If you are a regular reader of my blog, you know I’ve been flirting a bit with digital medium format. I’m completely convinced about MF when it comes to image quality but I still have my doubts about the ease of use of most MF systems. I haven’t checked them all out yet, so when the guys from Servix offered me to test out the Mamiya DM28 system, I didn’t hesitate. I didn’t have the time to set up a special shoot like I did with the Pentax 645D but I had a communion shoot coming up and Sam and her mom said it was ok to shoot some extra pictures with the Mamiya.

Communion shoots might not be what medium format manufacturers have in mind when they design their cameras but I think they better should if they want to reach the younger generation of photographers. I don’t shoot that many communion sessions and I don’t think MF is required for these shoots. But this kind of work requires the same speed, portability and flexibility as a big chunk of my commercial portrait work. Locations and time doesn’t always allow to shoot tethered to a computer, our subjects don’t always stand perfectly still and often there are no assistants around to carry all the gear.

Working with the Mamiya and the DM28 digital back is pretty straightforward. All buttons and menus are clear and usually easily accessible. Although the camera and the back work together well, this is a modular system and I found it sometimes a bit cumbersome to change the iso on the touch screen on the back instead of having a dedicated button on the camera. The camera + back + 80mm 2.8 Schneider lens, isn’t a featherweight but it sits well in my hands and I wouldn’t mind lugging this camera around all day.

The LCD screen was a bit of a disappointment. The touchscreen interface works rather well but the resolution and quality of the screen are simply way to low to judge your images. I prefer to shoot tethered most of the time but sometimes it’s just not possible or handy. And in those cases I want a decent LCD on the back of the camera.

On a brighter note, the auto focus felt pretty snappy even in challenging lighting conditions. I also never felt like the camera slowed me down in any way.

I can’t compare the image quality with other MF systems but up to iso 400/800 it’s certainly a step up from a full frame DSLR. Especially the larger dynamic range is very interesting. I probably didn’t even got the most out of the files since it was the first time I used the Capture One software.

I’ve only shot for 20 minutes or so with this camera, so I haven’t used it enough to come to any definitive conclusions. For now I’d say that the Mamiya certainly seems to be a good option for portrait/commercial photographers who want to get an improved image quality for a decent price.

I’ll be probably using the Mamiya more extensively on a bigger shoot soon, so hopefully that will allow me to give you some more hands-on info. In the near future, I’ll also be testing some toys from Phase One.

No matter how much I learn about lighting and how much gear I buy, I’m still a big fan of the simple beautiful soft light of a big window. One day, if finances allow I’ll have one installed in my studio. In the mean time, my friends at Servix and Partners suggested I’d give the Lastolite HiLite Background a try as an always available big window.

The HiLite is developed to be a self standing white background that is lit with one or more strobes from within. It’s designed as a simple and fast solution to produce an even white background on events and stuff but I immediately saw it as a giant softbox. I’ve always likes extreme lenses, lights, and modifiers so I went all out and got the biggest HiLite, which is 2,50m by 2,15m. They come in four sizes. Coming from the company that have turned collapsible reflectors into an art-form, it’s no surprise that this huge HiLite folds down to a circle with a diameter of about 1 meter. It’s incredibly easy to setup and pack down again. See how big it is:

I powered the HiLite with a single Elinchrom 300RX strobe. I’ll blog about my new Elinchrom equipment soon. For now, let’s just say that I love it and that the guys from Servix & Partners were extremely helpful and knowledgeable when choosing the right equipment to turn The Barn into a full blown rental studio. The HiLite is equipped with zippers on both sides, so you can put a strobe on each side. Two strobes will definitely be better if you want to use the HiLite as an even white background. But I found that the HiLite does a really good job in evening out the light from a single strobe too. Despite the huge large source and the rather low powered strobe, I had no problem to shoot at small apertures and the Elinchrom wasn’t even at full power. My guess is that you could even power it with a Speedlight (or maybe two).

Here’s the Elinchrom 300RX in the HiLite:

I tend to use this kind of very soft light mostly for female subjects but when Stijn volunteered to model for a test shoot, I figured, why not try it on a male subject? Here are a couple of the shots we did:

This one is done with the HiLite only inches behind Stijn and a silver California Sunbounce Mini above the camera as fill. When I shoot on white, I usually don’t let the background light blend in with the exposure of the subject but I found it pretty cool here.

We then started to use the HiLite as the main light and added another Elinchrom monobloc with a Maxi Spot reflector behind Stijn. Here’s how the setup looked (all setup pics by Ioannis, who happened to drop by and helped us out):

I really enjoyed the freedom of working with such a big light source. It was more like working with natural light, where you change the position of your subject rather than changing the light source. It feels more natural and you don’t keep breaking the connection with your subject every time you need to move a light. Such a big light is also very forgiving when it comes to position and exposure.

Here are some more pics:

The HiLite is a big, soft light source just like my shower curtain setup but the light seems more “marinated” by bouncing around inside this big box. Sure, the HiLite is way more expensive than a shower curtain but I’ve got a medium size softbox that costs more.

Conclusion: I still have a lot of experimenting to do with the HiLite but I already know that it’s going to be one of my goto-modifiers from now on.

Things have been rather quiet on my blog because it’s been busy around here with getting the Barn ready to rent out, commercial work and shooting communion sessions. I don’t know if it’s done in other parts of the world but here in Belgium, communions are one of the only occasions where many people want to get pictures of their kids taken by a professional photographer. It’s not my core business but I see it as a service to many of the clients who gave me their trust to photograph their small children when I just started out.

I like to pack extremely light and keep my gear very simple for theses sessions because time and budget are usually limited and also because I like to focus on the kid instead of on the gear. I bring lots of lenses and lights, but usually they stay in my car except for the 5D mk2 with the 70-200, a light stand with umbrella, a 580EX2 flash and my TTL pocketwizards (which I still use mostly on manual). I’m always on the lookout for little things that make my life easier, my workflow faster and in the end, get me better pictures. When I heard about the Frio coldshoe, it seemed like it could be one of those things.

The Frio is not a revolutionary device, it’s a coldshoe for mounting a small flash on a light stand (or tripod, gorillapod, clamp, …). I have plenty of little gadgets that do this, so normally I wouldn’t even bother to look at it. But it comes from the same people that came up with the Orbis Flash ring light adapter for speedlights and I know they got their act together. That’s why I decided to take the Frio for a test drive during some fast paced communion shoots.

The biggest difference with the traditional cold shoe designs is that the Frio doesn’t use any sort of screw to lock the flash onto the cold shoe. You basically slide it in and it “clicks” into place. To release it, you simply push on the lever and slide the flash out. The Frio is made from what appears to be very sturdy plastic and there’s no chance that your expensive flash will fall out of the shoe.

We’ve been blessed with amazing weather and light these past few weeks in Belgium so I’ve shot most communion sessions with just available light (hey, I sometimes do that). But sometimes you just want to quickly set up a flash like in the picture below. The sun back lights the boy and I used a speedlight with an umbrella (camera right) to get the light on the face right.

Could I’ve done that shoot without the Frio? Sure! But sometimes it’s those few extra seconds or that little extra convenience that make our job more enjoyable. I keep my 580 EX2′s mounted on Pocketwizard TT5′s in my bag. Until recently I just screwed the TT5 straight onto the swivel adapter when I got to the location. This doesn’t take much time but sliding the TT5/580EX2 combo onto the Frio is just a touch more convenient. My Frio’s are here to stay.

It didn’t really came as a surprise but after I posted my latest Confessions of a Photographer video, I got a load of questions about the wireless tethering to my iPad. If you don’t know wtf that is, it basically means that a couple of seconds after I take a picture, the image miraculously appears on my iPad without using a cable.

TETHERING

The LCD on the back of my camera is great. It allows to quickly review your images and check them for composition, sharpness, exposure, color, … sort of. But the LCD is too small to judge critical details. Since I like to get as much as possible right in camera, it is important to me to be able to see my mistakes.

Another reason why I shoot tethered as often as possible is that it makes working with clients easier and more productive. It’s much easier to discuss an image with an art director on set on an iPad, laptop or computer monitor than on the back of the camera. The more people involved, the bigger the screen needs to be. I strongly feel that decisions are made faster on set and discussions after the shoot are minimized when shooting tethered. It’s also a great help for stylists and make-up artists to see when they need to make some corrections.

For me personally there’s another reason to shoot tethered: workshops. I often teach about lighting with flash and speedlights. With flash, there’s no “what you see, is what you get” so it’s important to be able to show the actual pictures to the workshop participants.

THE CABLE

The traditional way of shooting tethered is with a long USB cable between the camera and a laptop/computer. It still is the most secure, cheap and fast way to instantly transfer images. It’s great when working in studio or on location when you have full control and enough time but it’s less ideal when things have to move fast with a limited budget and crew.

THE WIFI GRIP

From the moment I got my 5D mark II, I’ve also been using the WFT-E4 (the link is to the markII version, I got the older one. I’m not sure what the difference is). This is basically a vertical grip with a build in Wifi transmitter. By attaching this grip to the 5D2, I can transmit my images over Wifi. That’s is, when you can get it to work.

I see myself as a pretty technical guy, but after a full day of trying to figure out one of the worst manuals I’ve ever read, I still couldn’t get it to work. If you got a degree in computer networks, it might be easier, but I don’t think most regular photographers can get it to work without help. Eventually I found a long step-by-step guide by Julian Love (thanks man) online that worked. I’m still keeping that guide on my laptop in case the Wifi connection decides not to work in the middle of a shoot.

The WFT-E4 is a pretty expensive piece of kit and it can’t be used with other cameras but there aren’t any real other options. Sure, there are the Eye-Fi cards but if I have to believe the reviews, performance is not always pro spec. I haven’t tested them, so I can’t tell for sure. If you use them, let me know what you think.

WORKFLOW

My Wifi workflow depends on the situation. The first choice I need to make is to transmit RAW-files or JPEGs. Sending a 21 megapixel file over Wifi takes a while (about 20 seconds I figure). So if you shoot fast, the buffer will fill up really soon. Most of the time I shoot RAW+JPEG and only transmit the small(ish) JPEGs. Those JPEGs are still big enough to judge the image and can be transmitted way faster.

The other choice, I need to make is to send all the images or just the ones I choose. It’s a pretty easy choice to make. When I’m out of my comfort zone and the client is watching, I transmit only the images I want my client to see otherwise I’ll transfer them all automatically.

YEAH YEAH … BUT WHAT ABOUT THE IPAD?

As soon as I got my iPad, I thought it would be great if it could be used as a wireless monitor in combination with the WFT-E4. Technically it should be possible, but it took a while until someone came up with an app and someone else figured out a way to make it work.

A while ago, Filip (who just started a blog about analog photography btw) pointed me to an app called Shuttersnitch. But it took me some quality time with Google to find a tutorial on how to make it work with the WFT-E4. Most people who got it to work, used some kind of external battery powered wireless router. I was prepared to give that idea a try although another device (with a battery that can run out), is a big drawback to me. But then I came along this article by Carsten Plueckhahn. He documented perfectly how to get the Wifi-grip and the iPad connected.

THE VERDICT

I’ve been using the WFT-E4/iPad/Shuttersnitch combination pretty often over the last months and it has become my favorite way of tethering. I still use cables and/or laptops for the bigger jobs but for fast work, this is a great combination. It’s not without its glitches, sometimes you loose the connection and then you need a couple of seconds to reset it all. But it’s workable. The iPad seems to last forever on a single battery charge, so it has earned a permanent place in my camera bag. By transmitting only the small JPEGs, you get an almost instant preview. The setup allows me to check my images, point the model in the right direction, discuss images with clients, …

An added benefit is that all my clients find it pretty damned cool … that’s until you all start using it too.

I first came around Syl Arena when he wrote an open letter to Canon in which he wrote down his Canon Speedlite Wishlist. Syl is also the man behind speedliting.com an excellent resource for small flash users. He’s an expert in using and teaching the Canon wireless flash system, consider Syl to be the Canon version of Joe McNally.

I’ve never been too fond of the Canon Wireless Flash system. It’s not that it’s not powerful, on the contrary it’s very comparable to Nikon’s CLS system. The biggest difference between the two is that Nikon’s system is pretty easy to use and is well documented in lots of videos and books while you need a degree in rocket science to figure out the Canon system. That’s until now, because Syl Arena has figured it all out and wrote it down for us in Speedliter’s Handbook, learning to craft light with Canon speedlites.

For the kind of work that I mostly do, I still believe that shooting all manual is the best way to go. I could (and probably will) dedicate a whole blog post on why I prefer shooting manual over E-TTL but the most important reasons are the lack of consistency of E-TTL and the limitations of infrared signals. Since I got the new Pocketwizards, the IR-problems are gone and that was all I needed to give the Canon E-TTL system a second chance to see if it can fit into my workflow for certain situations. That’s why I was very keen to get my hands on this book.

I know reviews look suspicious when there’s only positive things in it, so let’s do the downsides first:

There are a number of really great pictures in this book but some pics could have been better. I know that these are just there to illustrate a technique or effect but I’m always more inspired to try out something new if it’s illustrated with a stunning image. But then again, this isn’t an art book and getting only top notch images to illustrate such a vast amount of information, would have delayed this book by a year.

There, that’s it, that’s the only negative thing I have to say about this book and I had to get into an extremely critical mood to find something.

Some will probably argue that the price is another negative thing about this book. And 29 USD for the paperback and 32 for the Kindle edition (which I got) isn’t as cheap as some other photography books. But how many books contain 432 pages of information? Certainly because some of that information is hard to find elsewhere.

This book is more than just the missing manual for the Canon flash system. If you are just starting out with lighting or need to freshen up your knowledge, there’s a lot of info about the characteristics of light and how to apply them. There’s also a good chunk on information about equipment for off-camera flash use. I consider myself pretty well educated about the available gear, but I learned about some brands I never heard before. And then there are countless of little shooting tips.
The great thing is that this book contains all the information a complete newbee in the off-cam flash world would need. And at the same time it contains lots of info for the advanced photographer.

And for those advanced photographers I have a piece of advice: Read this book from cover to back! It’s tempting to skip some chapters and parts but by forcing myself to not do that, I discovered lots of small things about the Canon system that I thought I knew, but didn’t.

The book is well written and extremely well researched. I followed the progress on Syl’s twitter and now I really understand why he put so much work in it. He basically has compiled an encyclopedia of Speedlite info and turned it into a well structured and readable book.

I wish this book would have been available a couple of years back when I started to learn about using flashes. That would have been a serious shortcut in the learning curve. It should be in any Canon photographer’s bookshelf, first to learn the basics, later as a reference guide.

I can’t really remember why I started my Confessions of a Photographer videos on YouTube, nor can I remember why I stopped doing them. But I’ve had so many request to take it up again, that I decided to try to free some time to do some more Confessions videos.

Here’s the behind-the-scenes video of my test shoot with the Pentax 645D. Filmed by Pieter and Andy.

View on YouTube

Hope you enjoyed it. Let me now what kind of videos you would like to see in the future.

The biggest attraction in digital medium format to me is the image quality. Sure, the huge file sizes can come in handy but the dynamic range and the depth in the images are even more important to me. I’m sometimes frustrated with the lack of range and gradual transitions in standard DSLR images. But on the other hand I find that the ergonomics and slowness of medium format, often slows me down to much to shoot in my style for a majority of the jobs I do. And then there is the price tag of MF. So I only rent a digital MF camera if the job really requires the image quality and comes with the budget for rental and spending more time on the shoot.

But things are changing in the digital MF world, and because I like the image quality so much, I keep an eye on the evolutions. Pentax announced the 645D so long ago and kept postponing the release so often, that many thought it would never come. But it’s here now. The specifications look very interesting and promise a medium format camera that handles like an ordinary DSLR. So when I was asked by Shoot Magazine to test the Pentax, I jumped to the occasion.

All medium format camera’s work well in studio or another controlled environment but I wanted to see how the camera handles in a real world location shoot. It was also a last minute thing so we improvised a fashion/portrait shoot in the snow. Lien volunteered to model, Andy assisted and Pieter walked around with a video camera (yes, there’s a behind-the-scenes-video). I wanted a challenging environment and that’s exactly what I got, maybe even a bit too challenging as it was terribly cold. It was just unbearable to work for more than 5 minutes at the time before taking a 15 minute heating up break in the car. So we had to improvise and working really fast. I was curious to see how the Pentax handled such a situation.

First impressions count, so here they are: Even though the camera came without a manual and I’ve never shot a Pentax before, I was shooting within a couple of minutes. The shape of the body may look a bit weird but is very ergonomically and surprisingly light yet sturdy. All the buttons are where you’d expect them to be and I could even operate them with big gloves. Pentax Belgium delivered the camera with the relatively light and compact 55mm 2.8 lens which is like a 40mm on a full frame DSLR.

The viewfinder may not be as big as some of the other MF camera’s but it’s still a lot bigger than your average Canon or Nikon. The LCD screen is also pretty good. Some people say the LCD-screen on a MF camera is unimportant because you’re supposed to tether it to a computer. I don’t agree. I like to shoot tethered whenever possible but sometimes it’s just not practical and then I like to have a decent LCD.

The autofocus is fast and accurate with several focus points. That’s a pretty normal feature in DSLR land, even the entry level camera’s have decent autofocus but not all medium format score very well in this discipline.

The buffer is big enough to keep shooting at a normal pace while the camera writes the images to the card. Dual SD card slots instead of CF, seem a bit of an odd choice to me, but hey, why not? The downside of the buffer is that it has to be emptied completely before you can go through the images. I found out that 10 seconds can seem really long when your genitals are freezing off.

Another downside is that the flash sync is only 1/125 while some MF camera’s can go to 1/500 and higher. It may seem like a small thing but I know shooters who switched to MF only for the faster sync speed.

For this kind of work, I’d normally shoot a longer lens but the Pentax 55mm lens pushed me towards more creative angles and compositions. It seems to distort very little but this isn’t a lens for headshots off-course.

When I looked at the picture on my computer later, the first thing you notice is how big 40 megapixels really is. Even for high end commercial jobs, 40 megapixels is often not a must for the end result. But more pixels, means more options when retouching. But like I said before even more important than the image size, is the image depth and the Pentax certainly didn’t disappoint. Even at high iso’s the noise levels where pretty acceptable and the colors are crisp and clean.

Conclusion: I’m pretty impressed with this camera. It’s a nice combination of image quality and usability. When my work shifts even more towards bigger commercial jobs and pure portraiture (and less reportage style work), I will strongly consider going the medium format way and the Pentax would stand a good chance. I hope to test out some other MF-systems in the near future so that I can compare them to the Pentax.

The behind-the-scenes video is coming very soon!
EDIT: here’s the video

For years I’ve been very happy with my PocketWizard Plus II’s to trigger speedlites and strobes. Basically they just tell your remote flash to fire, nothing more, but they do that simple task really well. I prefer shooting full manual (camera and flash) whenever possible to have complete control over my light and the perfect consistency considerably speeds up post processing because you can batch process. That said, I have nothing against automatic TTL flash control. I’ve been controlling my 580EX2 speedlites with the Canon ST-E2 controller on events and other assignments where I needed to work fast or manually setting the flash power wasn’t a practical option. The downside of the ST-E2/580EX2 combo is that it communicates with infrared signals. Because infrared is just light, you need line-of-sight between controller and flashes. This seriously limits the range and angles at which you can put your speedlites.

Wouldn’t it be great if you could combine the range and reliability of good radio triggers with the flexibility and speed of wireless TTL? Well, you can. The clever guys at Pocketwizard came up with the Mini TT1 and the Flex TT5 to do just that. The Flex is a tranceiver. Which means you can use it as a trigger in the camera hotshoe or as a receiver for your speedlite. The Mini is a transmitter only (so it goes in the camera hotshoe) but it is small and looks way smarter that the walkie-talkie like Plus II. In fact, people have been asking me several times what that thing with the antenna on my camera was and they all believed me when I told them it was a special walkie-talkie that allows me to talk to my assistant on events without releasing my camera.

The new Pocketwizard system translatse the E-TTL signals from the hotshoe to radiosignals and sends them over to the Flex TT5 who transmits them to the speedlite on top of it. The camera and speedlite(s) behave like they are on camera. However they didn’t stop there, they build some really nice extra features into the system. I’m not going to explain the whole system and all it’s features in this post. There’s lots of info and informative videos on the PocketWizard website.

The main reason why I bought them is not for the TTL-features. I simply got so tired of attaching the PLUS II’s to my speedlites every time, changing broken pc-to-minijack cables and having that big walkie-talkie in my hotshoe. The Flex TT5 has a hotshoe, so you can simple slide a speedlite on top of it and attach the whole set to a light stand. Most of the time, I just keep the 580EX’s attached to the Flex’s in my bag. That alone is a small but significant workflow improvement to me.

But being the tech geek that I am, I just had to start experimenting with the wireless TTL functions a bit. I found the system to work surprisingly well and overall improve the Canon wireless flash system. I’ve been using TTL on many occasions in which I would previously have shot manual. When I bought the AC3 Zone Controller a couple of weeks ago, the system got even better. With the AC3 I can control 3 zones of light separately without running back and forth between the speedlites and my shooting position. First of all, you can switch each zone on and off. This might be a small thing but in a later post, I will show you how important that is to me. You can simply set the flash compensation for each zone individually. And last but not least, you can use manual and wireless change the power setting of your speedlites in a 6-stop range. You can even combine TTL and manual.

Only very recently the Nikon versions of the system became available. My buddy Tom aka Fotofolio, who runs the fantastic CreateThatLight blog, got his hands on one of the first sets and has been pretty pleased with them. Tom is one of the few people who’s just as much a lighting geek as I am and I always learn from him when we shoot together. We decided to go playing with our PocketWizard toys together to compare notes, techniques and tricks. Tom went first and immediately used all the ideas that I had in mind, so I had to come up with something else. While our model tried to warm up again in the car (very cold day), I tried some wireless high speed sync stuff with Tom as stand-in.

Our model Lucie proved to be very brave and professional on this very cold day and Antoon (picture below) was great as our assistant. But you don’t always have the luxury to work with skilled and motivated people. Therefor I wanted to play a bit with a very simple setup that would allow me to get decent shots in a short time and with a minimum of hassle.

It was a very grey day with dull light. Because it was around noon, most of the light comes from right above and even though it’s diffused it casts dark shadows under the eyes. I wanted to give the light some direction by working just below the ambient light levels and complement that with a small amount of flash.

For speed, we mounted the flash on a monopod and just added an umbrella to soften it up. Held by Antoon we could quickly change and finetune the position of the light.

I switched back and forth between TTL and manual, whatever worked best for the situation. Because I could control it all from the AC3, it all went fast and effortless.

After some shooting and lunch, it started raining and we were forced to look for an indoor location. Thanks to Twitter and the very kind people of Visit Oostende, we got free access to Fort Napoleon. At first I struggled a bit to get my flashes to fire. Maybe it was Tom’s aura or maybe I shouldn’t have tried getting the radio signal through two meter thick concrete  walls. But eventually I went for a simple setup with some dramatic light. I used a single speedlite with a grid to create a small spot of hard light.

I tried to balance the gridded flash with the little ambient light that we got in there.

Lucie teaches yoga, so we decided to do some yoga poses.

Does buying some new PocketWizard stuff, make your light better? No, but if you know what you are doing, you’ll produce that great light faster and more conveniently. If you don’t know what you are doing, you’ll just be able to spend less time before you can get bad light. I’m looking forward to experiment even more with this stuff. Also check out Tom’s blog post to see what he did and thinks.

Last year in the spring I bought the Panasonic Lumix GF1 (which is now replaced by the GF2). I’ve been wanting to blog about it ever since I got it, but I’ve been way to busy having fun with it. The other reason why I haven’t blogged about it is that I wanted to keep it all to myself and didn’t want anyone else to shoot with this fantastic little camera.

The pics in this blog post were all taken in 15 minutes behind the scenes of a shoot I did last week with Fotofolio to learn from each other how we use the new Pocketwizards (more to come about that this week).

Why Did I Buy the GF1?
Just like many photographers I got frustrated with the bulk of a DSLR sometimes. Like when I’m with my kids, when traveling, … And I got equally frustrated by the lack of speed, image quality, low light performance and too much DOF of a compact camera. I even seriously considered getting myself a film rangefinder. When I borrowed a friend’s old Leica last year, I loved the size, the manual controls and the image quality. I love shooting film, but to be honest all the developing and scanning is a pain in the ass. Certainly for a camera that I want to use very often since I want to have it with me all the time. Digital rangefinders are simply to expensive to justify for what I would use it.

But the last few years there have been some interesting experiments going on putting a bigger sensor in a compact body. When Olympus and Panasonic announced the Micro 4/3 system, they got my interest. I kept following their progress and when Olympus announced the PEN E-P1, I was ready to buy. But when I read the reviews, I decided to hold off a bit longer. It seemed like an almost-but-not-quite-there-yet thing. But then I read about the Panasonic GF1 and it seemed that this was the camera for me. It took me a while to finally decide to get one, but I haven’t regretted it for a second. I got it with the 20mm 1.7 pancake lens (40mm because of the 2x crop factor).

The Down Sides
It’s rather pricey, no automatic image rotation, limited dedicated micro 4/3 prime lenses available and I’m not too crazy about the colors. But that’s it what I’m concerned

Why I love the GF1
Technically the GF1′s qualities certainly beat the average compact camera. But even without any lab tests, I can tell it’s also considerably below my DSLR’s. But this is RSO, Review-sort-of, my way to write what I personally think about something. A review that should be taken with a grain of salt just like any technical review. And I just happen to like this little camera a lot. It’s also important to be realistic and see it like what it is. This isn’t a sports or wildlife camera, nor is it a camera that I would use for high end commercial jobs. To me it’s mainly a black & white reportage/documentary camera. (The in-camera “Dynamic Black & White” setting is pretty damned good by the way.)

It handles surprisingly well. In fact, it far exceeded my expectations. It feels sturdy and stable used with one or two hands. The LCD screen is great, even in lots of light. It’s almost as responsive as my high end DSLRs. All the automatic stuff like autofocus, auto exposure, … works great. When I put it in auto mode, even my 3yo daughter Noa makes great pictures with it. And with a couple of presses on the well laid out buttons, it’s daddy’s perfect manual machine. The menus and operations are intuitive and sometimes almost revolutionary. I can even fire speedlites remotely by putting a Pocketwizard on the hotshoe.

At the same time it looks like an average (slightly large) compact camera. I feel the size and look of the camera let me get closer to people and make more intimate shots. You might give up some image quality but that’s a price I’m willing to pay to get better stories.

What About the Image Quality?
Like I said, it’s not on par with my DSLRs … technically that is. I’m not a big fan of the colors most of the time. From iso800 on the images become pretty noisy. But in black and white, it shines. The noise actually becomes pleasingly close to the authentic, organic feel of film grain. The GF1 shoots RAW and these files seem to hold surprisingly much detail in the highlights and shadows. I love playing around with the Graduated Filter in Lightroom on the GF1 files to make the sky more dramatic and dodge and burn area’s to lead the eye to the subject.

Do You Have Any Bold Statements?
Yes I do: If I was a Magnum photographer, I’d travel the world with a couple of GF1′s.

And that was not bold, just to bold. I got some ideas for personal documentary projects floating around in my restless brain. I want to do one of these projects this year and I will probably shoot it mainly with the GF1.

Let’s start this post with a bit of (recent) history. (Or you could just skip the first part):

Back in the days when Strobist started the small flash revolution, getting the right gear together wasn’t the easiest thing to do. Basically we mainly adapted pieces of gear that weren’t made for small off-camera flash lighting. No shop could give you a good answer and you had to research what was available, get some parts from your local store, buy the other stuff on eBay and then try to make it fit together. These days every serious store can provide you with all the bits and pieces (even in a kit) and many manufacturers make equipment specially designed for off-camera flash use. One of the first manufacturers that stepped up was MPEX. They started supporting Strobist and stocked up not only the right equipment but also the knowledge about it.

For many the reason to start using small off-camera flashes is that it’s an affordable way of lighting with artificial light. The most expensive part is usually the flash itself. A Canon 580 EXII or a Nikon SB900 doesn’t come cheap so people started looking for cheaper alternatives. You don’t need all the high tech mambo jambo in these state-of-the-art but expensive flashes anyway if you are going to shoot all manual. I’m not saying these flashes aren’t word their money (I even started to become a fan of all the automatic stuff for certain uses) but lighting manually is often still the best way to get the best results. People started to pay ridiculous prices for old Nikon SB flashes and brands like Vivitar revived their old models.
My 3 Vivitar 285HV’s have been my workshorses for a couple of years and I also used some old Nikons but you still sometimes got faced with the fact that these were never really designed as off-camera flashes. No build-in optical slaves on most of them, stupid pc or even more exotic connectors, …

Enter a couple of years later when MPEX decided to start Lumopro, a new brand that makes lots of toys for us small flash lovers. I was pretty impressed with the first flash they made, the LP120. So when they came out with a new and improved version, the LP160, I really needed to take it for a short test drive and took it with me on holiday.

Finally the review:

We all know the dynamic range that digital sensors can capture is much less than what we see with our eyes. On a little geocaching trip with Noa and Maya I encountered such a situation. High noon, kids in the shade and some beautiful clouds. Trouble is, you can’t capture it all in a photograph. If you expose for the kids, the background blows out.

And if you expose for the background, the kids become silhouettes.

But hey what does daddy have in his backpack? Diapers, cookies and a first aid kit. But also a couple of pocketwizards and a Lumopro LP160. Noa became the model, Maya acted as a VAL (voice activated light stand) and I shot with the Lumix GF1. It became clear very fast that the LP160 is one helluva powerful flash. It packs about the same power as a 580EX or an SB900. So that’s a step/stop up from the previous model.

Noa is not too much of a poser, so you have to be fast if you want to shoot her, so that was an excellent recycle speed test. Despite the fact that we fired the flash at full power, it recycled really fast. I didn’t measure it but the recycling time seems close or equal to a 580EXII and certainly waaaaay faster than my Vivitars. It also seems pretty friendly to the batteries, I seem to get more flashes out of a set of AA’s than with the Vivitars.

Time for Maya, who DOES like to pose. We went for a slightly larger frame and to get all attention to Maya, I zoomed in the Lumopro. It now has an electronic zoom motor build in which feels a bit more professional than the manual zooming in the previous model.

The only criticism I can think of is the battery door. You have to push the batteries with one hand and slide the door with the other to get it closed. The door also comes off completely so make sure you don’t forget it somewhere. The feel, the controls and the power have certainly improved compared to the LP120. Lumopro clearly listened to their user base and made syncing the flash a breeze. It has a pc sync connector so you can still use your pc cables until they break (which happens usually 2 weeks after you bought them). But it also has a mini-jack connector which is way better suited to the task. It also has a pretty sensitive build-in optical slave that can even set to ignore a pre-flash. Optical slaves can be a very handy and cheap way to sync a flash in controlled environments. In fact I shot a commercial assignment this morning with a Hensel Porty as my main light and the LP160 as a fill light, synced with the optical slave. Worked every time.

So yes, I really like this flash. I can’t predict if it will stand the test of hard use for many years, but it feels like it’s up to the task. I think Lumopro set the new benchmark for affordable off-camera flashes with the LP 160.

By the way, I know that last picture isn’t very impressive but believe me it’s not easy to trigger the 10 second self-timer and race up those rocks in time to have yourself in the picture too. I just couldn’t not include this picture after all the exhausting speed climbing