Beauty Dish Update

Yesterday after I made my beauty dish, I got to use it in a promotional shoot I did for a local restaurant. Below is a sample of a small group shot (3 people) sitting at a bar. The beauty dish is about 8 - 10 feet away (2.5 - 3 meters) from the subjects. I'm glad I brought the beauty dish with me. Since it is on about 12 inches (30 cm) in diameter it was much easier to keep it hidden from being seen in the mirror behind the group. This would have been impossible to shoot with a soft-box or an umbrella.

I have included a shot to show the light drop off of the beauty dish. The dish about 6 feet (1.85 meters) away from the wall.

Make Your Own Beauty Dish

Here is what you need to make a simple beauty dish; white plastic bowl, foam board, zip-ties (zap straps), aluminum tape

Trace around the front of your flash. Make sure it is centered on the bottom of the bowl.



Make 2 diagonal cuts to make the flaps

Fold the flaps back 90º.
(Trick - once the flaps are cut, fill your sink with hot water from the tap, let the bottom of the bowl sit in the hot water for about 5 min. to heat up the plastic making it easier to fold back)



Check to see how your flash fits.



Front view of fit.



Draw circle on foam board, about 1/2 the diameter of the bowl.



Apply aluminum tape on other side of foam board, making sure the aluminum tape covers a larger area than the circle on the other side.



Cut out circle with sharp box cutter knife.



Cut slits just big enough for the zip-ties to fit through every 90º.



Bend the zip-ties (you'll see why)



Insert zip-ties through the holes you cut into the circle so the bends in the zip-ties face outward (radiating from the circle)



Front view



Cut slits into the plastic bowl just big enough for the zip ties to fit through every 90º
(Trick - you might have to insert a small flathead screwdriver into the slits to stretch them just enough to get the zip-ties through, the zip-ties should be held in place by the friction from the slits)
DO NOT MAKE THE SLITS TOO BIG SO THE ZIP-TIES MOVE FREELY!



This is how it looks finished.



With an omni-bounce on the flash.


Front view.



Illuminated (with omni-bounce on flash).



I might not be beautiful, but the light from the beauty dish looks good!

Any questions or comments please post them in the comments.

30 Days Using Aperture 2 (Days 10-12)

Days 10-12

I started looking for more detailed information for working with Aperture 2. The tutorials were just not cutting it. It seems when you buy Aperture 2 you get a booklet "Exploring Aperture 2" and sample projects to play with. With the 30 day demo you do not. I did find the the PDF file of "Exploring Aperture 2" here. It is a life saver.

I am now starting to understand the different view modes and the HUD's (Heads Up Displays). My favorite is hitting the "F" key for full screen display and then the "H" key to get the inspector HUD on screen. This gives you just the image you are working on and the inspector HUD that you can move to anywhere on your screen and size it to a good working size. If you move your mouse to the bottom of the screen your browser of your images comes up so you can change the image you are working on. You can also move your mouse to the top of the screen and the toolbar will drop down. By clicking the toggle switch on the right of the toolbar you can set it to stay in place or leave it so it will automatically hide when you move your mouse away from the top of the screen.

I just started using the "Stacks" feature. I like the idea of being able to stack similar images together by selecting the group of images by shift clicking on them and then clicking on Stacks > Stack. You can also Auto Stack images that have been shot in sequence. By clicking Stacks > Auto Stack you will get a HUD that will allow you to select a time interval between images up to 1 min. Once your images are stacked a number will appear on the main image, by clicking on that number you can open and close the stack to view all or just the main image.

More to come soon.

30 Days Using Aperture 2 (Day 9)

Day 9
I'm starting to feel like a monkey using Aperture 2. It's probably me, I'm just getting overwhelmed with everything Aperture can do. The learning curve seems quite steep. The tutorials show 2 different screen modes and I can't seem to get to the one I like. I might be too familiar with Adobe products and the Aperture 2 interface is a bit different from what Adobe offers. I think a bit more time using Aperture should get me more comfortable.

Today I watched all the tutorials under the "Compare and Select" heading on Apples website. I'm trying to get to the point where I start "getting" Aperture 2, but I'm not there yet. I'm seriously thinking of joining Aperture Users Professional Network just to understand the program. But, I'm holding off until I decide Aperture 2 is worth the purchase and I decide to commit to it.

In the mean time here is an image I worked on that I took with my Canon G9 while out ski touring behind Whistler Mountain. I'm didn't want to make too many adjustments before I really get to know the software. You can see the adjustments I did make on the left side of the images.

Any input, advice or comments are appreciated.

Master

Adjusted

30 Days Using Aperture 2 (Days 5-8)

Days 5 & 6
"The Weekend From Heck" I did manage to import 34 reasonably decent images (not my best ones) into Aperture 2. At least I'll be able to show the adjustments and features of Aperture 2.

Day 7
Tried to recover the "lost" images on my computer. No luck! I trying to figure out a solution. Maybe, loading the images on to a PC and converting them to DNG might work. I'll keep you informed.

Day 8
Watched more tutorials (see list below). I'm starting to see the power Aperture 2 has under the hood.

• Cropping and Straightening
• Recovering Highlights
• Setting Levels
• Setting Advanced Levels
• Using the Retouch Brush

In the next post we will explore some of the adjustments and use sample images.

Weekend from Heck

My internet connection has been a bit slow for the last few days, but that happens. Then, the connection got VERY slow (almost a minute for Google.com to load). WTF? I called tech support for my ISP and they were about as helpful as... well, they weren't any help at all. I didn't have one of their wireless router/modems so they would not help me. A hardwired connection worked fine, but wireless didn't. So, off I went to get a new wireless router. I ended up buying the Apple Airport Extreme base station. Within half an hour (unwrapping and reading the included manual) I was back up and running at faster than previous speed. YIPPIE!

What I really like about the Airport Extreme is I can keep my network secure (not giving out my security settings) and allow client access for a 24 hour period. That's kinda cool.

The other issue I am currently working on is recovering images I shot prior to my switch to Mac. It seems that about 90% of the images I shot in my studio in Toronto that I saved on my PC's hard drive and on CD's are not able to be opened on my Mac (Not the right kind of file). they worked fine on my old PC. I gotta figure out how to save them so my Mac can read them. If you know of a solution please let me know.

I'll be continuing with my "30 Days using Aperture 2" series in a day or so.

30 Days Using Aperture 2 (Day 4)

Day 4

After yesterday's post (using a perfectly exposed and white balanced image) I realized I need to import many more images into Aperture 2. And, that's what I'm going to be doing over the next few days. I want to be able to show you all that Aperture 2 can and can't do. But, to do that I need a larger variety of images.

I'm going to go through the thousands of images I've shot over last few years and import ones that need adjustments and use those for future post. OK, I'm going to chain myself to the computer now... see you in a day or so.