The Elinchrom Quadra

Sorry for the long wait for a new blog but have been so busy over the summer that I have not had the chance to post. Also I have been getting on with an exciting personal project which I will be launching next summer with loads of behind the scenes views of photoshoots for you to sink your teeth into.

Now on to the main event the new Elinchrom Quadra! After first reading about this new addition to the Elinchrom family I have been eagerly devouring every snippet of information on the new light. Frank Doorhofs Youtube video's and his forum, being one of the best. I was just about to jump in on the Ranger sets when this little beauty arrived on the scene and threw me into a quandry. Being a devout strobist when it comes to location lighting the philosophy that 'small and light is right' made the Quadra look to be right up my street!

Now the biggest debates I have read on the forums was is the Quadra capable of over powering the sun like the Rangers are capable of? As I had my new project under way which involved location lighting in the middle of the day this was highly relevant to me and the reason I was about to buy a Ranger but no one could really provide the definitive answer. Many stating simply, if that is what you want to do then buy a Ranger Pack.

I eventually stumbled on a German photography companies blog that did a great job of trying to equate what 400w of power meant in real money compared to top of the range speedlights. Their findings were that they saw the Quadra as being equivelent to four speed lights with the Flash Centre, the importers of Elinchrom products in the UK, suggesting to me during a phone conversation that they worked out it was around the equivelent to six. Check out the German guys site here a great site by the way full of information and help regarding lighting and shooting techniques.

Now I'm a great believer of always working to the worst case scenario so four speedlights I knew could over power the sun on at least a two subject shoot at a reasonable working distance but not without a lot of accessories and expensive triggering systems. Also you need to purchase fairly expensive adapted for speedlights specialised light modifiers to accommodate them so this is what made my mind up to buy the Quadra.

I went for the two head kit being the A heads which gives you a considerable saving over buying all the items included separately. Also it gives you everything to easily expand your system into a two light unit with just the purchase of an extra control box.

For the small extra outlay I highly recommend that you buy the A heads or action heads over the standard S heads as they give a faster flash duration. Remember in a controlled light situation with little ambiant it is the flash duration that has far more influance in freezing your subject than your chosen shutter speed, so it is important and also I am going to start a conspiracy theory that Elinchrom might have a new flash setting in the pipeline which I need to dig deeper into first.

Once you have the Quadra in your hands you really appreciate the size of this unit. The overt use of plastics in the heads did leave me with the impression that they may not take that much abuse and the lugs of the fitting bayonet may wear in time. I do try to look after my kit as opposed to a lot of over pros who really don't give a damn but unfortunatley in the heat of working against time it always takes knocks so only time will tell. To be honest the weight can only really be kept so low by the use of plastic and realistically they are no different to the construction of speedlights which are capable of taking a fair bit of abuse.

The rest of the kit seems little different to the Ranger units and felt very well made and capable of taking the knocks of everyday use. Again I must state this is not going to be a technical review as if your interested in getting a Quadra I'm sure your already up to speed on the technical side and specs. Rather this is a real life working review of the unit used in anger. If you use Elinchrom Rangers already the control layout will be fairly familier however, I think considering the price and the ease to manufacturer a circuit board to control the settings I would think they could of come up with an easier menu. Surely it does not cost much more to have your display show off or on rather than 1 or 0 even if it is meant to be sold world wide. I'm sure off & on is more understandible than 1 or 0 in whichever language you may speak also the display could state what exactly you are changing. To further rant the cost of incorporating various language options must be cheap as chips to provide in a unit that costs around £700! There are sub menus buried in menus which require several button pushes to get to which you have to keep refering to the manual to remember what to push until eventually, its burnt into your memory. To be fair most of the settings once set don't need to be touched again however, spend any time away from using the unit and it is all forgotten again!

The ability to use the asymetrical outputs is I'm sure of use in some situations but I have found that I have rarely used this in real life shoots. The main limitation being the length of the cables. You can purchase longer ones but I tend to prefer the ease of using a speedlight as a second or third light source. This brings me back to the main reason for buying the two head kit. Once the funds are available and the better half gives me her permission I will purchase a second control unit which is the main cost of the system at I think around the £700 mark but it's hard to verify as very few UK suppliers list it at the moment. Once you have this you have everything available in the two head kit to make up a second unit which is infinitely more usable than the asymmetrical system with its 33%/66% power split.

The Skyport system is excellent and works well with the inbuilt Skyport in the Quadra head unit. So far no duff triggers in the field within normal working distances. One other key function of the Quadra is the ability to sync with your speedlight as a slave and fire on the last of your preflashes which you can either enter if you know the amount or it has a learning mode to fiqure it out itself.

The RQ-EL adaptor to allow the use of Elinchrom light shapers is not really up to the job in my opinion. At around £69 the ability to only go up to supporting the 135cm Octa which, admittingly, I have not tried is unforgivable. However, even the 60cm Lastolite Ezybox takes a fair amount of torque to hold it secure so a 135 Octa would require an amount of tightning to certainly make me feel uneasy that somthing may give. The weak point is the clamp which is mainly plastic and unable to torque to the required pressure. For the cost of making it out of metal which I'm sure they could of done within the cost or if not, I would of quite happily paid the extra £10 for a metal clamp. The weight argument is a none issue as the use of the large modifiers would mainly be for studio use and besides, if I should require these larger shapers on location then the extra few grams of weight pale into insignificance compared to hauling the large softboxes. There are mods you can do to the adaptor to improve its strength which you can find by googling but I strongly feel this should not be necessary if it had been engineered correctly in the first place as I would expect from Swiss engineering.

Ok, lets get to the nitty gritty how does it perform in the field? For this review I will be concentrating on its first field outing although it has been used considerably since then which I will be able to post later next year once my project is ready to launch.

The first field outing required hauling the gear on foot uphill for about half a mile. First point of note this would of been a lot harder with a Ranger set. As it was it was managable for two with tripods, extra Speedlights, camera gear, lighting paraphernalia and light shapers. So tick in the box for the Quadra's light weight. My first test was to try and overpower the sun. As a point of interest the location I used is one on my doorstep which was where the Roman army stood in the opening battle sequence in Gladiator and more recently is the spot where the castle stood for the yet to be released Nottingham about Robin Hood again starring Russell Crowe and directed by Ridley Scott who obviously loves the location. So in giants footsteps we tread!

The day was a very bright Septembers day at 1pm so a good test of Quadras ability to overpower the Sun. One thing you should bear in mind when trying to overpower the Sun is the efficiency of your light modifiers. I personally like hard light and relectors are by far the most efficient shapers to make full use of your flash power. Softboxes and umbrellas all eat up precious power which is why I like reflectors. For this exercise I used the 21cm 50 degree reflector. The 13.5cm reflector which comes with the Quadra kits is very good and gives an excellent quality of light but I do find it gives a too wide a spread of light wasting power. You have to use it very close to maxamise all the power available when overpowering the Sun.

I placed the model with the sun slightly behind and high right to her left my right. This was my rim light to give seperation. The Quadra was placed to my left at a 45 degree angle to the model about 7ft high and at a distance of 3mtrs. I took a couple of test shots to determine the power output and then it was into the shoot. Now this brings up one of my few complaints about the Quadra which is I would love to tell you which power rating I was using however it was near impossible to read the LCD in bright sun even shading it with my hand. I could read the display of my D3 if I turned my back to the sun and shaded it but not the Quadra! Why didn't Elinchrom make a display in a colour that was strong enough to see in bright light?

This is my test exposure of my stand in model in Aperture priority set at f5.6 which gave me a shutter speed of 1000/sec, iso 200. This will give you an idea of how bright the day was!

This is the adjusted shot as I wanted the background uderexposed. Camera set to manual 250sec at f16, iso 100 and white balance set to 4550K to create a blue cast as I wanted to use a gold umbrella on the first shots which can be seen in the first three pictures.

So the result? Judge for yourself with the pictures below. I would guess that the Quadra was running at around 3/4 power here and this was a bright day and we were right under the Sun so for me the Elinchrom Quadra passed the overpowering the sun test with a fair amount of ease with the right modifier. The first three shots were using a gold umbrella which forced the Quadra to use more power. Actual settings for these was 250sec at F13, iso 100 as found f16 a bit too dark.

Changed over to the 21cm reflector and white balance set to Flash. Had to lower the power of the Quadra by a fair bit so I guess it was running at no more than 3/4 power max.

For the next location we moved just into the woods in the shade. Here the test for the Quadra was much easier and the shoot became much more of a studio set up as I did not need to worry so much about raw power. So it was a simular set up as before with a Nikon SB800 set to slave using a grid in a Viewfinder mini speedlight beauty dish as a rimlight behind the model at a slight angle off her left shoulder and set low. The Quadra was to my left about 6ft high using a shoot thru placed around 3mtrs away for a harder light. Quadra set at 150w and camera set at f8, 125sec, iso 100. By the end of the shoot I had taken 80 shots with over half running at 3/4 power and the battery was showing half full so I have no doubt that Elinchroms claim of 120 full power shots per battery will easily be met. As a point of fact on all subsequent shoots since, I have never got beyond a half full battery indicator and those are what I would class as normal bread and butter shoots such as a Model, Wedding or Engagement type shoots either on location or in a studio.

If you are a strobist and have been looking at the Quadra but have been put off by the price then I urge you to seriously reconsider. If you can't stretch to the two head kit and would not see yourself needing two units in the future then just buy the one head kit but factor in a Skyport transmitter at around £70 and the RQ-EL adaptor for £67 so that you can start to use the extensive range of Elinchrom light modifiers. No need now to buy expensive strobist adaptors to be able to use more than one speedlight at a time for extra power or enable you to use light modifiers that normal strobe heads have been using with ease since the dawn of photography.

Can the Quadra replace speedlights? No is the answer to that as the iTTL systems are indispensible in fast moving situations such as a wedding or for when you want to use high speed sync. However, if you are a location shooter or even have a small home studio then this is the answer to all your prayers. I have in fact replaced my home studio strobes with this as the saving in size and lack of needing to plug into power sockets along with their associated hazardous cabling are a real bonus. The Elinchrom Quadra mixed with speedlights are to me, the Ideal lighting combination and it intergrates beautifully with them with its ability to learn the preflash codes, work as a slave or master by triggering speedlights with their optical slaves turned on.

In conclusion, since this test the Quadra has gone on to prove a worthwhile investment both for location and studio work and I highly recommend it to any potential would be purchasers.

Videos You Just Got To See!

You just have to check out these videos and find out more about them. Brilliantly conceived and executed. The first is Matt Hardings which took in 42 countries and by meeting people around the world at a given place and time via his website he managed to get fans to join in this epic tale and help unite the world by dance!!!



This next video is one of a series of music videos being put together to try and help bring the world a little closer together by using musicians and artists from around the world. Checkout the other videos on their website; http://www.playingforchange.com/episodes

Playing For Change | Song Around The World "Stand By Me" from Concord Music Group on Vimeo.

Sorry guys nothing about photography this time just something I wanted to share!

Take care all.

For Animal Lovers

This may be old news to you but If you missed the programme about Christian the Lion cub on TV and missed the hype on You Tube then you have just got to check this video out. Its about two guys that bought a lion cub from Harrods in 1969 when you could do things like that and brought him up in their flat on the Kings Road in London for the first year of his life, becoming a local celebrity. He was loved by everyone and grew to be nothing more than a gentle, loving playful cat who loved his owners and his life as a much loved member of the family. A local vicar even allowed the boys to exercise him in the walled cemetery nearby.

By the time Christian was a year old and 185lbs in weight they felt, with regret, they could not keep him for much longer. It was a lucky chance meeting with the actor Bill Travis, who played George Adamson in Born Free, who put them into contact with George and he agreed to try and reintroduce Christian into the wild along with a much older male lion called Boy and a female cub who you see in the middle part of the video. The three of the them making up Christian's first pride. To cut a long story short he did this successfully over a long period of time until eventually 9 months had passed since George had seen Christian who had, by then, his own small pride and cubs.

Christians owners, John Randell and Ace Bourke, decided to pay one last visit to see if they could say goodbye to Christian as he had not been seen for so long even though George warned them they were wasting their time, they went anyway. Bill Travis had decided to make a documentary following Christian reintroduction into the wild to help raise money for the Born Free foundation which he and his wife Virginia McKenna had set up since making the film. Knowing this could very well be the last time anyone would see Christian they decided to try and film the event.

When the boys arrived in Kenya they were informed by George much to their amazement but not Georges, who believed Lions had a strong sixth sense, that Christian was waiting for them! He had arrived near camp the night before with his family and was waiting for them at his favorite rock after nine months of not been seen. When John and Ace went out to see him they called to him and Christian came towards them cautiously at first until the certainty of recognition was confirmed the rest speaks for itself!



What is interesting is that over the next few days Christian introduced his new family, two females and cubs, to John & Ace who accepted the strangers because of Christian's love for them. You must bear in mind that the females and cubs were 'real' wild lions who at first were not happy about Christians affections towards the men. The video is edited which makes it look like their acceptance happened straight away which it did not.

If you are an animal owner, whether it be horses, dogs or cats and you have enjoyed the deep, complete love of an animal you will understand and recognise the unrestrained love & affection between Christian and his owners. I cry every time I see it and I see so many of the same characteristics in Christian as I see in my new Rhodesian Ridgeback puppy who even as I write is nibbling my feet. It is something special and life fulfilling to have experienced that close bond with an animal and my life for one has been made the richer for it. So I dedicate this post to all my past & present loves who gave me and my family untold hours of love, pleasure and companionship and best of all who made the world a much more fun & nicer place to live in.

You may be wondering what this has to do with photography? Simple really.....don't worry about what camera, lens, lighting you have or don't have, just go out and take as many pictures of them and your loved ones as you can. The memories are priceless!

In memory of;
Shaka [my hansome, wonderful first Ridgeback], Lilly, Rosie, Daisy, my dear, dear, recently departed Poppy, and Jama the new kid on the block!

Oh and if you want to know what living with a lion cub is like, get a Ridgeback, the similarities are uncanny!!!

Related article here.

And here he is.......

Paper Choice

Well if you thought my dilemma about which printer to buy was an epic you should read this about the dilemmas concerning what to feed it! Makes the Harry Potter series look like Jane & Peters Big Day Out At The Seaside.....if you remember them from primary school!

If you have read my review of the Epson R2880 you will of noted that after testing the use of Matt Black [MB] and Photo Black [PB] I had decided that I would use only the PB in my printing as I had no need for matt papers and if I did the PB does a good enough job on matt anyway using a bespoke profile and a suitable media setting. For our work we need one workhorse paper that can be used for A4 and bigger event prints as well as for our studio prints from portrait sessions. Next we required a fine art paper which could be used for more special print work for both selling and for personal use. In the end once all the testing was done I actually ended up with three and one held on the subs bench.

First up was a trip to the SWPP show which I recommend you attend if you live near London and can't be bothered with the trip to Focus. Quite frankly you can find most of the stuff you require there anyway which is why I have avoided Focus for the last two years. After exhausting all the paper manufacturers with my best interrogation techniques learnt from years of military service they finally relented and palmed me off with their test packs...so it was off home to give the Epson a thorough thrashing!

Well the first choice of paper was to be our general purpose studio and event paper. Requirements were to be either a semi-gloss or oyster/luster paper as we already used the excellent Canon semi-gloss prior to this as well as the gloss and statistics showed that the vast majority of customers preferred the semi look so in the end we dropped the gloss offering. Price and quality were the next priorities. Canons semi-gloss was actually quite well priced as opposed to the Epson semi which we found hard to find at a good price.

So the hunt was on for a third party paper manufacturer which boiled down to Ilford, Fotospeed, Permajet and a smaller less know company called Pinnacle. Price wise Pinnacle was the cheapest by quite a margin followed by Fotospeed so I decided to start the testing with these two papers first and see how they measured up against both Canon prints and Epson. The first thing I should point out when testing is to use two well known pictures you have, one for colour and one for black and white. Make sure your colour picture contains colours which you know well and know how they should be replicated. Here are my test pictures picked for a variety of reasons which I will explain.

This one is used because often printers struggle in producing a good red. The colour of the skin tone is a test along with the colour of the bra and its stitching detail shows how sharp the ink is laid onto the surface. If the paper allows the ink to flow and spread on its surface then fine detail will be lost. A sharp paper will hold the ink and dry.

This image gives a full range of the greyscale and also tests sharpness with the detail in the bodice.

These next two images ask a lot from a paper and inkset. The main sunset image has both subtle and strong colouring which must be accurately rendered as well as being able to show detail in the shadow areas and not blocking out.

This image has more subtle colouring which again must be replicated accurately by the ink and paper combination. I'm pleased to announce all the papers that I choose in the end did this with astounding accuracy with both the generic supplied profiles and even more so with the bespoke!!!

However, having said this the most crucial aspect of printing which is more important than the paper is to use a good profile and understand your print process colour management. If the profile you use for testing purposes is not accurate then bare in mind this can easily be rectified by a bespoke profile which I will cover later. Each third party paper manufacturer should provide a generic test profile to use for your particular printer and just as importantly give you the correct media setting to use, for example which of your own manufacturers paper settings such as gloss, semi-gloss, matte etc should you use. It doesn't necessarily follow that if the paper you are testing is gloss that you need to use the gloss setting.

Both papers tested were Oyster types which I must confess I prefer over semi-matt as they have a little more sparkle and I feel they bridge the gap between matt and gloss better. Both the Fotospeed Oyster and the Pinnacle Lustre produced excellent quality prints of similar quality to each other and the Epson & Canon prints so not much in it. However, there was one clear leader for me and that was the Pinnacle Luster. Its price is incredibly cheap compared to the others and it also weighed in at 300gsm as opposed to the others at around the 270gsm mark. This gives the paper a feeling of quality as soon as you pick it up and this cannot be understated as well as the quality of the print coupled with the price made it a clear winner. Price is £11.49 Inc VAT for 40 x A4 buy direct from http://www.paperspectrum.co.uk/ Postage is a little steep at £6.95 when buying under £40 worth but still makes the paper far cheaper than anyone else when including their postage.

Pinnacle as a company I cannot fault. When you call them you speak to someone who knows what they are talking about and if they don't they will put someone on that does. Emails are answered promptly and as long as you purchase their paper they offer a bespoke profile service for your printer which I received within 48 hrs of them receiving my test prints. Excellent service! The profile was excellent as well and the Epson is now happily churning out superb prints in colour and B&W with this paper and profile. I must add at this point that Fotospeed provided a very good service as well just beaten on price and weight.

Next up I wanted touchy feely type paper to mainly print out on black and white with a surface suitable for the Photo Black ink [PB] and a texture to the surface. This was a hard paper to find but I eventually found a paper by Perma Jet which I had in an old test pack of theirs called Textured Art Silk. This was a paper that was 271gsm and had a lovely textured surface which looked completely Matt until you printed onto it and the print then came out with a beautiful soft sheen that gave B&W prints a wonderful look and depth to the blacks....simply astounding! I can only describe the prints as looking as if they are printed onto buffed leather if that makes sense? Perfect, all I had to do now was hunt down the paper at a good price!

After a couple of frustrating hours trying to find the paper on the net to no avail a phone call to Perma Jet left me in a semi state of shock as that particular paper had been discontinued....however.....there was a light at the end of the tunnel as the paper had been replaced by a less textured version called Smooth Art Silk at 300 gsm. Once the test pack had arrived it was with trepidation I reprinted my B&W picture to compare to the old. First thing is it was quite a bit smoother and at first I felt disappointed with the result. It had the same lovely sheen but I felt the texture was lacking. However after a few more print of various subjects it has grown on me and I have found it to be a better all round paper as certain subjects do look better without so much texture.

To be frank the whole textured surface bit can only be fully appreciated with the print in your hand. I find that once the print is framed you tend to loose that textured sense as you need to light the print well so as not to accentuate the texture too much which can look very bad if you allow it to cast shadows. So in reality losing the texture is not that big a deal. The print still has a quality feel and weight and still retains enough texture to make it feel special and in my opinion it has a unique look among papers which I love.

I was glad to see Perma Jet now offers a free bespoke profiling service which like Pinnacle was fast and efficient with an excellent result. I have to say though that both companies generic profiles were very good to start with and I would estimate only around a 10% improvement being made by the bespoke profile. One word of warning this is quite an expensive paper and is only really used by me for special projects. Best price I can find is Richard Frankfurt £26.38 inc VAT for 25 x A4. However postage is steep at just under £10. Try some of the other retailers mentioned throughout the post and at at the end as they may work out cheaper.

Last but not least I wanted a special smooth fine art paper that could take PB with a gloss finish but one that was not too glossy as to distract the eye. It was time to investigate the Baryta type papers. As with everything it was a cost driven exercise as i really feel that if the cost of the paper is too expensive it ends up deterring you from actually printing your pictures which is a great shame because for me there is no greater satisfaction as a photographer than seeing your picture roll off a printer. If you have not heard of Baryta papers then you should read this excellent review on luminous Landscape.

So again after trawling the web it came down to two. Harman Fibre Gloss & Ilford Gold Fibre Silk 23p difference between them per sheet of A3+. Harman @ £93.81 per 50 and Ilford @ £74.86 per 50. Once the test packs arrived it was back down to comparing. The Ilford was a warmer tone paper with a less glossy finish than the Harman. The review from Luminous Landscape above is a zillion times better than I can do, however, suffice to say I too settled for the Gold Fibre Silk as I preferred the less glossy finish and the slightly more stippled surface added to its appeal plus it is a great price. The Ilford profile for the Epson R2880 on the website was so accurate I have not bothered to obtain a bespoke one yet but probably will in the future. Best price was at Warehouse Express. Cost £74.86 per 50 and only £3.99 to send.

So that was it, I had my three papers which in truth could be reduced to two if i dropped the Perma Jet Smooth Art Silk and use the Gold Fibre Silk instead which gives outstanding B&W as well as colour prints, however, I just can't seem to let it go, it has that special something that makes it stand out above the others for uniqueness and satisfaction when printing on to it, all i can say is give it a go for yourself. In fact all papers are subjective and totally down to personal opinion and choice, I just hope this review can give you a starting point and help save you time and money.

But wait..... there is one new kid on the block. In fact its been around awhile but its price has put me off until the other day I happened to find it on the Epson UK site on offer. Its their own fine art paper called Epson Traditional Photo Paper on offer at half price!!! So i bought a pack of A4 and A3+. Now once again there is an excellent review on this paper on Luminous Landscape here. I had read this article previously and it took a long time to realise that Epson for some unknown reason had deemed it necessary to call it Exhibition Fibre Paper in the USA. However once I found the price out over here I dismissed it due to cost until I found it on offer.

As to the prints, what can I say! I agree with the reviewer above the prints are sharp accurate with the deepest black I have ever seen, I love it! The Ilford GFS which is very good in its own right has been put on the sub bench for now and I am stocking up on the Epson Paper as I write so it may be a few years before Ilford GFS gets to earn a cap for team iVisualise. I might, I suspect, when faced with it, grit my teeth and pay full whack for the Epson Traditional Photo Paper when my stocks run out....it's that good!!!

Other suppliers to try;

http://www.onlinepaper.co.uk/

http://www.mjcolour.com/

http://www.thedarkroom.co.uk/

squidtech

If you do get a hold of some Epson Traditional Photo Paper then download these excellent profiles from the guys at Pixel Genius.

Lighting for events

The more you read this blog the more you will find out how we love the Nikon CLS system as basically we use it for everything from location shoots to studio portrait sessions. Why? Simple its small, powerful and versatile. Also you don't have to lug expensive power packs around which, if your shoot dictates you need more power, then that type of shoot really should be paying you enough to rent that type of gear anyway.

So for events such as birthday parties especially teens birthdays, but not exclusively, as we have the older and should know better generation performing equally as badly at their parties, we often have a dilemma. Space or rather lack of it. Our normal set up for this type of gig is four speedlights consisting of 2 x SB600 and 2 x SB800 with either another SB900 as master or for some of Nikon models D200, 300 & 700 you can use the inbuilt flash.

We use a 10ft backdrop in a colour to suit the occasion, in this shoot we were using the excellent Lastolite Vinyl backdrop which we will review at a later date. So up front we have two SB600 set at Cnl 1 group B, remote mode, 24mm zoom & firing through 45in shoot thru brollies placed either side and around 4ft from the rear of the backdrop.

Key lights are two SB800 set to remote mode, Cnl 1, group A, 24mm zoom and firing into 45in softbox brollies placed either side to the rear about 2ft from the end of the background train. For high key you should be looking for around a 2 stop difference between the background and the subject.

The camera flash is set to master and both groups to manual at 1/4 power. Camera used on this shoot was Nikon D3 and 24-70 f2.8, camera set to manual with an aperture of F8, 125th sec shutter and ISO 400. If there is one thing I love about the D3 & D700 is the ability to shoot at higher ISO with the Nikon CLS system. I've shot at 800 ISO before on location shoots which makes the SB's pop! Wow, its like shooting with 600w heads but without the hassle, just got to love the D3 for opening up a whole new world of stobist lighting!

Next, get them in front of the camera. As always it's slow to start but once you get the first few in front of the camera then its stand back and watch the lemmings jump! You have to have real energy for these type of occasions getting them to have fun, posing and enjoying themselves to want to come back for more with other groups of friends. Remember the more quality shots of them the more they buy! Only real problem is having to shout over the DJ, boy that strains the old vocal cords for sure.

We always find it best to give them a time limit in which they have to get in front of the camera before you pack up, fail to do this and you will be there forever as later, the more alcohol they consume, they will just trickle back after the initial novelty wares off. We normally have a couple of laptops for viewing which helps to get the buzz going but seldom print on site for teenagers as they rarely have the money and what they do have is normally rationed for their beer! For black tie functions we will always print on site as we have mobile credit card facilities and people will always buy on the night.

One point of note from the evening which is always a great reminder is never stop experimenting with your lighting. We have always used this setup for this type of shoot where large groups can become involved as with the two key lights you have a large spread of light to cover everyone and it gives them flexibility to move around and be covered by the light. If it was just couples or up to four then you would only need one brolly as key. And the shoot thru's always give a nice even spread of light for the backdrop.

Can you see the brollys in the way?...... Concentrate guys!!!

The problem we encounted here was the lack of space meant the shoot thru's were getting in the shot so that the groups had to be really packed tight in the centre to avoid them. In the end I took the brollies off the SB600's and just used them with their wide angle diffuses in place. Result? Perfect! No need for shoot thru's anymore for mobile high key, so less kit to carry is always a result in my book!

You can see the set up here without the shoot thrus.

So Nikon CLS gets the results again! No leads for people to trip over, all the kit carried in one bag [except background and its stands] no looking for PowerPoint's and for this shoot 350 shots on one set of batteries with plenty of juice in the SB's to easily double this. Also at 1/4 power these things can keep up with the motor drive so when your in the groove and the talents rocking you can AK 47 that shutter baby and hose the set down with jpegs!!!

You just got to love this job all those lovely teenage girls to model [did they really look like that when i was 18?] and whilst I'm in the groove doing my best Baily impression in front of them I can hear in one ear one young lads comments 'you've got the best job in the world mate'! Sometimes, just sometimes, he might...... just be right!

Big love to Annette and her family for a great night, she's a star and a natural in front of the camera! Anyway, below is a selection from the night hope you enjoyed the article.

Review Epson R2880 Printer

Are you in the market for an A3+ printer? Not sure which one to buy? Then read on and i hope this will help you in some way to help make your decision easier. Now in the past i have used Epson and Canon printers and they have all been excellent. For our work we have not needed to print in house larger than A4 until now.

Normally we found it was more cost effective to use a pro-lab for sizes larger than A4. However with more and more portrait work being undertaken and framed prints seemingly becoming more popular we decided we needed an A2 Printer, but which one?

First problems were a lack of choice. The obvious printer to go for was the Epson pro 4880 but we just couldn't get our heads around the whole swapping inks thing and the associated costs of doing so. The same reason applied to the 3800. Canon has no A2 [discounting the LP17] nor did Hp. So what to choose?

The decision was to opt for an A3+ machine for now and await the new Epson A2 printer, which surely must do away with the swapping of the black inks in its next incarnation? Or maybe there will be a new Canon or HP by then?

Next dilemma, which A3+ printer? We were moving up from the Canon ip8500 which was a superb, quick & reliable printer but its endless head cleanings and wastage of ink in doing so was driving us mad. If you missed one day of printing you would be subjected to the soul destroying hiss, hiss of pound notes being squeezed through the heads and away into the inner sanctum to be lost forever in a gloop of liquid gold or, should i say, liquid brown sludge with hints of green running through it, which a more accurate metaphor would be, costing the same as gold! Precious ink lost forever, never to be impregnated into the next work of art that would roll out of the ivisualise stable door to be admired for generations, or possibly less should the sun get to it first!

So the Epson R2880 was off the list because of the stupid black ink thing leaving the Canon pro 9500 and the HP 9180 to do battle to the death for the honour of serving the iVisualise cause.
So if your like us, which is probably why your reading this in the first place, it was off to tappity tapp into the might of the Google search engine to read all the reviews our little minds could absorb...so not much then.

So the first crippling blows were struck by HP. In the excellent and thorough review site http://photo-i.co.uk/ the Canon had a problem printing borderless onto fine art paper. Wow 'that's not on we thought,' we can't have a printer that's not house trained so to speak, which in retrospect was harsh as we never print onto fine art paper anyway....but we may want to one day was our reasoning.

But the Canon fought back and it was the HP that received the inevitable mortal blow. Its unique and much praised self cleaning programme had a horrible sting in its tail. After around the two year mark the NEDD sensor seems to clog with all the pigment ink that had been flushed keeping the heads clean causing the printer to go into overdrive with ever increasing frequency of cleaning cycles and the inevitable heart wrenching waste of pound notes being squirted into the abyss, sounding familiar? Maybe that was what was wrong with our ip8500? To be fair you could solve this problem by dismantling the printer and cleaning it but I'm afraid that's not on our job description and is certainly more than our jobs worth so it looked like the Canon had won!

So we hot footed it down to the excellent new Park Camera facilities at Burgess Hill to view the printer and get some expert advice. Two hours later much to the relief of the poor salesman we emerged clutching our new born proudly to our chest and lay her lovingly in the boot swathed in blankets to bring her safely to the comfy fold of home iVisualise. We would name her Princess... Epson R2880 ......and she would be loved!

Now we know what your thinking....how did that happen?

Ok, ok,here's the reason why. In coming to the final decision i weighed up all the factors which included;

• Ink cost, prices verse size of cartridge. HP won here but only by a margin of 10%, small enough saving to ignore
• Cost of media. Canon slightly in the lead but only by a margin which again small enough to ignore.
• Cost. Hp wins at the time being sub £400 with Epson next at £429 and the Canon last at above £500. So compared to the Canon the other two give you a whole set of inks extra in cost saving. This was December 08 since then the price of the Epson has risen to the same of the Canon.
• Quality. Lets gets this straight. All these printers are capable of a quality which far exceeds my abilities as a photographer! Whether one has a larger colour gamut over the over or smaller picolitre drop size is really in material in real world terms. I nearly bought the HP because of one fabulous BW print sample of a fisherman sitting next to his boat, nets in the background etc, but you have to pinch yourself and realise all these printers are capable of producing this print but am I, as a photographer, capable of providing these printers with the quality of picture they deserve. I think not!
• Reliability. Hard to determine as they all seem to be fairly reliable apart from the HP and its excess cleaning problems.

In the end it was Epson's market penetration and also because it was the newest of the printers. Don't you just hate it when you buy a product and then a month later its all singing all dancing replacement arrives to chants of 'i don't believe you own a piece of so yesterdays news darling!' Shallow i know but relative as it happens to me all the time. Also this printer can except rolls which you may think is not relevant to you but you will be surprised once you catch the panoramic bug of how useful this is! So in the end the Epson won and as I continue to use her I am constantly reminded that for my requirements I made the right choice.

So as a printer how does she perform? In a nutshell faultless superb quality prints as long as you use a good profile. As a tip the ones from the Epson USA website are spot on you can find them here. A word of caution during the first few prints the printer undertook 3 cleaning cycles, one before each print! a feeling of De ja vu prevailed and after a concerned phone call to Epson they assured me that the printer did not perform scheduled cleaning and that the cause could be the USB cable. The same cable used on the old Canon IP8500 which I changed and have had no further cleaning cycles performed since. Makes me wonder if this was the problem with the Canon?

Photo Black & Matt Black

Lets tackle the Photo Black [PB] & Matt Black [MB] issue. We use in the studio for portraits either a semi Matt or lustre/pearl type paper. We have rarely used Matt papers so in reality the swapping will rarely be an issue. As a business cost per print is everything to us as each small saving does actually add up to a substantial cost saving throughout the year. So the hunt was on for a replacement low cost paper. Now once you get into the realms of third party papers you begin to realise that its Epson that seems to be the better supported printer for items such as ICC profiles to test their papers with. Also should you wish to move over to a third party continuous ink system [CIS] again you realise that it is Epson that is the better supported manufacturer. Now in testing some third party papers, Permajet in particular will give you profiles to use on Matt papers using the Photo black and the Epson Photo glossy driver setting. I have read that you only loose 0.2 of D-Max using photo black over the Matt and have to say that the BW test prints we tried on the Matt fine art papers were excellent using the PB.

If you are looking for the last word in D-Max [or the depth of your blacks] then you really should not be printing on Matt papers in the first place as the coated papers which require the use of the PB will produce the deepest blacks especially with the new Bartya type papers. Remember that the Matt papers are generally used because of their archival qualities or you just happen to prefer the Matt look for your work. If your a fine art photographer then you do not need this review as you will know what you need from a printer and the paper you use already.

So, you really need to be honest with yourself and determine if you will need to print on Matt papers and if so, see if using the PB ink delivers the goods for you. Try the Permajet fine art test packs using their profiles for PB to help you in you testing. With the Epson you need to use a driver setting for one of the Epson coated papers otherwise it will lock up warning you cannot proceed without changing to MB, which Permajet do provide. If your happy with the result just bare in mind that many third party paper manufacturers will produce you a bespoke profile for your printer, just make sure you tell them you want to use PB and which driver setting do they recommend. If you, like us, are happy with the results then the issue of swapping the blacks becomes a non issue.

Ink usage.

Since installing the first set of ink carts we have so far printed;

• 31 A4 [12 of which are BW]
• 3 x 10 x 8
• 7 x A3+
• 2 x 13 x 30" Panoramas
  

That equates in sales from our studio and events a total revenue income of £517. We charge more for our sittings and less for our products than most studios so this is a conservative income for many a studio or pro photographer. We are just needing to change three of the cartridges Vivid Light Megenta, Light Black & PB. Light Light Black is reading low with Light Cyan 1/3 full, yellow 1/2 full, Cyan & Vivid Magenta 3/4 full. You have to take into account also that as these are the first ink cartridges so a percentage of the ink was used to charge the lines, so the yield will be higher from subsequent cartridges.The three remaining cartridges are at half level. The cost on the web of a new cartridge varies between £9 -£10 we find MX2 the best prices so far when they have it in stock, so make sure your not in a hurry before you buy from them.

We are pleased with this and taking into account our paper cost we would comfortably expect to see a 15% running cost based on our prices. Looking at what we have now it seems that this whole amount of prints could be printed again with just the change of five carts possibly even more prints by a margin of 15% due to the aforementioned difference of yield due to charging of the lines from the first set. If you are not selling your work and you are printing for pleasure this will at least give you some indication of how many prints you will be able to produce before running low on ink.

Reliability

Obviously too early to tell but no clogged heads with the longest period between printing being 3 days. Also we do leave the printer continuously on as Epson tech dept recommended to us. We will update this post should we have any problems in the long term.

Conclusion

An excellent printer that produces first class results. If you want to delve beyond Epson media such as papers or CIS or want authoritative reviews and information from the web then for now Epson is the best supported and that cannot be too underrated as an important consideration in your buying decision. We will move this printer over to a third party CIS system once we have a new A2 in place. The A2's larger cart sizes bring the cost of printing to an acceptable level so we see this printer possibly being dedicated to a pure BW machine, we will keep you updated on this. Sorry if this is not enough of a technical review as you may of hoped for but there are far better and more knowledgeable reviewers on the web that have already done this for all three of these printers. This, however, is more of an insight into real buying decisions that influence me as a photographer and my business which in many reviews are seldom touched on.

Hi and welcome to the very first iVisualise blog!

As the weeks progress we aim to regularly keep the blog up to date with various information regarding photography and how iVisualise goes about its business including the equipment and techniques we use, which we hope will be both of interest to you and maybe help you get more out of your photography.

Our equipment reviews will be very much hands on with a minimum of technical information which is already covered by far better reviewers than us, however we will let you know if A; the equipment works and B; is it worth trying/buying. We will be aiming to run workshops later in the year at our base in Farnham , Surrey which we will have dates for later in the year.

We hope you enjoy it and more importantly, it be of use to you.

Take care all

Team Visualise
www.ivisualise.com