My blog, although I don’t see myself as a blogger but as a Photographer I will try to blog some interesting material during the weeks.
Expect at least 2 updates a week.

My K&F Concept filter pack for beautiful lens flares

I’ve been using the K&F concept filters for a while now and although I never really used filters I was blown away from the start by the extra possibilities the black diffusion filters give. As you know I love to play with moods in my work. Color evokes emotion but just adding colors or extra lights is often cool and eye-catching. But for me adding some subtle or over-the-top lens flares,  just adds the final piece of magic so to say ;). So I was over the moon with distributor Movidis making a special K&F Concept filter pack.  The official name is K&F Concept Frank Doorhof edition Filter Kit

Why do you need a filter?

The problem with most modern lenses is that they are trying to prevent lens flares from happening. And in most cases that is great. But sometimes… Well, not. It can still be done but it is not that nice glowing and smooth lens flare we all love from movies and older photos.

A great alternative is to use old vintage lenses or lenses like Lensbaby or TTartisan but you also sacrifice a lot in normal usage when using those lenses. They are primarily primes and manual focus.

Having a filter like the black diffusion gives you the opportunity to work with your normal lenses and just leave the filter on all the time (unless you work with strong backlight and you don’t want the effect at that moment). In normal lighting situations, you don’t see the filter. But as you use strong backlighting it seems to jump into action.

The thing I like the most about the filters is exactly that fact. You can just leave it on the camera and it doesn’t make everything look soft or glowing. As you can see in the examples everything is razor sharp except the smoothness and strength of the lens flare. It’s an insanely usable filter.

The other thing I love about their system is that it’s all magnetic. We all know the problems with screw-on filters. If you are not careful (even when you are) putting them on slightly angled or with just a dust speck on the thread it can be a pain to take them off.

With this system, you mount the main ring and just leave that on all the time. When you want to use a filter just click it on there and you’re good to go. You can even stack filters.

K&F Concept Frank Doorhof edition Filter Kit

Because I was pretty enthusiastic about the filters (understatement) we worked together with the Dutch distributor Movides to create a special bundle.

The bundle contains the 1/4 and 1/8 black diffusion filters, which you can use separately or stacked. But we also included a variable ND filter (also magnetic) for those moments you want to have smooth water or skies or… When you shoot with strobes outside they don’t support HSS and you still want to be able to shoot wide open and fight the sun.

All the filters are stored in a limited edition recycled leather pouch, hand-made in the Netherlands.

Currently, the K&F filter pack is only sold via our webshop and dealers in the Benelux that sell K&F Concept.

Of course, I couldn’t resist taking some fun shots with Claudia and Nadine 😉

Welcome to Cascable

As you probably know we have a show called “digital classroom” we release several reviews, tips videos etc throughout the year plus app 10 live streams under that label.

The original idea was to do it for a year, it’s a very costly show to run.

But we got so many great responses we didn’t want to stop. So we needed partners.

Of course you already know our friends from BenQ, Calibrite and Rogue all companies we already worked with and I loved their products.

Today I can officially announce a brand new partner and supporter of digital classroom : cascable.

Cascable is an app I’ve been using for over a year now and makes it possible to shoot tethered via USBC or wireless to my ipad. It works super fast, is incredibly stable and has some cool extra features for different kind of scenarios.

It also makes it possible to shoot directly to different locations, including online services.

Seeing i have been promoting the heck out of their software (it’s really awesome) ever since I started using it I’m very happy to now welcome cascable to our family of supporters.

If you have an iOS device and want to tether without any issues and want stability and speed… Check out cascable.

And combine it with one of our #iqwire tethercables.

#tethering #cascable #iqwire #AQCOLOR #calibrite

Telling stories in Borne

One of the workshops I absolutely love to teach is the “Working in an unknown situation and telling stories” workshop. In this workshop, I’m using the location where I teach as my background, decor, set, etc.
The cool thing is that every single workshop is different and covers different subjects due to changing situations.

Photographing in every situation is also the title of my Dutch book. Improvising is easy as you know what you are doing.

How to make great pictures in a place you don’t know or any unknown location?

I’ve taught this workshop in conference rooms during Photoshop World, and local photo club meeting places ranging from churches to schools. The one thing they all have in common… when you first see the room you have to wonder how you’re ever going to take awesome shots there. This makes it totally different from going to a great location like an urbex building and start shooting because wherever you aim the light or camera is usable.

Yesterday night we took this concept to the Fotoclub Borne. And this was an excellent example of working in an unknown situation and telling stories

This is the location.

And of course, we did bring an awesome model… Nadine 😀
And that helps a lot obviously.
So let’s take a look at some of the results.

 

Sets

For the first set, I gave a lot of attention to telling a story with your images, and the “theater” setting. The outfit that Nadine chose did fit perfectly. I actually do not know if Nadine planned it or just thought it looked cool. But seeing she didn’t see the location beforehand (like me) I think we were just incredibly lucky.

When I looked at the location the first thing I thought was:  a performer that takes the final applause, maybe plays a bit with the curtains, like checking the audience, etc. when you start with thinking in solutions it often goes very fast with ideas.

So let’s take a look at the results.

telling stories in an unknown location

 

More storytelling

 

But it could also be fun to play with the curtains of course.

 

Shoot without strobes for storytelling

And by shooting it without strobes and using the available light, trying to get just a small area of detail from the location, and using a harsh black-and-white conversion it almost looks like the performer is looking into the audience just before her show.

 

After the first part, I focussed a bit more on the importance of angles and expression.
Using one of the blackboards that were available in the room.

Rogue Dome & Snoot combined

Of course, there are always a lot of questions and I combined some of them in the last set where I combined the Rogue dome with a gel and the Rogue snoot to really let the model jump out. The cool thing about the snoot and using it on a speedlight is that you don’t get a round lighting circle but actually what you see in the images, a rectangular pattern. When you prefer a round pattern just add a diffusion gel instead of a color/CTO gel in the gel holder. This makes the snoot one of the more flexible attachments I use (the FlashBender still wins).

See more about the Snoot

The live shoot took about 2 hours.
Sometimes I wish I have more time to really nail the shots, but thanks to Nadine I think we can be very happy with the results 😀

 

Gear used :
Sony A7RIV
Sony Gmaster 24-70 f2.8
KF concept black diffusion filter 1.8 for the lensflares.
Apple iPad Pro 12.9 M1
IQ wire 10mtr tether cable
Cascable on the iPad for tethering

Nissin speedlights (this workshop is also done with our Hensel strobes, but we mix this up for different locations)
Rogue Umbrella black with sleeve, check out this video
the magnetic system of Rogue: with dome, snoot, and gel
Rogue Flashbender 3 (also with grid)

And of course :
Calibrite colorchecker duo
Sekonic light meter

This is about average for what I use on location.
The only thing we switch is speedlights for Hensel strobes (Porty for outside and Experts for inside locations)

I hope you guys enjoyed a quick behind-the-scenes look at the workshop and liked the images. I think we really got the magic and the essence of working in an unknown situation and telling stories

DP review is shutting down…

In case you didn’t know one of the largest photography communities is being closed down.

If you are a DP review member it’s maybe wise to save your data.

Personally i think it’s the wrong way this is done.
For years they have made money from adds and members at least have the decency to archive the forum not delete it. Or give it to the community or sell it. But i dont think you can just delete everything.

There are posts there done by people we lost in the mean time, people that grew to become famous photographers and there is a boat load of information there. Destroying that is absolutely unnecessary for a company that owns so many servers and money.

In an online world there should be something that protects communities like those from being wiped out.