Tag Archive for: Sony

Never the black screen again when using strobes

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Black Screen on your camera when using strobes?

Oh, the black screen!

“This camera is unusable for studio use, that’s insane for such an expensive camera…. etc”
Countless of these kinds of bashing cameras can be found online, especially when the EVF in a camera was not as widely used as now. But why is the screen black when you are using strobes?

So what’s going on here?

In the older cameras, we used the sensor only as a replacement for film.
The image was still split into a part where you see the image, focus is done, etc., and a part where it’s hitting the sensor.
With the mirrorless cameras, everything changed.
First of all, we could get super accurate focus (well not at first, it was terrible at times) because you literally focus on the sensor, but we could now also use the viewfinder in a completely new way.

It started with the Sony A99

One day I got a call from Sony if I wanted to test a brand new camera that was “soon” to be released and do the press release in Dubai.
At the moment I wasn’t really into Sony. I was working with Canon cameras and absolutely loved the camera and the people at Canon (I still do :D)

But testing out new gear and getting carte blanche for my review, ……send it in.
Now there is a really funny story about batteries and Sony the Netherlands hanging up several times because they thought I was not serious seeing they didn’t know the camera yet. When it got solved I was literally stunned when looking through the viewfinder… this looks like fricking Topgun 😀
Yeah well, it was a huge improvement over the standard OVF (now I feel old).

The only problem with the A99 was the speed of the EVF. You probably remember the videos of people running through parking garages with their cameras and falling down because the EVF was too slow. In all honesty, when you do stuff like that it’s probably not just the EVF that has a … well ok it was funny 😀

Nowadays EVFs have greatly improved and yes you can now run around with them, although I would not recommend it.

Black Screen when using strobes.

But one problem remains; the black screen when using strobes

When you use the camera in the studio, the image you see through the viewfinder is totally black, and maybe when you press the shutter you can see a little bit of light. So what’s going on here?

The EVF actually does exactly what it’s supposed to do, it emulates the exposure….. ok let’s rewind.
Remember that A99?

Another thing that I found out with the EVF was that taking pictures outside was awesome, even the most difficult situations like backlighting were no problem anymore. Just change the exposure compensation till you see what you like and press the shutter. I called it the WYSIWYG display (What You See Is What You Get).

And this is the problem in the studio.
In a dark studio with the settings 1/125, F11, and ISO100 it should be 100% black in the viewfinder.
And of course, this also happened to me. And remember this was my first EVF. There was no manual and I had no contact person I could reach on the weekend. So, there was one solution, because this couldn’t be how it worked. I went through every single setting in the menu looking for something like LCD or EVF off. I couldn’t find it. Maybe it really was like this… no… ok now let’s try out all the settings. Finally I found a setting with the “not so clear for me” name “setting effect”. Because there was an option ON and OFF, I decided to go from ON to OFF… and like magic, there was my whole studio 😀

Black Screen when using strobes . A funny picture of a model with a camera

So the solution is actually pretty simple

In most cameras with an EVF, you can switch the EVF to roughly two modes.
One is an emulation of what you will get when you press the shutter with those settings.
and the other one is an emulation of what an OVF would show (optical view finder).

This means that in the studio we use the EVF on OFF and outside it’s in most cases best to leave it on ON.

On all cameras, the wording is a bit different but look for settings like “Emulation mode”, “Lighting emulation”, “Setting effect” etc.

To show it on my Sony A7RV I made a small video about the black screen when using strobes and how to solve it.
For this one, we made 2.
The first one is in English the second one is in Dutch.

If you have any questions feel free to ask.
Use the links in this blog post to order and support our work.
For the gear I use visit frankdoorhof.com/shop

 

How to make wow images with sets and colors

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Sets really add something

Often when I mention sets people think about big-budget solutions, but the opposite can be true, and mostly is in my work. In this article, I combine sets and colors to create WOW images.
It’s almost a sport to create cool-looking sets without breaking the bank.
So we also look for cool stuff on fleamarkets, attics, etc. you would be surprised what kind of “junk” you can buy for next to nothing that works great in a photoshoot.

And sometimes you use what’s there.
In this case, a customer brought in a huge projector for me to calibrate and it was packaged in a flight case. So…. yes indeed why not use it in a photoshoot?

Today a small tutorial on how to spice up a small set with a touch of color.

Model: Claudia
Want to visit one of my workshops?
Check www.fotografie-workshops.nl

Do you live abroad and is travel out of the question?
We have you covered there, book a full-day 1:1 online workshop in English or Dutch.
Just mail me for more info

Below the video, the results of how I made WOW images with sets and colors

Model : Claudia

How to make WOW images with sets and colors How to make WOW images with sets and colors

 

Read this blog for more sets with Claudia and colors 

First images with the Sony A7RV and it’s a huge upgrade

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During the Photodays 2023 I got the chance to shoot with the new Sony A7RV.
I’m still using the Sony A7RIV which is a great camera, but to be honest I was shocked with the upgrade.
Because I was shooting demos 3 days almost back to back and I used the A7RV only during the last day it really caught my eye how much more “depth” there seems to be in the images.

I’m not saying the A7RIV images are flat, but the A7RV does seem to be a little but more 3D, probably due to a different way of sensor processing, it’s subtle but clear when you know your camera. Now that wouldn’t be worth an upgrade, but the much faster and MUCH better (accuracy) autofocus is without any doubt. Much better with eye detection and now also with a load of AI options for trains, planes, animals and even chosing the correct eye. YES SONY, now I can use the eye focus (probably, still testing this). Also the display is a huge upgrade, tethering speed is faster and the display is now finally fully adjustable (I really missed that).

I’ll be using the A7RV a lot more so if you have any questions let me know.
I can confirm that tethering to the iPad Pro with Cascable works.

Today in the blog some of the results from the last day at PhotoDays 2023 Brussels.
Models : Nadine and Felisa.
Do remember that these kind of images are shot during a trade show on our booth during demos, so short time periods where I have to pay more attention to explaining what I do and the crowd than taking the photo, so there are often far from perfect, but I just love the styling Nadine did, so I had to share them.

Strobes : Geekoto GT400/GT250/GT200
Modifiers : Geekoto small softbox, Rogue magnetic system and Flashbender
Backgrounds : ClickBackdrops
Tethering : IQ Wire 10mtr to iPad Pro running Cascable

 

Wireless goodies for Sony shooters

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Shooting tethered is without a doubt one of the most valuable pieces of advise I can give, direct feedback, your customer can see and select images, you can do a pre-edit/selection, check focus and when working with manual focus lenses you can even do some bracketing if needed with the aid of Capture One’s awesome focus overlay (it shows everything that’s in focus as green).

Now most of the times I shoot tethered via USB-C and use my Tethertools cables and Tetherblock for this, plus some Tethertools extension locks and those together give me a pretty rock solid connection up to just under 15mtrs which in most cases is more than enough. However when shooting on location things do change a bit.

I love my Dell XPS series laptop but in all honesty outside the screen isn’t that bright and the battery… don’t get me started on that, yeah it’s ok but nothing more. A while ago we started experimenting with my Huawei M5 tablet and the build in Sony wireless app. That worked like a charm at home and in the field, the Sony sends over small JPGs and keeps the RAWs on the card and the app works great on Android (NFC) and “ok” in iOS (have to keep making a connection via password or QR), the M5 has more lightoutput than my laptop and being on location not having to carry a laptop, cables and extra battery pack + table for the laptop is a big plus, we now just use a tablet with a shade (hoodman).

However the Sony app is great at home but it fails miserably in more demanding situations.
I’m working on a series on mobile workflows with the iPad pro and smart devices instead of laptops so during our trip to SA Joburg I decided to shoot wireless for the first time in a tradeshow environment, and can tell you “DON’T EVER DO THIS YOURSELF” it was a disaster, some images came in in seconds others took 25-30 seconds, shooting from the same location not 3 mtrs away from my tablet. Literally unusable. But what than?

As you know I LOVE Tethertools but their great CaseAir doesn’t support Sony (yet) so I looked online.
CamRanger is coming soon for Sony, but I’ve been hearing that for at least 5 years now.
CamFi I already tested a year or 2 ago and although it did work it lost connection a lot and the app was…. well not that impressive. But I found out they have a new one, enter the:

CamFi pro
And trust me after the iPhone pro the name pro in my opinion has lost all it’s value (yeah I’m still an Apple fan boy but calling the 11 a pro…. nah) So what does this CamFi pro promise. Well actually quite a lot, and some things even blew my mind.

First off it promises much faster transfer speeds, well let me burst that bubble, yes it’s fast, in fact it’s VERY fast, but don’t expect to shoot RAW, not going to happen, not now not soon (maybe for still life or nature, but not far fast shooting like fashion or movement), but JPGs… well that goes REALLY snappy and I really mean REALLY. I’ve set my camera up for small JPGs and full size RAWs, in the new Sony menus you can find an option where you actually tell the camera to shoot RAW+JPG and only send the JPGs to the PC (yes this now also works for Capture One).

Ok what can it do with the app:
Autoview (handy for what I do, shoot image comes in, shoot, repeat)
Live View (can be cool to show the attendees how I make my composition, and awesome for other shooters, like remote cameras etc)
Time Lapse (always handy)
Focus stacking (cool for Macro)
HDR (Yep…. not a real fan of Highly Destructive Retouching, but… yeah ok it’s cool)
Video recording (ok that’s also handy)
Multiple camera control (yep you read that correctly, awesome for sports shooters with several cameras)
Auto print (yeah… well ok it’s there)

Transfer speeds are given as 10MB/s which I believe, again it feels really snappy.
And remember you’re shooting small JPGs so it’s almost as fast as RAWs via USB.

Capture one and Lightroom
And now it gets freaky
What if I told you that with this device you can just connect your camera to Capture One/Lightroom and those apps THINK you are shooting wired? In other words you see the camera, you can select everything and images come in like normally with USB, pretty cool right?

Yep and it works as advertised, setup is a breeze, just a small software app you run before you start shooting and you’re done.

My conclusion
You might expect a hallelujah conclusion after reading this, right?
Well it is, but…. and someone told me once that everything before but is useless, so let’s dive in.

First up.
Startup time is pretty long, but that’s pretty standard, but I would have loved for that to be a bit faster, connecting the camera works in 60-70% of the cases, don’t worry, if it doesn’t work just unplug ONLY the camera and connect it again, it never happened to me that it failed a second time, not once (and I used it a lot)

Second up.
And this is the big one.
This thing is HUGE, and I mean…. I don’t have a clue where to put it. It can’t be on the hot shoe because I need my trigger there, I don’t want a cage around my camera (I think) because I normally don’t want it on and it feels weird in my hands (I shoot with a grip) When I look at the case air you can just let it dangle next to the camera via a small cord and it’s fine. The CamFi pro…. never, it’s really big. But that also means build quality is like a tank, it’s very durable and it screams PRO device in every single way.

Third up.
Battery life is ok, they claim 6 hours, but my experience is about 4, which is more than enough (plus I got a loan unit so I don’t know how they treated the battery, I know I’m super aware of how to treat them so with me the batteries often stay in peak performance) but again 4 hours is more than enough

Fourth up.
Distance.
CamFi claims 50mtrs and I can only confirm that I did a test which was absolutely stunning.
During Photoshop World I walked all the way to the back of the room (those rooms are huge) and remember there are many wifi signals there, and the CamFi didn’t miss a beat, maybe it was a milisecond slower but all the images came in just fine and fast enough, WOW, that’s awesome.

End conclusion
If you need a wireless solution and you are like me shooting Sony, I can highly recommend the CamFi pro.
If you’re shooting Canon or Nikon and you want that integration with Capture one or Lightroom go for it.
If you want something smaller that also works just fine get the Tethertools CaseAir, but that’s only for the size, in all honesty I’m blown away by the CamFi pro…. if I could find a way to mount it without too much hassle like screwing in a case and working like that I would even recommend it even more, you could use a coldshoe splitter of course but if you’re using an ETTL or HSS/HS system that won’t work.

I have to send the unit back soon, and I have to be honest I do feel a bit sad about that.
Who knows…maybe I’ll buy it when there is no good solution before the end of the year…but you never know. 😀

HIGHLY recommended.

 

 

 

images are not mine