Location Laptop Case completed

It took me a while to get all the components together, but I finally finished my location laptop case.

I started putting this together after watching the excellent "Location Laptop Case" YouTube video posted by commercial photographer Chase Jarvis.




I pretty much followed the way they designed theirs, with a few minor modifications.

The case is the Pelican 1490 which fits the 15" MacBook Pro. If you are designing one for the 17" model, there is a larger version of this case - the Pelican 1495.

I started with industrial Velcro on the bottom of the case to hold 2 external firewire drives (One main, one backup).


I cut a hole in the divider to route the firewire cable through. I chose to mount the drives with the firewire ports facing the front so that it would be easier to access the ports and on/off switches.

One of the problems I encountered with mounting the drives below the computer was that the MacBook Pro fan would constantly run, due to the heat from the metal casings of the drives. I added an Elecom gelpack on top of the hard drives which is very thin, but also helps to draw heat away from the drives.

There is another hole cut into the side divider to route the firewire cable out from the drive bays and into the side ports of the MacBook Pro. There is a notch cut in the divider to make space for the firewire 400, 800 and USB ports.


Since there is only one USB port on this side of the computer, I have a 4-port Elecom USB hub connected here (The flat white box on the right side of the photo). This allows me to connect multiple additional devices, such as a wireless mouse, Wacom tablet, iPhone charger cable, etc.

A Sandisk firewire 800 CompactFlash card reader is installed in the upper part of the case. The firewire 800 cable is run through the back of the case, down under the foam and up into the side of the laptop.


I also sometimes need an SD card reader, so I found this on my last trip to Japan. It's an SDHC card reader which fits into the ExpressCard slot on the left side of the MacBook Pro.


The MacBook Pro is a slightly older model (not the unibody) with a matte screen. It is encased in a Speck MacBook Pro 15" See-thru snap on case. I like this case because it simply snaps onto the MacBook Pro and protects it from scratches. I then added the Compushade folding laptop sunshade which mounts to the lid of the case.



This makes it easy for times when I need just the laptop itself and not the Pelican case. I can unplug the cables, take just the laptop with me, and still have it protected by the Speck case and the Compushade.


Since I use this laptop for both photography and video editing, I also added a keyboard overlay for Final Cut Pro. You can find this at www.kbcovers.com.


On a recent trip to Japan I found the perfect travel mouse for this laptop. This is the Elecom micro receiver BitGrast mouse. The transmitter for this wireless mouse is TINY!


The pockets in the upper part of the case store the extra battery and power supply. Also keep a few extra model releases in there.


I used to keep a 6x8 Wacom Intuos Tablet in there as well, but it was a pretty tight fit. Planning to keep the tablet at home and invest in the smaller Wacom Intuos tablet for traveling.


When I'm working and have access to an outlet, I slide the laptop slightly up and back so that it rests on the hinge of the Pelican case. This lets me connect the power adapter and gives me access the left USB port (and allows me to connect the R2D2 USB hub at the office). It also gives the hard drives underneath a little breathing room so they run a little cooler.

Things to get in the near future:

1. smaller Wacom tablet
2. decent set of collapsible headphones for video editing
3. external battery with a MagSafe connector (for times when there's no available outlet)
4. Solar charging option?

Sometimes it takes a while

I shot this image a few years ago but wasn't able to finish it 'til today.

Originally we shot this against a greenscreen using an ABR800 Ringlight. I also used 2 SB-26 flashes with CTO gels behind the model to help her blend into the fire that I was planning to add later in post.

Joanne was the model, with makeup done by Jessica Waite and hair done by Karli Benedict. My friend Jennifer was our assistant - she stood in for the skeleton and held his sword.

There were two things that made it take this long for me to finish the image: the greenscreen and the skeleton.

First, getting a good matte from the greenscreen turned out to be harder than I had planned. The greenscreen wasn't evenly lit ( I didn't have enough lights and it was also one of my first attempts at greenscreen work). Thanks to my friend Chaz at After6Media, I found out about a Photoshop plugin called Primatte, which is really effective at cutting out subjects shot against a greenscreen. It helped that the way Karli styled Joanne's hair made it so there were no tiny stray hairs to mess around with. Using the Primatte plugin, it took about 3-4 mouse clicks to get the matte about 90% of the way I wanted it.

Second problem was finding the right adversary for our ninja. Since our assistant wasn't willing to be hacked to pieces by our ninja, I thought about adding a samurai warrior in post to battle her. Unfortunately, samurai battle gear is a little hard to come by on Maui.

Went through different ideas - ninjas, zombies, nothing was sparking a good idea. I added the fire and background screen and left it at that for a while.

What got be back into working on this image was a tutorial from Videocopilot.net - a website dedicated to showing how to make all sorts of crazy cool effects in Adobe After Effects. One of the tutorials was how to disintegrate a person, like the effect seen in the movie "Blade".

I went thru the tutorial and happened to be watching CSI at the same time. That's when I got the idea for the skeleton - sort of a homage to the old stop motion Ray Harryhausen Sinbad movies.

I used a CG skeleton, added the disintegration effect from After Effects, and the result can be seen above.

Radiopopper test shoot

Saturday was the first time I got to do a real field test with my Radiopopper gear. At the same time, I also tested out my Mac netbook and Eye-Fi wireless card.


The model was Jackie, a model I met thru Model Mayhem. The lighting for this is a Canon 580EX and a Lastolite EZYBox Hotshoe softbox triggered via a Canon ST-E2 transmitter and Radiopopper triggers.

Using the Radiopoppers was pretty easy. I pretty much left the camera on Aperture Priority mode and let the flash unit do all the calculations to balance the fill flash with the existing light.
The Ezybox softbox did a pretty nice job of softening the light. Here it's being held about 5 feet from the model on camera right.

At the same time I was doing this , I was also testing out the Eye-Fi wireless card and netbook that I previously mentioned. I had the Eye-Fi card in the SD slot of my 1D mk II and was able to get it to work pretty easily and a fair amount of distance from the netbook (about 20-30 feet)
The only problem I encountered was because I was shooting RAW, it took a very longtime to transfer over. Jpeg transfers were pretty quick, taking about 12 seconds or so.

On the newer 1D mkIIN and the 1DmkIII, there is supposedly a way you can save RAWs to the CompactFlash card and just Jpegs to the SD card. I think that would be ideal for me as it would make the transfers much faster, but unfortunately, my older 1DmkII does not allow that. It only lets me backup from card to card, and since I shoot RAW, it backs up the RAW files as well. If I were shooting just Jpegs, it would have gone much faster. Guess it's back to the WFT-E1 for now.



The weather that day wasn't really cooperating with us - there was a huge cloudbank on the horizon which hid most of the sunset. While we were waiting for the sun to hopefully peek through under the clouds, I setup this shot. Using a blue gel, I custom white balanced the camera, then put the gel on the strobe (AB800 with 11" dish) to get this result. I tweaked it a little in Photoshop to bring in the sky a little more.

More from the pin-up shoot

Still working on images from Alyssa's pin-up shoot, so here's a few more.


Makeup artist Kahulani did an awesome job with the pin-up look. To see more of her work, check out her website by clicking on the link on the right hand side of this blog.


Alyssa is a great model to work with. She came up with a lot of great poses, which made it much easier for me since posing a model is one of my weak points.


This chair actually was a very faded light magenta. I had her pose with it anyway, figuring I could change the color in Photoshop. I kinda like the results, but really wish we had real red chair to work with from the beginning.

Also experimented with different preset looks in Lightroom This was Spilt Wine, I think.

Eye-Fi Pro + MacBook Nano

I really like shooting tethered to the computer during a photo session because it allows for greater collaboration. Having the images come up on the computer screen during the shoot makes it much easier for everyone - the makeup artist can check for touchups, the model can refine her poses, the stylist can fix any stray hairs, and the photographer can check lighting and focus. It's also much easier on the eyes than having everyone crowd around the tiny LCD on the back of the camera.

My usual setup for model photo sessions is a 15" MacBook Pro, a 19" LCD external monitor, a Canon 5D, and the Canon WFT-E1 transmitter which sends the images from the camera to the computer over WiFi. I like it because there's no cables, which makes it easier for the photographer to move around to get the shot.


While this is great for shoots in studio, it's not that great when you're out in the field, especially at the beach. Sand gets into everything and you're always having to keep an eye on your gear in case it decides to grow legs and walk away from you.

I had been looking for a lower cost solution to use in the field. It took a while, but I found the solution in two parts - a Mac netbook and a wireless SD card.

Netbooks have become very popular recently, due to their low cost and their ability to do about 90% of what most people use a computer for - browsing the web, checking email, viewing video clips, etc.

Apple still doesn't make a netbook, so many people have taken to hacking low cost netbooks such as the Dell Mini 9, Lenovo S10, and MSI Wind to run Mac OS X. You can see a list of compatible netbooks here.

I chose to use the Dell Vostro A90, as it was available from Dell for less than $200, and is pretty much the same as the now discontinued Mini 9 in that it is one of the most compatible netbooks to run OS X on.

I found a very easy to follow guide for installing Mac OS X on this netbook. Once I installed 2 GB of RAM and a 64GB SSD, I had it up and running within a day.

It boots up and runs pretty quickly due to the SSD. I have Photoshop & Lightroom installed on it (Yes, the netbook DOES run Photoshop) and I am planning to use it in the field (the screen is only 8 inches so I'm mainly using it just to check the shots as they go into the computer). This will save a lot of wear and tear on my 15" MacBook Pro.


The next part was the wireless solution. The Canon WFT-E1 is a pretty big unit which attaches to the bottom of the camera via USB or Firewire. It's very bulky and expensive (about $1000). Canon has since come out with newer versions of this device which incorporate the Wifi transmitter into the extended grip for cameras such as the 5D MkII, the 40D and 50D.


A few years ago a company called Eye-Fi came out with an SD memory card for around $100 that included built in wifi capability. It was a pretty amazing product at the time (WiFi from an SD memory card? Wow!), it was very limited in that you needed an internet connection for it to work. It was mainly intended for consumers to upload images directly to the web from the camera. While you could upload from your camera to your computer, both had to be on the same wireless network, meaning you needed a router for the connection to work. It unfortunately did not support ad-hoc connections directly between the camera and the computer.

Thankfully, a few months ago they introduced the Eye-Fi Pro - a 4GB SDHC WiFi card ($149.99) that DOES support ad-hoc connections. This now does about the same thing as my WFT-E1, but for about $850 less.

It took some time to get it setup properly. You need to use a web browser and connect to their website to do the initial setup for the card. Firefox gave me some problems when I tried to switch on the adhoc connection on the netbook to set it up in the Eye-Fi manager software. But once I got it worked out (hint - use Safari to do the web setup), it was smooth sailing. The Eye-Fi website has a forum which was a big help in getting the problems worked out.

So now with this setup, it looks ready to roll. On the Mac netbook, I go to the menu and select "Create Network" and set up an ad hoc connection. I insert the Wifi Pro card into my Canon Powershot G9, turn it on, and we're good to go. I click the shutter and after about 12 seconds, the images pop up in Lightroom. The Eye-Fi Pro supports transmitting both JPEG and RAW files, but for now I'm just having it send the JPEGs to the computer for preview purposes only (I transfer the RAWs from the card back at the office)

I showed this to my buddy Chaz from After6Media, and his first reaction was "I gotta get this!" ;-)

In preliminary distance testing, I was able to get the camera to transmit from a distance of about 70 feet (couldn't test out further because that was the length of the room I was in at the time)

I haven't tried it with my regular cameras yet, as they use CompactFlash media instead of SDHC cards. I do have an SDHC to CompactFlash adapter card that I will use to test in my 5D. I'm also thinking of using it in my 1D MkII which has slots for both CompactFlash and SDHC.

With the Mac netbook, the Eye-Fi Pro, my Canon G9 and a Strobist light kit however, I think I may have found the ultimate mobile mini studio. I'll be testing this out in the field in a couple weeks and will post the results.

Pin-up style photoshoot

This past weekend I had the chance to work with model Alyssa and makeup artist Kahulani again. We also had assistance from Quddus, which made setting up the shoot much easier
(it's great to have an assistant.)

This time we worked in-studio to create a 50's pin-up style look.

For lighting we used 2 AB 800 bare bulb strobes aimed into white V-flats. Another AB 800 was used in a beauty dish mounted on a C-stand in front.


We started out using just the beauty dish as our light, with the 2 other AB 800s turned off.



As the shoot progressed, we turned on the 2 AB 800 strobes in the V-flats to get this look.


The V-flats are very easy to make. These are just 4x8 sheets of white styrofoam from Home Depot. They come in various thicknesses. I chose to go with 1" thick sheets, which run about $18 each. I used gaffers tape to join the sheets together on one side so that they could be propped up in a V-shape.


For our second set, we wanted to try to create a black and white film noir style of setting. We used just 2 lights for this. 1 SB26 with a gridspot aimed at the wall, and another SB26 with a cardboard snoot aimed at the model. The table is covered with a black satin sheet from Ross, and we hung some black cloth on a C-stand behind the model to block light from being reflected from the white cyc wall.


I eventually replaced the model's light with an AB800 and a gridded strip softbox, as the snooted light was a little too harsh on her.




Still working on the images from this shoot. It was the first time I've ever done pin-up style photography and it was a lot of fun!

One of the reasons why I use a Mac. ;-)

This video's in French, but even if you don't understand the language, it's well worth watching.