Why 6 Mpix is Not Enough

[Jay B]

Tony:

Many children can be posed well or play gently. With more problematic children I've adopted the zone system to accomodate the rapid, erratic and energetic motion some have. I've tried handholding & following - even at the shoot in this post - but the tripod, marked shooting zones and adult encouragement to play in the zones has worked best. Digital is a lifesaver, in this case, due to the large number of shots that must be taken to yield a few acceptable images. And parents ask for this service - its not a normal portrait shoot - rate are set accordingly.

More pixels would help due to the large amount of cropping required, but must be supported by lens resolution, flash duration (to stop motion blur) and depth of field considerations.

Brian C.

 

[Jay B]

Hello, Mike:

Regarding child accidents... I'm keenly aware of the opportunity, as one of my own children will take every opportunity to disassemble or demolish equipment, stick fingers in electrical fittings and walk quickly into traffic. He is the way I became aware of parents who's children require this kind of handling.

I'm glad to hear that you have your own. The joy, sorrow, victories, love, affections, anguish and failures of parenthood comprise the biggest challenges and rewards in my life.

And the kids make handy calibration targets for new techniques.

Best Regards,

Brian C.

 

[Don Molyneaux]

on.

I still wipe my brow after something like this. But I do
appreciate the happiness I bring to the parents when I'm successful.

Brian C.

Brian, I'm glad it worked out for you, the kids and the mom. I have done work which people have said other "Professionals " wouldn't have the patience for so I know the satisfaction a hard days work can bring.

 

[Juli Valley]

Kids have been known to pull over a TV set off of a rolling cart and be killed.

 

[sam photo]

...if these kids are running around at top speed on a 9ft set as you claim in your original post I doubt your attorney wife would have approved...those kids don't need to trip over your equipment for you to be liable if one of them hurts themselves while on your premises...I'm glad it worked out for you but in general most of us would have serious reservations about setting up a shoot such as this especially with children known to be difficult...I think you misinterpreted some of the comments people made...it was not anger but surprise that your post evoked...I have worked with children many times albeit in a commercial capacity so I'm familiar with what it takes to coax a child into doing what you need...

Gentlemen:

The set was prepared to be as friendly as possible, lighting
secured, cords covered (mostly). Adults were in constant
supervision. Liability was covered - my wife is a liability
attorney and handles contracts & coverage. She does not like risk.

Please review my posts above. It seems my original post did not
highlight that in this instance, I was specifically retained to do
this shoot because of its known difficulty and my past successes
with similar children. Children that other photographers gave up
on.

I still wipe my brow after something like this. But I do
appreciate the happiness I bring to the parents when I'm successful.

Brian C.

 

[Jay B]

Sam:

Children who do commercial work (I hope I'm interpreting this correctly) are generally selected for their ability to work with the staff involved with the production. Even those recruited off the street are pre-screened, normally.

This is the opposite problem.

Also, the 9x9 ft. set does NOT include equipment. It is the "clear space" within which the children were allowed to roam. Studio space is much larger. Equipment had to be placed outside of this box with monitored standoff space and low barriers between equipment and subjects. Once reason why setup takes a while and lots of light is needed.

Accidents are always possible, at any time in any profession or simply in daily life. But the opportunity was minimizex in this case.

Also, these children were very active, not aggressively destructive.

Brian C.

 

[Jay B]

You wrote...

Kids have been known to pull over a TV set off of a rolling cart
and be killed.

Hmmm. I suppose so. Occasionally they die of undiscovered birth defects, too. Or falling off a swing, or the flu. And this is not age related. You and I face the same risks (I sit on swings with my kids - swings that might break). I missed the flu in 2003 year (and hope I will in 2004).

Sooo... I guess I'm missing your point.

Brian C.

 

[Juli Valley]

I just added that because someone else mentioned a child getting killed at a chiropracter's office. Nothing related to photography.

 

[Michael Meissner]

Hello, all:

Had a very difficult assignment this weekend - a high-key studio
shoot of two very cute but hyperactive girls, ages 1 and 2-3/4. At
no time were either of these girls still. Usually they were moving
at or near maximum speed around the lighting set. The mom had
tried several other photographers with (what she considered) little
luck.

So... what to do? High-speed kids, finicky Mom.

First, I flooded the set with light, main and fill to either side
of the camera (Canon D60) at 45 degrees, white paper backdrop/floor
lit by two background strobes, one rather broad gridded hairlight
overhead. 2000 watt-seconds total on a 9 foot by 9 foot set.

I placed props (hats, cute dolls) at strategic intervals on the set
perimeter to catch the kids attention, and my assistant helped
encourage them to play.

Then, the adults acted as bumper cushions, redirecting the kids as
the bounced around in the shooting space wearing hats, carrying
dolls and whatnot. I set the lens (Canon 24-70L) to cover the set,
f13 for deep depth of field, shutter speed at max synch (1/200th)
and tripped the camera via wired remote release (I've just GOT to
get an RF remote). 106 shots later, we were fininshed.

In general, the "sweet zone" for the effect I sought was only about
2 feet deep by 6 feet wide. Even with the main and fill at 45
degrees, getting the correct facial angles was... random. And
lighting ratios varied with subject location. Thats why I love
digital, too. No film changing, infinite supply at near zero cost.

Many resulting images needed to be heavily cropped in Photoshop, to
capture just the girls... but... it worked. So, out of 6.3 Mpix,
some shots use only 2 Mpix due to cropping. Good enough for 5x7's.
And a few are good for 8x10's. THIS is one reason why I need more
pixels. For dynamic subjects, I need to shoot much wider angle
than normal, to capture unpredictable movement, then crop down.
Accurate framing is not possible. Therefore, 50 percent or so of
pixel capacity is thrown away.

I did and carry the camera and shoot on the fly for some of the
images. But most were taken from a tripod mount.

This shoot also demonstrated why I like powerful strobes. The need
to flood a broad area with light - and maintain fast recycle time
(about 1.5 sec. at the power levels I used). I used 5 Travelite
750's.

I had to quickly select a few examples and process them in PS7 to
show the mom. She was sure that we got nothing. But... not so.
We had quite a few "good ones". After post processing, I've got 22
proofs to provide and will see her tomorrow. Wish mw luck!

It sounds stressful, but it also sounds like you are up to the challenge. Obviously having two targets instead of one made things much more difficult.

I am just an amateur, but if you are going to do active kids on a regular basis (and that mother may provide lots of word of mouth business), my thought might be to treat it like a sports shoot, and use hot lights/high ISO and continous mode on the camera (or strobes that can keep up), and just blast away.

 

[Dana Jacobsen]

I'm not even going to begin to comment on how you dealt with the kids -- I have two and my wife has done some jobs with kids, so I have some idea of what is going on. We have never used the zone focusing setup -- we tend to be more into handholding and using the 70-200 zoom when we have kids to photograph. If they'll sit nicely, then we will use the tripod, but really with studio lights or a bright day it isn't necessary. Also I like to get down at their level for photos -- I hate the classic snapshot look of standing straight at 6 feet high and pointing down at the kids (I don't mean you're doing this, but I see it all the time from other parents at our preschool, and it makes working with the tripod a bit unwieldy).

First, I flooded the set with light, main and fill to either side
of the camera (Canon D60) at 45 degrees, white paper backdrop/floor
lit by two background strobes, one rather broad gridded hairlight
overhead. 2000 watt-seconds total on a 9 foot by 9 foot set.

Amazing. White paper and 2000 w/s? We're getting f/10 with less than 300 w/s total from most of our studio work, so this seems like an enormous amount of light. However, we did a location shoot where we used a 500 w/s Norman pack at full output and only got f/4.5 (ouch!). Measuring the pack it was actually putting out about 250 w/s vs. my Profoto Acute2. Imagine that: f/13 - f/4.5 = 3 stops, 250w/s * 2^3 = 2000w/s. But it was a very dark background.

Maybe I better start saving up for that D4 2400 w/s pack after all (and extra heads). Hmm, for the price of a D4 and three heads I could get 18 B1600 monolights. Sigh. Hey, at least it's cheaper than Broncolor.

[...]
and tripped the camera via wired remote release (I've just GOT to
get an RF remote). 106 shots later, we were fininshed.

I can't say enough good things about RF connections between the camera, flash, and light meter (e.g. Pocketwizards) but we haven't used the remote trigger nearly as much as I thought we would. We mostly use the standard wired TC-80N3. I think it might work with the situation you describe though. The problem we have is that the subjects always look at us, no matter where we tell them to look. Hence, we must stand behind the camera. Which means the RF remote is wasted.

Many resulting images needed to be heavily cropped in Photoshop, to
capture just the girls... but... it worked. So, out of 6.3 Mpix,
some shots use only 2 Mpix due to cropping. Good enough for 5x7's.
And a few are good for 8x10's. THIS is one reason why I need more
pixels. For dynamic subjects, I need to shoot much wider angle
than normal, to capture unpredictable movement, then crop down.
Accurate framing is not possible. Therefore, 50 percent or so of
pixel capacity is thrown away.

When we had the D60 we did a location Christmas shoot which was one thing that prompted me to order the 1Ds (and get new lights as well). With little cropping (mainly to an 8x10 format and a little off one side or the other) we ended up with 4 to 5 MP for most of the images after cropping. Personally I thought they made very nice 8x10s but were losing detail at 11x14. I've since seen expensive prints from 35mm slides which indicate I'm very picky -- I seem to expect gallery quality, and these 4-5MP images can produce 11x14s the equal of any 35mm work I've seen. Regardless, this led us to crop in a little too tight to get the best quality, so a few people who didn't stand in the right place (or moved after they were placed) got some elbows chooped off. My thought with the 1Ds would be that I could loosen up the shot (which I should be doing) and still get good quality out. Leaving an extra 10% on each side still gives me 7MP.

After post processing, I've got 22
proofs to provide and will see her tomorrow. Wish mw luck!

Well that's the proof, isn't it! I'm glad you got some keepers, and good luck.

 

[Jay B]

Dana:

Thank you for not commenting on how I handled the kids.

Regarding the 2000 WS on a white background.... It was not all on the white background, and several factors made this amount of power desirable...

1. Small aperture (f13) used to expand focus zone
2. Relatively large distance between children and lights - necessary for safety

3. Significant amount of diffuse natural light in shooting area due to blackout curtain replacement in progress - desired strobe lighing to strongly dominate natural illumination. I really needed the strobes to freeze action and metered accordingly.

I rechecked the strobes on Monday morning, and my notes indicate approximately 1350 WS, not 2000 - my first post was in error. 375 from main, 188 from fill (both into silver backed umbrellas), 375 into each of two background lights, controlled via barn doors, about 50WS into one weak gridded overhead hairlight, simply used to soften shadows. The lighting setup was somewhat overkill. I've achieved satisfactory high-key results with 3 lights in the past, using a contoured reflector on one background light, and a raised fill light to soften shadows.

Brian C.

 

[Dana Jacobsen]

Regarding the 2000 WS on a white background.... It was not all on
the white background, and several factors made this amount of
power desirable...

1. Small aperture (f13) used to expand focus zone
2. Relatively large distance between children and lights -
necessary for safety
3. Significant amount of diffuse natural light in shooting area
due to blackout curtain replacement in progress - desired strobe
lighing to strongly dominate natural illumination. I really needed
the strobes to freeze action and metered accordingly.

I think I took (1) into account, but (2) can make a huge difference, and I think I understand now. (3) also -- I don't have a huge amount of experience with that but it makes sense.

I rechecked the strobes on Monday morning, and my notes indicate
approximately 1350 WS, not 2000 - my first post was in error. 375
from main, 188 from fill (both into silver backed umbrellas), 375
into each of two background lights, controlled via barn doors,
about 50WS into one weak gridded overhead hairlight, simply used to
soften shadows. The lighting setup was somewhat overkill. I've
achieved satisfactory high-key results with 3 lights in the past,
using a contoured reflector on one background light, and a raised
fill light to soften shadows.

Thanks for the info. We've been doing mostly two light photos, and I'm realizing we need to work on at least adding a hair light. I have a nice Photoflex Halfdome and a boom I bought just for it, but we haven't used it yet. My excuse is that our third head took quite a few months to arrive so we were stuck with only two.