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Choosing the Best Canon Flash for Your Needs

by Phil Steele.
14 comments

Choosing the right flash can be intimidating to beginning photographers. It’s easy to find lots of jargon-laden technical specifications, but hard to find a simple analysis in plain language of which flash is the best one for your needs.

I’m going to make the choice easy for you.

Canon Speedlite 270EX

Speedlite 270EX

If you are a Canon shooter, you basically have three options at the time of this writing in 2010: the Speedlite 270EX, 430EX II, and 580EX II.

We’re going to immediately simplify it by eliminating the little 270EX right out of the gate. In my opinion it just doesn’t make economic sense. (more…)

Posted in: Camera Equipment, Flash Photography, Lighting Equipment.
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Hard Rock Model Shoot (Video)

by Phil Steele.
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It’s not every day you get to have this much fun.  Photographer Brad Mahler booked a suite at the Hard Rock Hotel, lined up some great models, and invited me to join him for a day of shooting.  How could I say no?  Check out this video for a behind-the-scenes look at the whole process.

By the way, if you’re a gear geek you’ll notice the difference between our lighting setups.  Brad is using his big Alien Bees studio lights, while I’m using my favorite small-flash setup, shooting Canon Speedlites through umbrellas. You’ll see me using both the Canon wireless (master/slave) system, when I need one light, and radio triggers when I need two lights.

If you’d like to know exactly how all this works, you can get the full story in my new 9-video course called “How to Shoot Professional-Looking Headshots and Portraits on a Budget Using Small Flashes.”

That’s my first video product, and I’m pretty damn excited about it, so if you think it sounds interesting, check it out, or at least hit one of the social media links below and share this video with your friends!

Posted in: Camera Equipment, Flash Photography, Lighting Equipment, Photo Tutorials, Photography.
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How to Sell Photos to a Book Publisher

by Phil Steele.
67 comments

Burning Man PhotoSince I so often kick myself for doing things wrong, today I’m going to celebrate doing it right.

Today I turned a publisher’s request for a single photo—with no offer of payment—into a 5-photo sale for hundreds of dollars.  It’s a lesson for me, and maybe for you, in what to do right.

I was contacted by a Japanese travel book publisher, who wanted to use the image at left from my Burning Man Festival photos (caution, some nudity) in their “Dream Trips” guidebook, which will include a chapter on Burning Man as a tourist destination.  (Of course, the notion of busloads of Japanese tourists arriving at Burning Man is pretty damn funny. If you’re not familiar with Burning Man, it’s the annual festival of “radical self-expression” held in the Nevada desert — a photographer’s dreamland of fantastic characters, art, and spectacle — but definitely not for the faint of heart.)

Anyway, this publisher offered no payment, only credit. (more…)

Posted in: Burning Man, Photography, Travel Photography.
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Speedlite Headshots: Stephany

by Phil Steele.
11 comments
Speelite headshot 1

Click to enlarge

I just shot a headshot session with a lovely San Diego jewelry designer named Stephany.  These were done in my own living room with a combination of window light and Canon speedlite flash (off-camera, of course).

If you’d like to see larger versions, plus some additional shots from this session, click any photo.

These were shot as part of the practice sessions for my online video course “How to Shoot Headshots and Portraits on a Budget Using Small Flashes” in which I explain exactly how I do these shots with minimal equipment.

Speedlite headshot 2

Click to enlarge

Speedlite headshot 3

Click to enlarge

Posted in: Camera Equipment, Flash Photography, Photo Tutorials.
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Flash Photography with an Off-Camera Shoe Cord: Film Festival

by Phil Steele.
38 comments
San Diego Burning Man Film Festival

The Hoop Unit performs in the lobby

In a previous post I wrote about shooting an indoor event in a dark warehouse with the Lumiquest 80/20 with on-camera flash.  Today we’re going to look at another option for event photography: using an Off Camera Shoe Cord to get the flash off the camera.

If you want to view the photos before reading about them, see the gallery here.

Last night I attended the San Diego Burning Man Film Festival at the Museum of Photographic Arts in Balboa Park.  You can always count on the Burning Man community to turn out in fanciful costumes that make great photos.

Since I knew I’d be holding the camera in one hand and the flash in the other hand all night, I chose my gear based on weight: the super-light Rebel 350D and the 430EX flash (each considerably lighter than carrying my heavier DSLR and 580EXII flash).  Unfortunately, my workhorse lens for indoor photography, the EF-S 17-55mm f/2.8 IS, is a monster, so the camera is still quite a brick to hand-hold all night.  Not to mention front-heavy as hell on the tiny Rebel body.  But these are the trade-offs we make. (more…)

Posted in: Burning Man, Camera Equipment, Event Photography, Flash Photography, Lighting Equipment.
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Be Your Own Flash Test Dummy

by Phil Steele.
9 comments
Self Portrait

Self portrait in my living room

It’s about freakin’ time.  For years I’ve pestered family members, friends, and occasionally even strangers to stand in while I’m testing a lighting setup or indluging some photographic whim that requires a human subject in front of the lens.

Thus I’ve gradually trained all the people nearest me to duck out the back door if they see me coming with a camera in hand.  “Sorry, dude, gotta run.  I think my parking meter is about to expire.”

So what’s a photographer to do? I have a constant need to test lighting setups, particularly those involving multiple radio-triggered flashes, which require delicate adjustment to get the right balance.  I like to know how these things are going to look before I try it out in the field. When it comes time for the actual shoot, I don’t want to force the talent, or the client, to sit through this agonizing process of tweaking. (more…)

Posted in: Camera Equipment, Flash Photography, Lighting Equipment, Photo Tutorials.
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Video: Introduction to Adobe Lightroom Workflow

by Phil Steele.
4 comments
Adobe Photoshop Lightroom Box

Adobe Photoshop Lightroom

Adobe Photoshop Lightroom is the premiere photo managment software for digital photographers.  It can handle your entire photo workflow from importing images, to organizing, editing, printing, and exporting to websites like Picasa, Flickr, or your own custom-made web galleries.

I just created a free 23-minute video tutorial illustrating the process of working in Lightroom. If you’re considering buying Lightroom, or if you’re a new Lightroom owner looking to get more out of the software, this video is for you.

In this tutorial, I walk you step-by-step through my own Lightroom workflow, narrating as I process a set of photos from camera import through organizing, renaming, editing, and exporting as a fully-functional flash web gallery.

If you’re curious about Lightroom, I invite you to check it out on my photo tutorials page.

See Lightroom at Amazon.com

Posted in: Photo Tutorials, Photography, Software.
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Book Review: The Photographer’s Legal Guide by Carolyn E. Wright

by Phil Steele.
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Photographer's Legal Guide - CoverTo be honest, reading any kind of book about the legal aspects of photography—from taxes, to corporate structures, to copyright laws, to government regulations—not only makes me want to never shoot another image, it also brings out a seething, anarchic, vigilante side of me.  I suddenly feel like hurling bombs at government buildings and torturing IRS agents with a cattle prod.  This is probably wrong, but I suspect I’m not alone in this reaction.

After all, most of us take up photography because we are artists at heart.  If we were interested in tax laws or the differences between S-Corporations and C-Corporations we would have gone to business school or law school.  You might even say that we incline toward photography precisely to the degree that we hate that kind of stuff.

So I suppose we ought to be grateful that there are people like Carolyn Wright, who is both a practicing attorney and a professional photographer, and who has written a guide to help the rest of us navigate the legal swamps that surround the business of photography. (more…)

Posted in: Book Reviews, Photography.
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Lens Repair Blues (or Don’t Do What I Did)

by Phil Steele.
5 comments
Canon Lens

The posterior of my Canon EF-S 17-55mm f/2.8 IS

I’m kicking myself.  Maybe I shouldn’t be, because the guy at the camera repair shop says it’s probably not my fault, but still…

Here’s the story.   After returning from the Burning Man festival, I knew my cameras needed cleaning but I put it off for a long time.  So one day recently I got them out and started cleaning—and I noticed a weird little spot on the rear lens element of my Canon EF-S 17-55mm f/2.8 IS.

I can’t tell if it’s a water spot (how would that even happen?) or perhaps something that’s been there forever and I never noticed.  It’s faint, and my test shots don’t seem affected by it, but it bothers me. This is my main workhorse lens, and I want it to be perfect. (more…)

Posted in: Camera Equipment.
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How to Take Better Photos at Burning Man (and Beyond!)

by Phil Steele.
1 comment

Burning Man Art ProjectThe annual Burning Man festival held in the Nevada desert is a photographer’s dream:  A surreal landscape populated by bizarre machines, monstrous, mind-boggling art projects, and the world’s most outrageously costumed characters all trying to outdo each other with sheer creativity.  Each year approximately 50,000 people attend this weeklong event, and for many photographers it is the annual pilgrimage not to be missed. (more…)

Posted in: Event Photography, Photo Tutorials.
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