Too much money, not enough sense

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Mainecoonmaniac

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I think it's a digital Hassy feature.
 

jgwetworth

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He comes out of it with quite a pretty image.
 

cramej

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IMO, the end result is pretty bland. I'm surprised it took him so long to figure out what panning is. I suppose this is one of those things you do just to say you did it.
 
OP
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Mainecoonmaniac

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Wow! He is quite something.
 

ruby.monkey

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At 750km/h, that plane is going to cover something like 15->30cm over the period of an exposure at that camera's highest shutter speed (even at 1/8000s, it would have moved about 10cm). How is the photographer supposed to get a sharp photo using natural light alone?
 

jp498

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Probably the pilot wanted some nice photos and could afford it. If there is a 1-second delay, that's the wrong tool for the job.
It's gear porn, pushing lights and his "special" monopod. I don't mind some gear porn and fighter jets for entertainment.
 

jp498

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Panning. It works.
 

Matthew Wagg

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I agree totally with the OP. Too much money...
Using http://johndudak.com/photographers/sp.php to work out the details that were given in the shot a shutter speed of at least 1/11364th would have had to have been used to 'catch' the jet in focus enough so there's a 0.01mm blur when printed.

Using the profoto lights he's using, according to what I could find, they have a t1 time of 1/12,000 of a second. I didn't see how many profotos he ended up with but at 2400w/s per unit that is a hell of a lot of light power.

Sure its an impressive show off promo for Profoto and Hassleblad but I'm left cold as to the final image.
 

vpwphoto

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This guy impresses me more... and he did a lot of his work with flash bulbs... only one shot at the shot... train/light/bulbs only there once a day.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/O._Winston_Link

Money and time can accomplish anything, I'm sure 80% of the people shooting professionally/or seriously can do the "jet" photo if the client requested it and you had access to the lighting.
Personally I could do it with my gear I have now, but I would have been un-elegant and used gasoline generators to power the lights. Or run a few cords from the tower on a small strip.

Look at the 6th image in this series...(link below) I stopped a shot-gun shell impact with no timer no nothing on the first try. Client was too cheap to let me rent the shutter trigger from Calumet in Chicago. Just about everything I do is on the cheap here... I resent it sometimes, the Bosch advert was done in an abandoned building the AD found... I told her we were trespassing... but the shoot went on.

I was surprised the first shot was the best... we fired about 10 shells , early or late on most of the others.

http://vincentseye.com/job/things/

I drive a used older Audi... perhaps I can buy his used Porsche one day. I'm happy here. Good/day/evening apug peoples.

+1 Matt from the UK -- cheers.
+1 JP948
 
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OP
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Mainecoonmaniac

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Tom1956

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A camera with a 1 second delay is totally worthless.
 

markbarendt

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Did a little googling and the delay is programmable, the intent is to reduce the shake from mirror slap.
 

markbarendt

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With regard to using flash in this situation, actually as in most any situation, it is to make printing easier and improve the photo's quality level. Think of it as doing the bulk of the burn and dodge work when the shutter drops instead of doing it "in the enlarger" and avoiding under exposure of the subject is important. He may have been stopped down a ways to keep the DOF long.

Also, we can't always wait for a sunny day, nor might we want to; a sunny day would not have the same dramatic background these shots did.
 

vpwphoto

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Matthew Wagg said:
Wow that's impressive
Click to expand...

Thanks... I told the client before we went to the range I wasn't promising anything.
Dumb luck and a little intuition.... those are crappy US made White-Lightning units that stopped the action.
I joke White Lightnings are cheap only because they don't pay super-models and rent Ferrari and set dressers for their advertising.
They just work.

Regarding the use of the radio slave in the video (I know the point was to sell equipment) butI hard wired my shot there is enough delay in radio slaves that I find I have to run the Hasselblad at 1/250th and Nikons at 1/160th when using a radio slave of any sort. If I had to shoot this jet situation, I would have went hard wire also.
This delay is mentioned in the instructions of most radio slaves I have used. Radio waves travel at the speed of light, but the signal processing on the chips is where this small delay comes from..
....impulse to trigger signal, to received signal, back to trigger impulse voltage takes a little time.
 
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vpwphoto

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@ hoffy,
I understand your point. I may not seem that way here sometime...but I don't act like a big wizard on the set and swoon over my own work/photos.
I keep my head down, hands on the camera, and leave the high fives for when the paycheck is delivered.
Sure I get excited about an image, but with carful planning you can capture about anything in controlled situations like this.
Real world budgets/people wouldn't allow for this. Assistants... I have to keep them at arm's reach anymore just because they simply want to cut me out of the
loop and go solo... The logistics of setting up that much portable power (those batteries are heavy) my richest client (I've had a couple) wouldn't stoke their own
ego to the tune of 4 assistants to me, and renting a kings ransom in lighting.... 2 Honda generators 18 Einstein units at $500 each would have had me covered to do this.
I also doubt Paul C. Buff would have let me have them for free, customers are customers to them.... their stuff sells on reputation of value.

See my note on previous post about why White Lightning units are so affordable.
And in the end check out this guys work... real amazing and truly hurculean effort on
---ONE SHEET OF FILM in most cases.
http://lens.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/11/16/when-steam-locomotion-ground-to-a-halt/?_r=0

I'm a full time pro of about 30 years and my client's budgets don't leave enough room on the table to even think about a ProPhoto outfit of 4 heads and two
power units.... (Iv'e price them, and saved the difference on equipment outlay to provide for my family)
The set up with batteries and the jet was to sell flash and camera (A new Blad system and back cost 6x what I have in my current daily ride).
 
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hoffy

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I totally get where the vid was going. Blind freddy could see that.

And to be honest, I wasn't implying what you have shown above and your comments as being higher then mighty (please teach me! High speed strobe photography is pretty cool).
 

ScarletBrown

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Wrong Tool with lot of wastage of money and time. I don't like these type of photography because i think good photographer can capture good photographer without wastage of money. Photography skills are important in all photographer's life.
 

removed account4

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hi vpwphoto

i couldn't agree with you more about clients, wizardry and getting the work done without a circus
(and o winston link was a master of the medium no-doubt! and it is important to know our past)
but you have to admit sometimes it is fun to see someone do something kind of goofy and foolish
just to shake your head and smile and say LOL that is kind of silly, and there is a self promotion
youtube video of the whole thing. to be honest i thought it was kind of funny to see that he didn't point
the lights UP at first but, what do i know ..

great work you (o- ) linked to ( sorry for the pun) !
in a past life i worked for a newspaper and had an assignment photographing projectiles being launched out of "the tube" ( on a boat )
didn't use anything fancy, no circus of assistants or 100K worth of lighting ... and the client was just as impressed ..
certainly not stopping a shotgun that's fun ! ( darn, no vimeo video to link to! youtube is so passé vimeo is much cooler )

=====

this thread kind of reminds me of a guy 7? 8? years ago who made this enormous camera ... he was in the news, all over the interweb ..
he captured the public spotlight because of this giant thing. he was raving about how he could see enormous detail
from the extreme foreground to the needles of the pinetrees on the hillsides in the distance. ( you know like a film based image is capable of (oops) )

people who regularly shoot ULF cameras, 20x12 &c chimed in the thread saying " hey when i stick film in my camera i can take the
exact same image, extreme focus and detail far and infinity " couldn't have agreee more
.... but it was still fun seeing this guy build his frankenstein from scratch, and he didn't even have marty feldman as an assistant

john
 
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