Olympus OM-D E-M5 Review:Four thirds (17.3x13mm) sensor 16.1 million effective pixels with 4608x3456-pixel output Weather...
Category: Location Tools
Black Foil
I’ve mentioned aluminum foil, and I’ve mentioned black flags. Put the two in a camera case and shake, and what do you get? Black aluminum foil, of course. I’ve carried a roll of black foil in one of my location cases for as long as I can remember. Black foil isn’t something most still photographers [...]
Black Flags
When a light source is visible from your lens, you’re at risk of getting flare in your image, which is a bright patch of unwanted highlights, sometimes in the shape of your lens aperture. The sun is a good example of a light source that typically causes flare in a photograph. Sometimes flare, also known [...]
Chalk
I was at a rock-and-roll concert the other night (yes, I still indulge) and was amused to see that the rows for seating were marked on the floor with chalk. By the end of the night, the chalk numbers were nowhere to be seen. That’s the nature of chalk—it’s relatively harmless, writes on most textured [...]
PVC Tube
PVC, or polyvinyl chloride, helped revolutionize the plumbing industry. PVC is lightweight and can be cut and glued together for a water-tight seal. For the photographer, PVC makes for some interesting possibilities. Because PVC tubing is sold in a 4-inch diameter and at 10-foot lengths, the tubing makes an excellent transport container for background paper [...]
Aluminum Foil
The other day I opened up one of my hoop disk reflectors for a photo shoot and a quantity of silver paint shot into the air and down my lungs—yuck. It was clearly time for that old reflector to go into the circular file. I grabbed a roll of aluminum foil and pulled out a [...]
Folded Foam Core
One of the photo studios I wrote about at the beginning of the tutorial was in a loft in an industrial building. Beneath me was a busy framing shop that did much of the framing and shipping for the area’s art galleries. The framing shop used to sell me individual pieces of foam core whenever [...]
Caution Tape
Caution tape makes for great signage. You can’t miss it. Even if you are colorblind, the high contrast of the diagonal black and yellow stripes will alert you that there is something you should take care about. On a location photography shoot, that “something” might be an extension cord running along the floor, or the [...]
Slide Boxes
The next throwback item is the slide box. If you took pictures in the pre-digital era, or your parents did, you might have a few, or a few hundred, slide boxes stored away. I’m not talking about the paper ones. Those aren’t rigid enough to be useful storage for going on the road with your [...]
35 mm Film Container
This tool and the next are throwbacks. Forget how they were used then; this is how you can use them now. If you have any 35mm film lying around, you might consider throwing out the film and saving the container. If you use film for any reason, holiday snapshots with the old film point-and-shoot or [...]
Medicine Bottles
Empty prescription medicine bottles are the first of a trio of small but strong storage tools that I recommend and that work great for location photography. These tight-lidded marvels make great storage for spare bulbs and small parts. (See Photo 1 and 2.) After years of being toted around in an equipment case, the cardboard [...]
