Have wonderful things to say about me? Say it at Project Wedding so other people can see it, too!

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Carly and Brian were great fun and up for anything I had in mind. We went to Golden Gardens and found lots of different and interesting spots for images.

It was an absolutely beautiful day making for a beautiful blue sky in the images

Trees in the winter without their leaves give a cool, haunting feeling to images

With this image, I couldn't decide if I liked it better in b&w or color. What does everybody else think? I'll take votes!

And more important than what I have to say, here is what Carly & Brian thought of them!

Cory, Cory, Cory.

WOW — these pics are so amazing!!! We are absolutely thrilled with
how they turned out!! You are a genius and have such a great
eye!! We could not have imagined that you would be able to frame
those kinds of shots from where we were!!!

Thank you so much for getting them to us so quickly and for doing such
a fabulous job!! We cannot express how happy we are with these
pictures!!! We are ecstatic that we hired you and are very
excited to see what kind of shots you have in store for us on our
wedding day!!

Thank you again and we will choose our favorites very soon!

Talk to you soon!

Carly and Brian

I just got some new toys tools for wireless, off-camera flash called Radiopopper PX. What they basically do is take Canon wireless flash technology and make it useful somewhere besides in a dark room with the flashes pointed at each other. You then use the flash system on your flash to set up lighting ratios, manually change the flash settings, use automatic flash without having the light source coming from on top of your camera. Today I took my son and Sounders FC superfan, Kyler, to the park to play with the system.

I wanted to test a few things: the High Speed Sync, speed of operation, and a comparison of the eTTL system versus the manual flash adjustments that I usually do. I used a flash 580EX flash on my camera acting as the master unit with a Radiopopper PX transmitter attached to the top of it and two 550EX acting as slaves with the Radiopopper PX receivers attached.

This is what I envisioned when we went to the park. I used the Radiopoppers to transmit the fire signal and the manual flash adjustments while keeping my shutter speed at the 1/200th top speed that the Canon 5D allows for traditional flash systems.

This image was taken using the high speed sync allowing for a much more shallow depth of field.

I really liked this image. Ky loves soccer and is really excited for MLS to be coming to Seattle (Sounders FC season starts March 19). For this I used the eTTL system rather than manually setting the flash and I was pleasantly surprised at the nicely exposed result.

This is more what I expected from eTTL. The camera saw the bright lightsource in the frame and didn't use enough flash power (even though the fired) to make a proper exposure.

In this image, I switched to manual flash exposure and I had a much better exposure. This image is processed identically to the image before it so that it is an apples to apples comparison.

This image shows the shallow depth of field that is possible using high speed sync and a fast lens.

Same as the image before, but with the focus on his face rather than his hands.

Another using the high speed sync to make him pop from the background.

Testing the range. I was about 150 feet away. Really all that I need it to work at would be this range. The system is supposed to work at 1700 feet. Nice, but not necessary for me!

The front of his jersey. This image was shot at 1/6400 of a second with a full power flash.

This image of my amazingly handsome son was taken at f2 for the shallow depth. Again using HSS.

Again using the two flashes and HSS. The shallow depth of field throws the trees and sky out of focus and makes them shapes rather than trees.

These last three images are for illustration of the Manual versus eTTL. The first is taken with manual flash, the second is eTTL. The third is eTTL with +2 stops of exposure compensation.

My conclusions are that the Radiopopper PX system works really well for doing portraits. The system fired the flashes every time the flashes were ready and charged. It works well at distance. It provides a reliable system to use the HSS (high speed sync) allowing for flash and shallow depth of field at the same time. And it allows me to change my manual flash settings without going over to the flash and pushing buttons (I can push buttons from wherever I am with the camera).

Where it falls down in my mind is the difficult installation (you actually have to semi-permanently attach it to the flashes you are going to use rather than take it on and off at will) and the fact that it is limited to speed of operation of the Canon wireless flash system. I tested it on motor drive and was able to get only four out of 12 to fire at 1/128 power at three frames per second (frames 1, 2, 3, and 9 of the 12). This was because the Canon master flash was not ready, not because the Radiopoppers or the receiving flashes were not ready.

Edited: I tried the speed test again. The first time I did this, I had the on-camera master flash set to 1/128th power plus it was firing the flash signal to the slave flash. I tried this the same way with very similar results (actually only 1, 2 & 8 out of 12). However, when I changed it so that the on-camera flash was not firing at the time of exposure and was only shooting out the flash signal to the slave, it was able to trigger the flash much more quickly. I was able to get 9 out of the 12 exposures (1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 7, 8, 10 & 11) to fire from the slave.

Finally, I found that I got the results that I wanted most consistently when I used manual flash exposure. The eTTL was right about 75% of the time, but for me being wrong 25% of the time doesn’t cut it.

It is a very cool time to be a photographer with all the awesome equipment available!

I had a great time with Liz and Brian at the beach, lighthouse and the Ferry landing area of Mukilteo. It also worked out that it was the most beautiful day in a couple weeks!

I used a flash and radiopoppers (version 1) to light the couple and keep the dark blue skies.

I really like the way this image came out.

Liz and Brian sitting on a cold driftwood log.

Liz and Brian were engaged on the beach just a little ways from the Lighthouse

I loved this moody portrait by the seawall

When I saw this wall, i had a vision of Liz and Brian kissing while leaning up against the wall at night. I used a flash to try to recreate a street light.

Liz and Brian are such a happy couple that I thought this image really showed their fun side.

One of the most common questions I get from budding photographers is what equipment they should buy. Most of these people are owners of a relatively low-cost DSLR such as a Nikon D40 or Canon Digital Rebel that they bought with a kit lens. The cameras that come with these kits are great. Any digital SLR that is currently in production is capable of professional quality results, which is a big difference from even just a couple years ago.

There are three problems that people have with these great little cameras. The first is that they don’t really know how to use it, which is a much longer subject than I’m going to cover in this short blog post! The second is that the kit lenses basically aren’t very good. And the third is that the little flash that is so handy on the top of the camera produces horrible light especially when used in the fully automatic mode.

Canon 35 f2.0, which is what I put on my daughters Rebel XTi.

Since problems two and three can be solved by throwing a little money at the problem and that is what this post is about. The first thing I recommend for any DSLR owner is to get something to supplement the kit lens. I recommend a 35mm or 50mm lens. These are excellent, cheap, small lenses. The big difference is that they let in so much more light into the camera. To give you an idea, the lower the number for the f-stop or aperture, the more light is coming through. A typical kit lens is Canon’s 18-55 3.5-5.6. That means that at 55mm you are at f5.6. A 50mm f1.8 would let in around 10 times as much light. You could be creating photographs in 1/10 the light. That is a pretty incredible difference. It would also allow you more control over your depth of field, which means you can control what is in focus and what is out of focus. But that falls under “how to use” rather than “what to use”.

Next is the flash. I hate on-camera flash for the most part and the built-in flashes on the little DSLR’s are one of the worst offenders in the “unpleasant light” category. Photography is all about light, so having unpleasant light (unless you are doing it on purpose), is not desirable. The solution - a bigger flash that you can bounce with. That means, you can point it behind you or to the side to bounce off of a wall or ceiling rather than pointing it right at your victim. I’d say subject, but direct flash makes them more of a victim.

Here are the specific items that I can recommend.
Lenses
Canon 28 1.8, 35 f2, 50 f1.8, 50 f1.4
Nikon 35 f1.8 (just announced and not yet available), 50 f1.8, 50 f1.4
Sigma 30 f1.4, 50 f1.4 (I just bought it and I love it)

Canon flashes: 430EX, 580EX
Nikon flashes: SB-600, SB-900

Almost all of this stuff is available through my new Amazon store on my website. Convenient, huh?