A few new images of TNF rider Mike Hopkins and JHMR athlete Andrew Whiteford in the ever-evolving bike park at Jackson Hole Mountain Resort:
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Posts Tagged: elinchrom
19
Jun 10
Let There Be Light
Here’s a nice comparison showing how different kinds of light can affect a photograph.
I was shooting two winters back with a whole bunch of lights in the Jackson back/sidecountry with snowboarder Don Watkins and skier Andrew Whiteford, and Andrew happened to catch a shot of Don coming off a cliff at nearly the exact same moment that I pressed my shutter. Andrew’s shot captured the scene with the ambient, available light, and my camera captured the scene with the help of three off-camera flashes. Here are the results:
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That’s me in the foreground of the first shot, camera in hand. It was still pretty bright out at that point, but I was hoping to knock down the ambient light and make it the scene look much darker than it actually was. Photography is about light, but it’s more about relative amounts of light. My strobes are a bit brighter than the ambient daylight, so with the right camera settings, they can make it look dark out. Makes sense, right? It took me quite a while to wrap my head around proper flash exposure and how it differs from ambient light photography…
Just a few tech notes – you can’t see any of the lights in the first shot, but the main light is on the right, an Elinchrom Ranger probably at full power. There’s another Ranger up the hill to the left, probably 3/4ish power, and there’s a Sunpak 622 up behind the cliff as a rim light, not sure if that was half or full power. All triggered, of course, by Pocket Wizards. Manual exposure, 1/200 sec, f/13, ISO 100 on a Nikon D300.
13
Apr 10
Elinchrom Ranger Surgery
As I mentioned in the first post, I had a bit of trouble with one of my Elinchrom Ranger RX batteries a few weeks back. The battery was connected to the head and the Pocket Wizards on both the camera and strobe side seemed to be working just fine, and the flash head test fired as normal when you pushed the test button on the battery. It seemed to me at that point that it had to be either a). the sync cord, or b). some internal disconnect having to do with the sync port. Andy shot down to my office to grab a new battery and a new sync cord, which of course solved the problem, but we were then burdened with carrying around a useless extra pack and extra 20 lb. battery, which, well, sucked.
I was pretty sure that something had gone wrong on a park shoot earlier in the season – we were out there at sunset, and the temps dropped from somewhere in the 20s to just about zero in a matter of minutes after the sun went down. There must have been some moisture or condensation in the sync port, because the sync cord was frozen to the port at the end of the night, causing the whole sync port to stick and spin when I tried to unscrew the sync cord. Anyway, I later learned that this caused one of the wires inside – attached to the bottom of the sync port – to twist off and break. Lesson learned here – if your sync cord freezes to the port, just let it thaw out before you try to unscrew it!
On to the fix, which was really simple. I searched a bit for a warranty contact, but wasn’t too excited about sending the heavy battery anywhere, not to mention being stuck without it for a few weeks. The fix is as easy as removing the battery from the case (you had to put the battery in when you got it, so I’m presuming you know how to do this), unscrewing the top, carefully lifting the top off to expose the interior wires and circuit boards, and then stripping the end of the loose wire, and re-soldering it into the bottom of the sync port. It might also be a good idea, once you’ve removed the battery, to turn it on to drain any remaining juice out of the circuits.
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Top view, with key screws indicated
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Inside view
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Seal ‘er back up and you’re done! It should work fine. This isn’t exactly neurosurgery, but it’s better than spending the cash and wasting time on sending it in for warranty. That said, this probably voids the warranty, but what doesn’t?
Also, the shot from the original night sesh where the Ranger died can be seen on my site here. Video (thanks to Karl Steslicke) here.
2
Apr 10
Flashing Lights
With the gift of a late-season storm cycle in Jackson, we went out yesterday to the Crags to try some strobed pow shots.
After an initial Ranger malfunction and subsequent down time, we managed to get shooting. The snow was touchy, and often a lot less soft than it looked from above. There are lots of ski photogs out there shooting with strobes these days, and I promise you, it isn’t an easy task. Lots of wallowing around, test shots, waiting, shot composing, trying to explain exactly what you want the skier to do… And then the execution – you only have one chance to get the shot, no 10 frames/sec to make things easy. Not to mention that it isn’t like a park shoot, where you can just adjust your timing for the next shot – once the pillow is flattened, it’s time to move to the next feature and try again.
In any case, there was a lot to learn for the next time, and a few of the shots turned out pretty good:
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Can’t wait for the next try. Huge thanks to Andy Bardon for assistance and skiers John Beal and James Toth.