Did some quick shots for a company newsletter today and it was my first real opportunity to play with an off camera lighting setup that involved more than a single flash. The female subject below was actually just assisting me with the setup and we fired off 3-4 quick test shots for gauge the lighting. The shot turned out so good that I decided to keep it and in fact I like it a little better than the ones with the intended subject. The intended subject works in computer security hence the vault door as the backdrop.

Strobist Info:

Dropped my old (free) Pentax AF200T behind the subjects and positioned my trusty Canon 430EX in front to the lower right. Purposely left it bare (no diffuser, bounce, etc) for a harsh dramatic effect. Sure the lighting could have been positioned better in a few respects, but it was mostly an experiment and I think it turned out pretty good considering I took less than 5 minutes to set it up.

Please excuse the adjustments they were done on my Macbook screen quickly. If I have time later I will rework them a little once I’m back at home on my HP2475w.

Many Lightroom users are unhappy with the Post-Crop Vignette in Lightroom 2 because it gives much different and usually less appealing results compared to the Lens Correction Vignette.

Inspired by Matt Kloskowsk’s recent post “Presets - Focal Point for Landscapes” I decided to see if I could recreate the effect of the Lens Correction Vignette using gradients. The results (I feel) are pretty good! Definitely much closer than I ever got with the Post-Crop Vignette adjustment.

This version simply servers as a proof of concept. I still have to clean it up and also create a portrait orientation version. To do this I plan to edit the .lrtemplate file directly to precicely place and angle the gradients. I have already done this in another gradient related preset and it works well but this one will require some digging through the file and some number crunching to get all the angles right, etc.

Please let me know if this is helpful! Once I get the final versions completed I will post them as well. I am super busy though to don’t hold your breathe! If anyone has the time and desire to attempt some cleanup and tweaking please feel free to give it a go… and share your results!

Vignette - Lens Correction Mimic via Gradients [by DigitalOxygen.ca]

UPDATE: Well sadly I just realized that gradients are treated just like the lens correction vignette tool and the adjustments are relative to the edges of the original photo, not the crop edges. So if you use this preset, then crop your photo it will crop out part of the effect of the preset. One workaround would be to manually move the gradients when you crop the photo but that kind of defeats the purpose of using a preset!

What you’ll need:

1. - White Macbook
   (any will do but if you truly want to match the black macbook as close as possible you’ll need the top end version with the same specs as the black macbook, minus the HDD size of course)
2. - Black Macbook Hardshell from Incase ($50)
3. - External HDD $115 +/-
   (in my case I purchased a seagate 160GB 2.5″ laptop HDD and a NexStar3 black external USB enclosure for around $115 for the pair.  Ideally your external drive should be at least the same size as or larger than your internal drive but at long as it bridges the gap between the black and white macbook HDD sizes it will due.  At the time of this writing that is 90GB so any 100GB+ drive is good.)
4. - A copy of super duper (optional) $30 +/-

I won’t go into installation or configuration details here (that’s what google is for :D) but what you have now are the necessary parts to put together not only an (almost) black macbook but one with twice the storage or more of Apple’s black macbook (depending on what HDD size you chose) but also the potential to have a portable, bootable clone of your entire HDD.  Sure there are pros and cons to this setup but considering it costs $5 less than the offical blackbook and you get not only a hardshell but also an external drive for backups or an entire clone of your drive I say it’s a pretty good alternative, in fact I think I perfer it all things considered.

Let us know what you think of this pseudo black macbook idea and share your alternative ideas!

This shot was lit by my 430EX Speedlite on-camera with a home made diffuser/bounce surface.

Will write more details later and naybe some build photos from the extension tube.