We usually don’t make a big deal out of Chinese New Year, except for going out for a (sometimes ridiculously overpriced) dinner with Gen’s family.  But this year, some great friends of ours decided to get into the spirit, and naturally we came along for the ride…well, we especially came along for the homemade dumplings (see photo #2 below).  It turned into quite the little gathering, and naturally I couldn’t help but document the whole thing.  Enjoy!

Kaya was a big help making the dumplings.

Two different kinds of dumplings, plus homemade pork buns.  So good!

Gen and her ‘slightly-rude-when-seen-out-of-context’ apron.

Making dumplings.

Scotty making homemade Char Siu.

Scotty even went so far as to make the dough for the pork buns.  Well worth the effort!

Elliot had some fun, too!

Enjoying the feast.

Luke – highly suspicious of the camera.

Kaya’s band-aid; always coming off.

More kids – (very) young and old.

Oh yeah.  Veggies.  Almost forgot about those.

And cookies for dessert, of course.

Why do kids love to do this so much?

The setup here is really deceptively simple.  A 580EX sitting on the keyboard of my MacBook Pro, and a 550EX on a lightstand at camera left, at a 45 degree angle to the back wall.  Both flashes were triggered by Pocketwizard Flex TT5s, with a PW Mini TT1 and AC3 in the hotshoe of my 5D Mark II.  Lens was the Sigma 50 f/1.4 at 1/20, f/6.3, ISO 100.  Camera and lens held steady by an Induro CT-213 carbon fibre tripod and Manfrotto 498RC2 ballhead.

I wanted a nice swath of blue in the background, so I gelled the 550EX with a single cut of CTB (colour temperature blue).  However, I found that this wasn’t giving me the rich, saturated blue that I was looking for.  I added a 1/2 CTB to the 550EX, giving me a total of 1 1/2 CTB, but this still wasn’t really what I was looking for.

The solution was to set the camera’s white balance setting to tungsten, which makes neutral white light look blue, and thus makes blue light look…well…really blue.  This gave me the blue I was looking for on the back wall, but made the neutral white light from the 580EX on the keyboard go too blue.  To get around this, I simply gelled the 580EX with a full cut of CTO (colour temperature orange), to correct for the tungsten white balance.

You’ll notice that one side effect of the tungsten white balance is that the white light from the Apple logo on the back of the MacBook Pro is pushing heavily toward magenta, as is the label on the wine bottle.**

This is a shot where I really wish I had a third Speedlite, which I would have used to illuminate the MacBook Pro.  As it stands, you can barely make out the outlines of the screen.  Oh well.  I sold my 580EXII to buy the Fuji X100, and I’m 100% satisfied with that deal, so I’ll just have to live with two Speedlites for the moment.

Anyway, this shot is a good example of how creative use of gels and white balance can radically transform what is possible with off-camera lights.

** – EDIT: This morning, I realized that I had processed this image using the public beta version of Lightroom 4, which offers localized white balance corrections using adjustment brushes.  So I went back and edited the white balance of the Apple logo, to make it more white.  I also boosted the exposure of that region.  A minor change, but an important one, I think.

Now, on with the show.

Have you ever taken a look at the front of your lenses?  If so, have you ever noticed that the physical size of the “hole” in the front (the aperture) varies wildly between different lenses?

For instance, take a look below at the front of two of my favourite lenses, the Canon EF 35 f/1.4L and the Sigma 50 f/1.4.

(Top: Sigma 50 f/1.4; Bottom: Canon EF 35 f/1.4L)

Both of these lenses feature a wide maximum aperture of f/1.4.  What this means, if you don’t already know, is that the maximum aperture diameter for each lens is the focal length divided by 1.4 (incidentally, this is why it’s written as “f/1.4″ and not “F 1.4″, as you sometimes see it…that little forward slash means something).

For the 35mm lens, this means that the maximum physical diameter of the aperture is:

35mm/1.4 = 25mm

For the 50mm lens, the calculation is:

50/1.4 = 35.7mm

(And this is apparent in the photos above, where the physical size of the aperture is visibly larger on the 50mm than the 35mm)

Since the aperture is roughly a circle, and since the area of a circle is equal to pi times the radius squared, the area of the maximum physical aperture for these two lenses is:

35mm

Pi x (25/2)^2 = 490.87 mm^2

50mm

Pi x (35.7/2)^2 = 1000.98 mm^2

So the maximum physical aperture area of the 50mm lens is slightly more than 2 times larger than the 35mm lens (2.04, actually).

But this begs the question, why does setting each lens to f/1.4 give the same exposure if the 50 has an aperture that is twice as large (in area) than the 35?  Doesn’t that mean that the 50 lets in twice as much light, and thus the exposure at f/1.4 would be one stop greater for the 50 than the 35?  This question causes some degree of confusion.

As anyone with a light meter knows, f/1.4 (or any f/stop) gives the same exposure, irrespective of focal length.  Here’s why:

A 35mm lens “sees” an angle of view of about 63 degrees, while a 50mm lens “sees” an angle of about 46 degrees.

Now, let’s assume that we are standing 10 metres away from a light source.

35mm

The angle of view is 63 degrees, the lens-to-subject distance is 10m, the radius of the circle that the lens “sees” is x.  The hypotenuse of the triangle is y, as shown below.

Using basic trigonometry (which I can’t believe I actually remember), we can solve for x as follows:

Cos(63/2) = 10/y

y = 10/Cos(63/2) = 11.72m

Sin(63/2) = x/11.72

x = 6.12m

Thus, the area of the circle that the 35mm lens “sees” (let’s call this the “imaging circle”) is:

Pi x (6.12)^2 = 117.81 m^2

50mm

Again, we can easily solve for x by just changing the angles here from (63/2) for the 35mm to (46/2) for the 50mm lens, and we get an image circle at 10m of 56.48 m^2.

Now, let’s divide 117.81 (the area of the 35mm’s imaging circle @ 10m) by 56.48 (the area of the 50mm’s imaging circle) and we get 2.08.

Thus, the 35mm lens captures light from a circle that is two times larger (in area) than the 50mm lens.

But hold on a sec.  We previously determined that at the same f/stop, the 35mm lens has an aperture that is about 2 times smaller than the 50mm lens.

Let’s assume that we put an even light source 10m from our camera.  The 35mm lens will “see” about 2 times more of that light source than the 50mm lens, but it will also let in about 2 times fewer photons of light (at equivalent f/stops, of course) than the 50mm because of it’s smaller physical aperture size.

That is, the two cancel out perfectly.  And this is why setting a lens to f/1.4 (or any aperture) gives the same exposure, regardless of the focal length.

(Just for fun, take a look at the massive size of the maximum aperture on the Canon 85 f/1.2L II.  Despite the large physical aperture, I assure you that f/1.4 on this lens produces the same exposure as f/1.4 on any other lens, for precisely the reasons given above.)

I hope this helps to clear up any confusion regarding f/stops, focal length, and exposure.

Without question, 2011 has been the craziest year of my life.  I’ve been fortunate enough to do some serious traveling; started a new job which I thoroughly enjoy; had some terrific photography clients; and seen my son develop from a helpless lump into a wonderful, playful, energetic, and just plain awesome little guy.

2012 promises to be another crazy year.  I’ll again be doing some traveling, which should provide ample opportunity for photography.  I’ll be participating in the Google+ ’366 Project’, trying to produce one reasonable quality image per day for the entire year (I’ll be blogging each image, too, so check back often).  And I’m booking now for Spring 2012 family photography and event photography, so use the contact link at the top of this page if you’re interested.

With all of that in mind, I thought it might be a good idea to see off 2011 by reposting some of my absolute favourite images from the past year.  As I said, this blog is going to get a whole lot busier in 2012, hopefully with at least one image per day.  I’ll also be doing a smattering of product reviews that have been on my plate for a while now.

But without further delay, here are some of my favourite images from 2011.

Happy New Year!

Of all the places I visited in 2011 (heck, of all the place I’ve visited in my life), Beijing was by far the craziest.  We might as well have been on Mars; that’s how incredible it was.  I’ve never felt so cut off from the language and the culture.  And I say this having had full-time guides to the city, without whom we would have felt even more cut off.  I feel incredibly fortunate to have such wonderful friends who are wiling to go to such ends to show off their city and to make us feel welcome.  Here are a few of my favourite images from Beijing.

Summer Palace

This was a pretty cool scene.  Amid the craziness of Chang’an Ave, I noticed this lone cyclist appearing from an underpass.  This, I think, is a good example of the concept of the ‘decisive moment’ in street photography.  Had this been taken a few seconds later, you’d have noticed the legions of other cyclists that followed this man from under the tunnel.

On our last day in Beijing, my wife and I were left to our own devices, so we decided to head over to the Forbidden City, which was just a few blocks from our hotel.  In case you’ve never tried to get in to the Forbidden City on a Sunday afternoon, let me tell you straight away that it’s not easy to negotiate a queue of what I can only estimate was at least 50,000 people.  We decided to walk completely around the Forbidden City, only to discover that the north entrance is no longer an entrance at all.  On our way back to the far more famous (and busy) south entrance, I saw this man furiously digging up the road in front of his house.  He had to be at least 80 years old, but there he was, digging as hard as he could.

This was taken on our way to Mutianyu Great Wall, and to me it just about sums up China.

Taken outside the Grand Hyatt Beijing.  Sometimes you plan out the ‘decisive moment’, and sometimes you get lucky.  This was certainly the latter.

Hong Kong is certainly on my list of my favourite places on Earth.  Next to Beijing, it felt completely ‘normal’.  No doubt, this was at least in part due to the preponderance of English speakers.  But it really did feel like a completely different world compared with Beijing.

Butchers in the Mid-Levels.

Panorama of Victoria Harbour and Hong Kong Island, from Kowloon.

I spent four days in San Francisco in October, and absolutely fell in love with the city.

Aside from a bunch of street/travel photography, I did actually a good amount of family photography this year (although – full disclosure – the shot below was taken while on holiday in the Dominican Republic with some great friends).

One of the greatest achievements for me in 2011 (at least in terms of my photography) was the development of my post processing techniques.  The image below was one of the first ones I took and edited using my new post workflow, and I’m quite proud of it.  On a another level entirely, it’s simply a great photo of an absolutely wonderful kid, whom I love very much.

This photo (and the two that follow it) are from my favourite session of the year, with Ewan and his parents.  As I said in the original blog, this was one of those sessions where nearly everything went right.  Great subjects, great locations, and great light.  Sometimes it all comes together.

Ewan took a little while to get used to the camera, but he eventually came alive and showed me some great looks like this one.

This was a real “Aha!” moment for me.  We had done a bunch of shots in the park around the corner, and we decided to take a walk down the main street, just to see if we could get some shots in the neighbourhood (the type of shots lifestyle photographers really love).  It just so happened that the light was absolutely incredible right at that moment, and just as we came around the corner, I noticed the “Joy” sign.  It was one of those moments as a photographer where you just sit back and let the light and the surroundings and the love do their thing, and just try to stay out of the way.

This one is just full of awesome, and I’ll say no more about it.

And, of course, I would be remiss if I didn’t post at least one photo of Elliot.  This one – taken in Barbados in October – pretty much says it all.

Here are a few of my favourites from the session.

The Jazzatolas play Trane Studio in Toronto on January 28.