Ron Shoots

This page will be about the cameras and gear I use. And some of the trials and tribulations of being dependent on technology. If you have any of the same equipment, please feel free to post your comments or make suggestions!

CAMERAS

I shoot with both Canon and Hasselblad digital systems. Our studio is 100% digital from capture through delivery.

Canon System

Our Canon’s are 17 megapixel 1Ds Mark II bodies with a range of lenses from 15mm up to 400mm. For the most part, my favorite lenses are the 24-105mm and the 28-300mm zooms. Both are image-stabilized and work in a variety of situations. The longer lens is a bit of a beast but you can’t beat having a range of 28mm up to 300mm in one lens!

The Canons are great for extreme weather… like blizzard conditions on frozen lakes in Minnesota.

Not having to switch lenses in windy or dusty conditions is a real plus. The Canon body and many of the lenses are water resistant so light rain or salt spray are not a problem.

We also have a Canon 5D for back-up with an underwater housing for really extreme conditions or for shooting the cool half underwater/half over shots.

Hasselblad System

(First, my sincere appreciation to Paul Claesson and John Williams of Hassselblad USA, and to Steve Hendrix of PPR/Atlanta for helping us out! We had an early problem with the camera and these folks were continually in touch, hot-swapping cameras and lenses, and ultimately replacing the system. Stuff does go wrong and when it does, you need the prompt support from this kind of team!)

We’re using the H2D-39/H3D-39 series. These cameras create absolutely amazing 39 megapixel files- more than twice the size of the Canon files! I’m using both the 35mm and 50-110mm zoom lenses on a daily basis. We also have the 28mm, 80mm, and 120mm lenses plus a 1.7x tele-converter. The 120mm is a macro lens for both portrait and close-up product work.

While the format is slightly rectangular, I have been cropping the images square much like the original film-based medium format cameras. I am loving the square format! There’s something about a square composition that is rock solid and compositionally challenging at the same time.

However, the Hasselblad is not without its quirks. First of all, the camera LCD screen is fairly small with passable color rendition. (I use the histogram for determining most exposures.) In addition, the camera does not create JPEGs, so to view images with any detail, the files need to be downloaded to Hasselblad’s own FlexColor application. (These files are so massive that Hasselblad developed their own proprietary RAW format- actually 2 formats, one for writing to CF cards, and one for manipulation within FlexColor.) Now the good part about FlexColor is that the incoming images can be color-enhanced on the fly. Simply adjust the first image and the rest of the images will be adjusted automatically. For the most part, shooting tethered (camera hooked via firewire to a computer) is the best way to go for the most control. If not tethered, then downloading the files as soon as possible through FlexColor is the next best option.

Here’s the camera tethered to the laptop while on the road:
Click for our hints on tethered operation with FlexColor.

I put the camera through some serious testing on my recent aerial shoot. Shooting from sunrise to sunset, from sea level to 14,000 ft, and from 90 degrees to 27 degrees… and all in a 5 day period. The camera worked beautifully in all those conditions.

So the H2D-39/H3D-39 cameras provide incredible files with more detail than you ever thought possible. The downside for a location shooter is having a laptop either tethered or nearby to double-check and/or color-correct the files. CF cards don’t hold many images at this size. Every click to a CF card is 47 MB and every click directly to the laptop is 80 Mb! For a location shooter, the process is not quite as fluid as using a 35mm digital system.

LIGHTING

Update: Just had a fantastic experience in February with the Hensel repair facility. We’re tough on our equipment… we shoot from tropical rain forests to frozen lakes. And ship gear about 100,000 miles a year on FedX and airlines. One of our Hensel Porty units stopped working on a weekend. We shipped overnight to Danielle, Inc. (Hensel’s dedicated service center in New Jersey), I had a call Tuesday with a diagnosis of the problem, and the pack arrived back on Wednesday morning. That’s great service!

I use 3 kinds of lighting systems- 2 portable strobe systems and hotlights. The portables are the Hensel Porty system and a Quantum handheld unit. Most of the hotlights are Arri ranging in size from 250w to 2000w.The Hensels are a solid versatile strobe system. Powerful (1200ws), water-resistant and durable with compact heads and a nice ringflash. For me, the most important cool thing is that the system is battery-powered so I can take the lights anywhere. Although you don’t want to carry them on your back very far, they can be taken outside and used in dusty or dirty places.

In the Maui studio, I also use 2 Interfit 1000 light panels for variety. (For us gearhead shooters, different kinds of light can mean different creative styles.)

We also use a combination of PhotoFlex pop-up reflectors and translucent screens. Sometimes the flash will be too strong and a reflector adds just the right amount of light. On the other hand, a reflector is a constant light source and can easily cause the model’s eyes to squint. In that case, the quick burst of light from a flash is the right choice. Reflectors are also hard to hold in windy conditions so a flash is really the only choice.

COMPUTERS

My studio has been working with digital for well over 12 years. We are a total Mac-based studio (more on our digital operations later). On the road, I use an Apple MacBook running the Hasselblad FlexColor application when tethered. This same laptop is used for downloading CF cards whether from the Hasselblad or Canons.

The laptop is the “black” version with the Duo 2.0Ghz processor. We maxed out the RAM to 2Gb. The stock version only comes with an 80Gb hard drive. Durability is critical when you’re on location, so I found a replacement drive that both doubled the storage capacity and had the highest shock-resistant values. The new internal drive from OWC is a Hitachi TravelStar 160Gb that thus far has worked flawlessly!

Check out how we almost destroyed the laptop!

CAMERA SUPPORT

I use Gitzo tripods and a Kenyon Labs gyro-stabilizer for aerial work. The “can’t live without” gear are the Really Right Stuff brackets that bolt to the camera for quick and secure connections to the tripod head.

LIGHT STANDS

In the studio, I almost exclusively use Matthews C-stands. They’re heavy duty steel, indestructible, easy to use, and, most important, can be nested together when storing them between productions. Matthews makes a gazillion different clamps to satisfy even the most avid gearhead. (I resemble that remark!)

In our travel case, we have a set of lighter weight stands. These are the typical tripod style aluminum stands that always need to be weighted down. Unfortunately, unless you rent gear at the location, lighter weight stands are the only choice with the airlines increasingly restrictive weight limitations.

Sandbags are both a necessity and an excellent “insurance policy” for keeping a light stand upright. I use the ones that look like miniature saddle bags since they can be easily folded over the legs of a C-stand. Sandbags can also counterbalance a boom arm. And if you’re on location and get your vehicle stuck in loose sand, sandbags are excellent for putting under the tires!

PORTABLE HARD DRIVES

This is a tough one. Portable hard drives are necessary for back-up and transferring digital files to the studio or to clients. We used LaCie for several years but had several drives go bad, one right after another. We then moved to OWC drives and continue to use their 100 Gb drives although we occasionally will have problems with these as well.

A couple months ago, we purchased a few of the new LaCie Rugged drives and thus far, no problems! We’re always shipping drives and pack them carefully. We’re bubble wrap junkies- there’s really no such thing as too much bubble wrap! Just seems that a drive, after being shipped 15-20 times just doesn’t want to work as well.

For larger back-ups, we use the OWC 500Gb Aluminum Drives which always work perfectly, and they look great next to a G5.

FILE STORAGE & BACK-UP

In the old days of film, all we had to do was make sure that the slides stayed high and dry. With digital, the potential for catastrophic loss of files is exponentially multiplied! Not only are there basic drive failures, there’s power surges, rough handling, future compatibility and asset management concerns.

Back-up is critical. Our studio policy is not to ship a drive unless 2 other back-ups exist. We assume that the overnight carrier will lose or damage the drive, and that one of our back-up drives will go bad. Are we paranoid? Absolutely! Have we lost 2 out of 3 drives in the past, sadly yes…

Our back-up drives are almost exclusively from OWC. We use 250, 400 and 500 Gb drives. We’re testing an OWC 500Gb mirrored array right now. This is in addition to the 3.5 terabyte Apple XRaid array in our server rack.

Update

Never enough storage! In December 2006, we added a 10 terabyte array from StoreHouse Technologies to our server rack. This new array connects via a fibre channel switch directly to our existing Apple XServe. We now have 13.5 terabytes of online storage.

THE TECHNOLOGY BEHIND RONSHOOTS.COM

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