News about StudioFD, Frank Doorhof, and more.
This date is my favourite 😀
07-07-97 :09:07
That was the date and time we said “yes”. And I didn’t regret it any second over the last 25 years. And people know it, when you book Frank you always get Annewiek too and it’s not just because we work well together. It’s also because I could not stand to be apart for a longer period than let’s say….. Well 25 hours 😉
So today…. Congrats Annewiek for keeping up with my wild ideas over the past 25 years and up to the next 50+.
As a photographer, tethering is without a doubt one of the best things you can do for your workflow.
It doesn’t matter if you shoot on location or in the studio, shooting tethered is always handy.
So what is it, and what do you have to check?
Tethering means; connecting your camera to another device to show your images (or preview of your video) on that other device, this can be a computer, phone, or tablet, it doesn’t really matter, the idea is that you can show your images on another device than your camera.
When shooting to the computer there are many great extra options like:
Some things to check
Not every camera is compatible with tethering.
And also not every camera is compatible with every software package.
The best way to check is to read the manual or just google the name of the camera and tethering. In most cases, this will give you the answer you need. After this, you also have to buy the proper cable. Always take into account that you have to be able to move around. Most cables are sold in 4.7-5 meters length and although it sounds like a lot always realize that your desktop/laptop is not standing on the floor and your camera is also not on the floor, so unless you want a cable that is hanging in the air (a disaster waiting to happen) you always have to add at least 1.5 meters to the length you think to need. This is why I’m a big supporter of using 10 meters in length for anyone that has a studio and/or has a little room to move Especially outside 10 meters is really handy.
Software solutions
As you can imagine there are a lot of software solutions that support tethering, it’s impossible to cover them all here, so I will keep it to the software and hardware I have experience with. For all software counts, you find a list of compatible cameras on their website. So if you can’t find it via google, check out the software manufacturer’s website, this will also be a solution.
Capture One
I think most people know Capture One.
It’s not only a great RAW convertor, but for tethering, it’s one of the most stable and fast solutions out there.
There are special versions for certain cameras, but beware that you need the pro version in most cases to shoot tethered. The base versions only do RAW processing.
Smart Shooter
A very basic solution if you want to use Sony cameras in Lightroom via the free extra plugin.
Smart Shooter itself is mainly aimed at event photographers and is very fast and stable, but lacks features like adjusting anything in your images, this is just tethering, and that does it very well.
Lightroom
Lightroom has been the all-round solution for many photographers. It’s a great solution to store your images, use smart albums, retouch, and with the new Lightroom CC Adobe has a great online/offline platform. For tethering, it’s a bit more work than Smart Shooter and Capture One, where you just turn on the camera and it works. With Lightroom you have to start tethering manual, it’s not difficult, but it’s a few steps more. On the other hand, shooting into Lightroom is a delight; with presets and preview options. And if you already have a creative cloud subscription it’s already on your hard disk.
Camera native
You might not think about it immediately, but most cameras actually have native software for shooting tethered. And in almost all cases this works like a charm. If you can’t shoot into Lightroom via the internal tethering solution using a hot folder in combination with the camera native software works very well. It’s a bit slower but in most cases that doesn’t really slow you down.
Cascable
One of the things I really wanted for a long time was shooting tethered to my iPad Pro. And although wireless was possible via the Sony it didn’t gave me the stable connection I needed. So I was very happy when Cascable supported Sony cameras a few months ago. It’s not a cheap solution but I can say that it really works like a charm. However with Sony cameras make sure that when you turn off the camera or disconnect the camera, you HAVE to remove the battery before the iPad will release the port again.
Ok now that we have seen the software solutions, what are some problems you can encounter?
Problems and solutions
In most cases, tethering problems can be solved quite easily but can be very tricky to track down, so let’s take a look at some problems we have encountered over the years and how we solved them.
Camera settings
It sounds bizarre but trust me… in most cases, it’s a matter of a simple setting in the camera.
First of all, make sure the protocol for USB is set up correctly. You can often choose between a mode for PC control and hard drive mode. Always chose the option to have PC control. For Sony cameras it’s also vital you disable the option to use smartphone control, the first time it drove me nuts because in the USB menu everything seems normal but that one setting made it impossible to shoot tethered. For most cameras, it’s just selecting the right protocol.
In most cases, it’s a matter of power
When you have to disconnect your cameras, have hiccups, etc. try to disable power saving on your computer. And don’t just do the standard power saving. In most OS versions you can also disable the USB power saving (let the computer put USB to sleep OFF). Check online how to do this for your OS version. What can also solve a lot of issues is using a powered hub, it doesn’t have to be an expensive one but in our own experience, we found that using cheaper USB hubs doesn’t last as long as for example Startech hubs, which are running for over 5 years in our studio now without a problem. Also, make sure you disable charging over USB when you experience problems.
On certain laptops try different USB ports, some ports will give more power than the others. We especially found this to be problematic on certain MacBooks.
What when it always worked on port A and during a shoot it doesn’t….?
Well, don’t panic just try another port, reboot the machine, and next time port A will also work again. Why? no idea it just works that way on some machines.
Update the USB and Thunderbolt drivers, we found this problem on almost all Dell XPS laptops, using drivers from the net which are often newer than the Dell drivers can totally mess up the USB c port on those machines. Make sure that ALL mainboard drivers are Dell-certified drivers and your tethering will work like a charm.
Use external power.
Sometimes it’s necessary to connect power to the tether cable. In all honestly we hardly ever experienced this with our clients in over 12 years but it can solve some issues if nothing else works.
Make sure connectors are clean.
The protection caps delivered with your cables are there for a reason, keep dust and dirt out of the connectors, this is one of the most experienced defects in cables, so make sure yours stay clean.
Don’t twist your cables, or try to tie them in a knot.
Yes, it sounds logical but you don’t want to know what we sometimes see. Tethercables are very sturdy (if you buy the right ones) but everything can break down, so always treat your cables the same way you treat your expensive camera gear. When you’re done use a velcro strip to bound the cable together.
Use something to protect your camera port.
Protecting the port is without a doubt one of the most important things. Damaging a port is a certainty when shooting tethered without protection. The cable is hanging loose in a not so strong port and you move the camera almost constantly, that’s not a good combination. So our advice is to use angled cables and for example our Cable Block which is Arca compatible and will hold your cable firmly in place and prevents any problems with cable port damage.
Some apps that can cause problems.
This is a bit hit and miss, when you tried everything and nothing works, please disable DropBox, OneDrive, and any firewalls you have running. This is especially an issue with wireless tethering but we also found one customer that couldn’t work with capture one when DropBox was running, so it’s always something to check.
If nothing works…
Before panicking check on another machine.
Feel free to contact us, we can always help out to solve your problems.
Some things to check
Make sure to check in your camera what the settings are for tethering. In most cases you won’t have a lot of options but for example, with my Sony cameras I can select the size it sends to the computer (full or 2MP) and if it sends the RAWs or JPGs, and what stays on the card. Normally for tethering, I will set it up to shoot RAWs to the computer and store the RAWs on the card.
If tethering is slow, check in for example Capture One how the files are handled, Capture One can be set up to show the images as soon as they come in, or after they are rendered… I always let them show right away.
If your images don’t show when you shoot in Lightroom make sure “Advance to next” is enabled, normally this works automatically with tethering.
Hardware
I’ve been tethering for over 17 years and started literally with the yellow cable connected to my video output to a CRT tv. And hey, it worked. After that, we went to firewire which was the first real connection with a computer for me. After that, we went to Firewire 800 which was faster but also a lot less stable as a connection, and then it only went downhill. The connectors on the cameras became so small and fragile that I sometimes wondered if we would end up with just 2 wires we had to put in with a microscope. It’s insane that people don’t think about the forces that will be put on those ports and cables while tethering.
When USB C arrived we finally had a solid connection on both the computer/tablet side and the camera. But time continues and with today’s super-fast cameras spitting out an insane amount of data, the demands on the cables also have increased. We are using the tether cables from IQwire in our studio and also distributing them in The Netherlands/Belgium, the IQwire cables are in my opinion the next generation in tether cables.
Available in 10 meters (and 5) the IQwire cables support super-fast connection and data transport, thanks to the 2 inline boosters (10-meter version) and IQconnect hardware which makes connecting your camera not only very fast but also negotiates the highest possible data rate, meaning the cable makes it possible to shoot on full speed and never miss a beat, no pauses just one continuous stream of images coming in. The boosters are also lit, so you can even see the cable in dark studios. And if needed you can also connect a power supply to both boosters. This makes the IQwire cable for us the most advanced solution at the moment. Also the fact the cables are all delivered with protection caps and a velcro strap for storage and angled USB C connectors marks all the boxes for me.
In The Netherlands/Belgium the IQ wire is available via www.iqwire.nl and the 10-meter versions are delivered with a free CableBlock.
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.
Most of the time it’s all about photography on the blog, but I know you guys also love some business tips in between.
Let me start by stating that both me and Annewiek have been running our own companies for over 25 years so we definitely know how running a business works.
Customer care and happiness
One of the most important things is keeping customers happy and giving them the feeling they were treated fairly. This doesn’t always mean the customer is right, it means that in the end the customer understands the solution and in most cases is happy with it. Let’s be clear, some customers you can never satisfy and they will try to get the utmost out of a situation and even don’t feel any shame to threaten with courts even if they are 100% not right, in all cases they will actually not push through but at that point for us as a company the trust and willingness to work for a customer is also gone, so always be careful how far you push a well willing shop/company
let’s give you a recent example and als the reason I think it’s important to write this as a business tip.
It’s no secret I love playing guitar and recording music. So during the pandemic we build a nice small studio setup at home, which we also use for the digital classroom episodes that stream from our home (something we couldn’t do before and now half of the streams are done via this setup)
The heart of a setup like this is the console
I bought a second hand console which worked like a charm but due to my switch to the M1 macs I needed to upgrade it and the choice was a behringer x32, the problem…… it was out of stock everywhere and when calling around delivery times of June this year would be expected (this was November last year)
Musicstore.de
To my surprise a huge music store in Germany did claim they had stock, even 2, so I immediately ordered the console and because the next digital classroom was 10 days later I expected it all to work out great, however my order didn’t update to shipped, at first I tried some emails and when I got an answer it was always the same “I see it in the storage and it will be send out tomorrow” now in the Netherlands a day is 24 hours and unless I missed something major it should also be in Germany. In the mean time we were almost 5 days further and the weekend was approaching so I tried to call them to hear the same, delivery on Saturday was absolutely no problem, it was on stock as they have been telling me from the start, they were actually surprised I asked because the site said stock…. Somehow they didn’t seem to understand that if I order something on Sunday that’s on stock I expect it to be shipped the latest on Tuesday. But we were now already on Friday.
via a friend of us we found another x32 that was offered via Amazon and decided to order that one also because mails and telephone calls to musicstore.de were very problematic with vague answers and more an attitude like “we send stuff out when we think it’s time and now stop asking”
the next day my x32 from Amazon came in and much to my surprise on Monday the x32 from the German store, because the other one was already installed we immediately send the x32 back to the German store unopened and the next day we got it in, of course we did mail them about it and because they have a 30 days money back option we didn’t expect any problems. Also because on their website the x32 still was not send out so although I did receive it there was no tracking number etc. If this was the case I have some understanding of what happens next.
much to our surprise we did not get our money back, in fact we got the message after asking a few times that we had store credit and that they did this manual, so I had to order for 1699 products and mail them and they will then handle that. This was the moment I started to protest and feel uncomfortable a lot.
Finding excuses to not pay up
excuse me…. Why do I need to buy 1699 in products (which I don’t need)?
Their response was pretty shocking and shows little to no customer support
According to musicstore.de the product I ordered COULD be used for a commercial product and send back, and their rules are simple, if you order something that could be used for a concert or event and send back they never give money back……
This is a bit like saying, we sell clothing and have a 30 days money back if you don’t like it, but if it’s a product that could be worn for a day you don’t get your money back.
For people that don’t get this….
Almost 100% of music products that are being sold could be labeled like that.
You could use an effects unit for a show, a guitar, speakers for a mix, mics to record etc. The only thing you can’t really send back of course are strings. So in essence they claim they can decide if they feel like giving money back or not and for us it was the end of the line, we had to spend 1699 otherwise there was no option, we even offered to pay restocking or for shipping, but no…. 1699 in credit.
now luckily we still have income during the pandemic but also for us this is boatload of money that just disappears now and can’t be used for food, mortgage etc. I can imagine for people that save for a year to be able to buy a product from musicstore.de will get into financial problems for the simple reason 1699 for most people (including us) is not the kind of amount you just spend for fun
but if you think it ends there….. no way
I decided to order 3 products which in essence I might have bought in the next 1-2 years. So my Xmas and birthday presents came early for the next 2 years.
Two products were in stock when I ordered, one not
It took us at least 4 hours calling to get everything in order, of course you never get a call back, and waiting times can be huge while another time you get someone within 10 minutes. But hey its a lot of money.
by the time we had the store credit it was another week after my order, and now…. One of the products was sold out but because I ordered it I expected to get it anyway (when we take orders the products are locked to that customer, even with backorders they are delivered in order of the order time)but no such luck, after a few mails demanding they deliver at least what’s on stock I never got an answer but the first product did came in.
after 4 weeks we saw that product 2 was on stock and I expected to see it delivered…. No luck so after a week (we are not unreasonable) started mailing again, no responses, so tried different mail addresses, no response, after a more demanding mail we still didn’t get an answer but two days later the product…. So it seems that keep pounding at the door does seem to help.
we are now months later and my third product also came in, so that was the time to write this article (first wanted to make sure it all was in) Now for us, the bizarre thing is that they claim that my mistake was not cancelling my order, the story that I did call them several times and also mailed them I would send it back a day after receipt because someone else did deliver out of stock all doesn’t count according to them….
so what is the learning part?
First of all…
Listen to your customer
without customers your company doesn’t make money, and customers have to come back, also mouth to mouth is the best advertising you can have, one angry customer can do more damage than 100 happy customers. So listen to your customer
reply emails
We have a rule of 24 hours, if you mail us we respond asap, even if we don’t have the answer.
Keep your client updated
This can be done via your site and order system, or just answer their mails when they ask about orders
service also beyond
You can always mail or call us about the products we distribute. Even if you didn’t buy them from us, we stand behind our company and if someone is unhappy about a product a dealer delivers and doesn’t have the answer this could be negative for our products while in real life 99% of the problems are easily solved. So we always try to work seamlessly with our dealers. Which helps the reputation of them, our products and our company, for the simple reason they trust us to also get other products from us.
the customer is almost always right
As mentioned before not all customers are equal but in our book the customer is always right unless it’s 110% sure he/she is not. But even if we find the customer not to be right we will try to find a solution he/she is happy with even if it means we have to take a hit financial (to a certain extend)
What could they have done better?
Well they broke almost every rule
We didn’t feel taken serious because we were treated like a nagging child waiting for it’s gift while in essence we were waiting for an expensive piece of gear that I clearly told them had to be in before Saturday.
when they didn’t deliver due to their mistakes in communication or transport we were held responsible for the costs and had to buy other products which they again messed up in their communication and even when the site said stock it took us several mails pointing them towards that fact before they send it out, all without a response from them by the way. So ok we didn’t cancel the order via the website, but this is like we make 10 mistakes and we don’t give a f7ck but you don’t mail us to cancel so bad news for you……
So how to make the customer happy?
Simple. First of all, just deliver what you promise, stock means we send it out today or tomorrow or the first working day. When you have a customer that is not happy mark that customer and make sure that someone in customer support picks up that customer and makes sure from that point on everything does go smooth.
the most bizarre part,… my x32 on my customer page is still…. In transit…..
Conclusion
Musicstore.de is huge, they have a very nice site and what I can see store, but this was my first and last experience with them, we regularly order gear from Baxstore, KeyMusic and Thomann and never ever had problems with returns or customer support, in fact all three call you up and when there is a problem all three are super easy with returns, and that way they will always see me back and I send a lot of friends to them. Musicstore.de lost us as a customer but did gave me the perfect example on how not to do business…
feel free to add your ideas or experiences
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