I'll fix the teeth tonight in the real photograph, but you guys were
pressuring me into putting something up.... Actually, that one is
probably an outtake, anyway. There's better shots...
The handheld 600mm equivalent wasn't easy--I'd have preferred to been
using my monopod, but that gets into the flash situation.
The flash is the T45 fired into a LiteDOME XTC softbox. Because of
weight, I had it sitting on a monopod which was then controlled by my
VALS (Voice Actuated Light Stands--my daughters). The flash was
located about 3 meters away and at very slightly above head level.
(they're miffed that they didn't get paid for this--I said "stand in
line").
Exposure was deliberate. The background is somewhat blown out (yet is
fully recoverable in ACR conversion), but I did that to provide the
isolation and high-key image desired. Flash was then adjusted for
position and then tweaked for power. If I had lowered the exposure of
the background (ambient) the columns would have gone hockey on me (and
they did in other shots). The high-key approach was the best approach
even though I know it will drive the purists around here nuts.
The next sequence of images I moved a few feet to one side and had
another column partially obscuring her. I think I like those shots the
best, but we'll see what the publisher wants. The only problem with
those shots is the background columns are in sun, she's lit by flash
and reflected sunlight and the frontal column is in shade so it turned
a bit blue. About halfway through the day I wished I would have had
two or three more lights with me as I would have lit the columns
separately.
The majority of the pictures were taken with the 50mm F1.4 lens with a
polarizer on it to knock the brightness down. This way I was able to
shoot wide-open or nearly so while using my max sync speed of 1/160.
(I think the E-1 does go faster, but my wireless flash won't
consistantly make it). The combination of the lens with polarizer
wide-open on the E-1 gave some chromatic aberation, but the F2 and
F2.8 shots were clean as a whistle. I used F2 almost exclusively. Some
of the shots have telltail bokeh characteristics, but I did that on
purpose as sometimes the design of the bokeh works for the
composition.
I'm going to give another shout-out for the T45. Most of the time it
was running around 1/3 power but I did vary from full-power to 1/16
power depending on flash-subject distance. Some of the head-shots I
had the flash extremely close (just outside the frame) whereas other
times it was up to 5 meters away. I think I took a total of 267 shots,
all of which had the flash fire. Some of the shots (especially the
300mm shots) were run in burst mode where I'd fill the buffer. I don't
think there was more than once that the flash did not fire.
When shooting that 300mm+E1+grip combination I am reminded as to why I
so like that camera--it is SMOOOOOOOOTH. The E-1 has one of the
smoothest, most vibration-free (and quiet) shutters ever found in a
camera. The button is so smooth and gentle that you get no
finger-motion vibration either. The next day I took about a hundred
pictures at a church service using the Leica lens on the camera and it
was as completely unobtrusive as I could imagine.
A side-note on the Leica lens with the E-1/grip combination. That is
one seriously meaty looking camera configurations. It's big, it's
black, it's a "got camera?" camera. Simply incredible--and it's a bit
sharper and gives more effective resolution than the 14-54 ever did.
But for what it costs, it should...
AG
--
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