Red Bull Crashed Ice 2009 - Shooting in the cold

I started off planning to blog every event and photoshoot this year as they happened. It was pretty much a new years resolution for me, but I'm already struggling with it. Here goes for a post I started a couple of weeks ago.
Red Bull Crashed Ice is one of the craziest looking events I've ever shot. It's like a skier cross or boarder cross event, except it's on ice skates, on ice, downhill, with turns and jumps and all sorts of other fun stuff. It's the kind of event that Red Bull is famous for and I've shot the one in Quebec City for the past 4 years now. Aside from all the craziness of the event itself it's also a fairly difficult event to shoot. It takes place at night in Quebec City in the winter so right away you can correctly assume that it's dark and it's cold. Red Bull and Gestev (The company that produces the event) do a really good job of lighting the place up so it looks awesome on TV and in photos. But that light still falls way short of what you'd really want if you could choose. Here is a brief description of the Crashed Ice photography issues over the last couple of years.

The first year the track itself was fairly dark, hidden behind the crowds and the boards. I shot with a couple of Quantum Q flashes, placing them on tall light stands and trying to light up the crowd and the action, while still shooting at a high enough ISO to get the ambient lighting on the buildings etc. This worked to a point and I got some great shots, the biggest issues were the crowd (60,000 or so) and the cold. The crowd was a major factor as it was very difficult to move around and leaving a light stand in a location for a short period of time was almost impossible. Without even worrying about it being stolen or tipped over the biggest issue was probably trying to retrieve it whenever I wanted to change locations. Also the first year it was about -20 Celsius, which is cold, not extreme cold, but definitely cold enough to be an issue. I was mostly concerned about batteries but the biggest trouble came with the lcd screens. The Quantum flashes and the Pocket Wizard triggers both use lcd display screens to show you what's going on and after about 2 hours in the cold they started to go out. My flashes and Pocket Wizards still
worked but I had no idea of what the settings were because the displays were completely blank. Lesson number 1 for shooting in the cold, bring pocket warmers and tape for all your gear. Little point and shoot pouches work great for the pocket wizards, you can fit a hand warmer in there with them and they'll go all night with no problems. I didn't have pouches big enough for the Q Flashes so I just taped pocket warmers to them. Not as good a solution, but better than nothing at all. Here are a couple of shots from that year.































The last 3 years they put lights in the boards and increased the amount of light on the buildings so it's been a lot easier to shoot. And this year with the new cameras and the higher ISO's it should have been a really easy event to shoot. No flash, just put the ISO at 1600 or 3200 and shoot away. Last year I shot with a Nikon D2Xs and most of my shots were at ISO 640 or 800 around 1/250 f2.8. Not what you'd call ideal for action. This year I was shooting with a D700 and getting 1/800th at f.4 and 3200 ISO which was awesome, the only problem was the cold. At -37 Celsius Digital Cameras have some serious issues. I kept spare batteries in a pocket with handwarmers and swapped them out occasionally, so that wasn't as much a problem as it could have been, my friend Yorick went through 3 batteries in several hours. The biggest problems had to do with the lubricant in the lenses becoming quite stiff, and the lcd and indicator lights not working properly. The lens problem was mostly an issue with my 70-200 zoom, it was so stiff it felt like was going to tear the lens off the camera when I zoomed. Autofocus was also an issue, I could definitely notice the focusing speed slow right down as the lenses got cold, not good when you're trying to focus track. The LCD screen on the back of the camera started to flicker a lot, and the focus indicator light in the viewfinder quit working all together. This was really a problem in the end when I was trying to prefocus to avoid the really slow autofocus.

I did a fair bit of reading before and after the event and came up with a few recommendations for cold weather (below -20C) shooting.
1. Do not bring your camera or lenses inside if you can avoid it. Besides the usual problem with condensation on and in cold lenses and camera bodies when they're brought into a warm humid environment, lenses supposedly also work better when they're consistently cold. Aside from the lubricant issues, lenses suffer from the glass and metal parts expanding and contracting at different rates when they're brought in and out of the cold. So leaving them in the same temperature to 'acclimatize' before using them is supposedly a good idea.
2. Keep spare batteries in your pocket with handwarmers to keep them warm, then switch them often.
3. As a part of number 1 above, if you do need to bring your cameras inside, take the cards out in the cold and put your bodies and lenses in sealed ziplock bags inside your camera bag and don't open your bag for several hours. Don't open the zipock bags until the bodies and lenses are no longer cold to the touch. (At Crashed Ice this year we saw more than one photographer walk into the media room with a 300 2.8 over their shoulder or attached to a monopod. Once inside the lens would immediately be almost dripping wet, with condensation on both sides all the lens elements. A short time later the photographer would walk back outside into the freezing temps and all that moisture would freeze solid. Hard to shoot with a lens full of ice.)

A few photos from this years event...

Bike Mag Cover

Last month I got something really exciting in the mail, Bike Magazine, and for the second time in my life I had a photo on the cover of it. What set this cover apart for me was that it was shot at 1/500th of a second with flash. See my post on Camera Sync Speed and Flash for more details.

The Details:
This was shot at 1/500 f5 with a Nikon D2Xs. I used 2 Nikon SB800's set to manual 1/2 power and mounted on a single stand. I can't remember exactly what the zoom was set at but I metered it out to match the sunlight coming from almost directly overhead. Flash's are on a stand at the bottom of the photo in the middle, behind the bush. Some people may wonder why I used 2 flashes at 1/2 power, isn't that the same as one flash at 1/1? Yes it is, the big difference is that the flash duration is way quicker, so you get a crisper image, and if I was going to take a second shot, they recycle way faster as well. I've started using 2 SB800's together now for a lot of different things, it just seems to work better for me.

babies and blogs

So it's been a while since my last post. Almost a month and a half actually. In that time I've had a baby boy, shot 3 Red Bull Events, 2 Mountain Bike Slopestyle events, 2 film shoots, and a bunch of plain old fashioned photo only shoots. I've learned a lot in that time as well, probably the most important thing being that babies are like a time vacuum. I had originally thought that having a baby would give me time to stay home and chill a little while getting myself organized, and doing things like spending some time on this blog. This is my first post since Kainoa was born on July 22nd so you can see how well my plans went. I have about a week free now before the Interbike trade show in Las Vegas, and then a few more days at home before the Red Bull Rampage event in early October. In that time I have to get all my promo stuff ready for the trade show (an attempt to find some new work in the bike industry) and get a bunch of work done on my house reno's. I'll also try to get back to my plan of writing at least a few posts every week. Wish me luck...

Camera Sync Speed and Flash

There seems to be a fair bit of confusion in the world about camera sync speeds, Pocket Wizards, and high speed sync so I thought I would try to explain and demonstrate how it all works.

Camera Sync Speed (SLR)
Your camera has a set sync speed which is the fastest shutter speed you can use with a flash for that particular camera. So say the camera companies. Knowing how it works can allow for some additional creative processes. I'm going to assume that you know what a shutter is, and the examples here were shot with a Nikon D2Xs, Canon's work the same way, they both have vertical focal plane shutters. Rather than rewrite what's already been written about shutters I'll refer you to a fairly good description with diagrams on wikipedia.

The sync speed of your camera is the maximum shutter speed at which the shutter is entirely open. After that point the shutter begins to close before it is fully open, creating a slit that moves across the focal plane as can be seen in these shots below.



"Wait a minute you're saying, how did you shoot faster than the sync speed of the camera, mine won't let me do that!"
Most SLR and DSLR cameras detect that a flash is attached and electronically limit the shutter speed to the maximum sync speed of the camera. By using a PC cord or a Pocket Wizard or other such remote you can bypass the detection of the flash. If the flash is not on the hot shoe, the camera doesn't know that it's there, and thus it doesn't limit the shutter speed. This can be a good thing if you understand how to use it. As you can see in the images above there is very little difference in the 1/250 shot and the 1/320 shot, if I'm shooting with pocket wizards I frequently shoot at 1/320. Even at 1/500 the flash still covers almost the bottom 2/3 of the frame, so if I position my flash lit subject in that bottom 2/3, and keep the top 1/3 lit by ambient light, everything will be fine. You can use the same trick for vertical shots as well, just keep the flash cropping in mind when you compose.

Pocket Wizard Multimax Fast Mode
The Pocket Wizard Multimax transceivers have a fast mode that according to the manual allows you to sync up to 1/1000 of a second. Of course that's dependent on your camera's sync speed, and the only camera I know of that can sync at 1/1000 is a Rollei with a PQS lens. It does affect your camera's sync however, as shown in the photos below. The photos with the HS are the ones shot in Fast Mode



As you can see from the images, with Fast mode on the Multimax there is no discernible flash cropping at 1/320, and at 1/400 you still have most of the frame available for flash. At 1/500 and 1/1000 there is a smaller difference, but still good to know about. Please note that every camera is slightly different so you should repeat this test with your own camera before you start using it this way.

Nikon Auto FP High Speed Sync
As I use Nikon Cameras I won't go into the Canon version of this feature, although i believe it is similar. Nikon pro cameras and the newer Nikon "prosumer" cameras allow you to use what they call "Auto FP High-Speed Sync" mode with the Nikon SB600 and SB800 flashes. It allows you to shoot up to 1/8000 with a flash. It accomplishes this by firing a bunch of vey fast flash pulses instead of one single flash, and these pulses blanket the shutter as it opens and closes so that the entire image is lit. There are several benefits as well as several drawbacks to this feature.
Benefits - As it allows you to shoot at a higher shutter speed you can adjust the ambient light level and keep a lower aperature even in bright daylight. Also you can shoot at a higher shutter speed to freeze action and still use fill flash.
Drawbacks - Because it fires a bunch of flashes the actual flash "duration" becomes much longer making it less than useful for freezing action between 1/250 and 1/1000. Also because it has to fire more than once the effective power level of the flash is greatly reduced, and the recycle time increases. The biggest drawback is the huge reduction in output. My Nikon SB800's at ISO100, 1/2 power, 70mm zoom at @7 feet give me @f8. With the same settings using Auto FP high speed sync I get less than f2.8 Even at full power I get less than f2.8 Not great if you need to have the flash more than a few feet from your subject.
Also this is a feature that is enabled on the camera, not the flash, so it won't work with Pocket Wizards, although the new Radio Popper wireless TTL system will probably work fairly well with it.

I'll follow up with review of this feature with the Radio Poppers once I get a set, hopefully fairly soon.

Seeing things. Light - part 1

A lot of people over the years have asked me to critique their photos or help them with things like lighting. I always get asked about what I think is the most important thing to learn about photography, or "how can I become a better photographer?"

I usually respond by talking about spending time learning to see things. A photograph can be brought down to two basic elements, light and composition. There are other things that contribute to a great photo as well of course. Things like color and timing and focus etc. but really it comes down to light and composition.

Light

By light I don't mean how well you use flashes to light something, I mean the overall light. A photograph is light traveling through a lens and hitting film or a sensor for a brief moment of time. That light usually comes from a certain direction and is filtered by various things that diffuse it or obscure it or make shadows out of it. If it isn't diffused it is much brighter on the side that the source is on, and darker on the side away from the source. Highlights and shadows. Our eyes see it all and in combination with our brain interpret it so that we see light and shadow mostly as one. When you look at a photo you don't interpret it the same way you do the surrounding world. It is flat, two dimensional, and it's not moving. It is a frozen slice of time and the differences between light and dark are far more noticeable. The way light strikes an object is far more noticeable as well. When you are taking photos, one of the most important things you can do is learn to see the light that is actually happening as you are shooting. And learning to see it the way it will look in a photo. Practice this. Take the time to look at the way light is happening. Walk around and look at objects front lit and side lit and back lit. See the differences. Take photos of things from 3 different angles so you can see the difference in your photo. Look for interesting shadows or highlights. Practice seeing the light.

More to come including examples in part 2 on light.