Jeff Cable's Blog

Thursday, October 6, 2022

Photographing fire dancers - The fun and the challenge!

A couple of weeks back I photographed a really fun event that culminated with a group of fire dancers putting on a show along the edge of a small lake. I was only told about the surprise about 30 minutes before the show, but this gave me just enough time to think about how I would capture this unique show.

The first thing I did was to ask the fire dancers when the show would start. They said that they were ready to go, and as I watched the blue hour fading away, I encouraged them to start right on time.

At first, I thought that I might be better off using a flash (with the power turned down), but after taking a couple of photos, I did not like the images I was capturing. They looked too "flashed".

I figured that the best way to capture the fire dancers would be with a slow shutter speed, and since I had very little ambient light to work with, and I really didn't want to crank my ISO to some crazy level, my shutter speed was slow regardless. I started with my Canon R3 (with the RF15-35mm lens) at ISO 800 and a shutter speed of 1/10th of a second.

I shot a lot of images knowing that any large movement by them or me would result in a poor image.

I tried to take the most photos when the dancer's face was still, so that I could get their face and eyes sharp, while having motion in the fire. As it continued to get darker, I increased my ISO to 3200, and still only had a shutter speed of 1/20th sec.

This is one of my favorite images, because I love the reaction of the kids reaching out towards the fire. The smiles and excitement on their faces is priceless.

Once again, I was waiting for the dancer to stay still while twirling the fire.

Because of the slow shutter speed, I was getting really nice motion in the fire.

I should mention that each of these photos have been retouched in Photoshop. I did not do too much to them, but decreased the highlights (so that the fire was not too white), and increased the shadows (so that you can see the people and blue sky better).

The closer the dancer and flames were to me, the more light I had, therefore getting a slightly faster shutter speed. This photo was taken at 1/50th of a second with the same ISO 3200 and f/2.8 settings.

Just like when I photograph sports, I look for the peak of action and the best reactions.

This woman was putting the flames in her mouth and the intensity on the kid's faces says it all.

This guy was spinning the flames and I saw that his body was subtly lit by the flames. I waited for him to hold the one flame in front of him to rim light his face and fired away.

Towards the end of their performance, they came out and danced in a group. I debated my choice of lenses before the show started, but having the RF15-35mm wide angle zoom lens proved to be the perfect choice for this show.

As the show was wrapping up, I did get up and move closer to the dancers.

I also moved from my original spot (I was sitting right in front with the crowd) to get shots of the dancers and the party guests, who were thoroughly enjoying the performance.

The show started at 7:40pm, and as you can see, by the time this photo was taken at 8pm, the blue hour was over and I only had darkness in the background.

Assuming that I already had some nice photos captured, I decided to experiment and lower the ISO to 1250, shooting some images at 1/2 sec to get even more motion blur. The face of the dancer is not as clear, but I do like the movement of the fire.

The dancers came out for an encore, so I quickly switched back to ISO 3200 to capture the last images.

Half way through the show, this guy did a quick movement of the baton and the flames exploded from each end. The kids went wild. I did not get great shots of that. But he told me that he was going to do it again. This time I was ready for it, and bam!

The show ended and I went over and showed the dancers some of the images on the back of the Canon R3. They loved them. I was happy to share these images with them as well.

As I always say, I love capturing new things!

Thanks to everyone at Pyrophoria Fire Troupe for the entertainment and challenge!

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Monday, September 19, 2022

Using the new Canon Speedlite EL-1 professional flash (Real world test)

The Canon Speedlite EL-1 flash was announced late last year, and like many of you, I saw the price tag and thought that I would save some money and keep using my old Canon 600EX-RT flashes. Let's face it, at $899 each, these things are not cheap. But about a month ago, I decided to pull the trigger and purchase two of these flashes. Even though I typically use 6 flashes when shooting events, I had a very specific use for these two new flash heads. But that would be getting ahead of myself, so let me tell you a little about these newer flashes.

The first thing I noticed when unpacking the Speedlite EL-1 is that it is noticeably larger than the previous Canon flash heads. I believe that a big part of this is the fan which is integrated inside the Speedlite EL-1. Yes, there is a fan in these to help keep them cool, even when being used heavily.

Here is the older Canon 600EX-RT flash laying side-by-side with the Speedlite EL-1. You can see some of the size difference in this photo, but this view does not do it justice.

Here is a head-on view, and you can really see the difference in size of the flash head. As you would expect from seeing this, the Speedlite EL-1 can pump out a lot more light than the 600 series flashes.

Heck, the flash head is almost as big as the base of the unit. But even though this new flash has increased power and light, it is still not why I wanted the two units.

I purchased the two new Canon Speedlite EL-1 flashes for the faster recycle time! With the new cooling system and large battery pack, this new flash can recharge itself much faster than the older flashes and fire almost endlessly without overheating.

As many of you know, I photograph a lot of events and rely heavily on remote flashes at receptions. I usually have two flashes with the MagMod MagSphere diffuser (one for each camera) and two remote speedlites set up on 12 foot light stands in the venue. My hope was that these new flashes could stay up on the light stands and keep up with my rapid fire shooting (using two cameras and flashes) for the whole night. I can easily change batteries for the on-camera flashes, but not so much for the remotes.

As opposed to the Canon 600EX-RT flashes which use AA batteries, the Canon Speedlite EL-1 uses the new LP-EL battery pack. And let me tell you, this battery can hold enough charge to last me for an entire 5 hour party (at a manual setting of between 1/32 and 1/128 power) and still have plenty of battery life left over. I also love that I can charge these batteries using the same charger as my Canon cameras that use the LP-E6 batteries.

I used this flash for my last event and look at the battery indicator. It stills has plenty of juice left over.

The El-1 has a much better LCD display and a new user interface. After working with the Canon 600EX-RT flashes for so many years, I am still getting used to the interface on the Speedlite EL-1.

The good news is that these new flashes can fire off more shots, and faster than the older 600 series flashes, which gives me more high-quality images for my clients.

I am still using the Canon 600EX-RT flashes on my camera, both as a flash and a trigger for the remotes. and you may be wondering why I am doing that instead of using all Speedlite EL-1 flashes. There are four reasons I am shooting this way (for now):

1. I like the smaller size of the Canon 600EX-RT flash on the camera.

2. My MagMod diffusers fit much better on the smaller flash heads.

3. I can change out AA batteries quickly since the flashes are always with me. Having a second set of AA ready to swap out half way through the party works well.

4. It saves me a lot of money.

I can tell you that my take-rate is much higher with these two new speedlites working as my remote flashes. As I fire off my 2000 images during the party, I have way less shots where the remote flashes did not go off.

Do I get nervous having $900 flashes up on 12' light stands with kids running around? Yeah, I do. But so far so good. I hope I did not just jinx myself.

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Friday, September 2, 2022

San Francisco - A NEW PHOTO TOUR and FLYING over the city!

A couple of weeks ago I posted on social media that I took my new Canon R5 out of the box for really cool photo opportunity. And now I get to share with all of you the images from that shoot. For the longest time I have wanted to take aerial photos over my home town of San Francisco, but it just never materialized. Well...until a couple of weeks ago.

I was talking to my friend a couple of months back and she told me that her son had recently graduated from Purdue as a pilot (not an easy task!) and was flying here in the San Francisco Bay Area. I asked Jake if he would take me up in a plane so I could take photos and he readily agreed. Then it was a matter of coordinating both of our schedules and making sure there was not a SF Giants game (which severely restricts the air space over the city. Two Fridays ago was the day!

I was going to use my Canon R3, but at the very last minute, I decided to break out my new Canon R5 which has higher resolution than my Canon R3 or Canon R6. That was a good choice! I brought a Canon RF 24-105mm lens and a RF 70-200mm lens but figured that I would be using the wider lens most often. As it turned out, that was the only lens I used.

I am excited to share the aerial images with you all.

We started the flight with a selfie. All that fancy gear on board, and I used my iPhone for this one. :)

We took off from the local airport exactly at 7pm, hoping to catch golden hour light on the city and night shots as well. Once we were over the city, I opened the window and determined the best angle to shoot through. It was a small amount of space to stick the lens out, but it worked.

As luck would have it, we had a clear view of the Golden Gate Bridge, with the evening sunlight perfectly lighting this landmark. I asked Jake if he could fly out and away from the bridge and then come back in over the South Tower for this shot.

We also flew over the Palace of Fine Arts. I have photographed here many times (on the ground), but never seen it from this view. Because I had the window open, and was using a zoom lens, the force of the wind kept pushing the lens into its widest focal length. I had to hold the lens really firmly in its zoomed position in order to get this shot.

Moving away from the Golden Gate Bridge, we were heading straight for the city. What a beautiful place!

We circled the city numerous times so I could get different perspectives. I love how you can see straight up Columbus Ave in this photo.

After circling the city for a little while I asked Jake if we could fly over towards Sutro Tower. I saw how the tower was sticking out, with the late day sunlight hitting the top of the fog.

It is really interesting to see how different the tower looks from the other direction (with sunlight at our backs and the city in the background).

Before heading to the airport, I made a list of shots I wanted to capture. One of those photos was looking straight up Market Street towards downtown.

This is a similar shot to the one above, but taken vertically. This gives you a better view of City Hall (the domed building towards the front of the image and to the left).

I really liked the way the sunlight was hitting the SalesForce Tower. Jake came in around 2500 feet so that I could get the tower and the Bay Bridge in the background.

We flew right over the SalesForce Tower, so I angled the camera down and grabbed this shot, with the building half in sunlight and half in shadow.

Jake flew around for a while, as I waited for the light to drop. As you can see, we had some fog moving in over San Francisco. That was fine with me as it adds drama to the photos.

This was taken at 7:45pm, with the last bit on sunlight on the buildings.

Then it was time for some sunset photos. Time to turn the ISO up to 640 on the camera.

I had Jake take the same route as before and waited until I had the setting sun directly behind the SalesForce Tower. I turned my exposure compensation to - 1 1/2 to protect the color in the sun. This darkened the city quite a bit. I then opened the shadows in Photoshop when I was processing the image.

Here is a wide shot, showing the piers, the city and Sutro Tower at sunset.

Right before the sun dropped out of site, I got this photo of the Golden Gate Bridge and the incoming fog.

We had more time to kill before I could get some night shots of the city, so Jake flew out past the Golden Gate. We had this pretty view of Marin County.

As we turned and came back in towards the San Francisco Bay, I turned and saw the fog coming over the tops of these mountains. I shot this through the back window of the Cessna 172. The yellow lights you see at the bottom of the photo are the openings of the Robin Williams Tunnel.

We got back over the city but it was still not dark enough for the shots I wanted. I checked the camera and saw that my shutter speed was dropping fast with the decrease in light. I turned my ISO up to 2500.

This is an overhead view of Pier 39, a popular tourist location in the city.

I saw this building just off of Market Street and liked the way it was framed in blue lights. Again, you can see City Hall off to the right.

Here is another shot of Sutro Tower peaking out of the fog, with a beautiful sky in the background. I timed this shot to get the lights blinking on top of the tower.

Now the lights were on and we turned back into the city to get my night shots. I had to increase the ISO of the camera to ISO 6400, and even then my shutter speed was only 1/60 sec. Combine that with the movement of the airplane and the incoming wind, this made for a pretty tough shot.

What a pretty view of San Francisco, and exactly what I was hoping for!

For these last photos, I had to crank up the ISO to 10,000. I bursted out many photos hoping to get one that was sharp.

Even though I had little light to work with, I loved the challenge of capturing these night photos.

Having captured what I wanted, it was time to head back to the airport. But not before one last shot looking down over the South of Market Street.

Jake sent me these flight maps showing our flight path for the two hours we were in the air.

If you did not know better, you would swear that we were lost. 😀

Oh wait - I have some great news for all of you! After many years of people asking me to do a photo tour in San Francisco, I have finally added one to my schedule in 2023. You can find that here.

I may even add an aerial option to the photo tour! I will blog more information about that soon.

I hope you enjoyed seeing these images from above my home city.

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