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