On Monday I did a photo shoot at Jackpot! Recording Studios with my fellow friend E Einowski of Wikirecording.org
Jackpot! Recording Studio, owned by Larry Crane, has hosted sessions for artists such as The Go-Betweens, Elliot Smith, Quasi, Stephen Malkmus, Sleater-Kinney, The Decemberists, and The Shins over its ten-year history (info provided by Wikirecording.org). So it’s quite a big player in the Portland and national recording scene.
My friend E runs a wiki site on recording. One of the features of the site is studio directories. Jackpot! Studios will hopefully be the first of many studios we shoot. The shoot consisted of us shooting pretty much their entire inventory of mics, guitars, pre-amps, and various other equipment.
For the shoot I rented a Canon 14mm f/2.8 L Lens and borrowed a 5D from my photography friend TJ Cameron. It was great shooting with a full frame camera body. My camera, the 30D, has a 1.6x cropped sensor. That means that any lens I use, the focal length will be multiplied by 1.6. If I have a 35mm lens that would translate to 56mm lens on my camera. This can be great if you’re shooting sports or wildlife because a 70-200mm lens now becomes 320mm at the long end. At the other end though if you’re shooting with a wide angel lens it can be a pain. The 14mm becomes 22mm. A diagram below (from TheDigitalPicture.com) shows the difference between full frame camera and cropped sensors.
Side note: TheDigitalPicture.com is an awesome website if you’re just getting your feet wet with canon SLRs and have no idea what lens or camera body is right for you. There’s a ton of lenses out there and from my experience workers at retail stores don’t provide the best info about each lens. Where as this website goes into great detail about each lens and has recommend lenses for different types of shooting from weddings, portraits, sports, wildlife, etc.
Another great website is dpreview.com. They don’t have reviews on lenses but they have great reviews on camera bodies (even compact cameras). If you are looking to purchase any type of camera this is the website you need to . . . no have to go to before you decide on a specific camera. I can guarantee you that i if you do you’re research on that site you will end up with a camera that you are very happy with.
But enough plugs here’s a few photos from the shoot:
(where the magic happens)
(my setup: two Alien Bees AB800s, with octo-soft-box on the left and white umbrella on the right, with a white backdrop)
We had a little fun with the 14mm 2.8 lens after we finished shooting all the equipment
(And that’s a wrap! At 12:30am; From left to right: Kendra (Jackpot! Manager), Isaac (me photographer), E (founder of Wikirecording.org))
