VJ Heaven

Photographer’s Studio Lighting

R. Dodge Woodson

The right lighting system combined with a camera that offers a fast shutter speed can literally stop a bullet in mid-air. Well, it looks stopped when you see the picture. No, I’m not suggesting that you shoot the lights and watch them explode on impact. I’m referring to capturing the rotating bullet as an image. Studio strobes can be extremely powerful and can stop all sorts of motion without risk of blurred images.

If you plan to convert a spare bedroom, basement, or attic into a studio, you should give serious consideration to buying some studio strobes. This type of lighting is not cheap, but you can get name-brand lights that do a wonderful job for reasonable prices.

My studio lights are made by Novatron®, and I’m very happy with them. This company is known for its excellence in lighting equipment for both serious amateurs and professionals. It is common to find kits offered by Novatron and other quality manufacturers that will give you all the basics of good studio lighting. For less than $600, you can frequently find kits that include at least two flash heads, sometimes three, light stands, umbrellas, a carrying case, and other accessories. Anyone with an interest in studio photography can benefit from these semi-pro lighting kits. If you decide to use this type of lighting, invest in a good light meter that takes flash readings. Otherwise, you will suffer trial-and-error exposure ratings that will be very frustrating. Another option is to use the automatic mode on your camera and depend on the camera’s light meter.

Quartz

Quartz-halogen lights are an alternative to flash heads for studio photography. Problems occur with flash photography. One of the most common is finding out after you look at pictures taken that the flash units created unwanted shadows. This doesn’t happen with quartz-halogen lights. These lights are on while you are composing a picture, so you see the exact effect the lighting has on your subject. This is a big advantage for a lot of photographers. An added bonus to this type of lighting is that it’s less expensive than flash units. A good quartz-halogen starter get will cost you about $250. It will include the lights, barndoors (which allow you to angle the lighting), light stands, and a carrying case.

(CAUTION) Quartz-halogen and other photo lamps get extremely hot during use. They can easily inflict serious burns and are capable of starting fires if they come into contact with flammable materials.

I started my studio lighting with quartz-halogen lights and continue to use the same lights today. My flash heads see a lot of use, but so do my steady lights. Both types of lighting have their advantages and disadvantages. One drawback to quartz lights is that they get very hot. This can make a model’s make-up run, present a fire hazard if flammable materials come into contract with them, and there is some risk of serious burns if someone touches the lights.

Another problem with quartz lighting is that it can’t stop motion like a flash unit can. Since quartz lighting produces tungsten lighting, you will have to put a corrective filter on your lens to maintain accurate colors in color photographing. But, this is no big deal. Of course, you can made lighting corrections in your photo editing program in your computer.

Quartz lights allow you to take normal light readings. This can be done with an independent light meter or the one that is in your camera. A flash meter is not required. Since quartz lights are on at all times, you can see shadows and lighting effects before you fire the shutter. This is a big help. If you want big-time lighting on a limited budget, quartz-halogen lights are the way to go.

Ring Lights

Ring lights are a specialty flash. They are used with macro lenses when taking close-up pictures. These units often consist of a sensor that mounts in the hot shoe of a camera, a battery pack, and the flash attachment. The flash mounts on the ring of a lens, in a way similar to a filter. Since the flash elements surround the lens, it gives good, even illumination of your subject. Some models, like the one I have, allow you to disable one-half of the ring for creative photography. Other models fire all at one time. For documentary photography of close-ups, ring lights can’t be beaten.

A ring light would not normally be used for anything other than documentary work. Taking a picture of a human model with a ring light used for flash would result in a bright, well-lit photograph that would probably be boring. Ring lights bring out extensive detail in subjects. This is usually not desirable when photographing people or pets. If you don’t chase after grasshoppers, mushrooms, and wildflowers, you shouldn’t need a ring light. But, if you love to bring nature home on your memory card with you in a film canister, a ring light might be right for you.

Flash In a Box

Some photographers like to take their flash shows on the road. If you are one of these road warriors, look into portable studio flashes that can travel with you. Any studio lighting can be used where electricity is available, but if your take your photos off the beaten track, you may want some battery-powered flashes to go along with you. There are two ways to do this. One is much more expensive than the other.

If you want to take full-power studio strobes out into a meadow to photograph a model, be prepared to spend between $1,000 and $1,500 for the privilege. You might find a portable, battery-powered location kit for less than $1,000, but they are not numerous. It might be cheaper to take your regular studio lights and rent a small electric generator for your location session. For that matter, it might even be cheaper to buy a small generator to run your AC lights. It’s very difficult to justify or afford location strobes. But, don’t get discouraged; I’m going to show you how to beat the system.

Most photography doesn’t require super-powerful studio strobes. If you want to take models on location and get some great shots, you can do it with inexpensive, portable, battery-powered flash units. I’m talking about the same electronic flashes that you might normally mount on your camera. These flashes when put together with either sync cords or slaves and some light stands make a good substitute for expensive location kits. You can still use umbrellas and reflection cards, and you will save a tremendous amount of money. Granted, you won’t have the full power and control you would with a location set, but you probably won’t need it.

To give you an idea of the results you can receive with inexpensive, pocket-size flash equipment, let me share a story from my past with you. When I started doing wedding photography, I couldn’t afford the best equipment, but I needed my work to look good. My second wedding assignment was a tough one.

I was going to have to light a large dance room with electronic flash to meet the demands of my customer. This would have been a good time to own a location set of strobes, but I didn’t. To compensate for my problem, I took several modest flashes, some inflatable umbrellas, and some light stands to the reception area. My assistant and I positioned the lights prior to the crowded arrival of guests. Each electronic flash was equipped with a peanut slave. When I fired my powerful, bracket-mounted camera flash, all of the slaves would trigger the other flashes. This simple, inexpensive set-up allowed me full light coverage of a large room and crowd with minimal cost.

I have never owned a location set of strobes. During all of my years in the field, I’ve always used simple, battery-powered flashes with good results. You can spend a lot of money on flashy pro gear if you want to, but it’s rarely needed.

Other Flash Factors

There are a number of accessories available for photographers who use flash equipment. Whether you’re using a $60 pocket flash or a $1,000 pro setup, you can always enhance your flash photography with accessories. Buying stuff is half of what makes photography so much fun! The accessories available are not mandatory equipment, but many of them can improve your photography and produce nice special effects. You will need a camera with either a hot shoe or a pc sync connection port.

Many photographers advance to a point where they want remote and or multiple flash sources. If you reach this level, you will likely use a sync cord for your remote flash. Slave devices can be used to trigger multiple flashes. There is one problem often encountered with sync cords. They don’t always maintain good connections with the camera body.

You can reduce flash failures by using a sync key, a small device that resizes the connection pieces, to keep your connections tight. This is a very inexpensive accessory that should be kept in your camera bag or vest at all times when doing flash photography.

Slaves come in a variety of shapes and sizes. Peanut slaves are inexpensive and work well under most conditions. This is the type of slave that I use, and I can recommend them highly. Most slave devices are made like a hot shoe. The ones that are not can be coupled with a remote flash by using a sync cord. The cord runs only from the slave to the flash, not from your camera body to the remote devices. Once you get to the point of doing creative things with artificial lighting, you will want multiple flashes and remote firing devices.

Studio strobes of good quality usually have slaves built into them. When you fire one light, they all go off. Before you invest in any studio strobes, make sure that they have adjustable power settings and built-in slaves. When this is the case, you only have to connect one light to your camera body with a sync cord, which is also known as a PC cord.

Filters

Filters are available for most photographic lights and flashes. Using filters with your lighting can produce some outstanding results. Even inexpensive pocket flashes are often sold with an assortment of colored filters. Some models use gel-type filters and others use plastic filters. It is a good idea to make sure that any lighting units you buy will accept filters for future interests in special effects.

Snoots

Snoots and barndoors sound like things you would find down on the farm, but they are accessories for photography lighting. Any reputable studio light will accept these types of accessories.

Barndoors consist of two or four metal flaps that allow you to angle light creatively. Snoots are used to concentrate a beam of light. They are often used to highlight a model’s hair. There are many other types of add-ons available for studio lighting, so make sure the products you are considering will accept them.

Umbrellas

Most people have seen umbrellas used in flash-photography sessions. They are used to bounce light in a soft, shadowless, attractive manner. Most photographers use white umbrellas, but silver umbrellas produce more bounce. You should experiment with both types until you are comfortable with which one to use on various assignments. As good as umbrellas are, the can be cumbersome at times, and they don’t allow a lot of mobility. There is a solution to this dilemma.

Inflatable umbrellas are the answer to higher mobility and better results when using small flash units. These little blow-up umbrellas are only several inches in diameter, but they produce great results. They attach to an electronic flash with elastic bands. Your flash fires into the clear surface of the device and is reflected by the white or silver interior surface. You get bounced lighting from a small, portable, affordable package. I’ve used them to photograph modeling sessions and weddings with wonderful results. This is one accessory any serious flash photographer should own.

Reflector Cards

Reflector cards are often used in photography. They are implemented with natural light and flash photography. A reflector card can be a small, hand-held size, or it can be a large unit that is supported by a stand. The painted walls and ceilings of buildings act as large reflector cards for photographers bouncing flashes. By bouncing flash or natural light with reflector cards, you receive lighting that is not harsh and distasteful.

Lightweight survival blankets fold to pocket-size proportions and are often silver on one side. These inexpensive items make fantastic reflectors.

Meters

Light meters are critical to good photography. Most modern cameras have some type on built-in meter, but these meters can be fooled under certain conditions. The use of multiple flash units is one of these conditions. If you are going to do much flash photography with any type of flash other than a dedicated, automatic, on-camera flash, invest in a decent flash meter. You will save time, frustration, and wasted film many times over. A lot of flash meters double as reflective meters, so that you are getting two meters for the price of one. This is the type that I would recommend. Flash photography and studio lighting can add a new dimension to your hobby, so give it serious consideration. You should enjoy the journey.

Video montage created with a 1951 educational film, a tunnel of used medical equipment and psy goa trance music.

Microsoft Visual Studio 2005 Professional Edition is a complete, IDE, or “Integrated Development Environment” for professional software application developers. Its range of programming language and platform support, together with support for 64-bit computing architectures and other Microsoft technologies, mean that almost any development task can be tackled with confidence. Standalone, web and mobile solutions are all possibilities, for any platform that supports the .NET Framework 2.0, or the .NET Compact Framework 2.0.

Visual Studio 2005 Professional Edition

Visually, Visual Studio 2005 Professional Edition appears much the same as previous versions. The default opening screen has the look of a web portal, and provides access to online content, as well as recent products. From the point of view of productivity, however, the IDE has undergone something of a transformation. It is now much easier to see, at a glance, which sections of code have been edited, and if they have already been saved. This can be useful for a developer who needs to keep track of multiple changes to multiple files. In addition, the new “code snippets” feature allows developers to create, and maintain, a library of prewritten code, for performing various common tasks. This prewritten code can then be dropped into an application at the appropriate point, either complete, or in the form of a bare bones, skeleton, which can be fleshed out according to the application. A selection of snippets is supplied, and more are available online, so getting started is fairly quick and painless.

Life has been made easier for Windows Forms developers, too, with a range of new controls, wizards and layout models. Minor details, those that just make life easier, have not been overlooked; .NET Framework 2.0, for example, allows control of “snap” lines making control alignment neater, and easier. Similarly, other .NET Framework 2.0 controls allow application developers to access advanced operating system features, such as services, and background threads, without the need for advanced programming knowledge.

The Visual 2005 Professional Edition “bundle” includes support for Visual Basic, Visual C++, C# and VJ#, and XML and XSLT, accompanied by visual form designers and editors. It is possible, therefore, to streamline the development of each tier of a multi-tier development project, by the use of powerful editing and debugging functions throughout the development lifecycle. Visual Studio 2005 supports “Edit and Continue” for Visual Basic, and C#; this means that a developer can run an application, pause its execution, make an desired changes to the application code, and resume execution, effectively debugging that application “on the fly”. “Exception Assistant” provides a new method of isolating runtime problems, which can be notoriously difficult to track down using conventional debugging techniques. The Exception Assistant provides information on the location of any exception thrown, along suggestions for possible causes, and fixes, of that exception, including links to documentation.

Crystal Reports, upgraded to support the new “ClickOnce” application deployment method, SQL Reporting Services, a development version of SQL Server 2005, and support for 64-bit compilers, are all also included in the Visual Studio 2005 Professional edition package.

Conclusion

Visual Studio 2005 Professional includes some major new features and enhancements, but, additionally, time has been taken to dot the “i”s and cross the “t”s, so that the package, as a whole, has a far more rounded look and feel. The package is likely to be a boon for Visual Basic developers, but just about anyone who cuts code on a daily basis is likely to feel the benefits of the ease of use, and the productivity, which Visual Studio 2005 Professional Edition affords.

I’m done with posting for this week as it’s time to overhaul my (very, very humble) apartment studio space and gear closet. But that seems the perfect time to ask you how you set up your musical workspace. (I think people imagine that I have rooms full of gear, but I really do a lot of work in-box on computer, which I’m gradually augmenting with some “boutique” – but reasonably affordable – DIY synth boxes. As an urbanist and someone on a limited budget with limited space, that works well.)

I’m a great fan of Lifehacker’s ongoing series on their readers’ workspaces, which show off marvels of productivity, efficiency, and attractive interior design:
Lifehacker Workspace Show and Tell [Flickr]
For some of the best examples: http://lifehacker.com/tag/workspace/

It’s funny; the notion of “bedroom producers” is often disparaged, but I think the ability to have personal workspaces are a great thing for music. Now, a musical workspace can range from an impromptu setup on a hotel room desk to a corner of an apartment to a space you’ve built in a barn to a traditional studio. Each of those locations has its own advantages (and in a way, make you appreciate what’s special about the conventional studio even more).

So, whether you’ve worked out a mobile rig with a Nintendo DS and a tape recorder or you’ve got a dream studio you get to work in — or you want to show off how you’ve managed to organize your closet full o’ gear and cables — we’d love to hear from you. Send us a link to a public gallery in comments, or upload to CDM’s Flickr pool:

http://www.flickr.com/groups/cdmu/pool/

Also, do us a favor. Either send a note explicitly allowing us to reproduce your image, or even better, license your photo on Flickr as Creative Commons ShareAlike. (Because CDM runs ads against content, we apparently do not qualify as a non-commercial use. ShareAlike, though, means that anyone using your content also needs to share their content, which helps protect against exploitation.) You can add the license directly on Flickr, and then it’s more likely that we can use your images. I’ve actually thought of doing regular round-ups of images on Flickr, but getting individual licenses would be too time-consuming; if people do start doing this, I will easily feature the images you’re sending in!

I’m really eager to see your musical environments. Part of the joy of music is that ability to take your mind and spirit to another place, and that means setting aside physical space. (I recall a Buddhist friend of mine and the importance that had for where he would chant. It wasn’t anything extravagant, just a decision to set aside a location for the activity.)

To kick things off, Thomas Dolby has the location most of us would dream of: he’s got a wind- and solar-powered restored lifeboat on the north coast of England.

Dolby talks about his studio and the ideas behind it, followed by a new song he wrote in the boat, at TED:

Keyboard Magazine took a tour of the boat and covers all the gear contained onboard):
On Board Thomas Dolby’s Solar Studio Boat

More photos at Tiny House Design

But I’d love to see your less-exotic music making locations, too.

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VJ Fader’s extended VJ set, using faderTouch touchscreen interface controlling visual synthesizer programmed in Processing. Track is “Holding The Moth” by Underworld (Audiojack Remix), taken from 64er’s Summer 2008 mix compilation.

It’s the end of an era: pioneering synth guru, engineer, sound designer, instrument importer, composer, producer, and owner of the landmark Sear Sound recording studio in New York has died at age 79.

Sear’s career covered almost everything you could do in sound. He played tuba in the pit at Radio City Music Hall, imported and sold tubas. He studied chemistry. He befriended Bob Moog, introduced Moog to Walter Carlos, and is credited with helping convince Bob to make synths you can lift. He wrote music for Jim Henson, among other soundtracks and his own “switched on”-style record.

Sear is best known in recent decades for founding and operating Sear Sound, a spectacular, sought-after studio in Manhattan packed to the gills with gorgeous vintage gear. The four-studio facility has become a Mecca for lovers of studio recording, even well into the age of digital, attracting artists from Paul McCartney to Clapton to Sigur Ros and Wayne Shorter and even major TV and film projects (“A Bronx Tale.”) The studio almost needs a list of clients who didn’t work there since its 1970 opening. Just as Sear was an expert in what tuba players and would-be synth customers wanted, he managed to turn Sear Sound into a monument to great audio, collecting the ribbon mics and vacuum tubes needed to keep it all running.

Obituaries elsewhere:
R.I.P. Walter Sear [Consequence of Sound]
R.I.P. Walter Sear [Synthtopia]

I’m sure there are others; if you have something to share, let us know.

Here’s a fantastic 2005 interview by Steve Guttenberg for Stereophile:

Walter Sear’s Analog Rules

Wise words on synths:

The producers didn’t understand the capabilities of the instrument—and they still don’t. It takes imagination to think of a sound no one has ever heard before. The Moog could have been a contender, but I didn’t sell what it could do hard enough. Then again, it all started in the 13th century, with the invention of the hurdy-gurdy, the first instrument designed to eliminate musicians.

And the closing quote says it all:

I don’t want to make money, I just want to make good recordings. I’m doing this because I hope people will realize what they’ve been missing. I’ve had a pretty full life—I’ve played tuba, made a bunch of films, manufactured tubas and guitar amplifiers, sold Moogs. I’ve been married 52 years and had two kids. I did all of these things because I get bored easily. That’s why I’m always on to something new.

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Like well-stocked studios of hardware, software has become personal, idiosyncratic, and stuffed with functionality. Computer producers are passionate as always about what works. And that has made FL Studio a kind of subculture all its own. Image-Line has a unique way of encouraging loyalty: while the company still peddles new add-ons to its existing customer base, the expansive functionality of the FL Studio program and all its major instruments and effects are included in lifetime free upgrades. FL Studio is a program you buy once that keeps getting better, without the usual upgrade purchase treadmill.

So, when we talk about everything that’s new in FL Studio 9, or FL Studio 9.1, released last week, those improvements are free to existing users.

You can read my review of FL Studio 9 for Keyboard Magazine:

It’s a strange thing that the word “toy” has come to have negative connotations in music tech. Apparently, we want our music tools to be big and powerful, like a chainsaw, ideally emitting manly gasoline fumes. But when we talk about music, we use the word “play.” FL Studio is nothing if not a toybox. But it’s a toybox in the best sense.

FL Studio 9 Review

FL Studio 9 introduces a number of improvements, including a Riff Machine (pictured above), which can dynamically generate musical ideas if you’re stuck for inspiration. Perhaps more importantly, the upgrade also delivers more intelligent routing and MIDI control, and a really gorgeous vocoder. (Yes, Reason, Live, and FL Studio now all have vocoders; what’s interesting to me is that they’re each quite different, true to the personalities of the three developers.)

FL Studio 9.1 adds still more, as you can see in the video above. There’s a brand-new drum modeling engine called Drumpad, which should couple perfectly with FL’s sequencing features. (It’d even go nicely with that aforementioned Riff Machine, for some complex, generative patterns. Ah, I think I know what I’m doing with my Saturday night now.) There’s also a real-time convolution plug-in, which sounds like a fun feature to abuse.

There are lots of additional videos on the FL forum, though true to form, I find this isn’t necessarily how everyone uses the program:

FL Studio Guru

Tips for Getting Started, with Jim Aikin

Jim Aikin has long been one of my favorite writers in this field; you can find his work in Electronic Musician, Keyboard, and others, including the lesser-known but superb Virtual Instruments. But, since working with him as the technical editor – slash – life coach on my book, I’ve also gotten to enjoy Jim’s emails, which are frequently themselves packed with knowledge, musical ideas, and perspective. Jim is a cellist, and as someone with a classical and compositional background myself, I appreciate that slant on things. (It’s certainly not what people typically associate with FL Studio.)

FL Studio is a deep tool – deeper than I think a lot of people appreciate. But it’s not always clear where to begin. Jim shares his own take on how to get started with the tool, creatively.

He writes:

My #1 tip would be this: Assign every Generator to its own mixer channel. (And name the mixer channels, so as to avoid confusion.) Then automate your levels by right-clicking the mixer faders and creating automation clips. (After selecting the part of the song where you want the gain change, of course.) The reason to do it this way is because then you can use the volume knob next to the Generator itself for _global_ changes in the level of that instrument. You never have to mess with re-editing tons of automation data in order to make a global gain change from one end of the song to the other.

Here’s another tip, which I learned by posting a message on an FL forum: By default, FL does not patch your mod wheel moves or aftertouch through to the 3rd-party Generators (softsynths). If you’ve selected a patch that uses mod wheel or aftertouch and you actually want to play an expressive line, this is annoying. But there’s an easy fix: Open the instrument’s edit window and select Browse Parameters from the menu in the upper left corner of the window. This opens the Browser, with a complete list of parameters. Scroll down. At the bottom of the list you’ll find all 128 MIDI CC’s, and also aftertouch. (The MIDI CC list does not appear with built-in plug-ins such as Sytrus and Slayer.) Right-click on the knob icon beside the mod wheel, select Link To Controller, and wiggle the wheel. Now the plug-in will respond the way you want it to.

Here’s another one: You can create your own quantization templates. Record a bar of regular 16th notes (or whatever) to a piano-roll, edit it to taste, Open up the piano-roll window’s File menu, and choose Save Score As. Save it in FL Studio > Data > Patches > Scores > Quantization. Now here’s the bonus tip: There’s already a long list in that folder. So that you won’t have to scroll down to find one of yours every time you want to use one, start your file names with an underscore (such as _Shuffle16th_32.fsc). They will appear at the top of the file dialog when you access it from the Quantize box.

And another: Learn the QWERTY key equivalents. When you hover the mouse over a tool button, the key command equivalent is shown as a dark gray (almost invisible) letter at the right end of the info bar, under the word HELP. I’m constantly switching back and forth from Select (E) to Draw (P). Then there’s the scroll lock key (important) and the fact that left Alt is not the same as right Alt.

Jim also shares a bit of how he uses FL in his own workflow:

I clone patterns a lot. But then, I’m a composer, not a loopin’ beatbox guy, if you see what I mean. I lay down a pattern that I like, and then I start to think, “Hmm … I need an extra hi-hat hit on the last beat in every other bar.” So I clone the pattern, delete the hi-hats from version 1 and everything else from version 2, then I put the hi-hat pattern in its own lane in the Playlist and clone it so I can alternate Hat #1 with Hat #2 in the Playlist. That would be a simple example.

The “Jump to next empty” command in the step sequencer is also indispensable, I find. When you’re in song mode and want to record something new, you almost always need to use that command before recording.

The grouping function in the step sequencer is nice. I usually group all of the percussion channels together, just to get them out of the way visually.

After adding a generator, go to the Channel Settings box and give it its own mixer channel routing (“FX”). This is a good habit to get into. With multi-channel VST plug-ins, the MIDI Out generator is absolutely essential — if you can’t figure out how to make this work, let me know, as it’s a little twisty.

Be sure to check out Slicex. It’s a killer plug-in for any type of sampled beat loop. A number of other plug-ins … just go down the Generators list and try them all. Beepmap is cool (it’s a postage-stamp-sized version of [visual/image-based synthesis tool] Metasynth), Slayer rocks, the Drumsynth is stupidly good for analog percussion, Wave Traveller is great for programming scratches, and you can do some fun stuff with the Speech Synthesizer as well. Oh, and SynthMaker … a complete programmable synth, under the hood. Some of the synths that ship with it aren’t that inspired, but SynthMaker is capable of doing many of the kinds of patches that Reaktor does.

The live mode features are not as extensive as those in Live, but they’re usable, I think. Check ‘em out.

And have fun — FL, in my experience, seems to make music fun again.

FL users, got tips we missed?

Has anyone created something with the included version of SynthMaker they’d like to share?

Other questions?

Let us know. And yes, we’ll keep calling it Fruity Loops.

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