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Better Digital Camera
#35
21
MontalbettiCampbell
Nick Rains takes his camera behind the scenes of our cover shoot.
L
ooking out o the plane windowas we came in to land, all I couldsee was rain lashing down andheavy clouds draped over the city.Welcome to Sydney in June.I was ying down rom sunny Brisbaneto meet up with Denis Montalbetti andGay Campbell who would be shooting animage or this magazine’s cover, and usingsome high end studio ash which Deniswanted to test out.Ater being dropped o by cab atthe wrong end o the industrial estate,and having to trudge through the rainto fnd B2 Studio, I was wonderingwhat I had let mysel in or. Ater all,Montalbetti and Campbell are legends inthe industry, known or their uncompromising approachand wonderul sense o style, and here I was stompingthrough the rain to spend a whole day in the studio withthem, watching them create something special or mycover.I was directed to Studio 4, and stepped into a vastspace o white to see Denis and the crew setting up aairly complex lighting rig at the ar end. There was acontrolled sense o purpose right rom the beginning– Lauren, our model or the day, was having her hairdone, Denis was measuring light levels and adjusting thestrobe positions – it all seemed very calm and organised,and that’s the way it went or the rest o the day.Thinking back to my days shooting commercialwork in Sydney back in the 90s, I was rather expectingrantic rushing around, mad panics and a general moodo mayhem. But no, apart rom the model’s latex pantsbeing too big (baggy latex is an odd look!) and Gayhaving to rush o to fnd new ones, everything wentswimmingly well.
Concept
It all started when Iapproached Denis to be eatured in
Better Digital Camera
;my idea was to eature him in the What’s in the Bagsection but Denis mentioned that he was interestedin comparing the two top studio ash systems’ highspeed ash durations. This sounded like a great idea andit gradually escalated into Denis and Gay shooting an
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Montalbetti & Campbell
image or their book that I could use or my cover – rommy point o view this was quite a coup.Between us we managed to bring together all thepeople we needed to get the look Denis and Gay hadin mind. Sun Studios agreed to provide us with their topBroncolor Scoro packs, L&P sent over their equivalentProoto Air packs and we cut a deal with B2 Studios asa neutral venue which had enough ceiling height or aull trampoline. Denis wanted to see i the claimed ashdurations o 1/4000th o a second were realistic and tosee i he could totally reeze a bouncing fgure – hencethe trampoline and the big studio. On top o all that wedecided to use the best possible capture device andBruce Pottinger rom L&P brought over a pre-releasePhase One camera with the latest P65 back.
Lighting
Denis set up a airly simple lighting arrangement. Twoheads running rom a single pack were placed behindicelite screens to illuminate the white background andallow it to blow out to almost pure white.One head was put in a big Octa light shaper on aull height boom to act as a key and another head wentinto a low strip light to act as a fll and even out the lightallo rom the key light. Since the model would bewearing a shiny black outft it was important to controlthe contrast between pale skin and black costume.Throughout the day both the Broncolor and theProoto ash systems perormed admirably – Denis doesnot give his strobes an easy time, he expects them towork when he needs them to work and they did thiswithout a single glitch, hour ater hour, shot ater shot.The claimed ash duration o 1/4000th was hard toconfrm. We had a ash meter that measured duration aswell as light level but unortunately it was the only bit o gear that let us down that day. It showed the Broncolorsrunning at 1/3200th when they were set to 1/4000th butwe could not repeat this check with the Prootos later on.Based on the published data the Broncolor Scoropacks peak at 1/12,000, just like the Prooto Air, and at thepower settings we were using (to get F11), both were inact indistinguishable. I we had gone down to F5.6 theProotos would have been running at a shorter durationthan the Scoros but given that the 1/4000 setting wewere using roze the motion anyway, we would not havebeen able to tell the dierence.Again, based on the published data, the Prootos
can
outperorm the Scoros – at max power the Scoros runat 1/240th as compared to the Airs at 1/1600th. Also, theminimum duration or the Prootos is not at minimumpower as you would expect, but at about 1/16th -1/8thpower. The Scoros ollow a more usual pattern o reducingpower to get a shorter duration throughout the wholerange.
Camera
Denis has never shot with a Phase One back beore andat frst was a bit concerned about his lack o amiliaritywith the equipment. He was pleasantly surprised to fndthat the our big buttons on the P65+ are simple and
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