8000 with flash is going to freeze the action no matter what the main light source is illuminating the subject.  But what about other uses of high speed sync and flash.  Until the release of the Pocket Wizard Flex system and Hypersync (see my last post), I was often frustrated shooting in bright sun.  I needed an aperture of F16 to get the right exposure at 1/200, my fastest sync speed using my Elinchrom Rangers.  What if I wanted to use a wide open aperture like F2.8 to get soft focus and blur out the background?  The answer is use high speed sync for selective focus shots in bright, sunny conditions.  Maybe high speed sync should be called ‘soft focus sync.’

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