To Zoom or Not to Zoom- Portraits with Primes

(A slightly different version of this post originally appeared on the Sigma lens site. You can see it here.)

As a photographer who specializes in environmental portraiture, lens selection is critical to the look of my work. Much of the time I choose to shoot with prime lenses. Let me explain why I made that decision for one of my projects.

In 2014, I was given an artist residency at The Hambidge Center for Arts and Sciences in Rabun, Georgia.  For two weeks that year and again in 2015 and 2016, I was given a cabin tucked away in the mountains, dinner prepared for me four nights a week, and encouragement to do whatever I wanted. I had driven through the area around Hambidge a number of times when my wife and I had gone to the Great Smokie Mountains of North Carolina from our home in Atlanta on camping trips. We often stopped at flea markets along the way and the faces I saw at these rural stops struck me. There was an extraordinary range of types and ages and looks. I knew there was a project here waiting for me to photograph. That idea became American Flea.

Mary-Lynn Starkey runs a small flea market near Franklin, NC with her husband Roger. They told me they decided to open their store because they needed some way to get rid of the stuff they had accumulated by going to auction. 

 For me, shooting portraits takes time, primarily because I need to talk to my subjects to get them to relax and trust me. The flea market portraits were no different- in fact, talking to people became an integral part of the process. Many of the vendors and customers will tell you that making money or finding bargains isn’t the thing they enjoy most about the experience. What they really love is the chance to meet and talk to the people they encounter. I found that everyone had a story and they wanted to share it with me.

Charles Brank, AKA Chuck B, sells his woodcarvings at the Franklin Flea and Craft Market in Franklin, NC.

When I work in this way, I think of portraiture as an active process. I’m not a passive observer as when I’m doing a story that requires a more candid approach. I’m actively engaged with my subjects when we’re talking before I start photographing and as the shooting begins, that engagement continues. I set up strobes and I rarely work from a tripod.

Peggy Hines, Randy Hines, and Randy’s mother, Christine Duncan sell odds and ends at the Woodpecker Wood Works Flea Market in Franklin, NC.

Primes, that is non-zoom lenses, were perfect for this style. I don’t want to hang back, zooming in and out to alter my compositions. I want to be actively moving around the space, closer, farther away, higher, lower. I sometimes think of myself dancing when I shoot like this. It’s a metaphoric dance as I try to elicit the best expression or pose from someone, but it almost becomes a literal dance as I change the scene in my viewfinder. The focal lengths of 24mm, 35mm, and 50mm are perfect for showing the environments that are so important to this work. I may even try a 20mm for some of them when I’m in particularly tight spaces and want to see even more if the environment in the frame.

Dodie Allen was helping a friend out by working in his vegetable stand at Uncle Bill’s Flea Market in Whittier, NC.

 All the photographs in this post were taken with a Nikon D600. The lenses were The Sigma Art Series primes specifically 24mm f1.4 DG | Art, 35mm f1.4 DG | Art, and 50mm f1.4 DG | Art Series. All were lit using an Elinchrom ELB with a 17 inch silver beauty dish. Most were shot utilizing Hi-Sync technology which let me synchronize my Nikon at speeds up to 1/4000 of a second. Stay tuned to my blog (or better yet subscribe to it) for an upcoming post that explains Hi-Sync in detail.

You can see more from American Flea on my web site.

Elinchrom ELB Review

I got my first generation Elinchrom Quadra in 2010 and I immediately fell in love with it.

I had been using studio/AC strobes for years, but I was sick of the weight and having to be tied to an outlet or generator. Shoe mount strobes were always a possibility, but they were grossly underpowered and dealing with batteries was a pain. There were a few high powered battery strobes, but they tended to be very heavy and very expensive. Along came the Quadra and it felt like my prayers were answered. Small, light, fairly powerful, not too much money, and best of all- they had an LED modeling light which used very little juice. It was bright enough to be of practical value and it didn’t drain the battery with the same speed as the halogen ones in its bigger cousins.

I travelled all over Europe with those Quadras, shooting portraits of small town shopkeepers and residents. They performed flawlessly. At 400 watt seconds, they had plenty of power to give me the apertures necessary. They set up quickly and I especially loved the modeling light. Whether shooting in the low light of a hotel lobby at night 

 or in practically no light in the caverns of an 18^th century winery,

 the LED modeling light was a life saver allowing accurate focus and framing.

Later, I began using them with the ECO ring flash in conjunction with my AC strobes. The ability to power way down and use the ring as a fill in some fairly extensive lighting scenarios was extremely useful. The quality of that fill is very different from using a traditional source or even a bounce card as fill and it gave my work an interesting quality that was difficult to define.

By 2012  Elinchrom had updated the battery in the Quadra from a lead gel to a lithium ion battery.  

What a difference! It was significantly smaller and lighter, the number of flashes per charge was much greater, and the recycle time was reduced. These were all welcome improvements.

Now it’s 2015 and I’ve been working with the latest version, the ELB 400, for a couple of months. 

This time the improvements to the Quadra, while still not revolutionary, represent significant improvements. I must admit, I was very happy with the previous iterations, but this new ELB is really way ahead of the older Quadra Hybrid.

The first thing you notice after unboxing the ELB is that the top panel looks very different from the Hybrid.  

Elinchrom has replaced the hard plastic screw covers on the head outlets with quick flip rubber covers. I wouldn’t consider this a big deal, but it does make set up and tear down that much quicker.

Next, you’ll notice that there are two small outlets on the right side of the panel. One is for the synch cord, but the other is a mini-usb outlet for future firmware upgrades. My guess is that this will make it easy for Elinchrom to add more hyper-sync (the ability to shoot with strobes at a shutter speed higher than the normal limit of 1/160-1/250) and TTL (through the lens metering) capabilities in the future. But there may be other features I haven’t even dreamed of that could be added.

The biggest change to the top panel is the reduction and simplification of the controls. The older unit had seven buttons and five glowing indicators in addition to the power display and battery meter. The menu system was fairly cumbersome and un-intuitive. This didn’t bother me too much since I rarely had a need to change my settings, but when I did, using the manual was absolutely necessary. Even then I sometimes got confused.

The new panel has reduced the buttons to six and an OLED (organic light emitting diode) display. Besides simplifying operation, the best part is that the OLED speaks English and is very intuitive. In fact, it’s modeled after the menu system in the ELC AC strobes, so it felt very familiar to me. There’s really no need for the manual- although I plan to keep mine close by for a while, just in case. It’s really easy to scroll through the options of: 1. photocell 2. skyport 3. audio 4. flash mode 5. power settings 6. statistics

These menu choices give an indication of some of the internal improvements to the ELB. The first three are items we’ve all come to expect from quality studio strobes- an optical slave that we can turn off and on, built in wireless support, and a variety of audio settings. The fourth, flash mode, is a major addition. This adjustment lets you choose between standard operation, delayed synch, sequential firing, or stroboscopic firing. I’ve been using the ELB for fairly traditional location photography, but these new settings will be a huge advantage for action sports shooters, allowing them to do multiple exposures and motion studies in ways previously difficult or even impossible without a truckload of gear and assistants. These options have been available in the Elinchrom ELC series for some time. If you’d like to read about my uses of the ELC go to http://forestmcmullin.blogspot.com/2014/05/new-elinchrom-elc-pro-hd-review.html

There are some fairly significant internal changes to the ELB that I’m very happy about, too. The first is that between an increase in power from 400 watt seconds to 424 and the introduction of the Pro Head, I’m getting almost a full stop more juice out of the unit. The Quadra Hybrid had plenty of power for most of the things I did with it, so what this means is that I can reduce the output for my shots, thus getting many more pops per charge out of the already large capacity lithium battery. I don’t have the patience to accurately test exactly how many pops I’m getting, but I estimate that at 50-70% power, I’m getting well over 500 pops- enough for most days of shooting.

The recycle time has been reduced, too. From full discharge to 100% ready, the original Quadra took almost 2.5 seconds to recycle. Not bad at all. With the introduction of the Hybrid, that was down to just under two seconds. Now with the ELB, recycle time is just over 1.5 seconds. I’m a people shooter and having a recycle time that fast is enormously helpful. My most recent projects have necessitated shooting in very public situations (flea markets and rodeos) and the faster I can shoot and let folks get back to whatever they need to be doing, the better.

One of things that sold me on the original Quadra, still holds true of the ELB- it’s easy to use all of Elinchrom’s modifiers with it. There’s a convenient adapter that lets me use all of my softboxes, grid spots, beauty dishes, and octabanks with this little powerhouse. I think Elinchrom makes the best modifiers out there and there have been many times when the ability to pop one of my “baby” heads into a sophisticated modifier has been a lifesaver.

Lately my work has leaned heavily toward a documentary approach and the ELB is the perfect tool. It allows me the versatility and power of larger, heavier strobes in a package that’s easy to carry and quick to set up and tear down. There are photographers out there who rave about the results they get from using multiple shoe mount strobes and I don’t disagree that it’s possible to do that. But for the money you can spend on three or four of the top of the line shoe mounts, you can get a pretty complete ELB system with two heads and batteries. It will give you way more power and flexibility than the shoe mounts ever could. And you won’t have to invest in hundreds of AA batteries anymore, either.

The following shots show a few of the things I’ve been doing with the ELB and Hybrid. I’ve been using a 17 inch silver beauty dish for a lot of it. I really like the sparkle and punch of that modifier used in daylight situations. The African American cowboy series uses the Ringflash ECO for fill. Shooting on sunny days, people with dark skin wearing cowboy hats is a real challenge trying to get detail in my subjects eyes. The ring on low power opens those shadows just enough without over powering the effect of my main light.

If you have any suggestions or questions about anything in this review, please contact me. I'll get back to you as soon as possible.

Read more about Elinchrom and their products here.

If you'd like to see more of my work, go here.

 (above photo by Hastings Huggins, http://www.hastingshugginsworks.com/)

 (above photo by Joshua McFadden, http://www.joshuarashaad.com/)