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.

Introducing the ClickPropsBackdrops in our studio

/in , /by

When taking photos the model is important, just as the lighting…. but also the background.
Sounds logical right?
Still when you look at a lot of images online it seems that the role of the background is often more to be “invisible” than to really enhance the image, and trust me, a good background can lift your images from ok to “WOW”.

For us it actually all started in our studio.
I was pretty much bored with using seamless, and don’t get me wrong I love seamless and still use it a lot, but to shoot everything against seamless is not something I wanted to do, in fact I was almost feeling like just picking a color to fit the styling/subject and that’s it.

Now I know that it’s often thought that to make a model jump out you need to focus really on the model with both lighting and poses/expression, but also to make the background darker/black or neutral so it doesn’t compete with the model. And in all fairness I also did this a lot. But as mentioned I got bored with it, and also constantly buying new colors and throwing them out after a few weeks of heavy use also pretty much became too expensive to be fun.

When working on location I found that I just LOVED using the available backgrounds and by incorporating them into my images I really fell in love with the more “rustic” “relic” backgrounds. Think about old walls, damaged doors, broken windows etc. But then when I came back into the studio… well it was just seamless.

So we decided to fix that.
We hired two painters that were familiar with painting custom childrens bedrooms with fairytales, movie themed walls etc. So for what I wanted they actually didn’t really have to flex their muscles, but the more walls they did, the more fun they had and the walls really started to get some “attitude” and character. In the end I believe there was not one white wall left in our studio, and it was AWESOME, I could still use seamless paper but I now also had a huge selection of truly unique backgrounds with structure and no reflections…. and that last part was something that bugged me a lot when using printed backdrops, first of all the material was often reflecting my strobes back when used under extreme angles (something I love to do). And although I did find some awesome non reflective backgrounds from Lastolite which were collapsable I did needed backgrounds that were a lot bigger and could be used in landscape mode but still fit a standing model and of course were easy and fast to change.

To be short I wanted my custom walls into a system I could take with me, or use in the studio via a background system (electric or manual) and that took a while.

A few years later I was in Johannesburg for workshops and I met up with the UK based company ClickPropsBackdrops, to put it into perspective I was just looking for a background to use during a photoshoot and was absolutely not looking for a new product, I was “happy” with my custom walls in the studio, and on location most of the times I could just use what was there, but it did limit me a lot when there wasn’t an interesting background.

The first thing that caught my attention that even on a standard background system the background was actually almost completely flat, and when you mount it on a roll it will be 100% straight by the way, but we used clamps in this case which is far from ideal. During the shoot I started to move my lights around and to my surprise the background looked awesome from almost every angle I used, and I became more and more interested, especially because the chosen background was not really fitting my preference, but while shooting I just kept exploring new ways to use it, and that’s a really good sign. Also when checking the images later I could not find any reflections or glare, WOW, that’s awesome.

Long story short (well actually it already was a short story to begin with) Charlie the owner of ClickPropsBackdrops loved my work and way of teaching and we agreed to do a custom signature series of some of the walls we use in our studio. From there it all went pretty fast and I can now announce that StudioFD (Annewiek and me) will start selling the ClickPropsBackdrops in the Netherlands starting in May 2022, the official launch will be during the professional imaging in the Netherlands.

Now I don’t connect my name to products left and right, when I promote something I REALLY use it and LOVE it, when we start distribution in the Netherlands that’s a whole step further and just means for you guys that I 100% believe in a product and think it gives the absolute best in quality for it’s price.

ClickPropsBackdrops delivers a stunning selection of prints that will fit every taste and occasion, it doesn’t matter if you’re a food/new born/wedding/event or fashion/portrait photographer there is more than enough choice for you and in almost every size you could wish for, from small to huge panoramic prints that can easily handle a whole family (well maybe not all families, but you know what I mean right? it’s huge).

The backgrounds are designed for and by photographers and you can really experience this when shooting. I HATE backgrounds that show up on the photo with creases and are not flat. The ClickPropsBackdrops are hand made and printed on non reflective thick materials that (even with the magnets are clamps) hang very flat, and also important they are super easy to clean. But most of all….. you can use them in many different ways with most prints. It’s not a solution where you are forced to use the same look over and over because the background is not wide/large enough or because the print “forces” you to place your subject in a certain location.

My favourite size is without a doubt the 2.72×2.72 meter profabric which is absolutely awesome and hails back to the wonderful painted canvasses which we all love but are often way out of our price range. Also the profabric is delivered on a sturdy tube that will fit most background systems, including electric systems. So it’s just hanging it up and.. well start shooting.

And due to the prints and size you have plenty of options on where to place your model, so you can literally use the backgrounds in many different ways and be super creative with it without customers/followers commenting that you use the same background all the time… I just love this way of working.

It might be more expensive than seamless, but if you start calculating… seamless you have to replace every few weeks with heavy use, my first ClickPropsBackdrops is still looking brand new, and is used a lot during events and in our own studio, so it’s many times taken down, rolled up and transported, and it still looks brand spanking new, that’s a super good investment because when I take seamless on location I already know I can throw it away right after the event. Plus it’s way cooler of course.

Because sometimes words and images are better and sometimes video, I decided to do this special introduction both ways. So here is the official Dutch and English introduction video.

DEALERS ARE WELCOME FOR THE NETHERLANDS

Dutch video
https://youtu.be/wOB-2CZkTSE

English video
https://youtu.be/NO6sehJhSvg

We’ve added a selection of my favourite backdrops on frankdoorhof.com/shop but we can deliver every size and print you find on the official site of course.

Using colortubes to spice up your shot

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It’s no secret that I love to take my images a few steps further than just a portrait, don’t get me wrong, there is nothing wrong with standard portraits, but for me the real challenge is more into creating something more surreal, and one of the things I love to do is combine coloured gels with a bit of smoke and maybe throw in some lens flares here and there.

During a recent live stream we decided to use the led tubes as my main light source and play with the different options, and today I’ll show you some of the results.

Our model during the live stream was Lois.
I’m using two small Nanlite led tubes and one large Nanlite led tube.
The nice thing about these tubes is that they not only are able to show almost every color imaginable but also output more than enough light to actually use them in professional photography. I absolutely love those tubes.

But enough talk, let’s take a look at the setup I was using.
I do have to add that the glow is achieved by using the amazing Black Mist filter from K&F concept, I can’t tell you guys enough how much I love using that filter, in fact you can now even buy it from our webshop at frankdoorhof.com/shop

Here you can clearly see the two lights on the side and the large tube Lois is holding. With this setup I just started to experiment during the live stream and came up with the following results.

But you don’t have to use all the lights at once of course.
So whenever you do a photoshoot, always try to experiment with different ways of lighting your model, move around your model and of course turn off certain light sources, you will be surprised how many different options you get from your lighting setups if you just dare to move around and move your lights a bit more than you normally do.

Now loads of images will fail, but always remember, there are no fails/mistakes, you only fail when you stop. So all the things that not work (and will drive you nuts) are just steps towards understanding and learning to visualise your setups.

For the next images I played mostly with the larger led tube and asked Lois to keep it really close to her face. When you are shooting on aperture priority mode or any other auto setting, you will have to adjust your exposure compensation because otherwise the face will blow out due to the fact that the metering of your camera will be thrown off by the large dynamic range in shots like this. It can help if you use spot metering in your camera as meting mode, but even than… I strongly advise to shoot things like this on full manual mode and use the EVF or Live View of your camera to check lighting. Plus of course when you shoot tethered (which I also highly advise as you all know) you can check the final results on a large screen and already do some tweaking in your RAW convertor (Lightroom, C1, Luminar etc.)

Playing with led tubes is very challenging but a boat load of fun, but do beware… it’s incredibly addictive, but also a great way to learn and understand your lighting.

You can see the whole live stream for free on our YouTube channel (we would love a subscribe).
Digital classroom mixing strobes and leds

LumeCube RGB Panel Go

/in , /by

It’s no secret I like the products LumeCube releases.
For me it started with the LumeCube, a small cube with a punch, I love using it on a selfie stick for some interesting lighting effects/angles, but it’s also very nice to add some light in positions where you need something really small, and they even released a full accessory pack for the light. Now why do I tell this.

A good manufacturer always thinks about what the creators/users need, and will adjust the products to the demands from the market, this in my opinion the reason that some brands grow really fast into a household name and for me LumeCube is one of those companies.

I still remember the times when we started our YouTube channel, when we wanted light on location I needed to spend a lot of money and most of those sets where far from portable. Now don’t get me wrong, a good light quality is often achieved with a larger light source, but there is also a certain limit to what’s easy to use or just slows you down. So we were over the moon when the affordable led panels hit the market, but still it was a lot of carrying around, you needed power etc.

Let’s fast forward to today.
LumeCube just released their new RGB Panel Go.
Now we’ve used the Panel Go before this and it works like a charm on location for video light. But as you know… I also love to shoot photos with led panels, especially during the lockdowns shooting action figures, guitars etc. with led panels/tubes was something that got me through most of the lack of photographing people. And to be honest that also changed my opinion on what to buy a lot.

Where in the past I saw the smaller led panels really as video lights on location and the most important thing for me was long battery life on full brightness and the possibility to set the color temperature (of vital importance), my wishes has now changed more towards the realisation that what we always saw as “just” a video light can also be used creatively when it could also change colours for example……

Enter the LumeCube RGB Panel Go
As mentioned before we loved the Panel Go, and LumeCube did a huge upgrade to this panel.
Compared to the Panel Go, the new RGB Panel has of course (as the name suggest) the option to change colours (later more), but they improved a lot more.

The Panel Go used 112 leds and the new RGB panel Go now uses 210 leds.
Lightoutput is still 1080 Lux at .5 mtrs
Also battery life has been improved from 1.3 hours on full power to 1.5 hours on full power and 2.3 hours on 50% to 2.5 hours on 50%.

I actually like that LumeCube gives usable numbers, you often see adds where led panels are advertised with for example an insane battery life of 13-15 hours, but when you look closely it’s on 1% output… and well I don’t think anyone will use it on 1% except maybe as a nightlight, but than there are much cheaper solutions.

Charging the panel is done via USB-c (I think this should be standard on all devices) and takes app 80 minutes for a full charge.

The LumeCube menu is easy to navigate and gives the user a lot more options that the Panel Go, creating the colours you want is very easy and fast, but in the menu you can also access the special effects options of the RGB Panel Go including a police, fire, lighting, loop effect.

CRI
You might have seen this CRI value before, but what is it?
The letters means Color Rendering Index, in essence this means how close to real life you will see the objects colors when it’s lit with the light source. The range goes from 0 to 100 ra where 100 is as close to real life as possible (Day light).

To get the final number 8 colors are used and an average of these are calculated giving the light source it’s rating.
For home lighting for example anything above 80 ra is more than ok. But when lighting a painting, or something that is important for color representation it’s highly advised to chose light sources that are above 90 ra.

You probably already guessed that for a led panel lighting a subject it’s important that we have a higher ra rating than 80 which is ok for house lighting. Well don’t worry, the LumeCube RGB panel Go actually has a CRI rating of 96 plus.

Who should get the LumeCube RGB Panel Go?
For me it’s a no brainer one should always carry at least one location lighting solution in your bag, you never know when you need some light somewhere. And with the RGB addition to the Panel go I think LumeCube opens a whole new market for this panel.

You can still use it on the cameras hotshoe but by being able to also change colours to almost any imaginable colour it also opens a lot of options for more creative uses. I would love to bring one of the panels for an urbex session when you can light the rooms with any color you want, and the panels are powerful enough to mix with a little bit of ambient light in a room and create wonderful surreal images.

But also with model photography you can use one of them as a main-light and one as an accent light with a nice color.

And of course it still does what it was originally designed for, function as a very nice video light.

With the RGB Panel Go LumeCube offers an awesome lighting solution that is compact, affordable, outputs enough light, can create any colour you need on location, has a good battery life and is small enough to fit your hotshoe. I can’t wait to start using the RGB Panel Go in my work and will post some images in a later review video. But for now I wanted to share the test/review experiences.

For a limited time we have a special discount code for you guys.
https://glnk.io/jxvv/rgb-panel-go-frankdoorhof
Your discount code: FRANKDOORHOF10

BTS during the workshop Smoke and Gels

/in /by

In todays blog post we take you behind the scenes during the workshop “smoke and gels” with our model Felica