My Home Studio with my neighbour kids as models

Friday evening sky - very yellowish

This photo was taken in my car, on my way to the Republic Polytechnic at Woodlands.

It's very rare to see a sky which is so yellow.  There was also a rainbow at the other end of the sky.

Passpart Photo that I took for my mother

This is taken in my living with the 9 feet wide white backdrop.  The quality is much much better than the photo that are produced by the vendor at the immigration office.  They charge $5 for 4 pieces and pay absolutely no attention to colour correction, shadow, expression.  

This photo is taken with 2 flashes.  Gary Foong light sphere which is positioned slightly to the left of the subject.  Another flash is the on camera flash which bounce the light off the ceiling.

A nice reflection of my sun glasses

Side Light with under-exposed background

This picture is taken with a slave flash (Canon 430EX), beam light. I deliberately under-exposed the ambient lighting to ensure that the background appear as black.

Casual photograph taken at a children playground

It's nice to carry a small camera around. This photo was taken with my brand new Canon G9, which offer very good image quality and allow good manual control.

G9 with Side Lighting + Ceiling Bounced Flash

The photograph above is taken using Canon PowerShot G9 with 2 external flashes:

1. a flash (430EX) that provide side lighting
2. a flash (580EX) on top of G9 camera. The flash is pointed toward the white colour ceiling to provide a ceiling bounced lighting.

The photograph belows shows the position of the camera, flash and the kid.

Canon PowerShot G9 with external flashes

Canon PowerShot G9 works well with all the Canon external flashes. I mounted 580EX Flash on top of G9 camera as master flash, and use the 430Ex Flash as slave flash. I will post some sample photographs soon.

No Flash for Young Baby

Beautiful baby girl in loving father's arm. The backdrop is actually the father's shirt.

It's not easy to take photos with 4 young kids running around. As you can see from the following photo, they are using my precious backdrop as car ramp. They managed to produce 5 holes in my backdrop paper and I have to patch it from behind.

Vivian

At the end of the flash photography session, we took some of the non-flash photos [by setting ISO1600] while the children are at play. This is the image of cute little Vivian holding a toy car.

Sheryl

This is Sheryl, a 2+ years old girl. She love the photo taking session and can't wait to see the photo preview.

With Camera Phone - ready to snap anytime

I will remember that when I was younger, I used to make a point to carry a small point & shoot camera with me where-ever I go. I had captured many great and memorable photos with my little Yashica T5. I have sold the camera at S$130 in 2004 to raise fund for my dreamed digital SLR. I kind of miss the camera now.

With the invention of camera phone with high quality image such as K800i and K750. I am back to those days where I am really to snap anytime, anywhere. The picture here is taken when I was waiting at Woodlands Civic centre on a Sunday morning. Feeling bored, look up and found that the upstairs and the root is quite interesting. I turned my camera to black and white mode, and turned off flash. Instantly, I have an image good enough for my camera background :-)

So with a camera phone in hand, be alert and really to capture all the little wonders in your life.

Slave Flash on IKEA Light Stand

Using Ball Bungee, you can attach your flash to any vertical pole that you find in your house. For example, this photo is taken with a flash attached to IKEA light stand at one corner of my living room. As you can see, the use of off-camera flash can create a more interesting photo compared to on-camara or ceiling bounced flash.












This pictures shows how the ball-bungie is used to attach the flash to an IKEA light stand. You can get 4 ball-bungie at S$2 at Daiso (IMM 3rd floor)

K800i Camera Phone with Umbrella Light

With the invention of camera phone, with "real" built-in flash. This has unleashed the possibility of using the external flash creatively to create nice picture.

These are the photos taken by my K800i phone to take photo with umbrella light.

In order to create this, i make use of DIY Phone Flash Divertor and Umbrella Flash as described below.





Phone Flash Divertor
The K800i flash need to be diverted using a DIY piece of paper. I have cut a piece of white colour paper from HSBC flyer. I have also folded it so that it's thick enough to divert the flash. Lastly, I cut two slits and inserted the paper between the phone cover and the flash on the phone.

Umbrella Light

This picture shows the umbrella light. It's a flash attached to slave adaptor and mounted to an orginary tripod via a Flash and umbrella holder. Click here for more details.

Single Light Source Photo - an example

Like most boys, Ben loves cars. One day, I noted that he invented a "car park in the air". This is a photo taken using primarily single light source - light bounced off from a white umbrella.









The umbrella flash is triggered from the camera flash (via hotshoe adaptor), which point toward the ceiling. In fact there are two flashes, but I consider it single light source since the umbrella flash is much stronger than the camera flash. The camera setting is at ISO100, f11, 1/125s. This the umbrella light source front of the subject. The relative position of the subject, umbrella light and the camera can be seen from the following picture.

Simple Home Studio Lighting Equipment

Photo Taken at My Friend's Home Studio

It all started with a visit to my best friend's home studio. I took photographs of my lovely sons and wife. I love to create a studio at my home but I don't have the luxury of space and money. It could cost S$2000-S$4000 to set up a basic studio with 2 studio lights.

I started exploring the possibility of re-using my old flash units and purchase umbrella to produce photographs with studio lighting quality. After 3 months of trial and error with my sons, nieces and nephews as models. This is my collection of equipment for studio lighting. It cost merely S$111, excluding the 2 flashes. You can get similar flashes from second hand market at about $50 each.

This is the list of items, with the price and shop that I got them from.

1. Photoflex 30" convertible umbrella - S$59 from Cathay Photo
2. Flash and Umbrella Holder + Tripod - Light Stand Convertor - S$42 from Cathay Photo
   
3. Kaiser Flash Shoe Adaptor - $10 from John 3:16
4. Popular Slave Adaptor (analog) - $? (very hard to find in Singapore, please email me if you can find one)

My 2 Old Flashes:

1. Sunpak auto 36FD Thyristor - has a function to allow half, 1/4, 1/8, 1/16 output. It's spoilt as it always output full power regardless of the setting.
2. Metz 32MZ-3 - flash that's working fine

Camera (not shown in picture here)

1. new Canon EOS 350D - $1300
   
2. Canon 17-40mm f4.0 L lense - $880 (second hand)

These are some photos that I have taken using the above lighting equipments. I will share more tips on the backdrop and lighting in future posting.