Coffee and Celluloid » Photography

How to Operate Your DSLR via Your iPhone for $4

Joey — Thu, 08 Oct 2009 12:38:44 +0000

Want to control your digital SLR camera from your iPhone (or Touch)? When I was taking pictures of grilled cheese sandwiches, there was a bit of downtime between the grillin’, so I figured out how to work this totally awesome magic, all for less than $4.

(While writing this and researching links, I realized OnOne has their own dedicated tethered shooting app. However, their app is $20 while the one I describe below is only $4. And before you say there’s a $2 Lite version, you can do so much more with Keymote)

Here’s what you’ll need:

Digital camera¹
Laptop or computer (Mac) with USB cable for tethering
Tethering software for your camera (links and free workarounds for Nikon users below)
iPhone or iPod Touch
Keymote iPhone App and their free receiver software installed on your computer

First is to get your camera and laptop setup to shoot tethered. Scott Kelby and Joe McNally have great posts on their personal setups and if you want more details on tethering you should check them out.

However, what they leave out is a free tethering option for us Nikon shooters. Canon users have a free ride with the EOS Capture Utility. The Nikon option is Camera Control Pro 2, but it’s $160.

If you don’t want all the bells and whistles and just want to be able to operate your camera from your computer, there’s Sofortbild, a free Mac tethered shooting app. Actually, it’s quiet amazing for free. You can control all your settings, have images displayed full screen, setup time lapse, and probably do 90% of the things you’d want to do in Camera Control, but for none of the cost.

So you’ve got your free tethering setup, now you need to make the magic happen with your iPhone. Keymote is an app that once linked with your computer it let’s you save sets of keyboard shortcuts to specific groups. There’s a bunch of preset program specific ones you can download, such as Front Row, Hulu, Finder, Final Cut Pro, or, in our case, you can create a new one, such as this:

The iPhone and Mac connect via a wireless network. Don’t worry, you don’t actually need to be in a hot spot. You can just create a network with your Mac and join it through your iPhone.

It’s pretty simple from here. With Sofortbild and Keymote launched and the two paired, just press away and watch everything go to work.

This worked out really well with the food when I had to position something and snap a picture before it all toppled over. Other uses I can think of are working with kids, getting a better connection with subjects and models, and anything else where timing or ruining the moment is at risk by running back behind your camera.

And as I said, Keymote will work with anything that uses keyboard shortcuts. So it’s been really nice to sit back on the couch and watch some cuts in Final Cut, and even be able to mark clips and subclip raw footage.

This post is specifically geared toward Nikon and Canon shooters, but as far as I can tell, as long as you can tether your camera (that goes for point and shoot too) and you can control it from your computer via keyboard shortcuts, then this should work. ↩

Grilled Food Photography

Joey — Thu, 01 Oct 2009 13:41:45 +0000

So here’s one of the images from the food photography shoot. And here’s the lighting setup:

My main goal was to fill the image with as much soft light as possible. This setup is what I settled with later on. Main light behind the food, kind of low to rake across the sandwich and give it some texture. Even though that strobe is going through a baffle and the silk on the soft box, I added the extra diffusion to spread the light some more and even further soften it.

Later on I settled on using a small strobe through an umbrella as fill. Originally I created some fill cards (seen below the table) from some thick poster board scored down the center so it folds shut and forms a V. Had one on either side of the sandwich, leaving a gap for the lens. That worked pretty well, but the table was pretty small and it was hard keeping everything balanced. Plus it was nice to have some control to raise the fill light if needed.

The ‘seamless’ background was made from a few sheets of poster board taped to the table and clamped on a stand.

I had a pretty sweet tethered rig (first time I got it all set up) to the computer with a really awesome camera remote that I’ll write about separately.

As for photographing the food itself, let’s just say I’m sure food stylists are worth their weight in gold. There’s so many ridiculous and amazing ways to keep food looking great and to get cool effects (like a steamer for steam or spraying glue onto pancakes so they don’t get soggy from syrup) that someone who specializes in this would know. We went through a bunch of sandwiches and eventually figured ways to make things work and look good.

The biggest issue was sandwiches falling apart. Easy enough solution to just jab the back with a bunch of toothpicks.

I also found that food photography is all about the details. I would just get my fingers all in the sandwich and move pieces around until it looked its best.

All in all it was a fun day and I look forward to going back to the restaurant to see some large prints of the pictures.

If you’re ever in Vero Beach be sure to check them out and grab some yummy sandwiches at Grilligans.

Cheesy Photos

Joey — Mon, 28 Sep 2009 13:52:25 +0000

Heading back from Vero Beach after a grilled cheese photo shoot. It’s for Grilligans, this awesome resturaunt that makes a variety of grilled cheese sandwiches and delicious shakes (a perk of food photography is you get to try everything).

Here’s a teaser photo. I’ll have some lighting photos and final shots later on.

A Figment of My Reality

Joey — Sat, 13 Jun 2009 12:12:39 +0000

This past week I’ve been in New York, catching up with a bunch of long, lost Film School peeps and making the rounds to the museums, hitting up the Model as Muse exhibit at the Met, Richard Avedon’s Fashion Photography at ICP, and the Frank Lloyd Wright exhibition for the 50th Anniversary at the Guggenheim (they’re all great).

And while I’ve been having tons of fun, the reason that prompted this trip is I have some photos from Haiti displayed at Figment, an art festival. It’s a free festival on Governor’s Island (that takes a free ferry to get to). It runs this weekend, so if you’re in New York and want something to do, you should check it out. There’s a bunch of other cool, interactive art projects including a mini golf course (and the free ferry gives you a great view of downtown Manhattan and the Statue of Liberty).

College on a Kodak Brownie

Joey — Fri, 08 May 2009 12:35:50 +0000

I like collecting old cameras. I mainly get them at antique stores. I have only three requirements: they have to be under $10, they have to look cool, and they have to work.

Most cameras I come across do work. If you think about it there isn’t much to go wrong. A little lever pushes a spring which pops open a shutter. No complicated gizmos or electronics to break. Just light hitting a negative; photography at its most basic. And that’s what I love about old cameras.

So about a month ago I found a really cool looking Kodak Brownie Super 27 that takes 127 film. This is the smaller version of roll film, though still larger than 35mm. I had a few rolls lying around that I’d gotten as a gift years ago. Turns out they were three years expired, but I figured what the hell.

I walked around campus, photographing some of the architectural attempts at 60s modern design. I had two choices for aperture – big hole or little hole. 12 frames, that’s it. It’s nice to have restrictions.

Possibly more exciting than shooting on film again was going back in the darkroom. Through my friend Ali I managed to crash the campus darkroom for free, and develop the negatives. I hadn’t been in a darkroom for a few years, though I have my own enlarger and everything and vow to one day live in a place that has a closet for a darkroom. The smell of developer was wonderful.

I scanned the negatives using just a regular flatbed scanner, inverted them, and then adjusted the levels to get a decent print. That’s the only Photoshop work done. Everything else is all from a 40 year old camera and some expired film.

View more from the roll on Flickr

A Figment of My Reality

Esquire’s RED ONE Cover Photo and Motos (Moving Photos)

Joey — Tue, 28 Apr 2009 15:46:48 +0000

The latest cover of Esquire that’s coming out, featuring Megan Fox, wasn’t shot with a still camera but with the RED ONE, the super inexpensive, super high-def movie camera.

Basically Megan acted for 10 minutes, which they filmed on the RED, and then pulled out the best frames. My first thought was doesn’t that defeat the purpose of capturing a moment and photography, and won’t this lead to lazy photography because basically you’re shooting 24 pictures a second, so you know you’ve got something. Plus, at 24 frames per second that’s over 14,000 photos to edit!

I first read about this on Chase Jarvis’ blog. Then this morning it was on A Photo Editor, so I decided to look more into it and it’s actually way cooler than it originally sounded and has some unique potential. First, the photographer behind the cover is Greg Williams, whom I later remembered did one of my favorite photo series ever in the book Bond On Set, which has great set photography from Casino Royale.

Secondly, this wasn’t just a shoot with the end goal of getting a cover photo. The 10 minutes they shot was on sets with a loose narrative, which they’re editing down to 4 minutes and putting on Esquire’s site next month.

But lastly, which I think is the coolest, is you get these really cool, Harry Potter-esque moving photos, or Motos, as Williams is calling them. While this may be the first cover to be shot on RED, Williams has been playing with this technique since Quantum of Solace.

Here’s Megan Fox’s Esquire Moto from Williams’ site:

Pretty awesome, right? Movie posters, National Geographic, photojournalism – there’s all kinds of applications for this, to have a little expanded slice of life. Now we just need digital paper to slap this stuff anywhere.

Photos, Photos, Photos

Joey — Mon, 23 Mar 2009 15:18:38 +0000

I never thought I’d see the day, but I’ve finally gotten a pretty good hold of Photoshop, dare I say an expert intermediate user. But that hasn’t come without pain, mainly in my shoulder from hours of sitting, coming up with a “look” for the Haiti photos. I blame it all on the Aeron chair, or lack there of.

I had an Aeron chair for about a year. Sort of complicated story, but I had borrowed it from a professor for a prop in my film, but then he went off to direct a movie so I held onto it, and then he came back and I had to give it up. So now I’m back in my old, crappy chair that I haven’t used in, well, a year and now my shoulder hurts.

But I guess no pain, no gain. Yeah right, I’m getting a new chair.

So here are some photos that I’ve put up from the first batch. They’re from when we first landed and went straight to Cite Soleil. It was probably one of the most surreal experiences. It literally is like the edge of the world. Amazingly the kids were really playful and smiling. I guess they got a kick out of a few white guys walking through their camp. They would keep yelling, “Hey You!,” probably the only English they know.

They really got a kick of having their picture taken and then looking at it. Digital cameras – breaking cultural barriers.

Here are a few more photos (all the photos are on my Flickr page):

Seven Photos that Changed Fashion Recreated

Joey — Tue, 03 Feb 2009 06:27:06 +0000

Famous fashion photos recreated | RobertBenson.com

Here’s a complete special that aired on the BBC. Seven Photographs that Changed Fashion follows photographer Rankin as he tries to recreate 7 iconic images. The series is chopped up into 8 parts, roughly one photo per clip, and you can find them all on Robert Benson’s site above.

The show is definitely worth a watch. Rankin (one word name should give you a warning) was a bit of a whiner, especially when shooting on film. And I’m sorry to give you this spoiler but I was shocked to find he was not gay when he said one of the models was his girlfriend. Not that there’s anything wrong with it.

So putting Rankin aside, there’s definitely a lot of goodies to learn and pick up in this special.

As for the end result, some photos captured the essence of what made the original iconic while others totally missed the mark. The Richard Avedon original is the one I think is furthest off target.

Avedon’s photo has a surreal quality to it. The lighting is soft but high key. While the elephants were chained to the floor, which is not cool, they were still more featured. There’s such a huge contrast between the model and the animals.

The most striking difference, which I think makes Avedon’s photo so successful, is the white sash. It adds a stillness and statuesque look to the model that just ins’t there in Rankin’s. The only similarity between the two photos is two elephants and a gorgeous model.

One of the more interesting observations in the show is how shooting with film affects the set and model, especially when using an 8×10 camera. With these cameras you only get one shot off before you have to reload, which takes a few minutes. The way everyone works is completely different and in the end that causes a different image.

Going back to Rankin, while shooting with the 8×10 camera he doesn’t actually shoot anything. Having an assistant set up the image and press the shutter when you say, “take the picture” doesn’t really count in my book. It goes back to my curiosity as to why magician’s get all the credit when it’s the lovely assistant that’s getting sliced and diced.

Either way, I think the 8×10 photo-shoot was the most successful and is split up between the two clips below.