Lighting

With the immense popularity of online sales and auctions, the need to show off those goods to advantage becomes increasingly important. In fact, eBay (ebay.com), the most popular site for such activities, provides some basic tips, which focus on proper lighting and suitable backgrounds. While...

Soon after becoming really serious about your photography, something annoying begins to happen: you become increasingly critical of your results. You start comparing your photographs to those in magazines, and note that, esthetics aside, your...

I have always considered myself a pack and head guy. You know what I mean--big powerful studio flash generators, long cables, and fan-cooled light heads. Growing up I always thought of a pro photographer as the guy with the view camera...

The problem with making the right exposures in low light environments is that exposure meters, in-camera and hand held, are not particularly suited for the task. Light meters were designed to read subjects in normal daylight situations or in bright interiors. The meter will deliver a good exposure under these “normal” conditions, but low light photography is anything but normal. There is either a lack of light, many dark areas, very high contrast or all of these combined.

The biggest problem we face when using the built-in flash or even a small hotshoe mounted accessory flash for macro work is that a flash sits no more than 6 or 7” above the lens. This means it will illuminate the top of a subject, leaving the middle and bottom portions in shadow. There’s no way the light can be dispersed over the insect, small flower, feather or whatever you might be shooting because it doesn’t have enough distance to do that.

Metz has just launched the latest addition to its flash system lineup: the new Mecablitz 64 AF-1. Offering an impressive guide number of 64 (210 feet) at ISO 100/21˚, it has a large color touch display, an Automatic Flash mode with 12 f/stops, a Manual Flash mode with 25 partial light levels and a Remote TTL mode.

Many years ago when I opened my first studio, I visited another photographer who had been in business for many years. When I saw his camera room, I noticed he had a big "X" on the floor in a few...