Anyone who has ever been tormented by a mouse will enjoy this semi-OT field trip today. And besides, there was some pretty spiffy hi-speed remote TTL flash involved in photographing the capture. __________
Imagine that you are a mouse -- an "outdoor" mouse. Specifically, you are the mouse pictured in mid-air, at left.
You live in chilly northeast of the US, and it is winter time. So, naturally, you might try your luck at becoming an indoor mouse for the winter. Except that you happen to live next to the wrong house.
Specifically, you live just outside of the nice, warm house of Jim Clark, the inventor of the PocketWizard remotes. And Jim is hunkered down in "no sleep" mode, working round the clock to finalize the design and launch of the new Flex and Mini units.
Long story short: Pick a different house to invade next time, Mickey. __________
You Don't Tug On Superman's Cape...
Those of you of a certain age will know exactly the song that was running through my head as I was listening to Jim's mouse-catching story. Jim Croce is famous for the original, but the link is to an excellent cover by Fretkillr.
To be fair, the little guy was just trying to stay warm. Only he had no idea that his nocturnal habits coincided pretty closely with those of a night-owl engineer. Especially one that already was consumed by the technical challenges of intertwining the new breed of remotes into the communication between camera and flashes.
Were it me, I probably would have just used a typical mouse trap. Or maybe a .410 guage. High nine for effectiveness, but low sixes on the PETA approval scale.
Jim, being an engineer, is driven to far more elegant solutions. Which is also why you don't see me designing cutting edge radio remotes, either.
Using a light beam (correction: sound) trigger and a set of motor-driven wireless TTL flashes with PW Flexes, Jim set the bait and waited. Time after time, the mouse pulled off the heist before finally recording himself onto film (or, pixels.)
Editor's Note: The device was a WaveSensor, made by LPA.
Note the typical engineer's approach to bait -- just throw in some of everything and see what happens.
Remember, one of the cool things about the Flex/Mini is that it can crank wireless TTL at full speed -- up to 8 FPS. The pre-exposure communication burtsts do not have to happen, as the PW's hijack the communication between the camera and flashes.
Which is exactly made the above, 6-shot sequence possible. Jim just composited it into one frame for reference.
Then Design the Solution
Next, Jim set out to actually catch the mouse, "rather than just feed it," as he told me. And may I say that I love the walk-the-plank design of Jim's trap. It is humane (more so than mine woulda been) simple and it is darn-near foolproof.
And now that Jim had established the beam-tripper / wireless TTL sequence, he knew he could catch the little guy and catch him in a photo, too.
Here's the Wind-up...
• Mouse smells peanut butter. (Forget cheese -- they have a serious jones for peanut butter.)
• Mouse sees peanut butter out on nice, wide, safe ledge.
• Nice, wide ledge is in fact balanced to support only the peanut butter.
• Mouse heads for peanut butter, tips ledge.
• Ledge has conductive tape that starts the camera-firing sequence when it begins to tip. (Sorta like a low-tech version of the light beam device.)
• Mouse (hopefully) drops into large, kitchen trash can -- with wireless TTL flashes going off the entire time at full continuous speed. Schwing.
... And the Pitch:
My favorite part: The little guy's toes, stretching out to grab something -- anything -- on the way down. (Click the pic for bigger version.) And yes, the peanut butter did fall down into the trash can with him. Coulda been worse, right?
Five minutes later, cue the bone-crunching sound of a garbage disposal. Problem solved.
Kidding!
Actually, in addition to being a crack engineer Jim's pretty much of a softy, too. Which is why his worthy adversary is spending the remainder of the winter in this brand new condo, before being let out into the wild come spring.
Come to think of it, the mouse got cheese, raisins, cashews, peanuts and peanut butter, Not to mention a warm house with three squares a day through winter. Not such a bad deal, considering...
Trade Secret Cards, a new company based in California, approached me last fall with a pretty cool idea. They wanted to create a series of cards (think high-end baseball cards -- thick, glossy, etc.) but with an added twist.
That twist is where you come in. Hit the jump for the deets. __________
It's Not Me, It's You
They at first wanted to do a series of cards featuring my work, with a photo on front and some On-Assignment-style info and diagrams on the back.
"Boring, Sidney."
Anyone who reads the site sees my stuff all of the time. What can we do to add a little more cowbell?
What about the readers' stuff, we thought. The Strobist Reader Gallery boasts some of the coolest ALT_Lighting_Flash_Off-camera stuff around. That's who you'd wanna showcase.
So that's exactly what they did. Their very first series of cards comprises 24 images chosen from the reader gallery. They licensed the photos and interviewed the photogs about how the photos were made.
In the deck you'll find shots from people like auto-wunderkind Ken Brown, Danny Ngan, Joshua Targownik and others. In all, 24 flashes of inspiration from the coolest group of open-source lighting guys on the net -- you guys.
The stock is thick, the finish is glossy and the repro is art book quality. They used the Strobist name, and I wrote the forward. But beyond that the spotlight is on you.
FWIW, I am not tied to them financially. Didn't think it was appropriate, seeing as you guys did all of the work. (I knew I shoulda gotten that MBA.)
What's next for them? Maybe a deck on reading body language at a singles bar. Or a field guide to identifying zombies. Who knows. I just know we were first.
UPDATED March 22, 2009, to add latest user feedback on LP120 and YN460. See below. __________
At long last, there are finally a few lower-priced alternatives to cruising eBay for a used Nikon speedlight or forking over a few hundred bucks for a new flagship off-camera flash.
Hit the jump for all the deets on the new LumoPro 120, the Yong Nuo YN460 and the Cactus KF36. __________
Totally In Sync: The LumoPro LP120
So, what if someone came to us and asked what we should include -- and exclude -- on a hot-shoe flash designed for photographers who light?
That's exactly what happened with the new LumoPro LP120, which was commissioned by Midwest Photo in response to the vintage speedlight availability (or lack thereof) and recent Vivitar quality issues.
The LumoPro LP120 was designed specifically for off-camera lighting in the manual mode. The idea was for it to have everything you want -- and nothing you do not want to needlessly pay for.
Major props to Moishe at MPEX for taking on this project. None of the big manufacturers were willing to step up to the plate, so he did it himself.
Features:
• Standard bounce and 180/90 swivel.
• Manual zoom head (non-motorized -- similar in function to the 285.)
• Full manual adjustment down to 1/32 power, with no "missing" levels like the 285.
• Important: There is no auto or TTL capability on this flash.
• Power is said to be equivalent to a 285 -- GN 80 in the normal zoom position. (I have not tested this first hand yet.) It's juiced in the tele position, of course, at the expense of beam width. This number can be greatly affected by the flash's zoom setting and is an easy way to fudge the number. Always go apples to apples.
• Shoe is strong plastic and it is able to be replaced if it breaks.
• Two-year warranty.
• Now, the biggie: Four-way sync. It has a hot shoe, an external PC jack, a 1/8" jack and a built-in optical slave. I did get to test the slave and it rocks. A little directional, but that is good as it gives it added sensitivity. The flash head rotates independently of the slave, so you can aim to your best advantage. __________
The combination of slave and 2-way external sync jack make this one darn near universal. You only have to hard-sync one flash in a multi-flash setting (within reasonable distances) and that one flash can be synched with a hot-shoe based remote, a PC cord or a 1/8" cord. The slave worked just fine around corners indoors in my testing.
This is how I work almost all of the time with my SB-800's, now that I am usually the only photographer in the area when I am shooting. (In multi-photographer settings, you would still want to hardwire or PW everything.)
Price is $129.95, thanks to leaving off the auto and the TTL stuff. The first batch is shipping now from MPEX. Note that the various MPEX kits will henceforth include LP120's instead of Vivitar 285s. (You may be able to swap into a 285 -- I dunno. Don't know why anyone would want to, tho..)
Still unknown: Flash duration at various settings. Factory specs do not list it, and MPEX is looking for someone who can test it. If you are that person, check in on the discussion thread linked below.
UPDATE: Exactly as you would expect, full power flash duration is 1/1000th of a sec and goes down to 1/20,000th of a sec at 1/32nd power.
QnA, discussion and results from early adopters are already being thrown around on this dedicated Flickr thread.
(UPDATE) LP120 Feedback Coming In
The Lumopro LP120s seem to be generaly well-received but there are some reports coming back about switches and WA panels not lining up properly.
The flashes themselves are working fine, but the fit and finish reports are enough to where MPEX is inspecting every flash before it is shipped in a bid to spot any quality issues before they go out.
It's worth noting that MPEX is eating their own cooking on this one, as the flash does come with a 2-year warranty. And any feedback from users is appreciated and will be passed along to the manufacturers for the next run. It is worth the effort to get a standard flash that is both reliable and available.
The discussion thread is here. Please post your questions and/or observations, good or bad. The information is valuable in both cases. __________
The Cheap Date: Yong Nuo YN460
Second, and looking for all the world like an generic SB-800, is the Yong Nuo YN460. It is just coming into the retail pipeline and I got a chance to play with one last week at PMA.
It is small, and has a very slick-looking manual adjustment on the back -- just tap the button to add or subtract a stop of power, down to 1/64th power. It also has a built-in optical slave, which seems to be housed in the flash tube area. This is pretty dumb, IMO, as you cannot orient the slave in a different direction from the head.
The LP120, above, has the slave in the front so you can swivel the flash to catch another flash better -- independent of the direction the head is pointing.
But the YN460 is popping up for under $50 in some of the direct-to-retail Hong Kong shops, too, which is nothing to sneeze at.
Other things that irk me a little:
It looks like an SB-800 or maybe an SB-600 (and appears to take identical head-mounted accessories) but it is two stops less powerful than the SB-800, at least according to some early testing. Also a bummer -- no zoom for the head and no external sync. But if you use hot-shoe-based remotes, that last one is no biggie.
And I could live with that package if I were looking for a rock bottom manual flash. But more worrisome is the reported inconsistency in the output at the low ranges. Not my findings -- that was from an early adopter on the thread linked below. But at less than $50, you'll have to make that call for yourself.
Lotsa pix here, and a discussion thread (with retail sources) here.
(UPDATE) YN460 Feedback
The Yong Nuo YN460 seems to be experiencing rather more variability in build quality. Some people are getting good copies, and some people, like Dan Wang, are getting copies that they have dubbed, "The Demon Flash from Hell":
The YN460 thread is here. Please sound off with your experiences, good or bad. We wanna know. __________
Déjà vu All Over Again: The Cactus KF36
Waitaminnit. This one looks a little familar...
The Vivitar 285HV, once the go-to flash for off-camera manual enthusiasts, died a slow and painful death in the quality-control department. And in the end, Vivitar was bought by Sakar, leaving the (once) venerable flash's future in limbo. It has been revived by the same people who make the Cactus remotes, and rebranded as the Cactus KF36.
Same specs as the old Vivitar, but anybody's guess as to the build quality. Main specs: Bounce/zoom head (non-rotating) partial manual control (1/1, 1/2, 1/4 and 1/16 power -- no 1/8 for some insane reason. GN is 120, but that's in the 85mm zoom mode. (See above.)
It has an "auto" mode which can actually be very useful when hi-speed synching with a G9, etc. In the mixed-blessing dept., it has a proprietary (arrrrrrrrgh) sync jack.
For Pete's sake, people, put a PC or 1/8" mono jack in there. Seriously, the world is not going to come to you on this one. Sony Betamax -- white courtesy phone, please...
Again, quality is yet to be determined. Is it the old (really good) build quality from way back? It is the recent (bad) build quality from more recent times? Is it worse?
We will not know until real-world reports start to come in. If you decide to take one for the team, please report back in here, on the Flickr discussion thread.
The biggest thing going for the Cactus KF36 is the anywhere-friendly slippery-customs shipping policy of Gadget Infinity straight out of Hong Kong.
I'll give them this: They can get anything anywhere in the world pretty quickly, for way cheap.
My favorite "feature" listed on the KF36 product page, and I swear I am not making this up:
After visiting the four major LHC experiments at CERN (and a fun Saturday teaching) all that was left was to head to the Computer Center to make some photos.
You think you have archiving issues? You have no idea. More after the jump.
46,000,000,000,000,000 Bytes Can't Be Wrong
Forty six petabytes.
That's the current combined HD and tape storage attached to the large roomful of computers at the CERN Computer Center. Suffice to say, shooting everything in 16-bit RAW would not be a problem for them.
That storage (12PB of spinning hard disc space and another 34PB of robotically accessible tape storage) is what is needed to store and process the insane amounts of data that the LHC will throw off when it is up and running.
Basically, they first have to look at everything to see what is statistically likely to be able to be thrown away. At each of several computer screening processes down the line, the data is further culled in sort of a needle-in-a-haystack-to-the-Nth-degree process.
If they do it right, when they are done they will be left with strong evidence of the Higgs boson -- the Holy Grail of particle physics.
My hosts, Peter and Andras, said that they could use some new photos of the Computer Center. And since I happen to know a liiiittle bit about tape-drive mass storage back from my days as a proud owner of a Commodore 1530 Datasette tape drive, you gotta think I'm pretty well-suited for the job.
The robotic IBM tape drive seen at top was completely encased in a cabinet. There was a window at each end, and some small windows up top. There was some cool ambient (literally -- it was blue) floating around in there so I decided to go with it and gel the strobe with a CTB.
The CTB (tungsten-to-daylight conversion) gel is my favorite of the blues. It is natural looking, unlike some of the freaky blues that populate the sample books. It is also pretty efficient, not sucking up too much of the flash's light output. And last, it is easy to contrast with the corresponding CTO gels I keep with me all of the time.
We were not able to get inside the machines, which were running all of the time. That robotic head swoops around constantly at very high speed -- and high torque. As in deadly high torque if it catches you inside when it wants to do some tape hunting.
So, we could shoot through one of the end windows. But that would leave us with few options for lighting. We stuck an SB-800 with a CTB gel at the other end and originally aimed it away, at a nearby wall for a nice, clean light source. But Aaron suggested we try turning it around and firing it right into the innards of the machine. We tried it, and it looked better.
So, how do you expose for the inside of the machine? What power flash setting do you use?
It always comes down to solving your most important problem first. And my most important problem was to get some depth of field going, so more of those tapes would be in focus. The backlight would throw cool speculars off of them, so you want as many of them to read as possible. More power equals more depth of field.
Thus, first step is get some decent power into the flash. I set the SB-800 on 1/2 power, manual pop, and chimped the various apertures until it looked best. This is not rocket science here, right?
Next step: Balance the ambient. I have two sources to consider -- the inside lighting of the machine and the LED status light of the robotic head.
My flash power is set. My aperture is set. All that is left is to walk the shutter speed down -- 1/30, 1/15, 1/8, 1/4 -- until the LED and blue ambient start to look good.
A flash meter would be of little help to me in this shot. As soon as I get my arm in there with a Minolta Meter IVF, that thing would come to life, swoop in and lop it off, prolly.
But that's okay -- I have not used a flashmeter in years and still have two arms to prove it. You don't need a flashmeter. As long as you identify your primary problem to solve, that solution leads you to all of your other settings, one at a time, as described above.
Frankly, our biggest problem turned out to be the unpredictability of the positioning of the robotic head. It was about as uncooperative as your average three-year-old hyped up on a bowl of Frosted Flakes.
I wanted to light the head from the top with an amber-gelled second flash coming in from a top window. But the thing just would not cooperate, and we had to get upstairs to do the hard drives pretty soon. So we nixed the top light and went with a mix of backlit strobe and ambient interior lights.
Another Floor, Another Tunnel
Finished with the tape jukebox, we went upstairs to shoot the main computer room. The CERN guys are pretty good at assembling some serious processing power straight off of the rack, and this room is basically a ton of Linux boxes and hard drives strung together for massive processing and storage capabilities.
It was pretty awesome to spend time there -- rows and rows of racks and racks of computers and hard drives. With almost no place to hide a light.
Okay, so take a look at the top view of the shooting alley, which is essentially two enclosed rooms. There are glass doors at each end (which we opened) and a glass roof. And we do not have enough light to nuke the whole room, so we will have to use the ambient.
So, first problem is to tame the ambient. It is a (thankfully) consistent fluorescent environment. For our purposes, this ambient light will come in from the top.
Set the camera to FL balance. Move the WB adjustments around until it looks best. Then underexpose the room by about two stops. This is because we will use the ambient as fill lighting to carry the whole room.
Since we are shifting the white balance, we will have to gel the strobes to compensate. No problem there -- just green 'em up.
So, where to put the strobes?
The subject would be Andras, who actually wrote the drive burn-in program that was causing all of the blue lights to blink on and off. It was like being on the bridge of the Enterprise. Or maybe in 2001: A Space Odyssey. I love technology, but I could see myself at night being a tad creeped out by all of these computers, HDs and tape drives going nonstop all around me.
(Not that it bothered Peter, our co-host and CERN computer whiz, who had promptly fallen asleep on one of the tables when we were shooting the tape drive monster.)
So the juncture between the rooms was a logical place to hide the key light, which was greened and fired through an umbrella. That would do two things: Light Andras from camera back right, and paint a nice specular on the left rack as it reflected back to me.
I put it on 1/8 power and adjusted my aperture until it looked best. Each time I moved my aperture, I would also have to compensate with my shutter speed to keep that minus two stop ambient exposure dialed in.
So that was easy enough. Now wold come the hard part -- how to fill Andras and pick up some of the spiffy hardware with light at the same time?
Position-wise, we had few choices. The most obvious being right next to the shooting position.
I stuck a second, greened SB-800 right at my left side. Just a foot or so away. This would fill Andras and throw some speculars off of the cables and Linux boxes. But it would also nuke everything in the foreground.
That's easy enough to fix with a grid spot on the flash. Everything along the edges that is close is also at the wide part of the flash beam. So knocking that out with a grid allows us to push the light down the tunnel and keep it from nuking the near sides at the same time.
How did we choose our power setting? Easy -- we already had the aperture chosen by the key light. The shutter was chosen to set the ambient exposure at a couple of stops under. Since those do not change, we simply adjust the power of the nearby "fill" strobe until we get the look we want.
No rocket science, no flash meter. Just good 'ol chimping.
Now all that was left was to make sure to catch some of the blinking hard drive lights. No big secret there, either. Shoot lots of frames and go for the law of averages. Worked like a charm.
Two of the most common feedback items I have gotten at the one-day lighting seminars over the last few years has been the lack of a student shooting component, and a desire for a longer format.
So this year, I am teaching two, five-day shooting workshops being hosted by two separate organizations. The first will be for Paso Robles Workshops (4/27 - 5/1) in Paso Robles, CA. The second will be for Santa Fe Workshops (10/18 - 10/25) at their San Miguel d"Allende campus in Mexico.
Registration for Paso Robles (almost exactly between LA and SF) is now open. Hit the jump for more info. __________
Wait, How Much?
Normally, I teach in a single-day, larger class format, the tuition for which is $159. But for Paso Robles, with the smaller class size (15 max) longer format (five-day) and overhead (models, food, location, logistical support, etc.) the tuition basically gets a zero added to it.
This is the hardest thing to rationalize for me, as my goal is always to make the process as economically efficient as possible. I will admit to being a little conflicted about it, too. But some people value a more intense, low class-size environment -- and the ability to immediately be working through new techniques. So, I am going to give it a spin (two spins, actually) and see how it goes. Paso Robles and SFW are the only 5-day lighting workshops I have planned for as far as I can see. So if you are interested in that format, those are the options.
Not that I am going all high end from here on out, 'cause I'm not. At the other end of the scale I am working on a project for next year that will take the current seminar costs down an order of magnitude, too. More on that later.
In a nutshell here is my most important thought on this workshop with respect to the price, and I am dead serious about this: If this workshop is a real stretch for you, money-wise, you shouldn't do it. Keep your powder dry for other things, and make use of all that the internet has to offer in terms of free info. Do meetups with other local lighting folks and leverage the peer-to-peer thing for all you can.
But even if that kind of money is no big thing for you, you still have a right to know what to expect.
No, This Doesn't Mean Long Pants
I was lucky enough to be a participant in the second Eddie Adams Workshop way back in the late '80s. So I understand how valuable an intense week of learning and shooting can be.
Not that I will compare this week to an EAW, 'cause I can't. That's basically like being plugged into the Photo Borg Collective. They say that if your head doesn't explode, it'll take five years of mistakes off of your career. My head didn't explode (came close) and that week has paid be benefits ever since.
So I am going to rationalize the price this way. First, we are going to go hard. Don't show up here looking for a nice, easy week.
Two, when we shoot we will work in small teams, and there will be a little competing involved. This is straight EAW influence, as it balances the shared learning concept with the little kick in the pants that competition can bring. Even more than the memory of being an EAW '89 member is my memory of being a Team Purple EAW '89 member. Those of you who are alums know exactly what I am talking about.
Three, as an offshoot of the above, this will not be a 1:15 teacher-to-student ratio. This will be a 16x16 network. Every person there will bring a different perspective, and I expect to learn things from each one of you just as I hope you will each learn things from me and each other. No one holds back.
The flash workshop will be taught in manual mode. If you are a TTL shooter, that's just fine. But working in manual gets us away from the specifics of brand and makes things far more universal. If you are a Nikon CLS guy, you will most definitely want to go with Joe McNally's workshop the week before at the same location. Joe will be going full-bore CLS, and there is no one better to learn that method of lighting from anywhere on the planet.
We will at first be looking at photos, talking and demo'ing light. Next, you will be shooting each other. Granted, some the subjects will be butt ugly (one of you will likely get the short straw and have to shoot me) but we will get some quick experience on both sides of the lens. Nothing helps your bedside manner as a photographer WRT subject interaction better than having the gun pointed at you occasionally. It's no coincidence that many photographers are uncomfy in front of a lens. Being in the hot seat will make you better behind the camera.
Next we'll be photographing models on location. You'll be rotating through roles as shooter, grip and assistant for each assignment. That way you'll not only be picking up tips on how other people are working, but be able to work with a support staff typical of a normal assignment. To the extent possible, your shooting level and your brand of gear will be taken into account so that you can learn from and/or pool gear with each other.
After shoots we will be editing, critiquing and working through some minor post processing, although the latter will not be stressed too much.
Lunches will be provided, and we will have a dinner together at the end of the week. I'm thinking there will probably be a visit or two to a local watering hole, too.
Couple Final Things
First, the "novice+ to intermediate" skill level.
We will hit some basic principles early in the week to make sure someone does not go through the whole process feeling like they are behind the eight ball. We won't be leaving anyone behind because we have the time and small class size to do it right. But if you are a been-there, done-that pro at this stuff, you'll probably resent the other 15 of us by the end of day two. And I really do not want anyone feeling short-changed on the week.
Second, we are going to leave it all on the field. So don't come here looking for a vacation. We'll have fun but you will work hard. ___________
• Remember Blair Bunting? (Rembrandt Lighting: NOT.) While it is always a good idea to let Blair photograph your hot ride, think twice about ever letting him drive it. (Scroll down.)
• Joey Lawrence, fresh back from Africa, had a great (if a bit NSFW-ish) post on Scott Kelby's blog. If you want to read more, Joey has several epic, travelog-style posts on his blog. (Scroll down.) Very much worth a read. It has me wondering what in the world he will do next.
• From the Cobblers-Kids-Have-No-Shoes-Department: Photographer Eddie Roman filmed his own commercial. What a great idea. Here we are, visual peeps, with tons of free video distribution platforms, and how many people have thought to do this?
• So, what do you do after you have nailed your post production skills to the point of perfections? Scott (Chase Jarvis' go-to post guy) has an idea: Embrace imperfection.
* And finally -- two absolute, "must-sees" for photographers:
IMPORTANT UPDATE: I was remiss in not including the following link as a public service. If you are concerned about the safety of the Large Hadron Collider at CERN, you can always check this site for the latest status on any catastrophic, earth-engulfing side effects. __________
The folks at CERN like to say that the smaller the object, the bigger the detector you need to see it.
If you want to study a bug, you use a loupe. If you want to study bacteria, you use a microscope. If you want study subatomic particles, you use a proton accelerator that is 27 kilometers around and has detectors that are as much as eight stories tall.
Fortunately, that's exactly what they have hanging around at the Large Hadron Collider at CERN near Geneva, Switzerland. And that's where I was last week, to shoot some photos and teach a workshop.
Reader's Digest version: Best. Trip. Ever.
And suffice to say that, for a while at least, it is gonna be pretty hard to impress me with your run-of-the-mill photographic background.
Would You Like to Come to CERN?
"What would it take to get you to come to CERN to teach?" asked the email. It was from reader Peter Kelemen, who manages computer storage at the research consortium.
He only had to ask. The LHC is perhaps assuredly the most interesting place on (or rather, in) the planet when it comes to tech.
I was traveling with my friend Aaron D'Souza, which was a good thing. He actually understands this particle physics stuff. And he can very effectively translate it into the monosyllabic grunts that comprise my vocabulary on the subject, too.
It worked like this: I would ask him a question, he would know exactly what I was asking, and then take a moment to see just how far down into layman's terms he needed to dip to where I could understand him.
If I did understand it, or even a small part of it, that was considered a significant linguistic victory for both of us.
So, after blasting through our jet lag with the help of a little Five-Hour Energy, we arrived at CERN ready to see how the secrets of the universe would be unlocked. I would get to some of the people there, using the experiments as a backdrop.
Our guide on the first experiment, ATLAS, was Doris, who is a computer whiz specializing in data acquisition. Doris is to data acquisition as to Bill Gates is to wealth acquisition. Except for Bill is a few orders of magnitude behind her.
ATLAS is ginormous. Humongous. Frickin' BIG. You ride an elevator 100 meters down into the planet. The detector itself is 25 meters tall and 46 meters long. It weighs as much as a hundred 747 jets and will create nearly ten terabytes of data a day when up and running.
That last part is where Doris comes in. (And you think you have information overload.)
ATLAS is a beautifully symmetrical behemoth that would look right at home on the set of Stargate, except that it is quite real. It has huge, toroid magnets and muon detectors and, well, let's just say that a flux capacitor would not even raise an eyebrow in this joint.
And it is all covered in dark metal now, with only one half being visible at one time. On top of that, our access to the cavernous room is limited to a series of narrow walkways around the sides. So after a few minutes of cursing the photo gods under my breath (en francais, of course) I finally reached the conclusion that the only way to shoot from our vantage point would be in tight, with a wideangle lens.
I am sorry, but one simply cannot do justice to Doris' s classic cheekbones with a close-in wideangle lens. So we changed lanes and brought Xavier, a security officer, into service as a subject. Xavier has a smiling exterior but inside he is all business. You will remain safe under his watch.
He even carries an iPod-sized cumulative radiation sensor, to make sure none of those subatomic particles are doing bad things to him -- or you. I am telling you, CERN peeps get all the cool toys.
In any case, an in-your-face wideangle portrait with a little attitude of Xavier makes a lot more sense.
As you can see in this setup shot by Peter Kelemen, we had about zero vertical space in which to light and shoot. For clarification, I define vertical space as the depth of a photo. Which is to say, how much space do I have between my main light and subject, subject to background, etc.
Oh sure, we had literal vertical space out the wazoo here in the ATLAS cavern (they actually call it a cavern) but my shooting environment was composed entirely of the narrow walkway you see here. That's about three feet of front-to-back for Xavier, the lighting, and my lard butt.
Key is an umbrella at camera left in real tight in this setup shot by Aaron. It is being held by possibly the most overqualified voice-activated lightstand in the history of the planet. Fons plays a computer the way Yo-Yo Ma plays a cello. Except for Fons uses way, way more notes.
BTW, you tinfoil hats types will appreciate the info I got from Fons regarding the theory that CERN will produce a black hole that will destroy us all. Short answer is, um, yeah, the LHC actually will produce rather a lot of black holes. But they are tiny and not sustainable. So don't go maxing those credit cards out just yet, as Fons assures me that the LHC will not get you out of your obligation to pay them off.
Fons also introduced me to some new gastronomic delights on our trip, the first being jellyfish. (Verdict: Like eating thick rubber bands, only it eventually snaps in two after a good bit of chewing.)
Dish number two was horse steak.
Yeah, I know. But Fons is very allergic to horses, and in the CERN cafeteria he goes by the motto, "Don't get mad -- get even."
He was kind enough to let me try a piece, as I would never have taken the whole plunge on my own. (Verdict: Surprisingly delicious.)
Sorry, Emily. I know you love to ride them and pet them, and I promise to stay away from your trusty Nirvana with my knife and fork. But suffice to say that you and daddy both share a love for horses. Sort of.
Back to the setup shot. In addition to the key light above, you can see our background light. It is crammed into the same railing about 15 feet away and aimed at the ATLAS shrouding. We are not lighting the dark metal cover so much as bouncing some reflections off of it. There is a CTB gel on the flash, too, for a cool color key.
Unseen in the other direction was our fill light for Xavier coming from about 30 feet away (and one story up) at camera right (that's your left as you are looking into the camera). This gets me light on both sides of Xavier's face within our tight space constraints.
We decided to flip on Xavier's head lamp to add a little pop to the photo, too. If there are interesting ambient lights inside the frame, I will always turn them on if only to check to see how they look. In this case, we went with it.
The photo was lit mostly by flash, with the ambient dial down about three stops.
The "Compact" Muon Solenoid
Later that day we got to visit the CMS, which I suspect is the biggest "compact" anything on the entire planet. Michael, seen in the pic at the top of the post, is a damn good photographer in his own right and was our guide for the visit.
He had some stunning photos on the wall that were there to help to educate the King of Belgium, who came through the CMS shortly before we did. Michael showed us a cool little trick by firing his pop-up flash into the mouth of the giant sensor and illuminating the reflective stickers used to measure if the machine shifts during operation.
I liked the effect, and also noticed that if you fired a direct light into the cavity it tended to bounce around on the metal surfaces and come out looking as if it had come from several angles at once. Given we could not get into there to light it, that would help us out a lot.
We set the camera to underexpose the environment by a couple of stops to use the ambient as fill. (You can't easily light something that big and complex with a couple of small speedlights, so you let the ambient help you out.)
In each of the experiments, that was our strategy -- let the ambient do the heavy lifting, suppress it a little, and highlight areas and people with flash.
As you can see in this setup shot by Aaron, we did it all with an umbrella and two small flashes. And a very sexy subject, too. (Easy there, Michael -- I am talking about the CMS.)
The umbrella lights Michael from a second walkway, and also lights the railing for some context. If you look carefully (or click through) you can see a Justin-clamped flash on the walkway behind Michael's feet which fires into the mouth of the CMS.
The power levels were surprisingly economical -- 1/16th on the key and either 1/4 or 1/8 (can't remember) on the CMS light. Huge areas, but dark. Don't try to nuke them. Expose for them (a little under) and finesse the ambient. __________
The next day we toured The LHCb experiment, shooting Niko in a nightmarishly sodium vapor cavern. That is a long post unto itself, so I won't stretch you out any more here today. Did a little french cursing under my breath there, too. Big room full of sodium vapors to fix. But the LHCb looked like a big, beautiful view camera.
Also, Fons took us to see ALICE, the fourth Experiment on our tour. We threw every light we had at here and she still remained dark and moody.
The very best vantage points for the detectors are pretty much gone now, as the beam pipe (which contains the protons and lead particles used for the various experiments) has been installed. But when they were building the detectors it was possible to see them from a proton's eye view. And some amazing images were made from that concentric viewpoint.
Some of the most beautiful ones were made by CERN's own Max Bryce, and for a tech geek it is practically a religious experience to view them.
At one point on the tour Max muttered some kind of half apology about making some of the shots with just an old Nikon D1X.
Yeah, well, I shot for quite a while with a D1X, too, and I never made a photo anywhere near as cool as some of the ones Max made. The machines are awesome now, but to totally appreciate their beauty you have to see them without their clothes on. You can see many of the early construction shots in a beautiful page done by The Big Picture, here. __________
Rapping it Up
Last but not least, if you have five minutes I recommend the video embedded below. It totally passes muster with the CERN folks for accuracy -- and does it with style. And for a more thorough tour (with lotsa cool links) of the experiments we visited, check out Aaron's post.
Imagine that you are a mouse -- an "outdoor" mouse. Specifically, you are the mouse pictured in mid-air, at left.
