The Power of the Cube

I've not done a tech review before, but there's a first time for everything. A couple of weeks ago I found a YouTube review of a neat looking external light source cleverly called the Lume Cube. I forget who's video I saw first - like any good photographer with a mild case of GAS*, before buying I binge-watched a whole load of video reviews, but the first one I saw was probably Hudson Henry's - you can check it here if you're interested. What the reviews had to say was all very interesting, and I could immediately see the potential of this device in a number of settings, particularly as an additional light source in low-light settings for mixed-light photography, using the cube as a fixed (or even mobile) fill-in light.

*Gear Acquisition Syndrome - the tendency of (not just) photographers to acquire unnecessary gear in the often mistaken belief that it will improve your images without actually investing time or effort in your talents.

Lilly of the Valley || Olympus f5.6, 1/200, ISO 200

There are three versions of the cube, the first version was a solid 4.5 x 4.5 cm cube with a screw-cap Micro USB charge port, the second - Lume Cube Air - is a lighter version intended, as I understand it, for the drone market, and the third returned to the initial format with improved battery duration, light quality and spread as well as 'controllability'. All of them have a standard 3/8" tripod attachment thread and so can be mounted in a number of different ways.

All of them can be controlled using buttons on the device itself or using a dedicated smartphone App, allowing basic on/off controls, a light intensity bar allowing you to set the luminosity any where from 1-100%, strobe control and optical slave mode if you want to couple it with a separate flash device.

Having looked at all the reviews, particularly with an eye on battery life and light quality, I decided I'd go for version 2 and get a few of the useful-looking accessories while I was at it. In Europe the Cubes aren't all that easy to come by and not every camera shop stocks them. Amazon couldn't deliver the Portable Lighting Kit I was after so I Googled around and found it in a German online camera store and ordered one. Or thought I did. When it arrived I was dismayed to realise that I'd mistakenly ordered an original cube. Rather than send it back, I thought I'd give it a run for its money and see how I got on with it. The original Cube does actually have one advantage over the newer model; the charge point has a screw-cap rather than a rubber cover and is rated to 30 m underwater rather than the 10 m of version 2. If I want to, I can take the cube underwater as a light source for shooting whilst diving. 

What's in the Box?

Like I said, there were a couple of things in the Lighting Kit that piqued my curiosity, it has a range of attachments and filters as well as a doodah for mounting it on the camera's flash hot-shoe. Some of gear is clearly intended for portrait photographers and videographers.

The Cube

Obviously the Cube itself is the star of the show. Shot here in ambient daylight at about 5% maximum brightness. You're never going to need more light with this thing, it's an absolute monster. In a good way of course.

Box Contents

As well as the cube itself, a mini user manual and a micro USB charging cable, the Portable Lighting Kit+ comes with a filter attachment adaptor, a dome diffuser - probably my most-used filter, strong and light flat diffusion filters, two hexagonal plates, red, green, blue and yellow gels, two Lee CTO filters, a barn door, a snoot, the (dumb) hot-shoe connector and a sturdy zip case (not shown).

How to Use It

I'm not going to go into the user manual here, but I want to discuss the potential of the Cube from a landscape photographer's point of view. As well as off-camera fill-in light for flowers and other small objects, the Cube provides plenty of light for illuminating the foreground of night- and astro-photographs or for illuminating people. One of the things I'm looking forward to trying is using it in water to illuminate a wet-scape.

Lighting up the Aquilegia

There's something attractive about off-camera light. Light straight from the camera (flash) is fairly boring, resulting in an essentially equal exposure over the whole image, whilst at the same time creating harsh shadows if anything is partially obscured. Light something from the side and you'll start getting landscape photographers interested. Most landscapers look forward to the golden hours - the time just after sunrise and just before sunset due to the gentle light from the side rather than above. With the Cube, I can take this a step further, illuminating from wherever I please within reason. Lighting from below, for example, yields some lovely results on bell flowers, making it look as if they're lit up from within. A while ago I was struck by some photos of mushrooms by a British photographer who goes by the Instagramm handle @fatmanskinnycamera and was interested to see whether I could recreate the feeling he generated with a mix of artificial and natural light. I set up my test lab in the back garden. Please excuse the greenfly, I only noticed them after I'd finished processing the images! Here's my comparison of native light, on-camera flash and Lume Cube illumination, with the Cube set to approximately 20% luminosity.

Native Light || Olympus f16, 8" ISO 200

On-Camera Flash || Olympus f16, 1/60 s, ISO 200

Lume Cube Underlit || Olympus f16, 6" ISO 200

I think the results speak for themselves, the native light image is ok, but there's little separation from the background (well, I was shooting at f16), and the sky is distracting. The on-camera flash causes harsh shadows on the flowers (look at the flower on the right) and completely darkens the sky. Yes, I know it's possible to reduce the intensity of the flash to better balance the light, but I'm not particularly keen on investing the time in this skill. The Lume Cube, however, casts a gentle ethereal light and gives me the flexibility of being able to place the light source wherever you want is fantastic.

So that's how it looks close-up, what if you need more light. Here's a quick-and-dirty grab of my garden yew tree with and without the Cube, which was on the floor below the tripod.

Don't forget that there's an acute danger of under-exposing photos at dusk and at night due to the brightness of the camera screen; to ensure good exposure, I strongly recommend you rely on your camera histogram, assuming you have one. 

What I Do and Don't Like

There really is so much to like about this cute little cube:

Ease of use The constant source makes setting up photos practically idiot-proof. There's no need to muck about with flash, no trial and error. It's pretty much WYSIWYG and it's easy to move the light around and change direction and beam whilst monitoring the effect in real time through the camera. 

Light Quality Although one of the complaints against V1 was the light quality, I think this comes from portrait photographers who were concerned about light on skin. By light quality I mean that they reported it giving a slightly off-white colour cast. I certainly had no complaints illuminating flowers at dusk in the garden. 

Control The amount of light is also easily controlled in 1% increments via the dedicated Lume-X app, even if I did keep losing the connection. For shorter periods this was simply a question of clicking a button in the app.

Attachment It's easy to attach the Cube to any number of supports using the 3/8" thread, whether the hot-shoe connector or an Arca Swiss plate for tripod mounting. Mostly I use it on my old Ultra-pod II tabletop tripod using the supplied hot-shoe connector. This gives me infinite directional control. If I don't use the connector, the Ultra-pod screw tends to push off the filter-holder.

Filters The fact that the filters attach to the filter holder magnetically is brilliant, though I'm not sure I'd trust this 100% underwater. I think I'd be afraid of loosing the filter holder by catching on something.

Portability Lastly, the Cube is incredibly portable. At 100 g, and approximately 20 ml volume, no-one is going to notice it at the bottom of a rucksack or camera bag.

Lilac by Moonlight	Lilly of the Valley
Aquilegia Lit by Snoot	Dandelion Head

There are a couple of things I don't like with my version 1 cube that have apparently been overcome with version 2:

Battery The battery seems to run down very quickly, though not faster than indicated by the manufacturer. I tried a continuous test at 100% luminosity to see whether it would last the full 30 min, but the device quickly became so hot that it shut down. At 50% luminosity I only got 40 min continuous running before running the battery down - disappointing considering the blurb says it should be good for 2 h at this level.

Connection Another bugbear is that I frequently lose contact with the app and have to re-initiate the connection on the cube end.

Light Quality Lastly, the light quality feels quite harsh for what I want to do with the Cube, but the diffusers easily compensate for this. 

Bottom Line Despite these shortcomings, all-in-all I really like what I can do with the Cube, even if I wish I'd got V2 to start with. If I find myself using it a lot, I might grab myself a basic Cube V2 for underway.

Aquilegia Aglow || Olympus f16, 13", ISO 200

An Homage to the Humble Dandelion

The Dandelion: the gardener's bane and the photographer's muse. A springtime delight turning green fields yellow and then grey. Some flowers are pretty but don't photograph particularly well. Others seem more mundane at first glance, maybe because we see them everywhere, but take a closer look and you'll see a different picture, whether flower or seed heads. 

A New Sun || Olympus f16, 1/1600 s, ISO 200

They inherently possess three elements that naturally make for strong images; both flower and seed head are complex yet repetitive. Repetitive patterns catch the eye and emphasise structures and light. The flowers are a cardinal colour, a bright solid yellow that stands out from any background - although they also lend themselves to monochrome conversion. Lastly, the seeds form a translucent globe that, from close and down low, give great pictures against the sky. 

Anthers || Olympus f10, 1/2000 s, ISO 800

Stripped of Colour || Olympus f10, 1/2000 s, ISO 800

Glowing Orb || f20, 1/500 s, ISO 200

Sometimes imperfection is also eye-catching, as with the half-finished dandelion clock. 

Perfect Imperfection || Olympus f16, 1/200 s, ISO500

Complex Perfection || Olympus f20, 1/160 s, ISO 640

Detail || Olympus f20, 1/100, ISO 1600

What looks like sepia conversions are in fact the natural colours straight out of the camera.

In a Field of their Own || Olympus f8, 1/1000 s, ISO 200

Globes || Olympus f16, 1/200 s, ISO 320

A lot of these images were taken lying prone in the field. For the real close-ups (I deliberately don't use the term "macro" as technically they're not) I used a +3 diopter magnifier screwed into the front of the Zuiko F4 12-100 mm, which even without help is a great near lens with a minimal focal distance of 7.5 cm. 

Against the Sun || Olympus f16, 1/100 s, ISO 200

B&W Challenge

The Challenge

The lock-down seems to be fertile ground for photo projects and challenges, ranging from Joe Edelman’s much-publicised Stuck at Home series to Oddbjørn Austevik’s 1000 Step Challenge with many prominent proponents in between. They’re a great creative use of time, motivating us to hone our existing skills and perhaps pick up some new ones. And getting to know your gear well is always a good investment. I've spent some time with focus stacking* photos of snakeshead fritillaries that are growing in the garden and learned a lot about both the camera and the editing process.

Back in March the kids gave me Hoddinott and Bauer’s 52 Assignments in Landscape Photography for my birthday and I'd been looking forward to working through the book over the year and seeing what tips and tricks I could add to my toolbox, but a lot of the assignments require being out in, well, the landscape and that’s not so easy right now. Sure, I could shoot a panorama of the back garden, but who wants to see that?

*Focus stacking is a method of extending the depth of field to get more of the subject in focus, most often used in close-up photography and wide-angle landscape photography with close foreground. It involves taking multiple photos with various focal points from close to far and then assembling them  to one image using software (or in-camera).

Time for a Challenge || Olympus f7.1, 1/20 s, ISO 1600

I didn’t escape the challenge trend and was recently tagged on Facebook for a ‘Ten day 10-black and white photos describing daily life’ challenge, which I took up enthusiastically (thank you Silke). I’ve long felt that monochrome hasn’t really been my strong suit, but I recently watched a couple of videos on the matter online and wanted to try out some of the principles. Plus the photos had to be of everyday items, also something outside my normal photo-genre (gummybears notwithstanding - if you want to find out more check out #gummibeardiaries on Instagram - at the time of writing I was the only one using this hashtag, who knows, maybe it's taken off by the time you read this).

Daily Essentials || Olympus f8, 1/80 s, ISO 200

The trick with monochrome, so I’ve been told, is to almost fully edit your photo as normal, balancing the tones etc. and then do the monochrome conversion almost as the last step. For these still-lives (still-lifes?) I think this has worked pretty well. Depending on the subject matter I’ve tried to keep the depth of field quite low.

If you want the step-by-step on the ON1 edit, it was fairly simple. Here you go:

Develop:

• Apply camera and lens correction in develop

Filters:

• Big Softy Vignette at 50% opacity
• Tone Enhancer set on Auto, opacity 100% (normally I would do this by hand , but I tried the auto function and found it gave me the look I wanted)
• Border
• Black & White Chrome, neutral colo(u)r response

Further Options:

• Dynamic Contrast where appropriate to enhance detail
• Lens Blur to reduce depth of field
• Local edits as necessary

As you can see, I had a lot of fun with this project and I had eight of the images together within about two days without thinking about it too much. You can probably tell from the first two images that I'm a huge fan of wood grain and natural textures. I really liked the contrast here between the natural grain and the man-made objects. The last two photos took a bit longer and I had to wait for the muse to strike. I'd wanted to take a portrait of Chicco, the ginger tom that we acquired last year from a friend of a friend of a friend, but it turns out that he's camera shy, so I took this one of his sister Evi sitting in the cat tree, looking out the window. For all the complaints about noise in m4/3 sensors, these ISO 1600 shots are working out extremely well.

Evi watching the world go by || Olym-puss f8, 1/13, ISO 1600

Spontaneous or Planned?

Watching the modern photography gurus at the moment, a lot of them plan their photos down to the last detail; when the sun will hit a certain angle, precisely where to stand, checking the edges of your photo, etc. For a long time I’ve beaten myself up about this because this has not been my style; I’ve always been much more impulsive and spontaneous in my photography and studying the profis I felt that I was doing something wrong or that my photography was somehow second class.

Ascending || Olympus f13, 1/25 s, ISO 1600

I took this next photo of my glasses on a tiled surface as part of the B&W challenge. Having slept on it, I felt that I had overshot the mark with the narrow depth of field, but I was otherwise quite happy with the shot, the composition and light really work for me. The original was one of a set of two or three hand-held shots where I played about with the focal point and height of the camera.

Reading Glasses Reflecting || Olympus f5.6, 1/50 s, ISO 1600

Having slept on the image, I thought there was something I could do to improve it. When processing I realised that I’d got a wedge of the white wall below the tiles and there were a couple of other ‘border’ issues. I also wanted to broaden the depth of field and try to catch an area of focus in the magnifying part of the lens of the glasses.

So I set up my tripod, aligned the camera carefully, cleared the clutter from the background, twisted the glasses to the optimal position, focused manually on the bridge of the glasses, performed an aperture run from f4 to f22, realised that I was on auto ISO and it was running at 1600, set the ISO to the native 200 of the camera, repeated the aperture run, opened the camera, realised that I was missing the main SD card from the camera and that I was shooting on secondary, searched the living room for the missing card, realised I’d left it in my T-shirt pocket that was in the washing basket, gone upstairs to check the washing basket to realise that my lovely wife had been ultra-efficient and that the washing was in the machine already, spotted the card in the front of the washing machine, put the secondary in the computer, checked the images...
...and was disappointed that none of the images had the same feeling of the original.

Aperture series with the Zuiko f4 12-100 at about 10 cm:

f4		f5
f6.3		f8
f10		f13
f16		f20

Lessons Learned

I think that some of this has to do with the emotion that I realise that I’ve been trying to convey with my photos - another lesson that I’ve been trying to build into my photography. That emotion is something spontaneous, revelling in the magic of the moment and not something that I can express when I plan a shot to death. So, two lessons for the price of one; I now know which aperture to use out of the starting block for close-ups and, perhaps even more valuable, I’ve learned that I don’t need to beat myself up about being a spontaneous photographer and not a planned photographer - that’s just my style.

Dandelion Closeup || Olympus f10, 1/2000 s, ISO 800

So thanks for laying down the gauntlet Silke. What about the rest of you? What tricks have you picked up during the lock-down.

Oh, and by the way, the SD card survived. Washed in de-ionised water and then dried it for 3 h in rice.

Ende (see what I did there?) || Olympus f4, 1/50 s, ISO 1600

Staying Close to Home

Back in February I presciently posted an entry on the virtues of shooting on the doorstep. At the end of March it seems that it's all that we can do. Depending on where you live, this is either more or less of a convenience. I'm actually enjoying working from home. The boy-child made it home safely over a week ago and at the time of writing we're waiting on tenterhooks to see whether the girl-child manages to get on a flight back first thing tomorrow morning. No doubt none of us will sleep well tonight.

Snowbells || Olympus f5.6, 1/1250 s, ISO 200

Photographically speaking, it's a chance to sit back and take stock. I'm very fortunate to have a picturesque little wood at the bottom of the village that has a lot of potential, plus the garden is beginning to erupt, so there's a lot of macro work to do. I'd been looking for a chance to play about with some focus stacking and I guess now's my chance. On top of that, even though I'm working during the day, I now have a lot more free time in the evenings - I'm usually out at least three evenings a week and those meetings are either on hiatus or taking place online, freeing up time that would be spent travelling to and from Munich.

My Local Woods

There are other ways of investing time in my photographic skills, whether working on post-processing or making use of the plethora of online resources out there. Just this weekend I've come across another landscape photographer via the ON1 Photo Raw tutorials who has several online courses available. Hudson Henry's Approaching the Scene series on YouTube is going to keep me going for quite a while.

The Boy-Child is Back || Olympus f4, 1/640 s, ISO 200

A Walk in the Woods

It seems to me that there are two or three categories of photographers; there are those who know in the field precisely what makes a good image and will go out and take two or three photos and they will all be strong images. Thomas Heaton appears to fall into this category. Then there are those who recognise beauty when they see it but aren't sure how to capture it to make a good photo and end up taking lots of images, a few of which will be keepers. I like to think that I fall into this category. The third category, well, we won't talk about them, but we all know some people who fall into this group.

Here's a good example of what I mean. As we were walking through the woods, we cam across this fresh woodpile with the sun shining on the bright ends. My initial snap was just about OK, the second shot a bit better, but for the third I got down on my knees. The perspective is much better and although not a portfolio shot, I was quite happy with this one.

The Log Pile, 1st Attempt || Olympus f4.5, 1/125 s, ISO 200

The Log Pile, Better || Olympus f4, 1/125 s, ISO 200

Similarly, a few metres further down the track we caught this mist against the light. Again it took me a couple of attempts to capture the scene adequately. The first shot was my initial reaction to the mist - shooting from the hip so-to-speak. The second was after I'd had a minute or two to hunt down a proper composition.

Mist Rising I || Olympus f4.5 1/50 s, ISO 200

Mist Rising II || Olympus f4.5 1/100 s, ISO 200

Out of the woods we circled back towards home though open fields and lots of solitary tree goodness. There are a couple of stands of my favourites as well, the mighty silver birch. Here with a bit of Orton magic, just because.

Orton Birch || Olympus f4, 1/500 s, ISO 200

In the Back Garden

Of course there are some genres of photography where you have to take a lot of photos to get just a few good shots. Wildlife photography is certainly one of those genres, whether birds or, in this instance, bees. We have a young nectarine tree guesting with us at the moment (long story, it was a present from one of my choirs to one of our singers last year for his new house which is still being built, in the meantime we're looking after it). Sipping tea on the terrace yesterday afternoon after spending all day in the garden clearing up after the winter storms I noticed a couple of bees humming around it, collecting pollen and so I grabbed the camera to see whether I could catch them in the act.

Michael's Herrenbesuch Tree I || Olympus f11, 1/400 s, ISO 200

Michael's Herrenbesuch Tree II || Olympus f9, 1/320 s, ISO 200

The tree has beautiful pink blossoms and a lovely petal structure. I spent about 10 minutes yesterday trying to catch a sharp photo of the bees, took the SD card inside and plugged it into the PC, only to be disappointed. None of the bee shots had turned out sharp. It was then I remembered that I also have a Hoya +3 diopter screw-in lens for the front of my zoom. So it was on with the magnifier and back out to the nectarine, where I was able to get these shots. The magnifier lets me get much closer to the bees, but it does come at a cost of depth of field.

As with all animal portraits, the eyes have to be in focus for a decent photo. Almost got it...

Nearly, but not quite || Olympus f11, 1/320 s, ISO 200

And this was my shot of the day. Not 100% sharp, but I'm happy with this for a first attempt:

Bee on Blossom || Olympus f11, 1/400 s, ISO 200

Stay safe, stay well, and we'll catch you on the other side of this mess.