Flashlight Ceiling Beamshots (Take 1)

Gallery: Flashlight Beamshots (Ceiling / Take 1)

I've decided to take my experience in compressing a photograph's dynamic range and apply that to rendering flashlight beam-shots in such a way as to show all the subtle colour differences and beam artifacts. There are many subtleties to the beams produced by various flashlights and while it is relatively easy to see these differences visually when shining against a blank white wall, it is not so easy to capture on camera, at least not with a single photo. Combining the large, 'domed' LEDs with high precision, polished reflectors and anti-reflection coated lenses in modern high-end flashlights can also create colour artifacts in the beam, sometimes quite obvious and other times more subtle.

I have endeavoured to somewhat accurately portray these differences in the gallery which you can access by clicking on the above image. Not only might these beam-shots be of interest to other flashlight aficionados, those that sometimes call themselves "flashaholics", but some of the subtle patterns and coloration are also quite beautiful in their own way. I need to be careful, since with my growing collection of lights, I may be well on the way to "flashaholism" myself! A great resource, if you want to learn more about modern high-end flashlights, is CandlePowerForums.

The middle image above (and the first image in the gallery) show the collection of lights, diffusers and filters that I photographed. There are many notes following in this blog entry, describing the test conditions, which lights were photographed etc. One thing that I will stress right from the get-go is that the photos in this gallery can in no way be used to judge the relative brightness of these lights. More details follow…

[update 12/31/2013]: added one missing photo and revised the order of the gallery and descriptions slightly to make more sense.
[update 1/1/2014]: Added labels to each shot in the gallery and fixed a few minor things in the article. Happy New Year!
[update 1/6/2014]: Added in the Thrunite TN32 beam-shot and took out the laser+refracting head to keep the gallery at a clean 35 shots.

Happy Holidays!

Hope you all have a Merry Christmas and all the best for the coming New Year!

A Hawk at Beau Photo...

It is not unusual for people to bring their pets into Beau Photo. We all love animals there and generally welcome them but on Friday, a slightly rarer animal made an appearance... a Harris Hawk! It was amazingly calm and composed, even letting perfect strangers touch it. Apparently it is "famous" having appeared is some films I believe. A few minutes were spent admiring the hawk with people pulling out their cameras and iPhones to take some photos. I took some shots with my Fujifilm X-E2 and a few more of this beautiful raptor follow...

Fujifilm XF 23mm f/1.4R: First gallery of tests...

Gallery: First Fujifilm XF 23mm f/1.4R Tests

Click on the image above to see my first image gallery of tests with Fujifilm's brand new and superb XF 23mm f/1.4 R wide angle lens. I have now tested this lens quite comprehensively and am extremely impressed with its quality. The only remaining question for me is how flare resistant it will be when placing the sun inside the shot, or just outside the frame. Sadly, the weather simply has not cooperated for me to do a test like that yet.

For a detailed review I wrote, see here: NEW! Fujifilm XF 23mm f/1.4 R wide-angle lens...

Fall colours, fog and GX7 followup...

Stanley Park Fall Colours (click image for gallery) - X-E1

It was a good year for fall colours here in Vancouver, with a nice spell of good weather before the major fall rains hit. This meant I could get out a few times and get some nice autumn shots for a change! The above image, and linked gallery, were taken with my Fujifilm X-E1 and all images were processed primarily in PhotoNinja v1.2.1 with a minor followup in Lightroom before exporting the gallery. It was an absolutely gorgeous day that Sunday, and there were many vibrant trees and lots of colourful leaves on the ground. The rest of the images galleries in this posting have photos taken with my new Panasonic GX7 and just processed through Adobe Lightroom...

UBC: More light painting...

Through the generosity of a contact I have at the UBC Botanical Gardens, I was able to get into the gardens after hours one evening last week to do some light painting. I had plans to do an elaborate, wide area, wide angle paint of the upper gardens, the eastern most section that is right next to Thunderbird Stadium. Alas, there was a game or practice on, and all the stadium lights were lit, flooding that area with a bright orange glow. To do the elaborate light paint I had envisioned, it would have probably taken me about 5-7 minutes, maybe longer, and that would have meant a bulb exposure equally long. With the stadium lit, even a one minute long time exposure probably would have been totally washed out.

Germany 2011 Trip: Fourteen Galleries...

Germany 2011 - Day 01 - Flight & Burg Hohenzollern

After over two years, I have finally completed sorting through all the photos I took during my 2011 trip to Germany and have created fourteen image galleries from those shots. I am making a concerted effort to go through the tremendous backlog of photos I have, going all the way back to 2010, and decided that the 2011 Germany trip deserved my attention first. I have friends and relatives over there that I visited, who all know that I took many photos on my trip and were probably wondering if they would ever get to see what I shot!

Each of the fourteen galleries has an associated image and a link, as the one above, and either can be clicked to have the gallery open in a new window. That way, once you're done looking at that gallery, you can close the window and scroll this page down for the next one. Click READ MORE below for links to the remaining thirteen galleries and enjoy...

Pitt Lake: Light-painting and beam-shots...

A few weeks back, I was at Pitt Lake to do some light painting. The above was my favourite shot, the last frame of the evening, a 12 minute exposure with my Fujifilm X-E1, 14mm lens at f/4 and ISO 200. I did less than 2 minutes of light painting at the beginning of the exposure using my Sunwayman D40A light to illuminate the trees and foreground while walking along the dike just outside the frame to the right. Too bad there was haze and some high clouds since the only really clear sky was near the top right of the frame.

New! Panasonic Lumix GX7

On August 1st, Panasonic announced the new Lumix GX7 Micro-Four-Thirds (M43) body. Here in Canada, it will sell for $1099 as body only, $1199 for a kit with the new 14-42mm zoom and $1299 for a kit with the new 20mm f/1.7 vII pictured above. After carefully analyzing the features and ergonomics of the GX7, I had already decided that this would finally be the camera to replace my two-and-a-half year old GH2, so based on that analysis I had already ordered one for myself through work at Beau Photo, the kit with the new revised 20mm f/1.7 pancake lens. The GX7 is due to start shipping around mid September.

Then, much to my surprise, this last Friday I had an unannounced visit from a Panasonic tech-rep who actually had a preproduction GX7 on hand for me to see. I was able to play with it for about 45 minutes and even take some test shots with it. Following are my first impressions and comparisons to other Panasonic and Olympus cameras I have owned or shot with...

Light Painting at MOA with a SupBeam X40...

On Saturday night, instead of braving the crowds and photographing yet another "Celebration of Light" fireworks, like I have for many years in a row (I was tempted), I decided to do something a whole lot more peaceful and meditative. I went to the totems behind the Museum of Anthropology and did some light painting.

Well actually, it wasn't all that peaceful for me...

It turns out that I did a whole lot of running back and forth through each frame with my new handheld LED searchlight, making sure never to stop in one spot long enough for my body to register on the shot, although there are a few ghostly hints of me showing on a couple of the images. I also made sure that while painting, I was either blocking the head of the flashlight from the camera's view with my body or with objects in the scene, or simply made sure that I was never pointing the light back towards the camera. I did ruin a few attempts when I wasn't being careful enough...