The Space Shuttle Discovery lifts off from Kennedy Space Center on it’s final flight moments before it’s launch window expires.
I managed to score a rare commodity, causeway launch viewing tickets for the launch of Shuttle Discovery for STS-133. My dad covered the shuttle launches throughout most of the 80s for a South Florida newspaper, so I grew up with all kinds of really nice photography of shuttle launches, but never saw one my self until just last year and then from 15 miles away. Then again, it was easier back then for a serious photographer to find a news paper that was willing to “hire” them and write the necessary letter for the photographer to get press credentials. Moreover, it was also easier to get access to the non-press viewing areas like the causeway on the NASA parkway.
Now, access to Merritt Island during Shuttle launches is seriously curtailed. Public viewing requires tickets that are available though a lottery system. Even then, only limited numbers of tickets being issued for access to the KSC visitor center, and an even smaller number of tickets being available for access to the causeway. Suffice to say, the causeway viewing tickets sell out minutes after they’re available and the KSC visitor center tickets are gone minutes later.
For me, this is an exciting opportunity, not only as a photographer and a space geek, but also to document something at its close that my dad was documenting at the beginning.
The one thing that I know, but want to be clear about, is that without the ability to place remote cameras much closer to the launch site than you can physically be (i.e. what the press can do), the images are all largely the same, tiny shuttle on a long trail of smoke and fire. Distance only makes the tiny shuttle not quite so tiny and much less distorted.
I’ve received at least one email, and now a comment about sudden flash death induced by or related to LPA design’s Control TL PocketWizards. Moreover, a recent post on Canon rumors has a link to a paper, purportedly produced by LPA Design employees summarizing their investigation into flashes failing.
LPA design claims to have received reports from 120-140 customers that their 580EX II flashes, has been damaged within the past 18 months with similar symptoms. The symptom specifically is the inability for the damaged flash to produce controlled bursts. Lacking the ability to control the output, the flash will make a full power discharge all the time, even for TTL pre-flashes.
TLDR, The Brass Tacks
- The potential exists with at least Canon’s 580Ex II and possibly Nissin’s Di866 (I’ve received a report of a Nissin Di866 being fried in a similar manner) flashes that a failure can occur.
- The failure doesn’t appear to be related to heat buildup, so AC-5 soft shields aren’t a problem.
- The failure appears to be strongly related to an electrical arc formed between the flash tube and the flash’s reflector, eventually frying the controller.
- Replacing the fired controller, doesn’t fix the problem, and the flash will die again, even if it’s never used with a PocketWizard.
- LPA Design claims that failures have happened to less than 0.5% of the MiniTT1/FlexTT5 units, and less than 1% of 580EXII flashes connected.
From my interpretation of the LPA design report, the problem lies in the flash and not the PocketWizards.
Moreover, it seems that if your flash exhibits defects that lead to the failure use becomes a consideration. In LPA Design’s tests, the arcing occurred randomly, even in HSS discharges where you would expect to see it in every “pop”.
Finally, it’s entirely likely that as many 580EX II flashes are failing on users who aren’t using PocketWizards at all, but we’re not hearing about it since they either aren’t being used as much or simply are being considered a case of random broken equipment by the users.
A Deeper Analysis
The LPA investigation tracked down the problem to 2 main areas. First, the failure is ultimately noticed when the insulated-gate bipolar transistor (IGBT) that controls the actual flow of current to the flash tube dies. Secondly, it appears that the IGBT dies due to repeated arcing between the flash tube and the reflector behind it.
Looking for my take on the Canon EOS-1D X announced in Fall of 2011? Click here.
It’s that time again, time for Canon’s spring product announcements. The big, at least for me, announcement is a 200-400mm lens. However, Canon is also bringing to market a 2 new consumer level SLRs and a pair of new low end flashes.
Call this a day late and a dollar short. I’m not big or important enough for Canon to give prior notice to, so my comments are limited to what I can glean after the embargo’s end and the press releases go up.
Overall, Canon has put forward a couple of solid looking entry level cameras, finished replacing their new stabilized super-telephoto primes, and released a pair of low-end flashes, one with some very intriguing features. Moreover, Canon is clearly continuing to treat video support as a first class citizen in their SLRs by adding features that make sense and continuing to refine and improve the way you can use it.
A while back I tried out Phase One’s Capture 1 namely to see how well their Focus mask worked. At the time, I was looking for a quick way to scan through pictures looking for the ones that had critical focus placed where I wanted it without having to go into 100% in Lightroom and study the images.
Needless to say, I found Capture 1 to be technically a really nice RAW processor that was such a usability disaster for me that as attractive as the focus mask feature was, it wasn’t good enough to get me to switch. Even then, focus mask is still one feature I’d long to see implemented in Lightroom.
It should be obvious, I think focus mask is one damn handy feature; it would be even more so to have on the back of your camera. Which is what Phase One has gone and done with their IQ series of ridiculously high resolution MF backs.
Fastest validation of correct focus with Focus Mask
No need to zoom anymore to validate your focus. The IQ series backs are designed to display a colored semi-transparent mask on top of the preview to show which parts of the image are in focus. It’s extremely useful to validate depth-of-field and get instant feedback about whether a shot is perfectly focused or not.
via IQ180 digital back – full frame sensor and sensor plus technology.
Reviewing Images on the back of a digital camera is a blessing and a curse. Gone is the need to wait hours, days or even weeks for a lab to develop and process your film, you’re now free to review within seconds of shooting the frame. However instant review is no panacea, even ignoring the low resolution of camera LCD screens, judging sharpness, color, exposure or focus placement is virtually impossible.
There are certainly some workarounds for some of those problems. Flashing highlight warnings, blinkies, show clearly where the images is clipping and not just where it’s bright. The histogram shows the overall range of the exposure, including whether there is data in all of usable range or not.
But there’s no real good way to review sharpness or perhaps more importantly focus placement. You can struggle at it in high magnifications, but even with the max sharpening applied to the preview image, the image can still be unindicative of exact focus placement. Never mind it’s time consuming to have to constantly zoom in and out while stepping through images.
Focus mask solves most of those problems; it’s a feature I’d love to see in more RAW processing software and even more in cameras right along clipping blinkies. So why Canon and Nikon are engaged in another race to the bottom, this time to see who can put the biggest ISO number on their camera’s spec sheet, Phase One has turned out an innovative feature that really makes sense—or cents if you’re Phase One. Too bad their backs generally cost more than a car.
I’ve accrued a bunch of links that I’ve found handy, or just plain interesting. These are from January 2011 and earlier.
Zach Arias posted a 6 part series on lighting, shooting, and post producing the seamless white images.
Art Wolfe has a Vimeo channel where he was, for a while at least, posting regular short clips on dealing with various situations that arrise when shooting in exhotic locations. Among other things.
Looking to turn pro as a wedding or studio photographer? Any kind of Photographer. Photographers International has a site for you.
Going pro means it’s a business and businesses have to keep their books straight, or well the results can be very very bad. Building 43 has a brief overview on the differences between cash-basis and accrual-basis accounting for non-accountants.
Video is becoming an increasingly important area for photographers to be comfortable producing. Music being one of those things that goes hand in hand with video. Finding inexpensive music to license for someone who’s not familiar with where to look can be daunting. Master New Media.org has published a list of some royalty free and low cost music licensing options.
The first trip to Sanibel and J. N. “Ding” Darling NWR of the 2011 season and it wasn’t a bad trip. Roseate Spoonbills were out in good numbers in several places in Ding. Though, perhaps due to the cold temperatures or my timing, the beaches were unusually devoid of both terns and shorebirds.
In the 6 months between its launch and my acquisition of one, I watched respected photographers like Chase Jarvis and Joe McNally rave about how good the camera on the iPhone 4 was.
I have one now and simply put, I am not impressed.
Let’s get one thing straight, the iPhone 4’s camera is one of, if not, the best camera in a phone. I say that as if it was a worthwhile achievement. I’m sure that for some people it probably means they can replace their $100 point-and-shoot with their iPhone and be perfectly happy. Of course, they were probably happy with the 1 mega pixel camera in their previous phone too.
However, I’m not a fan of qualified statements, good for a camera phone, to me, doesn’t carry a lot of weight. While the iPhone 4’s camera may be good for a phone’s it’s not nearly that good of a camera in general.
Actually, let me clarify that. The hardware is almost passable as a general purpose camera, it’s certainly on par with some low end point and shoots. What makes the iPhone 4 problematic as a camera, is the software behind the hardware.
Merry Christmas and happy holidays to all. We hope your holiday season is bright, safe, warm, filled with friends and family, and lets be honest, that Ole St. Nick brought you something nice.
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