Danella Photographic

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Visit Danella Photographic’s “Accessories” page for information and pricing on Smith-Victor’s Chameleon Line of photographic reflectors

The reflector, as an accessory, has a definite place in your camera bag, home studio and general bag of photographic tricks.

The usual use of a reflector is one of natural light augmentation or modification. Window light photography becomes balanced and enhanced when a reflector is used to direct light onto the shadow side of the photo.
The usefulness of a reflector, however, is not limited to portraits.

Field photographers can bounce light into flowers or other flora by carefully aiming light at the subject. The shadows are either opened up or eliminated and more detail will be rendered. Flash photography also can be greatly enhanced and softened if a shoe mount flash is tilted up and a reflector is positioned behind it. The resulting light is very soft and covers any photographer’s widest lens.

Reflectors may be purchased or home made. Commercial photographers, working far from home, will use anything that reflects light as a reflector. A white pizza box or a piece of rigid silver insulation will open up shadows on location assignments. With today’s reflector designs, however, they are easily carried in a camera bag.
Luckily, new generation reflectors are made to collapse and are easily transported at a third of their working size. This eliminates both the bulk of transportation and the excuse for not to take one along. Even large 42″ units are easy to manage once they are collapsed to their folded 16″ size.

Generally speaking, a 32″ reflector is capable of redirecting enough light to improve available light window portraiture.

Visit Danella Photographic’s “Accessories” page for information and pricing on Smith-Victor’s Chameleon Line of photographic reflectors

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High intensity discharge lighting (halcyon) is found in most indoor and some outdoor sports arenas. These venues often include high school and college basketball courts and hockey rinks.

The following information was passed to us by local ( Upstate NY ) commercial photographer David Tewksbury. The research can be credited to Guy Rhodes.

Discharge lights cycle at 60Hz (in the US) and as you can see in these images http://www.sportsshooter.com/guyrhodes/wbtests/
They vary in both intensity and color balance.

The third frame on this site shows very dramatically the shift in both brightness and color balance through the cycle. This is why with fast shutter speeds under these lights you get such a variation of exposure and color balance, and why people strobe arenas.

The same person who did these tests has put together an animated GIF that shows the cycling in a gym. Pretty dramatic changes.

http://www.guyrhodes.com/photo/flicker_lapse.gif

Here is the explanation associated with the animated GIF

The burst was shot @ 8fps, ISO 1600, 1/2000th @ 2.8. I had the camera in auto white balance mode. Lining these frames up next to each other (twelve total in the animation) allows us to see the problematic pulsing these lights produce.

I’ll remind everyone that this flickering, including in the gym where this was shot, is TOTALLY invisible to the naked eye.

Notice the exposure and color variations across every surface of the gym as lights flicker at different times (wired to different phases of the building’s power).

This is why shooting under these lights at fast shutter speeds is hit-or-miss. Sometimes you’ll catch the lights as they peak, other times, you’ll catch the bottom of the wave as the brightness / color are at their worst.

If you’re lucky, the electricians have spread the different phases of power across the entire group of lights, rather than wiring large neighboring areas of lights on the same phase. At E.C. Central’s gym (where the time lapse was shot), we’ve lucked out. You’ll notice lights seem to be wired to different phases every third fixture. This means that by the time the light reaches floor level, the pulsing becomes very manageable, and the light stays somewhat even.

I’ve been to football stadiums, however, where entire poles of lights are on the same phase (meaning they all flicker at the same time), leaving entire percentages of the field in near darkness at the “bottom” of the flicker when shot in a burst, depending on how the lights are focused.

So if you are shooting under discharge lighting and need a shutter speed faster than 1/60th be aware that variations in exposure and color balance will occur.

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As an experiment, two photographs have been posted with a critique. Following the critique is a an area in which you may post your comments. It is my intention to give the photographic community a chance to refine the subjective definition of what makes a good photograph a good photograph.

Your comments regarding the photographs and the critique are invited and encouraged.

Photograph A ©M.Elisabeth 2006

Photograph B ©M.Elisabeth 2006

Critique:

These images represent an excellent example of photographs that present different views of a shared topic. Both photographs are enjoyable to view from the perspective of decorative art.

The B&W conversion enhances the quality of photo “A.” Composition and the out of focus background (bokeh) also contribute to the image’s overall strength.

Just as the B&W conversion strengthens photo “A,” the muted colors of photo “B” lend to its overall impact. The twisted dark branches lead to the encapsulated head giving the photograph an unnerving aura. The fact that the photo is troubling does not flaw it. Any photograph that is capable of eliciting emotion from the viewer is a success.

Photo “B” is the manifestation of a bad dream staged within a harsh environment. Photo “A” promises better days to come.

Guy Danella • January 2007