Equipment failure, and having backups #2.

I only recently finished writing a piece about equipment failure. My flash died at a shoot and fortunately I had a spare available for instant swapout. Only this week I read about a friend who had a bad thing happen, which I will pass on.

The issue relates to his Skyports used to trigger the flashes he uses. Well, he found them swimming in the sink one day. It turns our his little brother decided to see if they’d float. We never did find out the answer to that question, but we did find out that they aren’t waterproof.

We went through a selecion of ways to try to recover the Skyports, but nothing worked. They were deader than a dead thing.

In this instance, the insurance came in handy. Remember insurance? Yes, you do have some don’t you?
Well, they Skyports are being replaced with Pocket Wizards at some point very soon, all covered by the insurance policy. I believe the insurance costs my friend less than £150 for the year so this has easily covered the costs of replacing the Skyports that went for a swim.

Let me say this quickly and firmly: Get your equipment insured. End of Story. Nothing more to add.

Sony Vegas 8 and IE7. Error in script. Cannot start up.

I recently had need to use this application for the first time in a couple of weeks. When I tried to start Vegas 8, the application failed with an error:

Internet Explorer Script Error
Automation server can’t create object
file:///C:/Documents%20and%20Settings/Me/Local%20Settings/Temp/udat/upsell.htm
Do you want to continue running scripts on this page?

Quite annoying. I tried many things including restarting the machine, uninstalling and reinstalling Vegas, Manually deleting all registry keys for the program, nothing worked.

Since this error is related to some browser related issue, I reduced all security options in IE7 to their minimum, but this also failed to resolve the issue. Finally, I uninstalled IE7. Success!

Follow this link to find out how to uninstall IE7: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/927177
Of course, if you are afflicted with the problem called “Vista” you are pretty much screwed. There are NO visible patches or updates for this issue coming from Sony.

IE7 and IE8 are pretty much on us now, and we’ll struggle to be without them soon. Let’s just hope that these companies can get their act together and resolve the problems, before I switch to another application or platform.

Equipment failure, and having backups.

A couple of days ago I had a flash fail while at a photo shoot. I was half way through the shoot when a flash gave off a huge bang and puffs of smoke, this was fun to see, but not what I wanted! It was dead.

After looking at it in shock, disgust and general annoyance, I realised it needed replaced. Thankfully I had a spare flash of the exact same model so swapping out would be easy. A couple of minutes after the bang, we were back on the shoot.

This brings some things to mind.
Next time you are on a shoot, consider what items you are using and the impact you would have if any item was to fail? Do you have a spare; Camera, memory card, flash, tripod, light stand, radio trigger, batteries(!) or whatever.
Next consider the likelyhood of failure and the severity of the failure to your business. Now plan a system of backups, quickly.

Being stuck at a shoot without a camera would not be funny. Having backups can protect the shoot and more importantly your reputation within the industry.

As Sergeant Phil Esterhaus said “Hey, let’s be careful out there.”

The power of light.

I recently had a conversation with someone who just started photography recently. He saw I was using a flash on my camera (bounced off the ceiling) and was curious as to why I did this, rather than “just turn on the lights.” When told the answer, he dismissed it as a pointless exercise.  I needed evidence!

So here we are, the evidence. I took out a single flash and some AA batteries along with a pair of 500w halogen security lights (normally used in the studio for video work) and did some comparisons.

That image is taken using in a room lit with 1000w of halogen light. It was VERY bright and HOT in the room. As you see, I set the camera at settings that allowed a reasonable exposure of the scene.

I then set up a flash as the same location (1m from the scene by the way!) I adjusted the flash to a power level that got me a close match to the photo taken using the halogen lights. The camera was not adjusted in any way. The end result was a close picture match when the flash was as its 1/128th power level, which is as low as it can go.

As a comparison I adjusted the flash up to full power. This time I did need to adjust the camera to return the scene to being “properly exposed.” In actual fact, I could not expose the scene correctly as the flash was FAR too powerful. Even with the camera and lens closed down to allow in the minimum of light possible then scene was over exposed.

Now, to put this into context.
The halogen light was at 1000w of power, which is probably 10 times what a typical front room has. The flash was at 1/128th of its power capability to match this, showing that the flash is MUCH more powerful and capable of lighting a scene than any constant light.  In technical terms, the flash is around 6-7 stops more powerful than a 1000w halogen, or 10 stops more powerful than your typical room light. A stop is a “doubling of light” in basic photographic terms, which mean a typical flash on full power delivers nearly 1000 times the power of light you have in your living room.

All cameras need good light to get a good photo. Poor, or low light, will most often result in a poor photograph. There are ways to compensate for low light, but there are always losses as well as gains. Expect more noise in your photos or blurred scene. However you look at it, flashes are far superior to light bulbs.

(The photos for the examples are simple comparison shots, and are simply to demonstrate the power differences between the two sources.)

So funny. Rent a cop looks a fool.

This is a link to a video which related to the legality of taking photos and video in the USA. Here in the UK we are under very similar pressure to that of the USA. More and more locations with security guarding seem to make up rules to suit themselves, some allowing photography, some not.  Even the UK government recently got STUPID in London regarding the “See someone taking photos, report them to the Police” campaign.

Anyway, back to the link. Rent-a-cop stomps in and disturbs an interview and states “No camera, No video, it’s a rule.” Why so funny? Well the interview was with a chief of the company discussing on national TV that there are no rules stopping photography. A classic moment indeed!

Here’s that link. Funny Video at FOX DC News.

Canadian Immigration photos.

Recently I had a call from someone asking about “passport” style photos. I’d never considered this to be a challenging area for photography as it is all too simple to visit the local supermarket. A quick jump into one of those boxes gets you four passport photos, nice and easy.  Well, the Canadian immigration paperwork states a particular size requirement for the photo, minimum/maximum head size, a white background and the face centred on the photograph. So many rules, all of which are simple enough, but pretty much impossible to do in a supermarket photo-booth, Boothes mostly leave the background a grey shade (as required by our passport system) and offer no way to guarantee head size or centre location. To be even more awkward each person required ten images identical images; again, not possible in a booth.

We arrived at the clients house with our small portable studio (a simple background, a couple of portable flashes, stands, umbrellas and of course the cameras.) It took around 10 minutes to set-up and get everything where we wanted it.

Now to wait for the rest of the family to arrive.  In around 45 minutes we had the four members of the family photographed with a variety of frame settings to ensure we had the shot that fitted the immigration rules.

A quick trip back to the computers to process the images was followed by uploading the images to the printers. 36 hours later, I was holding the final photos and preparing to deliver them to the family.

All went well and the images were accepted by the immigration department. Another job done, quick simple and inexpensive.

Flickr introduces Video!

Today, Flickr introduced video to their site. This is causing some long time member to object strongly. Many believe the site will start to turn into another Youtube, which is in many peoples opinions, simply a dumping ground for illegally copied video and childish movies. I personally would not like to see this happening to Flickr. Flickr are restricting their video to “Pro” members so I suspect the termination of their account could be a good block to the uploading of illegal content. “Pro” members pay around £12/$25 a year for the Flickr service.

Photoshop Express realises its mistake.

I see that Adobe has now chosen to change their Terms and Conditions. Good thing. The relevant area now reads better (It’s copied below.) They reserve the rights to use your photos for any purpose (except for profit) while you have them as publically accessable on their site. So, make your photos private while they’re on the site to protect some of your rights, but not all.

The situation has improved, but not been resolved completely. I guess this is simply a case of another company setting up a “free photo space” for the purpose of getting access to millions of photos free. Will a company ever pay for a photo ever again?

I would still encourage users to not store photos on their site. Use the service for editing your photos as required, but pull them off-line afterwords.
6. Use of Your Content

This section hereby replaces Section 8(a) (“Use of Your Content”) of the General Terms.

1. By Adobe

Adobe does not claim ownership of Your Content. However, we do need certain rights from you, with respect to Your Content, in order to operate the Service and in order to enable you to do all the things this Service affords you the ability to do. Therefore, with respect to Your Content, you grant Adobe a worldwide (because the internet is global), royalty-free (meaning we do not owe you any money), nonexclusive (meaning you are free to license Your Content to others) fully sublicensable (so that we can permit our affiliates, subcontractors and agents to deliver the Service on our behalf) license to use, reproduce and modify Your Content solely for the purposes of operating the Service and enabling your use of the Service. With respect to Your Shared Content, you additionally grant Adobe the rights to distribute, publicly perform and publicly display Your Shared Content (in whole or in part) for the sole purposes of operating the Service and enabling your use of the Service and to sublicense Your Shared Content to Other Users subject to the limitations of Section 7 below. These limited licenses do not grant Adobe the right to sell or otherwise license Your Content or Your Shared Content on a stand alone basis. Further, you may terminate Adobe’s right to distribute, publicly perform and publicly display Your Shared Content by making it no longer shared. You may terminate the remainder of Adobe’s rights by removing Your Content from the Service. (Detailed instructions on how to do these things can be found at http://www.adobe.com/cfusion/webforums/forum/messageview.cfm?forumid=74& catid=684&threadid=1351324&enterthread=y). Upon removal of Your Content from the Service or upon making Your Shared Content no longer shared, Adobe shall have a reasonable time to cease use, distribution and/or display of Your Content. However, you acknowledge and agree that Adobe shall have the right to keep archived copies of Your Content.

Designing websites.

This isn’t really linked to photography however I thought I would add this for reference material. I found a couple of interesting web pages while searching around, looking for design hints for web sites.
19 Things NOT To Do When Building a Website
has an excellent list of “things not to do when building a web site”, funnily enough. The author talks about these areas and gives reasons why certain design features are a bad idea. If you are designing a web site or having someone design one for you, it’s an essential read.

A test photo.

I just realised that I have not uploaded any photos to the blog.

To fix this, and to check it all works OK, I though I would throw this one up. Charlie came to a recent shoot to try out for modeling.

Please feel free to leave comments and opinions on the photo. Ta.