I’m very pleased to announce that not only will I be speaking at the next FITC, but it will be right here in San Francisco, August 16th-19th, 2010. I’ve presented at FITC numerous times in the past — recently Toronto and Amsterdam — and it’s always an incredibly immersive and educational experience. For the uninitiated, FITC is a series of events focused around interactive platforms like Flash, Flex, and AIR, along with animation and motion/film. But that’s just sort of the core of it, there are all sorts of other design related topics being covered (case in point: the fact that a print designer / musician like myself is involved). Basically just a very inspirational event centered around design and technology. Also, they have incredible parties each night often involving boats and free booze.
For the San Francisco event I’ll be speaking a bit about my background, process, and theory along with some walkthroughs and presentations of recent work. For a rough idea of the style of my presentations have a look at my Academy of Art lecture from April (although this was geared for the students in the Academy program, as opposed to professionals, so it was a little different from what I normally do).
FITC always stack the events with great speakers but this SF date seems to be the most epic yet. It’s the only where you’ll see Yugo Nakamura, Colin Moock, Erik Natzke, Kyle Cooper, Jared Ficklin, Kevin Lynch, and Robert Hodgin (along with over 60 others). It’s also probably the last time I’ll be speaking in 2010 as I finish up the Tycho album and prepare for touring.
Early bird pricing for the event ends Friday July 2nd, so be sure to get your tickets now (they also sell out very quickly, so if you don’t get in on the early bird be sure to get them soon after). You can register here. Enter code “isofifty” under discount code to get an additional 10% off the registration.
Sonar and Gravité by Renaud Hallee. Both are ridiculously awesome. Make sure to watch Sonar until at least 1:17, that’s my favorite part. Mega simple ideas like these are endlessly satisfying to me (especially when executed this well). I want to see more from Renaud! Both of these are almost a year old now, would love to see what he’s been up to recently.
I’ll be speaking at this year’s FITC in Toronto (April 25-27, 2010). My talk should be on April 26th at 2:30pm, but seeing as it’s still a ways off this may be subject to change. I just got back from Last week’s FITC in Amsterdam (will try and post pics soon) and it really was an incredible event. Toronto should be even better, in my experience over the past couple years it’s a much larger event as it’s held in the home town of FITC. I will be posting more info as it becomes available, you can also check the events page.
So I picked up some Nikon flashes last week and have been having a lot of fun with them. I got the SB-900 and its little brother, the SB-600. I’ve been running the 900 attached to the camera (D80) and have the 600 as a remote slave using Nikon CLS. Using the multiple flash setup has yielded some really great results (see this post for some examples) but even with just one flash attached directly to the camera I’ve found it’s pretty easy to get great shots.
Just thought I’d post some random shots I got playing around to illustrate how easy it is to get decent stuff using a good flash. I didn’t do all the post-processing stuff I usually do so you could see the raw output (save for the first one which I color filtered inside the camera). These were all shot with NEF RAW in adverse lighting conditions, most in very low incandescent light. As you can see, just the single flash was enough to fully light the scene and balance the color. If memory serves correct they were all taken with the SB-600 attached the camera. Also check out Alex’s post on the SB-600 for some other examples. As I work with the flashes more this week I will post more examples and info.
Recently I purchased a Nikon SB-600 flash for my D40. I have never owned anything in the way of photographic lighting and I figured this would be a good first step. I’ve outfitted my studio with a good continuous lighting set up (for video), but photographic lighting has always intimidated me (in regards to complexity and cost). The SB-600 is a flash attachment that works with the D40 (thankfully) and basically just augments the existing flash. The big difference is the ability to adjust the direction of the flash, allowing you to bounce light off the ceiling etc. It also has more options and allows for more control than the basic flash.
Above I’ve posted two pictures, the first uses the SB-600 (pointed at the ceiling), and the second is just the on-camera flash. Neither has been edited. Given that I have no idea what I’m doing with this flash, I think the results are fairly impressive out of the box. Every time I’ve used the SB-600 indoors, the pictures reflect exactly what I see in real life. None of that blown out flash nonsense. The colors are correct, the light is balanced, and the level of detail is like nothing I’ve seen come out of my D40 previously. Of course, the SB-600 is no substitute for a real studio lighting setup, but it’s a great way to cheaply augment the power and versatility of your on-camera lighting situation.
There are a number of other options for speedlights of this kind. I chose the SB-600 mainly because it seemed to be the best fit for my relatively “low end” D40. It’s not too heavy and didn’t break the bank like some of the other Nikon models (the SB-800 for example costs more than my camera). It’s been very easy to use and I would recommend it to anyone looking for a quick and easy way to improve their indoor photography. If anyone has experience with other models, Nikon or otherwise, I’d love to hear your thoughts or see some examples. I’m still learning how to get the most out of mine, but the potential definitely seems to be there.
