I’m Clean

On assignment for the URMC Wilmot Cancer Center… Clean to enter the Pharmacy. Very cool setup. I never knew how much was involved with these folks and safety, redundancy, fume hoods, etc…amazing.

I wish I had a shot of me in the Lead Suit when I shot during a Scan for a live biopsy. I was covered in lead, then mostly behind a lead-glass barrier. Here are some of the shots I got for that issue…

ExpoDisc Custom White Balance Tests

Digital camera Auto White Balance is just awful. I’ve never used it on any brand of camera I’ve owned (including my current Canon EOS1D M3). Normally I can guess at a close balance and use the manual setting for Flash, or ‘Cloudy’ on most outdoor shoots. I’ve played around with setting the Custom WB using a white, black or grey card and rarely like the results…. enter the ExpoDisc .

The quick review is that it rocks.

It even tweaks bounce flash color to be more accurate and handles mixed lighting nicely. Because florescent lights are banned from my house (forget going green… I totally hate that harsh, ugly color!)… so I haven’t tried that yet. I can’t wait to, since I shoot in many labs, etc where the florescent mix is weird. Or in totally nasty environments like the Sodium Vapor lights at RIT. This will get me so much closer to correct color on the shoot, and I’ll need less tweaking in Aperture.

Examples of my (very) informal tests.

Auto WB (Natural light from a window, plus the TV glow of a Mario game!) It’s kind of close.

Cloudy WB (what I would have used before)

ExpoDisc Custom WB (much cleaner… look at the white controller and socks)

This is a different day, and different lighting…

Auto WB

ExpoDisc

(This Expo shot is a touch magenta, but I was rushing and be I could have gotten a better reading)

Final Example:

Cloudy WB (the green leaves were trashing the color)….vs…..ExpoDisc

To use it, you put the camera on Manual Focus, and Auto WB. Put the ExpoDisc on your lens and go to where the subject is and aim at the light source, back toward the camera. This is a classic light-metering setup for incident metering (and for you photo-geeks, Incident is why it gets a better read than Reflective metering does off of a grey card.) The ExpoDisc can also be used as a light meter…cool. They have some nice video tutorials HERE. (and know, they haven’t paid me to rave about them! I’m just happy to get better color)

Then in camera, you set that frame as your Custom White Balance and you are off an shooting. For studio Flash, Handheld, you just need to trigger with a remote and get that reading from the subject area facing the flash. I can’t wait to try using it to clean up some off-white ceilings that always taint my bounce flash colors! People really paint ceilings odd colors…

I’ll shout if I have any other notes. I’m very happy so far. It’s a bit pricy for the non-Pro shooter…. Adorama has my size for $105. It’s good to fit your biggest lens, then you can just hold it over smaller lenses. They also have less accurate, less expensive ‘amateur’ versions… as long as your camera cad do a Custom White Balance, you can use this. See HERE

PS: To preserve marital harmony, here’s a shot of my lovely Lisa (and one with Oliver), when I haven’t drug her outside for a photo test…

Chase Run @ RIT

Photo by Greg Francis

I had the good fortune to be hired by JP Morgan Chase to shoot one portion of the Chase Corporate Challenge @ RIT today. PS: Note my new Canon EOS1D… lovin’ that camera.

I had a terrific time, and my contact Alan was fantastic to work with. It was great to hear all of the ‘Hi Ken’s’ from clients as they streamed past. Hope you all had a great run. It’s a fantastic event. I told someone it was like if every company held their office BBQ on the same day at the same place… and the money goes to local charities.

Thanks for the photos Greg!

See, I’m not kidding when I teach to get different angles… here’s my shot from that:

and the start of the race.

It was great meeting everyone from the companies I was assigned to as well. (This shot was with the new 16mm zoom I bought with the 1D)

Go Big! Digital displays at the URMC Discovery Ball

For the URMC Discovery Ball, we created several huge displays. This one was about 20 feet wide and was the scrim that then opened at the transition to the dinner hour. It is 16×9 format HD and it included a timelapse of a two hour sunset from the new Wilmot Cancer Center building.

Over about 10 minutes, you could see the sunset through the windows, while people came and went, cars drove by and the lights came on… it was a big hit and guests stood there just watching it. The display then included some of my ‘beauty views’ of the new building from the outside fading toward sunset.

Thanks to Ron Cronk for his help during the 3 hours we worked on this shoot!

This display of our work was 5′ tall prints (thanks to some great help from our local Kodak friends!)

The goal was really to bring the new building to the guests.

Thanks for the fun, creative projects Kim & everyone at URMC & the Cancer Center!

URMC Cancer Center Almost Done!

My associate Ron Cronk and I snuck into the building (OK, Security let us in

and we did a time-lapse series of the sun setting through the windows of the new building at the WIlmot Cancer Center.

We had a blast as always and grabbed some outside shots for Leslie White’s publications as well.

I think the Duct Tape bracelet makes the photo (thanks for the shots, Ron!)

Me ruining Ron’s shot.

The craziest thing was when an orderly and a patient (totally hooked up to machines and IVs) wheeled by to see the building progress and we chatted.

Wicked!

‘Psst…the Huth’s got their tickets to see Wicked with RIT’ Glinda seems to be telling Elphaba

Colin and Lydia are going too! We love the music and story line, but this will be our first time to see the show. Are you going?