The Reunion Dinner

The reunion dinner on the CNY eve is a very important dinner for a family. All family member will have to make their way back to home to re-unite with the rest of the family member. It is the time where everyone update their latest happening in their life; from work to love, from health to wealth.

It's our tradition to have steam boat for our re-union dinner. Why steam boat? Since we are living in such a hot and humid country? The reason why steam boat is chosen is beyond my understanding, but I reckon that preparing steamboat is much easier, and of course it's healthier. :D

This dinner is so important so I wish to keep a photo record of such reunion dinner. Photographing a dinner event under yellowish bulb condition would be a nightmare to me. The only light source available in the room is a ceiling hanging yellowish bulb. Low light means I have to bump up my ISO and shooting at very low shutter speed. Yellowish bulb means I have to custom set my WB.

Slow shutter speed means I have big chance to capture ghosting effect. Wrong setting means I'd have a very yellowish skin tone and everything would look "hot"!

I've read how to light in a big room in strobist's Christmas Game Plan. I was sceptical about Dave's way of lighting his living room with two flashes. Since I have a reunion dinner event to shoot, why not give it a try.

I was depending on my memory about the settings and where to set my flashes. All I remember was to position my flashes across the area where I was shooting the event.

With my light stand, I mounted my two F42 flashes position in such a way that the flashes are aiming to each other, but slightly pointed upward toward the ceiling.

A test shot as can be seen in the photo on the left, you can see a single flash could actually light up the whole dinning room ! With the flash at the same position, I could have "side lightings". Cool, eh ?

I adopt how strobist explained where to position his flashes. During the dinner event, I put my flashes as shown in the sketch on the left. Flash A was set to a corner near our dining table, and another flash B, position almost opposite to flash A as shown. Both flashes were pointing upward onto the ceiling.

Both flashes were fired wirelessly using my A700's onboard WL function.

Wait a minute, don't we need the sight of light to trigger the flashes? Strangely I do not need so. I could able to trigger the flash even it's behind me. Well, I guess the flash pulse from A700 is strong enough to fill up the whole dinning room.

So, how's the result ?

That's my mother hugging my son, Ee Young with my father in the foreground munching a shrimp. Base on my father's expression, I am sure that the shrimp must be pretty tough to chew.

Well, pretty good for my own standard. With two flashes nuking the dinning room, I could capture everything with high shutter speed at 1/250th of a sec without worrying of blur image because of hand shaking.

In the photo on the left, flash B has become the main light where flash A has become the hair light. Cool, eh !

A very important aspect to look into would be the colour of the ceiling that I am going to bounce. I do find the due to some yellowish ceiling colour, all my photos are hotter that it should be. However, it's easily corrected in post processing.

Later on, after the dinner, we hang out in the living room. Similar lighting set-up for the living room with different flash location as shown in the sketch on the left.

I moved my flash A to the new location as shown. This time, the flash was pointing to the nearest wall so the flash could bounce from the wall hence creating a wide broad directional light coming from side. A soft box effect so to speak.

Flash B was a main fill flash during the dinner event, but it became a back fill light in the living room. This is because most of the time our activity happened in the living room where our face were facing to the wall where flash A would bounce from.

My father and his two grand sons, David and Ee Young. David is my elder brother's and the little fella with red chinese costume is my son. Flash A was position at their front right and flash B was at their back left. I was in the middle of the flashes where flash A was on my left and flash B was on my right.

Flash A bounce from the wall, hence creating a soft box effect falling onto their faces. You can see from the shadow of my father's leg. Flash B bounce from the ceiling above to cast a soft light falling onto their hair.

This method proven work to me. At least I have no worry of shooting at low shutter speed. I guess this method could be very useful for a wedding shoot as most of the great action would happen inside the house. By placing two flashes, or may be three, on strategic locations, shooting a chaotic in-door event with fast shutter speed no longer a mission impossible.

Oh, by the way, Happy Chinese New Year to all. :D

Solar Eclipse !

Solar Eclipse !!!

Yes, I got my very first astronomical photograph! It is the 2010 Jan 15th's solar eclipse!

I knew the eclipse will happen on 15th Jan 2010 and marked my calendar and got my camera ready for this. The eclipse started at around 3.02pm and ended at around 5 pm. It was the longest eclipse ever happened, and if I missed it, I’ll have to find a way to keep me alive until the next millennia. Because it will only happen once in a thousand years!

How I photograph eclipse? Simple, with proper filter and a digital camera will do the job pretty good. I used two layers of the floppy disk’s magnetic disk as my filter. However, I found I was able to view the eclipse by using one layer of the magnetic disk.

Before I continue to describe how I did it, I must state down the warnings:

WARNINGS !
1) Do not stare at the sun with naked eyes without a proper filter. Your eye(s) could be damaged!!
2) Do not point your camera to the sun without a proper filter. Your camera will be damaged!!
3) Do not look through your camera viewfinder without any filter!!!!!

And finally, you shall perform the steps I mentioned here with your own risk.

Ok, what I did was to cover my lens with these magnetic disks as shown below:

I have some numbers of un-wanted 3 ½ in floppy disks. A little force applied to the disk and the magnetic disk can be easily taken out from the thin cover. Due to the lens diameter is huge, I use a magnetic disk to cover the lens to prevent any light leakage, and cover the middle hole with another magnetic disk as shown above.

Because I have only 70mm zoom lens, the size of the sun capture in my original file is just a peanut size. I have to crop 100% in PP in order for me to obtain a viewable picture of the eclipse.

I followed the whole eclipse event from the beginning till the end, and I am amazed by the wonder of the nature.

I captured a total of about 100 pics of the eclipse and made it into a stop-motion movie as shown below:

Now I know the moon circulate around Earth. :p

Sony's Flash Workshop

A very typical scene for a flash workshop if there is a model shoot session.

Finally, I got my place for this infamous flash workshop organised by Sony Malaysia. Almost every Alpha user talked about it, and when ever there is a flash workshop out there, the places will be filled up pretty quickly. I had been eyeing to get a place for myself, so to witness with my own eyes how the flash workshop is conducted, and hopefully after the workshop, some of my questions about flash photography could be answered.

The workshop I attended was held in Dorset Regency Hotel in KL on 5th December 2009. About 50 participant filled up the chairs in one of the hotel's ballroom. Refreshment was served and the workshop started with a little 5 minutes delay.

Well, basic flash history and theory were presented, and some sample usage of flash was shown as well. Just not all that been shown is correct, by the way. Not One but two slides that shown on the screen aren't correct.

One particular slide is shown here where the tutor presented the zoom effect of the flash. What was shown on screen is two flashes with different zoom setting so one could see the flash beam. First of course the photo shown on screen is downloaded from strobist.com that for sure, and the photo was meant to show the different between tele zoom of the flash vs snoot flash effect. But what the tutor mentioned in the workshop uses this photo to show the different flash beam between wide zoom and telezoom of our flash.

Well, this is not correct though. There is no way our flash even zoom at 105mm could provide such a narrow flash beam.

Not to mention our the flashes on the photo aren't Sony flashes. Weird though, a Sony flash workshop shows flashes from other brand.

Anyway, this is not a big deal. As long as the message is conveyed and everyone is understand that enough lar.

The flash workshop will not that popular if there isn't a model shoot session. Everyone in the workshop waits for the model shoot practical session. After a very basic and not so educational theory about flash, we went to the model shoot session!

This shot was done with flash zoom at 105mm.
See the different between a snoot flash vs 105 tele zoom?

I took this by accident.
Flash was at 105mm zoom, with the my F58 flash head tilted about 45 degree to the right.
I kinda like the effect of this flash angle.

Same setting like above, different is to balance the outdoor ambient with flash.
Btw, all was done under TTL.

This photo was done by underexposed the ambient to 1 stop and zoom my flash to 105mm for spot light effect.

Same setting as above, just composed a bit.

Two models was employed for the workshop.
Although we were separated into two groups, but basically we moved around freely.

She is a lovely and beautiful young lady. :D

How could a Sony flash workshop be completed without WL flash demonstation?
Stealing light is very easy on the workshop, this is due to the same channel we all using.
In this pic, I stealed the WL flash from camera left with my F58 as commander, ratio on at 1:1:1.

I didn't follow the workshop until the end as I had a dinner function to attend. I was told by my friend that the workshop was ended at around 5.30pm.

So, here are my conclusion on the flash workshop:
1) If you wish to understand the very basic of flash, this is the workshop you will attend.
2) If you wish to understand the usage of flash, don't waste your time there. Internet has more better tutorials for you.
3) Don't expect to learn about on-camera flash photography from this workshop. Because they don't teach you how to bounce.
4) Wireless teaching is minimal, and they straight jump to WL without much further introduction how to play with WL.
5) Of course, if you wish to do portrait model shoot, this is the workshop you must attend.
6) This is the basic flash workshop. No intermediate of advanced flash workshops to be conducted.
7) It's a waste of time.

And if you are not "fierce" enough, you might not get a good position for the model shoot session. I had difficulty to squeeze myself to the front to make a decent shot of the pretty model, and most of my photos here are crop ones. How sad.

Anyway, I had fun playing with my cobra F58. :D

The Octopus Saved My Flash !

.... from falling from my lightstand. :p


The story behind was like this: I was doing one photoshoot of my wife's latest masterpiece of cake. She would wish to share her recipe of her cake in her blog. I had planned my lighting would be a F58 with my DIY ring flash adaptor bending down 90 degrees facing down to the cake so I have a vertical flash direction. I wanted my flash to be radio trigger'd and hence mount my flash onto the modded YungNuo receiver with the SC-6 adaptor, screwed the set-up onto my lightstand, and turn the whole thing 90 degrees downward.

This was the part where my heart was merely fell out from my chest when my flash + ring flash slipped down and fell onto the table below ! I was lucky that my DIY ring flash adaptor acted as a cushion to absorb the falling impact, hence my F58 didn't hit anything hard below.

I was careless to check the connection direction between the SC-6 adaptor and the YongNuo receiver. The SC-6 adaptor doesn't have the screw to lock tight to the receiver; the spring connector between the SC-6 adaptor and the receiver could not hold the weight of my flash that for sure !

Turning to the wrong direction, the flash basically slip out from the receiver !

Upon close examine on the China-made receiver could easily find out that the receiver is not built to take the weight of the flash. Although the receiver has a metal screw mount on its bottom, but the flash hot shoe mount is basically a part of its plastic cover. I believe a small force apply to the receiver could break it into pieces.

Not until the octopus hit the shore of Malaysia !


It's the Octopus FA-CC1AM+CS1AM off camera shoe cord for Sony Alpha. It's a TTL flash cord that has the iISO hot shoe on both ends. This is what I need to cable-sync my YongNuo receiver to the flash.


What I do here is to mount the CC1AM end of the cable cable to the SC-6 adaptor and the receiver, and I mount my flash onto the CS1AM end of the cable.


The cable has a screw mount on the bottom of the CS1AM end, and it could be screwed tightly onto the flash stand. The whole set-up is shown in the first photo of this post.

Since the size of its CS1AM end is small and strong, it is indeed LOT better than the plasticy YungNuo receiver mount in the case of holding the flash on the lightstand.

I could just leave the cable hanging like what is shown in the first pic, or I could velcro the receiver onto the flash head. Since the weight of the receiver + SC-6 adaptor is negligible compared to the flash, hence it doesn't slip out so easily. Thus, I am no worry anymore when I wish to turn my flash into any angle I want.

Of course the set-up doesn't look nice and neat, but it works for me.

Nothing....

Trying to be artistic again.

Lines, sun light, shadow, moving girl, passer-by, nothing.

How to: Stop Motion for Alpha Camera (A700)

I realised that old Minolta DiMAGE cameras used to have an intervalometer built in. Newer Minolta DSLR and Sony ones have no such great feature. This mean that current A-mount owner wouldn't have the ability to produce stop motion video. Well, we can technically by spending time pressing the shutter button at intervals if we wish to but that is not cool at all. Imagine if I wish to capture a stop motion picture for every second, or to capture stop motion pictures of evaporated salt water that might take 1 day. Staying there pressing the shutter button for every hour just not practical at all.

I knew that Sony A700 has a cool function that call "Remote Camera Control" that enable us to control the camera from a PC. The program could be installed from the CD provided together with the camera.

Although I could not change the shutter speed and the aperture from this remote control, but I could take photo just by clicking on the "shutter button" (shown as a camera icon of the program). And the picture taken will be directly saved into the computer. In order for this Remote Control to work, I need the cable:

This cable comes together with my camera.

Now I have the remote. What I need to do is to create a script that can periodically press the shutter button at the interval time I want.

Where should I look for this script ? I asked my good friend, Uncle Google and www.dyxum.com, and both of them return an answer that I am looking for. What I need is "Automate and Script Windows Tasks - Autoit". It's a free program that could download from here.

Technically speaking, it's not a program. It runs script. The script should be written in Visual C++ language. What is this script do is to ask the computer to perform tasks automatically without our input. The most cool thing for this small program is it could actually "move" the mouse cursor to any place within the screen and perform right click left click.

The problem is: I don't write Visual C++ programming language. I was hoping it was Visual Basic....

I guess the Autoit programmers reckon the problem I faced. Hence, they introduce SciTE ! See here.

Download the SciTE add-on, run the ScriptWritter. A windows pop up as shown in the pic above. What this fella could do is to record all mouse move, mouse clicks and program run whatever task I want to do. And it translates all my movements and tasks into Visual C++ language. This recording can be done just one click on the "Click to Record" icon on the program. How cool is that !!

So, I wanted that my computer would perform task of the mouse selects the Remote Camera Control program, and click on the shutter button. What I need to do is click to record on SciTE, select the Remote Camera Control, right click the shutter button, and return to SciTE, save it. This is what I got:

The script is basically telling what should the mouse do. Quite easy to understand from the script. But this is not done yet. What I want is repeatedly doing this task for, say 1,000 clicks at interval of, say 30 seconds.

I studied C++ programming language when I was in University. But I am more pronounce in BASIC programming. Hence, some reference back to the text book solved my problem: A for-next command, and a sleep() command are what I need to make my very own Intervometer. The codes should be added as highlitgted:

What I have done here is to include a command line that tells the mouse repeat the "clicking exercise" for 2000 times (for $a = 1 to 2000 ... next), but before every click, delay for 30 s (Sleep(30000)). Test run, and my camera clicks for every 30s ! Woohoo ! I have my own intervometer ! :D

Save it and I am ready for my Stop motion pic !

Of course a Laptop would be a better one than the desktop because it offer mobility. Be sure that the laptop has sufficient disk space to store huge amount of pictures from the stop motion action. If I ask for 2,000 pics, and each pic is 2MB, I'll need 2GB of space just for the pictures !

Another very important thing to have is tripod but optional, if you need one. A sturdy and strong tripod is recommended for this stop motion task. Because for stop motion, the camera is left alone there for a long period of time, and I don't want my camera falls down hit by wind etc.

So, here I am, my check list for my stop motion movie:
1) Laptop with Autoit installed - checked.
2) Laptop to be powered by wall plug - checked.
3) Camera click script installed - checked.
4) Cable linking camera to laptop - checked.
5) Camera with full battery power - checked.
6) Sturdy tripod - checked.
7) Moving cloud or dynamic sky - checked !

I left my set-up in my room, run the script, and I'm off for my normal life routine. After about 3 hours, I came back to find out my camera was run out of power ! LOL. However, I managed to get about 300 pics of moving cloud at 30 second interval.


Pardon me for not avoiding the black bar on the upper right corner there. I didn't see this through view finder, but it appeared on my pics. That's the problem of having a non 100% view camera. LOL.

You may notice that there is a skip at around 34 sec. It's due to low camera battery and the a reminder pop up on the computer screen. That stop the script.

There are some pre-cautions need to look into:
1) Camera battery to be fully charged. I started mine with 90% battery confidently thinks that it should able to finish the 2,000 clicks, but I was wrong.
2) Well ventilated place to place my laptop. The above about 40 sec of stop motion took about 2 and half hours to perform.
3) Set camera mode to A-mode. M - mode is not recommended as I might get funny exposure pictures. Let the camera do the exposure job, since it was made to do that, right ?
4) 30 second interval is a bit long. Prefer to set at 5 sec interval.
5) Resize pictures to 640px on wide side. I tried 800px on wide side, and I ended up letting the computer running whole day joining my 300 photos and got a hang mode. LOL
6) Well, a powerful computer is recommended because of No. 5.

I admit my stop motion is boring, but I am exited about it. I call it a success.

I shall plan for a better one. :D

From Russia with Thirst....

I didn't notice the cup I use to quench my thirst came all the way from the north, and it's a place where I couldn't link this cup to. I didn't notice the words "Made in Russia" until I bottom up my water in front of my computer monitor just a couple days ago !

Apart from 2 cups where I bought from Ikea that are made from Russia, I don't think I could find any other thing that come from this northern country. The watch I bought for my brother from Harbin, China about 10 years ago was made in USSR (WOW ! That's cool !) but I doubt it's a genuine one. Well, I was in China, and I have thousand of reason to doubt it although I was just km away from the border of Russia.

Anyway, it's really a rare occasion where I could get a product from Russia so easily. How on earth I could relate glass making with Russia ??? Why not from China ?? LOL. Well, could it because of Ikea, Russia is just like China to us ?

Maybe.