Quadra

September 27 2013

Q&A: What portable lighting should I get?

I’ve been getting some question sent to me lately on the blog, Facebook and Twitter, which is brilliant. It means I can turn them into posts so everyone can hopefully benefit from the answers. First up was Matt with a question about lighting: Hi Simon I found your site originally when I was looking into light painting, then I ended up here again when I was looking into different portable lighting systems. Impressive work all around! It’s definitely inspiring me more to give lighting a proper go too.I firstly ended up looking into Alien Bees or Einsteins, but once they’re […]

September 17 2013

Photo of the Week – 500 Abarth

Earlier in the summer I shot this tidy little Fiat 500 Abarth down on the banks of the river Severn facing towards the setting sun. I wanted to make the image a little different so I decided to capture the car from 2 angles in the same shot. To capture the colour and detail in the sky I had to underexpose by about 2 stops which left the car itself very dark. So out came the Quadra! This time in a Maxispot – basically a big metal bowl reflector that creates a tight beam of light and throws it a good […]

September 3 2013

Photo of the Week – Light Painted A1

Today’s Photo of the Week is dedicated to Stephen Dowset who sent me a message on Facebook asking how this image was made. In camera or in Photoshop? The answer is: Both. I have a more detailed write up on light painting cars and to be honest, the technique on this one is pretty much the same. The only real difference was the ambient light in the scene which dictated my shutter speed. 13 seconds at f/14 was the sweet spot and gave me time to cover about a quarter of the car per exposure. The main thing to remember […]

July 23 2013

Photo Of The Week – Jen

A couple of years ago I got the opportunity shoot in a local cinema’s luxury screening room. As testament to my recent post about when working for free works I shot some images of the cinema foyer while it was bustling for the management and in return my “payment” was a days access when it was quiet. No money, but a no brainier! On to the image. Quite a simple lighting setup here, just 2 Elinchom Quadra heads with standard reflectors and 30 degree grids. One firing directly at Jen, the other at the seats further down along the row. Looking at the […]

June 18 2013

Photo of the Week – Georgia

Welcome to Photo Of The Week! This is a new idea I am trying out so I’d really like to hear your feedback. The plan is to post an image every Tuesday afternoon with a little bit of text about how it was shot. Let’s start off with this image of Georgia. It was shot in a multi-storey car park in Birmingham – I am all about the glamourous locations! The blobs in the background are actually traffic lights and a few lamp posts on a junction about a mile away. I shot this with a 70-200mm f4 lens, zoomed […]

January 27 2012

Balancing Act

If you’ve spent any time on my blog, you’ll know I like shooting on location. I love all the choices I get when it comes to balancing strobes with the available light – juggling all the variables is so much more fun than shooting in a studio where you have complete control over the lighting. Shooting at night takes that to the extreme. Capturing what little ambient there is can be tricky when your flashes want to nuke everything with light. I came up against such a situation a couple of weeks ago, so here’s what I did to stop […]

September 9 2011

Pit lane Skyline

Last weekend saw Trax come to Silverstone and another chance to be to shoot in the famous Formula 1 pit lane. No planning, no preparation – just a beautiful car and an unlocked garage. Rather that just hitting you with the eye candy, I thought I’d de-construct a few of the shots and tell you what I did to get them. As always, start simple. At 1/160th (a safe sync speed on the 5DMkII using Elinchrom Skyports) at f/6.3 all ambient light was killed allowing me to add my own light. When shoot a car, you can get away with […]

April 18 2011

Anatomy of a Location Shoot

I’ve known Emma for a few years and while we’ve done a few things at car shows, we have never shot together properly. Last weekend we put that right. Not only did Emma make the trek up from the Portsmouth but I was lucky enough to have my long suffering assistant/producer/gopher/other-half Helen on hand to help as well as good friend and fellow photographer Darren “Skids” Skidmore to shoot some behind the scenes video and stills. Quite a crew! So after the obligatory coffee and a snack it was on to location number one. If you follow me on Twitter […]

March 11 2011

Quadra ECO Ring Flash – First Impressions

[et_pb_section fb_built=”1″ admin_label=”section” _builder_version=”3.22″][et_pb_row admin_label=”row” _builder_version=”3.25″ background_size=”initial” background_position=”top_left” background_repeat=”repeat”][et_pb_column type=”4_4″ _builder_version=”3.25″ custom_padding=”|||” custom_padding__hover=”|||”][et_pb_text _builder_version=”4.4.8″ hover_enabled=”0″] Focus On Imaging is the biggest photography trade show in the UK – think of it as our version of Photokina or Photo Plus. While it’s not as large, you still get a few product launches there and this year I was particularly interested in The Flash Centre‘s launch of the ECO Ring Flash for the Elinchrom Ranger Quadra system. If you have followed my blog for a while, you’ll know I’m a big fan of the Quadra pack and head system and I’ve been […]

January 27 2011

Light Painting A Car

[et_pb_section fb_built=”1″ admin_label=”section” _builder_version=”3.22″][et_pb_row admin_label=”row” _builder_version=”3.25″ background_size=”initial” background_position=”top_left” background_repeat=”repeat”][et_pb_column type=”4_4″ _builder_version=”3.25″ custom_padding=”|||” custom_padding__hover=”|||”][et_pb_text _builder_version=”4.4.8″ hover_enabled=”0″] I’m lucky enough to have access to what can loosely be called some studio space (a huge empty room, large enough to get a car in that gives me completely control of the ambient light) so last night I tried a little automotive light painting. So armed with nothing more than a camera, tripod and an Elinchrom Quadra with the modelling light on although any constant light source would do though. I’d like to say that was all done in camera but it’s not. There […]