The battery-powered monolight scene is getting to be a pretty crowded one, so companies need to do something to really stand out. Broncolor appears to have chosen the raw power route, offering the Siros L monolights in a standard 400 Ws option as well as a powerful 800 Ws model.

The form factor closely resembles the regular Siros moonlights that we were introduced to back at Photokina 2014. They still use the Siros app so the settings on the lights can be adjusted from afar using a built-in Wifi coection.

Unlike the Profoto B1 or the Phottix Indra battery-powered moonlights, the Siros L heads don’t have built-in TTL, which means users will have to manually change the power settings using the app and shoot in manual mode. As long as you can tu the power up up or down without actually touching the monolight, that likely won’t be too huge of a detractor for most photographers.

The 400 Ws model is capable of 440 full-power pops (at least according to the spec sheet) before the battery is drained, and the 800 Ws model can go all the way up to 220 pops. 220 pops may not sound like all that many until you consider just how powerful an 800 Ws pop really is. Depending on the model, it’s roughly 10-times (or more) the power of a normal speedlight.

On minimum power, the Siros L monolights are capable of flash durations down to 1/18,000th sec. or 1/19,000th sec. (depending on the model), which is very useful if you’re trying to freeze fast action.

The flash tube is located exteally so that the bulb can be placed exactly the in the sweet spot of various reflectors and other modifiers, which are another very important part of the Broncolor product lineup.

Like the Profoto B1, this is meant for serious pro photographers and it comes with a price to match. The 400 Ws model is currently available on pre-order for $2,053, while the 800 Ws model costs $2,347. The batteries are actually relatively affordable, checking in just under $300.

It might not be the sexiest segment of the market, but the battery-powered lighting game is about as interesting as anything else going on in the photo world right now. I’m looking forward to give this a try and showing the sun who’s boss with 800 Ws firepower.

As you walk through a local garage sale, your eyes bounce from a pile of ugly jackets, to a bin full of well-wo romance novels, to a toaster oven that’s missing a knob. Then, you get a little shot of adrenaline as you notice the brightly-colored patte of a vintage camera strap sticking out of a leather camera case. Hunting for camera gear at garage sales can be tremendous fun, but there are some traps to avoid and techniques to use to maximize your weekend outings.

Know your motivation for looking

There are several different reasons people enjoy hunting for old cameras, but knowing your motivation can help you make smart purchases.

If you’re buying purely to resell cameras at a profit, it’s important to try and remove the emotion from the game because it will ultimately cut into your profits.

If you’re buying gear you actually want to use, you want to make sure you’re getting stuff that’s in working order, or is at least broken in a way that makes you want to use it. Sure, that old compact might be cool, but remember that it will cost you money to feed it film.

If you’re purely buying for collecting purposes, make sure it’s something you’re actually going to display or enjoy. If you’re just plaing to toss it in a drawer at home, it might be better off waiting for someone to come by who might actually want to use it.

Make a list of what you have and what you want

It’s easy to get tempted by almost any piece of gear when you’re at a garage sale, but once you’re over the initial thrill, it’s time to think logically. Knowing what you have at home will prevent you from spending your cash on a camera you already have a bunch of (I’m looking at you, Canon AE-1).

Keeping a list of wants in your phone along with the prices you’re willing to spend will help prevent regrettable purchases that can sometimes result from over excitement or getting wrapped up in the bargaining process. I have even shared my want list with a couple friends who love garage sales but don’t care about cameras, so they can keep an eye out for me.

Do your homework

Driving or wandering aimlessly around your neighborhood and surrounding areas looking for sales can be a fun way to spend a moing, but it’s an inefficient way to find the true treasures. Using resources like the Craigslist Garage Sales section, and even the local paper on Thursday and Friday night will let you know where you should start.

Obviously, if a listing explicitly mentions photography gear, that might be a good place to go first, but I also like looking for neighborhood sales or community sales held at local churches, schools or firehouses. It’s always good when you can see stuff from a bunch of different households in a short amount of time.

Go early, but not too early

Many garage sales start on Friday, which is tough if you work a typical 9-5 schedule. However, even if you go out on Saturday, it can pay to show up right around start time, especially if you already know there will be camera stuff from the listing. You don’t want to show up just in time to watch some other person paying for an item on your want list.

Arriving too early can also be a problem, though. “Early birds” as they’re known in the garage sale world can aoy people who are still trying to set things up. You might find it hard to bargain or even that you’re tued away full stop if you show up too early. Aim for the start time and use your judgment about whether or not the person seems ready to sell.

Bring more cash than you think you might need

It’s easier than ever to transfer money digitally, but garage sales still remain a cash business. If you find something really good, you don’t want to have to pass on it or beg the person to hold it while you run to the ATM for more money. The tricky bit involves not spending the cash just because you have it. I set aside a little money specifically for the purpose of buying camera stuff at garage sales. It actually sounds a little silly when I explicitly type it like that, but it helps keep me from siphoning off that money to things like moing coffees or ill-advised lunch purchases.

Bring a few batteries and lens cloths with you

Whether or not a camera is in working order can have a serious effect on its value, so bringing a small collection of batteries to check things like built-in light meters can make your purchases less of a gamble.

I typically bring a small battery assortment including some AAs and common batteries that power old film SLRs. At least that way you can see if the meter works or fire up a compact camera before putting down your money for it.

The lens cloths are there so you can check and see whether the glass is just a little grimy or if you’re dealing with mold, which is much harder to deal with. If you clean things up too much, though, they will look nicer to the person selling it, and it can be harder to bargain.

Use your smartphone to your advantage

If you see something that looks cool, but you’re not sure about it, the little magical rectangle in your pocket can work wonders. A quick eBay search, or a trip to KEH.com will give you an idea of what it might be worth, but you might also want some historical context. Sites like Camerapedia can be very helpful in that regard. A quick search might save you from a bad purchase or help you avoid missing a great pickup.

Don’t be afraid to bargain

Not everyone loves to bicker about prices, but you can almost always getting a better deal if you’re willing to haggle a little. Everyone has their own techniques, but I try to be respectful with my offers and not go with low-ball numbers. That can just make the seller mad and insulted. It also just seems disrespectful to me.

Sometimes you can get a better deal if you’re buying a few items, so if there’s something you’re on the fence about, you might be able to get it thrown into your other purchase for an attractive price.

Even if you hate bargaining, it’s worth giving it a shot. It will almost always stretch the buying power of your budget and it’s good practice for bargaining with clients in the real world.

Don’t be afraid to ask if they have more camera stuff they’re looking to sell

Sometimes people underestimate the appeal of old camera stuff or they have more gear stashed away that they had forgotten about. I once bought a $5 Mamiya Super Deluxe rangefinder (that didn’t work, sadly), but when I asked the person in charge of the sale if he had any more camera stuff, I ended up walking away with a Nikon F100 for $30. Most people say “no,” but I have never had anyone get upset with me for asking.

Be realistic about what you’re going to find

It’s great to daydream about finding a bag stuffed full of old Leica bodies and lenses for $10, but it’s very unlikely that’s going to happen. Most of the time you’re going to find some old Polaroid cameras, and some beat up SLRs. You’ll also probably find a bunch of old compact film cameras that weren’t very good even when they were new. It’s not a guarantee that you’re going to find awesome stuff, so try to enjoy the process along the way.

Germany is famous for precision engineering, so it should come as no surprise to discover photographic projects there that are unusually intricate. “Broken Circle,” below, was created by Heinz-Jörg Wurzbacher and Garry Krätz of Koblenz, Germany, a dynamic duo of paint-with-lighters that go by the name of Electrical Movements in the Dark or EMD. They made this single long exposure—214 seconds to be exact—entirely in the camera and edited it in a single Photoshop layer. Yes, it was complex, but we promise it’s doable.

EMD started by taking two 1.5 meter-long LED strips and taping them to two plastic gardening stakes of equal length. Using an appropriately sized plumbers’ T-joint, they coected the two stakes to form something like a propeller. They attached the base of the T-joint to a variable-speed, cordless drill which they mounted on a headless tripod with the help of a Manfrotto Super Clamp. Finally, in the dark and with the battery-powered LEDs tued on, they opened the shutter on their tripod-mounted Canon EOS 6D on the Bulb setting and set the propeller spiing at one of the drill’s slowest speeds.

At the camera’s lowest sensitivity of ISO 100 and an aperture of f/18, the photographers needed an exposure of nearly four minutes to produce the circles of light against the background that you see here.

To create the pattes, they tued the LED strips on and off during several spiing exposures, covering the lens in between each. For spacing between circles, they applied black tape over some of the LEDs so their output didn’t record. At the end of the exposure, they used a flashlight to paint the tuel walls for a sense of environment.

As you might have gathered, doing such a project requires a team of at least two: one photographer to operate the camera and a helper to spin the lighting rig. Read on for more details.

Step 1 Gather the gear. You can get LED strips online, and they’re inexpensive. (A custom-sizeable, 5-meter-long strip with a wireless remote controller is under $12.) Some strips have only white LEDs; you gel them to produce color. More sophisticated strips let you program color settings and have adhesive backings for attachment to the wooden or plastic rods you’ll use create the propeller. Since LEDs produce hard pinpoints of light, shroud them in translucent plastic for a diffused look. You need two tripods: one for the propeller and one for the camera. Any DSLR with a Bulb setting and a mid-range zoom will work.

Step 2 Find your location and set up. You will need a location that’s completely free of extraneous light after dark. For your circles to be concentric, set things up so the center of the lighting rig and the optical center of the lens are at the same height. Do this by elevating each with the help of a reference rod that’s marked at the desired height. Dress, glove, and hood yourself in black.

Step 3 Make test shots. To determine spin speed and aperture, take multiple test shots with the camera’s shutter open on its Bulb setting. For easily reproducible tests, spin your lighting rig at a slow, consistent speed.

Step 4 Make your exposures. This shot, made at 214 sec and f/18 at ISO 100, required multiple exposures. Between each of these, the photographer covered the lens with black flocking to prevent overexposure. You may also want to light the background. After spiing the light rig a few times, the EMD team removed that tripod and illuminated the tuel walls with an amber-gelled flashlight.

Final Step Clean up in post. With exposures measured in minutes, these images need noise reduction. EMD uses the Nik Dfine collection from Google. They also applied exposure and lens correction fixes in Adobe Photoshop Lightroom CC.

The Gear

“It's fuy that people who don’t have much experience photographing kids imagine that it’s the hardest kind of portraiture there is,” says Zoe Berkovic, a New York-based fashion and advertising photographer who specializes in working with children. “For me, that’s not true, though. If you like the company of children and you enjoy coecting with them, it can be a blast.”

Her subjects haven’t yet developed “the protective walls that adults sometimes build up around themselves. I see them as fully realized people with a genuine range of emotions and vast ier landscapes. Once they sense that I get that, kids are easy to work with,” she explains.

Photo sessions with kids need to feel breezy and natural because, if the kids are too hyped up, they’re likely to bu out before you’re finished shooting. To keep the mood relaxed, you’ve got to stay relaxed too. “If you are, the kids will sense it. Let them be themselves while you try coecting with them using a gentle tone, eye contact, and, most of all, respect. They will respond in kind,” says the photographer.

If you’re sensitive to what the children around you are experiencing and feeling, it will help you recognize, respond to, and capture the behaviors they’re likely to produce for you.

But keep your shoot active. You want to keep the kids coected and engaged with what’s happening around them. Providing some form of entertainment can help. “When things start to slow down, I pull out my Elmo and Mickey Mouse impersonations. Or I pretend to cry hysterically or laugh like a maniac,” Berkovic says. “These types of practiced routines are often enough to hold kids’ interest, at least for a while.”

On the Set

Choose locations that are calm, quiet, and familiar. “If you have it, a place that offers lots of space for the child to move around in will up your chances of having a happy, calm subject,” the photographer advises.

“Shoot where the light is good and the background can help you tell a story or set a consistent tone, without distraction. I like shooting at a location that takes my subjects away from everyday life—one that transports them somewhere more magical than their everyday reality,” she adds. It’s a good way to keep boredom or distraction at bay.

Berkovic also prefers spaces that have white walls. “It lets me use just one strobe to the side of the kids and opposite that wall,” she notes. The wall will act as a white reflector to fill in shadows. You can also use it to create shadows that add interest and depth, and to give kids something to lean on, which can introduce colorful body language.

Always fit the shoot to the child. As part of a photo session’s preplaing stage, Berkovic tries to devise a shoot that will suit the personality of the individual child. “For ad work, I like to be involved in casting the kids because I know which would be a good fit for a particular job. Some have great dispositions and others tend to be moody. I love both personalities, but both types usually won’t work for every job. I’m sensitive to what’s required, and try to match the child to the project. It sets me up for success,” she says.

If you want to photograph your own children, the good news is that no one knows them better than you do. Don’t let the photo session play against type, and select appropriately child-specific locations, times of day, clothing, poses, props, and direction.

While the shoot is underway, observe your subjects and try to get on their wavelength. Every child is different. The same child can change mood across any given day—or minute! “The trick is paying attention and realizing when your subjects are close to buing out and releasing them or giving them breaks before they reach that point. Most kids four years and up can last, with breaks, for four hours or more,” says Berkovic.

Don’t go into a shoot with too many preconceptions or expectations, and keep your goals to a minimum. Berkovic limits hers to this: “I want these kids to show me authenticity and soul. To find those qualities, I gently direct them, all the time being open to spontaneously generated opportunities and the unexpected. Witnessing and enjoying these unexpected moments are actually what makes my job fun and rewarding,” she says.

Plaing is essential. “Have everything in place in advance so that you’re ready to capture these moments as soon as the session starts. Have games set up and conversational topics ready. If possible, have a child wrangler who is known, trusted, and who can entertain the child while you’re concentrating on other things,” says the photographer.

When kids get cranky, Berkovic doesn’t see their mood as a problem, but as an opportunity. “I’m not opposed to kids feeling emotions other than happiness. I can play around with expressions, because my goal isn’t to get smiley portraits. I let the kids be themselves and don’t make them feel that any behavior they show me is ‘wrong,’” she insists. Giving children the liberty to be themselves pays off for her in the long run.

When grumpy behavior threatens to derail a shoot, though, “I step back and let the child wrangler work his or her magic. And if that fails, I sometimes have backup kids on set, especially for toddlers and babies,” she says. As a parent, you won’t have “backup” kids, but your subject may have older, more willing siblings, and at such moments you should be prepared to tu the focus on them.

Nuts and Bolts

As for camera gear, Berkovic shoots with DSLRs from both Canon and Nikon, and she relies on pro-level models for all the usual reasons—speed, durability, image quality, ability to work well in both available light and strobe-lit settings. Her favorite lens is Nikon’s 24–70mm f/2.8G Nikkor AF ED VR, which she likes for its shake control and focal length. At 24mm, it lets her include a lot of background detail, while at its 70mm long end, she can zoom in for a tight crop on a face or figure. “I’m less interested in the gear than I am in the lighting and the story I want to tell,” she says.

Berkovic fell into professional child photography about a decade ago. “I was coming off a failed business, picked up a point-and-shoot camera, and decided to give photography a try,” says Berkovic. “I took every book on photography out of the library, soaked up all the information I could online, and then hit the ground ruing. I haven’t stopped since.”

She started with family photography, at first finding her clients among her own circle. She also cultivated relationships with teachers and mentors from whom she leaed the basics of lighting, composition, editing, working with color, best business practices, pricing, casting techniques, and wardrobe styling. She needed solid knowledge of all these to succeed in the field.

Although she hadn’t plaed it, her business has changed. “I noticed over time that I loved images that told stories and conveyed emotions. I was attracted to a wide variety of locations, compositions, lighting setups, and moods that weren’t always appropriate for typical family portraits,” Berkovic says. This prompted her to leap to advertising, kids’ fashion, and child-focused editorial photography.

Interested in attempting a portrait session with your own children? Many pros believe that photographing your kids is often the hardest kind of child portraiture. For one thing, kids can be reluctant subjects for their parents. If this sounds like your situation, fighting it probably won’t get you great pictures. Instead, lea the strategies and techniques of child photography by working with other people’s children—with their parents’ express permission, of course.

Berkovic herself loves the work and invites anyone who’s interested to give it a go. “If you’re like me, you will love the spontaneity of working with kids and the many unexpected pleasures they will surprise you with along the way. This job is definitely not easy, but it sure is fun!”

It’s not uncommon to hear about all the work that sports photographers put in during the 16-day grind that is the Olympic Games, but it’s not often we hear about all the work that goes on behind the scenes. Ken Mainardis is the vice president of sports imagery and services for Getty Images, and it’s his responsibility to make sure all those iconic images can be processed, edited, and sent out to clients as fast as possible. It tus out, that’s a rather Herculean task. We talked to Mainardis about what it takes to make an entire city ready for some of the world’s best sports photographers.

How long have you been working in the sports photography world?

I have been with Getty since June 2004, just before the Athens Olympics. Previous to that I was at Reuters for 10 years. I actually started as an assignments editor at Reuters all those years ago.

You must have seen a crazy amount of change in the industry over that period of time.

My first games was Atlanta in 1996. We were dev’ing [short for developing film] in Atlanta. It was all chemicals and canisters of film. They were going to Kodak to be dev’d, then we would scan rolls and rolls of film to get something out. In '96 it was taking about 40 minutes from when something happened. Today we can do that in about 120 seconds to customers around the world. [Laughs] That is the jouey I have been on from 1996 to 2016 over 20 years.

Considering the quantity and volume of film and the process involved, 40 minutes actually still seems pretty fast.

Forty minutes was quick. That was us working at our top speed. There was low-priority stuff that would come back days later in ’96. [Laughs] We edit every frame live now. And “every frame” means around 1.5 million images across the 16 days of the games. And those 1.5 million images are edited down to around 80,000 finished pictures that we send to customers. So, you can see that the editors are as much stars as anybody else in that process. To be able to edit that kind of quantity down to a product that makes sense is an incredible skill.

That’s a crazy amount of work. Is there a ratio of editors to photographers that you have in order to manage it all?

In the old days that was much more common to have a ratio of what we used to call wire technicians to photographers, but these days it’s much more based around the schedule. Our editing team will be 18 in Rio. They’re really focused and created around the schedule in order to make sure that we have editing people on the highest-profile events.

Just 18 editors for all those images? That’s pretty impressive. How much editing do the pictures typically get?

We get untreated JPEGs from our photographers. We don’t move Raw files. Our editors select the picture with essentially one tap of the keyboard. A second editor then opens up the image and does some very simple Photoshop correction on color and contrast, and a crop. Then that picture moves down the production line to someone who adds metadata and captions it. That whole process, from the tap to select the image to the caption, is through in 30 to 35 seconds. These folks really are incredibly honed at what they do. They’re making sure they’re choosing the right pictures and sending them out to the right clients.

Is the software you’re using to do the sorting and selecting something that’s custom for Getty?

Yeah, that’s a proprietary piece of software that we have developed ourselves for our specific purposes.

It must be a challenge to store all that data that’s coming in from so many directions.

That’s right. We do store them all and we store them twice, just in case we lose one, as well. I don’t have the numbers in front of me, but every games, as camera file size increases, that becomes more terabytes on more terabytes on more terabytes.

Is there a standard camera kit that the photographers will be using to try and keep things consistent?

We actually give our photographers a choice. We believe they’re the world’s best and, as the world’s best, we believe they should be able to choose the equipment they’re most comfortable with. Essentially they all choose the Canon or Nikon top-of-the-range DSLR. Both of those cameras are extraordinary pieces of kit these days. They’re extraordinary. But, most importantly, they’re networkable. Both cameras allow you to plug in an etheet cable. The cameras become part of the network, which is why we’re able to get the pictures from our photographers so quickly.

You must have done a fair bit of infrastructure work, then, to make sure all that networking stuff is in place well before the games.

I think that’s probably the biggest single project that we undertake at the games. We start plaing that infrastructure the moment the games are awarded to a host city. So, this goes back to Copenhagen seven years ago. Almost immediately after the decision, we start to work with the organizing committee and the IOC to develop the transmission network that facilitates our needs and essentially coects all the key photo positions at the venues back to our office in the main press center. Basically it’s a hub-and-spoke network, which means that from all the key positions—the finish line at the track, ringside at boxing, the pool deck at the swimming, all these key positions—allow the images to come straight from the camera to the editors and allow us to make much better use of our editing resources than we ever used to.

Obviously, going back before we had this network, our editors spent a lot of time moving between venues and not editing. They now edit the whole time.

So, if you’re a photographer, does every shot that you take end up making its way back to the editors?

Exactly. It’s a brutal world. Every single shot is seen by the editor. There’s no more hiding. [Laughs]

Does the fact that all the photos go back to the editors change the way that the photographers shoot? Those top-end DSLRs can do 14 or 15 frames per-second, but they obviously don’t want to be sending massive piles of nearly identical images back to the office and hindering the editing process.

The same principles apply as they have always applied to great sports photography. You shoot what’s important. You wait for it to make pictures. We’re all still firm believers that machine-guing action for the sake of machine-guing action doesn’t actually make great pictures. We’re fortunate to work with the world’s best, who are able to know exactly when the right time is to let fire and when it’s right to wait. That is really why this system works. If you just flood your editor with tens of thousands of frames of everything you’re seeing, then you’re not really photographing the event. You’re just kind of recording it.

That’s basically just a collection of small, choppy videos at that point.

Exactly. And as you rightly say, it makes it impossible for the editor to actually pick out the really good stuff.

Sure, you’re always looking for that exact peak moment and that’s probably very difficult if there are tons of similar frames.

The really great sports photographers have a true appreciation for the action that’s going on in front of them. They can get a sense of the way the event is moving. They understand the rhythm of the sport. We believe really strongly in having sport-specialist photographers who really understand the subject matter. You’d expect a writer to understand their subject matter as opposed to a generalist, and it’s the same for a photographer. They have a second sense of when that action is about to become worth shooting.

Is that how you choose the photography assignments for the shooters?

It’s two things really. First and foremost, they’re all sports specialists. They don’t do anything all year long except sport. There’s an enormous competition in the first place to get on the team. They’re all very, very, very good at what they do. Having said that, there are particular subject-matter specialists. We have underwater specialists and sailing specialists. We have a rugby specialist for Rio because it’s in the games for the first time. We have golf specialists because golf is in the games for the first time. Certain sports, especially something like sailing, no matter how good a photographer you are, unless you really understand sailing when you’re bobbing around on a chase boat, you really have no chance.

How do you handle image transmission for something like sailing? Are you using wireless or old-school card ruing?

It’s a mix of both actually. We do set up as much Wi-Fi as we can from the chase boat back to the dock, where the network is installed. We get as much coectivity as we can. The photographer wouldn’t send everything in that situation; they would make selections from the back of the camera. In particularly difficult weather conditions or if they become stretched out in the field, then they would basically bring a card back to store and we would spool the cards back to the editors.

One trend that seems to have emerged over the past couple of Olympics is fancy new camera technology such as robotic cameras. Will we be seeing any exciting new tech in Rio?

I think there are really two key developments for Rio and they’re really continued developments rather than totally new tech. We were the first agency really to push the robotic angle ahead of the London games in 2012. We did a little bit of it and we’re really ramping that up in Rio. We have 20 locations that will be equipped with robotic rigs. We have all been putting remotes in roofs in different locations for quite some time. A robotic rig gives you full response as if you were holding it in your hands. Putting a traditional camera in the rafters involved a tremendous amount of luck when actually making the picture, while with a robotic camera you’re narrowing the odds. The chances of making something really strong are very high. You can also put a camera in a place that’s inaccessible to humans: It can be mounted on the ground and then lifted on a truss or a crane.

The other piece of kit, and I don’t think it will come as a surprise, is VR. It’s absolutely taking off in our view driven by readers’ desire to become immersed in photography—in the environment. We have been shooting VR and 360[-degree images] since 2012, but this games we will be doing much more of it. Every one of our editorial photographers will be carrying a small 360 camera that enables them to do an interactive 360 and have that uploaded in a matter of seconds to our editors and then uploaded to our site. To me, it’s a fascinating development because the history of photography was always about a moment right back to the late 19th century. Over time that developed right up to the birth of digital where we started telling stories with pictures in large volumes. Thousands of pictures in some cases would tell a narrative. Now, there’s a move back to a single image interactivity because it gives you the opportunity to really explore a picture for longer. That has become possible through 360s. For me, it’s fascinating and we’re on the cutting edge of that, I think.

That’s something we have been starting to see a lot. Things like what the New York Times has been doing in conflict zones have been fascinating. Big events like this also seem like they’re perfect for this kind of tech.

I think that sometimes we forget that our photographers stand in places most of us would dream to stand in. What we actually see through a normal camera is a moment in time but you don’t get a sense of where they actually are. 360 gives the user a genuine experience of what it’s like to be standing at the finish of the 100 meters final. We did one recently with Danica Patrick, the race car driver, inside her car. It gives people a real insight into the access we get.

Do you have a personal favorite Olympic image that stands out in your mind?

I think it would be the very first picture taken by our company at the Olympic games back in 1968. The story goes that a photographer from London called Tony Duffy was actually on vacation in Mexico City and managed to get himself into the venue with a camera. He was really a camera enthusiast rather than a professional at that point. He got himself at the end of the long jump pit as Bob Beamon broke the world record. It’s one of the most famous world records ever and stood for more than 20 years after that.

Tony took this picture back to London after his vacation and he didn’t really know what to do with it. It’s an incredible picture. He showed some friends and colleagues and people who worked in newspapers and they said, “What are you doing with this? You should sell this!” He sold it for really great money and founded the business that became Getty Images Sport with that single image. For me, the very first Olympic image is the start of our DNA.

Is that emotion really the crux of what makes a great Olympic photo?

I think there are so many things, but moments really are the key still. You have to be able to capture the moment. It’s not the fraction of a second before. It’s not the fraction of a second after. It’s the decisive moment where you can say “that was exactly when history tued on its axis.” That’s what makes the skill of the world’s best photographers so incredible. It’s far from routine, but they routinely capture those moments.

If you could give some advice to an aspiring sports photographer who dreams of one day getting an assignment like shooting the Olympics for Getty, what would it be?

I would say don’t get obsessed with kit. Yes, get yourself some decent kit. Yes, get a decent kit, but don’t become obsessed with it. Don’t get obsessed with events. Don’t worry about going out to the biggest events or even pro events to shoot sport. Go out to your local rec or park and shoot amateur sport. Find yourself somebody who is in the business to show that material to and seek feedback and listen. Think about the basics. Think about great composition. Think about peak action and body shape. Think about clean backgrounds and getting it sharp. Once you start doing those things and getting feedback from a pro, you’re going to start improving really, really quickly. We always say, don’t get obsessed with the trappings of the job—big fancy equipment and big events. To get the basics, start practicing shooting whenever you can and whatever sport you can. It will all help in the long run.

**

Epson’s new line of inkjet printers, which the company began rolling out last year, has been steadily improving, reaching a zenith of sorts in the SureColor P400. This new 13-inch printer, $600 (street), replaces the SureColor P600; it’s a smaller relative of the 17-inch P800. Like the larger Canon imagePrograf Pro-1000 (tested in March 2016), the P400 represents a shift in inkjet technology toward providing broader color gamuts and easier printer maintenance.

It is just these sorts of sophisticated additions that set the P400 apart from its predecessor, the P600. Epson’s earlier SureColor desktop was designed to work with the then-standard nine-color UltraChrome HD inkset, whereas the P400 uses the newer UltraChrome HG2 pigments. While the HG2 has one fewer cartridge than the HD system, this updated inkset incorporates new red and orange inks as well as a Gloss Optimizer to reduce metamerism.

Unlike the earlier model, the P400 has dedicated lines for both matte and photo black inks, avoiding the need to swap these cartridges out between print styles, thus saving both time and money. While both printers spray out ink in three variable droplet sizes, the print head in the P400 can render fine images by laying down 1.5 picoliter ink droplets, a significant improvement over the 2pl output of the P600.

Setup and Speed

One of the P400’s most useful features is its size. With all of its various trays and feeds folded up, the printer is just over two feet wide and one foot deep, taking up little more space than a standard office printer. When outfitted for regular use, the output tray (fully extended) adds about 13 inches to the front of the machine while the two rear roll attachments tack on nearly 4 inches to the back. At about 27 pounds, it’s reasonably light for a photo-quality printer and could conceivably be stacked on a shelf over other items on a crowded desk or small studio.

Setting up the P400 is a one-person job. After removing the printer from its box, make sure to remove the myriad pieces of tape affixed to nearly every part of the printer. Epson has found devilish places to hide them all, so look carefully! The P400 ships with attachments for roll media and fine-art matte paper, so be sure not to throw them out with the box after you’ve got the printer on your desk.

Once it’s set up, using the P400 is a breeze—for the most part. Although it lacks an LCD screen, the six control buttons perform just about any function you could need for a printer of its size. Longtime inkjet owners may remember reaching awkwardly behind some of Epson’s larger printers for a miniscule yellow button to print a network status sheet; that button is now helpfully provided on the front of the P400 to help troubleshoot Wi-Fi coectivity issues. The rest of the button interface serves to advance roll paper, accept replacement ink cartridges, delete and retry print jobs, and engage the printer’s wireless coection.

If you are looking to make prints in bulk or simply interested in wider formats, the P400’s roll paper attachment will let you print on rolls up to 13-inches wide. You can’t print panoramas that are longer than 129 inches, but this seems to be an industry standard for many desktop inkjets more than a particularity of the P400 itself.

When installing roll media, make sure to wear cotton gloves because it’s otherwise nearly impossible to avoid smudging the surface of your paper with Epson’s two roll adapters on either end. While these fit onto the printer with relative ease, feeding roll media into the P400 can be difficult given the close proximity of the roll to the slot in the back of the machine designed to accept it. And, as the printer lacks the cutting blade that many of its larger cousins are outfitted with, separating prints from the roll can be an awkward process of trimming them off by hand with scissors while the roll is still attached to the printer. Those reservations aside, the P400 produces beautiful roll prints with no trace of tension banding.

As with Epson’s previous photo-quality inkjets in the 13-inch range, thicker matte papers require a dedicated feed at the rear of the printer. The tray-like contraption that facilitates this process clips on to the back of the unit, though that is the limit of its convenience. The brand’s older desktops were notoriously fussy with higher-GSM fine-art papers when printed through the rear feed, and the P400 is no different. In the Popular Photography Test Lab, we were thwarted several times when trying to load Epson’s textured Exhibition Watercolor Paper, forcing us to continually reload the rear sheet-feeder.

For a desktop inkjet, the SureColor P400 outputs prints at an acceptable speed, However, we saw a difference between Epson’s listed print speeds and what we observed in our tests. According to Epson, the P400 is capable of printing an 8x10-inch photo in 1 minute, 8 seconds with the caveat that printing times vary depending upon coectivity types, software, resolution, and other factors. Our own tests, using a 3.1 GHz Intel Core i5 Apple iMac, yielded different results. Printing via a USB 2.0 coection through Adobe Photoshop CS6, our test prints with Epson’s Premium Glossy paper made 8.5x11-inch prints in the range of 5 to 6 minutes, depending on the border setting. Our prints were made using the Photo RPM resolution setting with the Gloss Optimizer enabled—the former option is known to increase print times and likely caused the discrepancy between Epson’s listed print times and our own.

Photo Print Quality

Unlike most of Epson’s previous 13-inch desktop photo printers, the SureColor P400 is built to work with the UltraChrome HG2 inkset. The new complement of pigments comprises cyan, magenta, yellow, red, orange, photo black, and matte black ink in addition to a Gloss Optimizer. The shift towards warmer colors and away from a broader array of monochromatic inks puts the P400 more in line with Epson’s Stylus Photo R2000 from 2012, a nearly identical 13-inch printer with a similarly composed inkset. As the new P400 only accepts two monochrome cartridges, you can expect better black-and-white prints from its predecessor, the P600, which includes two extra types of gray inks for more subtle tones.

In our lab we compared the P400’s color rendering abilities with the most widely used industry standard color gamut, Adobe 1998 RGB. Using our X-Rite Eye-One iSis color profiler, we produced custom ICC profiles from Epson’s Ultra Premium Luster and Ultra Premium Presentation Matte papers. After creating the profiles, we analyzed three-dimensional models of the colors they comprised with the help of Apple’s OS X Version 10.11.3 ColorSync Utility. For our comparison, we stacked the two color spaces up against the Adobe 1998 profile, which includes about half of all colors visible to the human eye.

Not surprisingly, we found that Epson’s Ultra Premium Luster paper out-performed the Ultra Premium Presentation Matte in its ability to render contrast and color; matte papers tend to produce flatter images. Both papers seem to have benefit from the HG2 inkset, delivering bright yellows, oranges, and warm colors outside the realm of Adobe 1998 RGB. Most notably, the Luster paper, with its ability to render contrast, exhibited a broad range of chrominance and luminance beyond the Adobe profile’s capacity. This boost in vibrance may be due to the application of Epson’s Gloss Optimizer, which give our test prints an enhanced sheen.

Bottom Line

The SureColor P400 may not be the most novel printer from Epson, but for personal projects and small studios, it’s priced right. The ease of set-up, use, and media feed options allow you to focus more on image making and less on the minutiae of digital printing. If you’re looking to make smaller standard-sized and panoramic prints with vibrant colors and lustrous surfaces, the P400 is just what the doctor ordered.

Specifications

MAXIMUM PAPER SIZE: 13x129 inches

INK TYPE: Pigment-based

INK TANKS: Eight-cartridge UltraChrome HG2 inkset (14ml each): matte black, photo black, cyan, magenta, yellow, red, orange, and Gloss Optimizer

MEDIA THICKNESS: Front manual-feed tray, up to 1.3mm; rear manual-feed guide, up to 0.7mm

RESOLUTION: Up to 5760x1440 dpi

INTERFACES: Six-button panel; Wi-Fi; USB 2.0; Etheet

COMPATIBLE WIRELESS PRINTING SOFTWARE: Epson iPrint mobile app (iOS and Android)

DIMENSIONS: 24.5x12.8x8.6 in.

STREET PRICE: $600

INFO: epson.com

The white, polygonal shapes in these gamut diagrams illustrate color visible to the human eye represented in the industry-standard color space Adobe 1998 RGB. The brighter, colorful shapes in and outside of these polygons show the colors that the P400 can produce on two of the brand’s papers.

More than 50 years ago, we ran a review of a new Olympus, the Pen-F. It was the world’s first half-frame 35mm body, capturing images that were about half the width of a horizontal 35mm frame and thus yielding vertical photos without having to rotate the camera. So, when we first saw that Olympus had revived the Pen-F moniker for its latest digital interchangeable-lens compact (ILC), we wondered whether the 20.3MP Four-Thirds-sized Live MOS sensor would be rotated vertically.

Nope. But the digital Pen-F does have some tricks of its own, notably a high-resolution mode that shifts the sensor to combine eight frames into a single 80MP RAW image. And the main idea behind the two generations is the same: to make a camera that is easy and fun to use, and small enough to bring along with you wherever you go. Plus, the street price of the new Pen-F, at $1,199 (body only), isn’t much more than the inflation-adjusted price of the $120 original back in 1963.

This also marks a renewal of Olympus’s slim and stylish digital Pen line after a few years of entries only in its more performance-oriented OM-D series. With a retro style that harkens back to its mid-century predecessor, the new model is the first digital Pen camera to sport a built-in viewfinder. After a few days shooting with a prerelease model on an Olympus-sponsored press trip to Austin, Texas, we were eager to get a final production unit into the Popular Photography Test Lab for a full assay under controlled conditions.

In the Test Lab

Just the second Micro Four Thirds body to push its pixel count past 16MP (Panasonic’s Lumix GX8 was the first), the Pen-F marks real progress for Olympus. The camera eaed an Extremely High rating in overall image quality from its lowest sensitivity of ISO 80 all the way through ISO 800.

The only reason it didn’t get an Excellent overall rating is because its color isn’t accurate enough for this. The camera hit an average Delta E of 8.7, well above our cutoff of 8 for this test in which lower scores are better. The irony is that the Pen-F’s various color modes, which like all such modes end up making color less accurate, proved one of its more engaging features.

Resolution easily reached an Excellent rating by capturing 2675 lines per picture height at ISO 80. That’s about the same as the Panasonic’s 2660 at its lowest sensitivity of ISO 100. At ISO 800 the Pen-F fell to 2600 lines, while the GX8 slipped down to 2550, both still enough for Excellent ratings. ISO 1600 saw the Pen-F at 2550 lines, while the GX8 dropped to 2340. We should note, though, that Panasonic seems to be more aggressive than Olympus in its noise reduction, which affects resolution. At ISO 6400, the Pen-F’s resolution drops to 2225 and thereafter drops faster to 1825 at ISO 12,800, and then 1600 at the camera’s top sensitivity of ISO 25,600.

In our Noise test, the Pen-F fared very well but didn’t deliver images quite as clean as those from the GX8. The Olympus scored an Extremely Low rating at its lowest two ISOs with scores of 0.9 and 1.0, respectively. The Panasonic kept noise below 0.9 all the way up to ISO 800, though at the expense of resolving power.

Still, the Pen-F held noise to a Low or better rating up to ISO 800, and didn’t reach Unacceptable until ISO 12,800. Given that this camera is squarely aimed at street shooters, we think that’s swell. Even at the camera’s top two sensitivities, noise doesn’t reach super-high levels, and if you shoot (or convert your images to) black-and-white, it can come across as a generally pleasing grain.

To test the Pen-F’s five-axis, sensor-shift image stabilization, we mounted an M.Zuiko ED 40–150mm f/2.8 Pro lens and racked it out to 150mm, a 300mm full-frame equivalent on the camera’s Four Thirds sensor. Our shooters got an average of 4 stops of compensation for handheld shooting. So, if you’d normally shoot at 1/320 sec to get a sharp image at 300mm, you might be able to shoot with a shutter speed as slow as 1/20 sec and still get acceptable results.

In the Field

The Pen-F has a classic look that we find very appealing. The on/off switch is a round knob on the left side of the top, like a smaller version of the film rewinder on very old Leicas. In fact, most of its controls are round. According to Olympus, one reason is that when the original Pen-F was made it cost less to mill round pieces than square ones.

In homage to that history, the new Pen-F even has a round eyecup for the electronic viewfinder, the first in a digital Pen. We’re not sure if it’s just a quirk of early samples or the shape of the rubber on the eyecup, but on a few occasions (before we started switching it manually), the sensor that recognizes that you’re holding it to your eye failed to tu on the EVF. The OLED itself looks great, though. It shows lots of detail and the lag time seems brief: The image doesn’t get too jerky or choppy as you pan around.

We mainly shot with prime lenses in field use. These autofocused quite quickly, as did the zooms we used only briefly. While older zooms with large glass elements to move tended to slow down the AF, most of Olympus’s Micro Four Thirds lenses employ smaller focusing groups to keep the AF pleasingly zippy. Tracking proved generally reliable and did a good job of keeping up with the camera’s burst speed.

The control layout is both comfortable and intuitive. Olympus embedded the shutter release button in the front command wheel to save space and put in a socket for an inexpensive screw-in cable release. Whether another nod to street shooters or to the original Pen-F, it makes for an easy way to trigger longer exposures as well as the High Res Shot mode.

This shoots eight frames as the image stabilization mechanism moves the sensor and combines them into one image to increase the resolution in the resulting file. You can make 80MP images from RAW files this way, but you should use a tripod and shoot a stationary subject. If you want a JPG from High Res mode, you’ll get a 50MP file.

A small exposure compensation dial on the right side of the camera top lets you adjust up to +/–3 EV or you can use one of the command wheels to reach up to +/– 5 EV. If you stick with the exposure comp dial, you gain the option of assigning something else to the command wheel, such as highlight and shadow detail in custom color and monochrome modes.

You select these using the dial on the front of the body, which evokes the shutter-speed dial on the original Pen-F. Choose from Art Filters, Color Creator, Color Profile Control, and Monochrome Profile Control. Each of these has three different options. For instance, Infrared Simulation, under the Monochrome Profiles, does a nice job of giving the IR look, with greens tuing brighter and clear skies darker, as with real IR capture.

While these modes might sound kitschy at first, in practice they’re quite enjoyable and offer enough customization to tailor them to your taste and incorporate them into your shooting when you wish. Since the dial is very accessible, we found ourselves switching through them a lot and having a whole lot of fun. If you shoot RAW+JPG you can always go back and second-guess yourself if you think that you made the wrong decision in the moment.

If you like to mount vintage glass (via adapters) or any fully manual lenses that don’t communicate with the body, you’ll appreciate that the Pen-F lets you input a list of the lenses that the camera can’t identify. It’s a slightly laborious task to enter their names, but once you do, you can select the lens you’ve mounted from the list in the camera body and the name of the lens will show up in the EXIF data in your images—useful for keeping track of them later.

Video from the Pen-F looks very nice, with plenty of detail and pleasing colors. You won’t find 4K capture here, but for most folks these days that’s overkill. The Pen-F really feels like more of a still shooter’s camera anyway.

Bottom Line

The prime competitor for the Pen-F is definitely Panasonic’s GX8. Both emulate a rangefinder-like design, using EVFs for framing, sport 20MP Four Thirds sensors, and can accept the same lenses. Both did very well in our lab tests and were pleasures to use in the field.

While it’s true that the Olympus fell just a tad short in color accuracy, we’d be surprised if the average shooter would be tued off by the colors in the images captured with the Pen-F. Indeed, we’d expect that photographers who enjoy experimenting with the various color modes in the camera won’t be bothered at all with exacting color accuracy as measured in lab tests. Overall, the Pen-F proved a very comfortable camera to use. If you like street photography, or just want a powerful, small camera, it deserves your serious consideration.

Specifications

IMAGING: 20.3MP effective, Four Thirds-sized Live MOS sensor captures images at 5184x3888 pixels wit 12 bits/color in RAW mode

STORAGE: SD, SDHC, SDXC (UHS I, II) slot stores JPEG, ORF RAW, RAW+JPEG, MPO files

BURST RATE: Full-sized JPEGs (Fine mode), up to card capacity at 5 frames per sec; RAW (12-bit), up to 250 shots at 5 fps

AF SYSTEM: TTL contrast detection with touch-selectable focus; single shot and continuous AF with face detection and subject tracking

SHUTTER SPEEDS: Mechanical: 1/8000 to 60 sec, plus B (1/3-EV increments). Electronic: 1/16,000 to 60 sec.

METERING: 324-area TTL metering, Multi-patte (evaluative), centerweighted, spot (size of spot not specified); EV –2 to 20 (ISO 100)

ISO RANGE: Standard: ISO 200–25,600 (in 1/3-EV increments). Expanded: ISO 80–25,600.

EVF: OLED with 2,360,000-dot resolution, 1.23X magnification

VIDEO: Records at up to 1920x1080p60 in MPEG-4AVC/H.264 MOV format; built-in stereo microphone; no mic input. Maximum clip length approximately 29 minutes.

FLASH: No built-in flash; comes with FL-LM3 accessory flash (GN 30, ISO 100, feet)

MONITOR: Articulating 3-inch LCD capacitive touchscreen with 1,037,000-dot resolution; 15-step adjustments for brightness and color temperature

OUTPUT: USB 2.0, Micro HDMI video, composite video

BATTERY: Rechargeable BLN-1 Li-ion, CIPA rating 330 shots

SIZE/WEIGHT: 4.9x2.8x1.5 inches; 0.9 lb with a card and battery

STREET PRICE: $1,199, body only

INFO: olympusamerica.com

The ”Eiffel Tower Upskirt” is a fruit of roughly six months of contemplation and plaing during my one-year exchange in Paris. Being an architecture student and passionate amateur photographer, I kept wondering how to isolate the beauty of the Eiffel Tower's structure without the distracting context. Apparently, my ideal long-awaited shot had been waiting up there all that time until I looked right up and found it. Being a traditional photograpy lover, I used a fully manual film camera. For the maximum detail, sharpness and dynamic range, I used Fuji’s medium format rangefinder - the GW690III loaded with Kodak Tmax 100 film (black and white for better light-capturing capabilities and lack of color to entirely focus on the beautiful form and shading). With a fixed 90mm lens, I decided to take two shots one above the other and merge it in Photoshop to expand field of view, which also resulted in even more resolution. The entirety has been cropped into a perfect square highlighting a continuous element of the Tower’s structure along the borders making for a perfect natural frame of the image

WOW Nashville was fabulous. This is my second Trek, Yellowstone being my first, but certainly not my last. Reed Hoffman was our Mentor a great guy and photographer with in-depth knowledge explained in a clear and direct maer. He constantly reminded us this was our weekend, all about us and to ask all the questions about things we always wanted to know. One of the great things about the Treks is that you get to go, see and experience places that would typically be unavailable to you as an individual. We started with a general overview, tips from Reed and a look at his gallery of places around the world followed by lunch and a trip to Southe Trace Farms where we were able to photograph horses, a cowboy and a very interesting ba. After dier we visited the Parthenon, a re-creation of the Parthenon in ancient Athens at sunset to photograph in available light.

Up early the next day to Gruhn Guitars. Absolutely fascinating place and as a group we were able to venture beyond the retail floor to the upper floors to photograph the museum of guitars and the technicians who repair fine instruments. After that we are off to the Wildhorse Saloon in downtown Nashville for a buffet lunch and a photography session with a group of line dancers. We had access to the front of the stage, rear of the stage. The afteoon quieted down a bit as we went off to Cheekwood Gardens to photograph absolutely gorgeous gardens. Once the sun went down we are back downtown on Broadway for the light show produced by the neon lights of the bars and music venues that seem to go on forever. Sunday moing, we’re up and off to Belmont Mansion, built in the 1800’s and now a museum. A lovely young woman dressed in a period costume is ready to model for us.

These Treks are great for photographers interested in leaing and perfecting their passion in places they would never individually have access to with the sole purpose of photography.

John Kavanagh

“Weddings are expensive” is a pretty popular topic for articles on the inteet, and now Consumer Reports is getting in on the action by “revealing” that wedding photography costs more than other kinds of photography. The premise of the article lies heavily on the fact that it’s simply a markup that gets applied as soon as the word “wedding” is uttered, but there’s more to it than that when it comes to photography, so let’s clear a few things up.

The first, and most obvious point to be made is that wedding photography is different than other types of photography. In the study, Consumer Reports queried several vendors with two different scenarios. Here’s the example from the article: “Some photographers inflated their pricing when the affair was a wedding. For instance, photography for a Saturday night wedding in mid-October cost $300 per hour at [photographer's name removed]. For a 50th aiversary party of the same size at the same time with an almost identical package of services, though, the charge was $150 per hour.”

It may seem fair to compare the two events because, hey, they’re happening on the same night and they last the same number of hours. But, the two are very different animals.

Weddings require work that happens before the big day, including scouting and helping the couple to plan the festivities to maximize time usage (something briefly mentioned in the article). Weddings typically require lots of gear to cover every aspect of an event, including formal portraits. Weddings have schedules that change on a dime, and tons of other logistics to figure out. And most importantly, weddings often require more people on the team to make everything happen. I like to work with a second shooter and sometimes even an assistant or two for weddings. And all of this often happens across several venues. And let’s not even get into the type of editing that wedding photos require.

An aiversary party, however, is typically much simpler. I can show up with a single camera and a couple flashes and make the whole thing work for basic formals and lots of great coverage. I certainly might bring an assistant, but wouldn’t likely need a second shooter unless a specific request called for it. And the editing is all pretty straight forward since it’s basically just one long wedding reception. This isn't the case for all photographers, but it's also probably not information that's readily offered to random clients unless they specifically ask.

That’s not to say that there isn’t some wiggle room for people who want a great photographer but can’t afford the best possible packages. It can’t hurt to ask if there are any options for making things more affordable, unless the client is slinging offensive low-balls.

Don’t get me wrong, there is likely at least a little bit of a markup on wedding photography as a whole. But, even if you can’t link that markup to a specific line item on the invoice, it’s still worth considering that developing wedding photography skills is a very long and specialized process. Wedding photography is also typically more stressful than other types of photography, even if it is really, really fun.

You wouldn't fault a mechanic for charging more to work on a Ferrari than on a cheap family sedan. The stakes are higher and the skills more specialized.

Ultimately, I think it’s unfair to imply that every photographer is simply trying to screw people as soon as they find out they’re in the market for a wedding. And anyone who gets the bright idea to try and book a photographer for a “party” that’s actually a wedding in order to save a few bucks should certainly reconsider.