The background info:
This past Christmas, I started a new tradition. I was thinking that not only is the usual big group portrait sort of boring, it’s also difficult to get everyone in the same shot… especially if you have upwards of 20 or more people to shoot, half of them are watching the Laker game, a handful are out for a walk, and one or two are taking a nap somewhere.

I decided to put a spin on the family holiday photo: the photo booth. In a spare room, I set up my camera on a tripod and got all the lighting dialed in, and then hooked up the wireless remote trigger on it. For a seat, I provided a soft chair, and for a background I hung a drape (that was not currently in use) behind the chair.

Instructions were given to everyone there that before they left, they had to sit down and take at least 4 photos of themself… either solo, or in groups no larger than 4 people. The limit to how many were allowed was due to the square crop I wanted to do on all the shots… I wanted to make sure that there weren’t too many people in the shot so I wouldn’t be forced to cut someone out of a shot.

When all was said and done, after processing all the shots, I had 145 images to deal with.

OK, now for the nitty-gritty on how I made the photostrips:
Photoshop CS2 has a feature called Contact Sheet II (in the File menu, under Automate) that will create a sheet of image thumbnails for you. 

Here’s how I used it:
Now, I had 145 images to put into photostrips so the first thing I did was group them together into sets of 3 or 4 images. Each set I put into it’s own folder.

In PS CS2, I ran the Contact Sheet II tool. For ease of reading, I’ll break this up into sections.

Source Images:
I browsed for the folder that had the set of images I wanted in a strip. Other options are to use all currently open images in PS, or you can select images using Bridge (Adobe’s file management tool). I did not want to open 145 images at one time on my system, and I don’t use Bridge. So, I stuck with the Folder option. Now, I had all of my sets of 4 or 3 images in their own folders… this is only because I had specific images that I wanted to go together. If you have a boat-load of images and you don’t care how they’re grouped, you can select a folder that contains all of them and this tool will create the separate photostrips for you. 

Document:
This is where you set up the end result of the process. Units… I always use pixels. Width and Height should be set depending on how many images your strips will have, or how many rows. If you’re going with 4 images, make it a 1:4 ratio for width to height, if you’re doing 3 images, make it 1:3. Resolution is always debatable … I say at least 240 px/in to be able to print. If you’re only worried about web, then it should be no less than 72 px/in. Mode should remain RGB Color unless you’re advanced enough to know what the others are, and if you are you wouldn’t be reading this since you would have figured this out already. Flatten All Layers takes all the photos and puts them onto one layer. I recommend leaving this unless you want to move each image around individually… not sure why you would for a photostrip.

Thumbnails:
Columns is how many images you want to go across, obviously we want that to be 1. Rows is how many images you want to have in your photostrip. We are all fairly familiar with the typical format of a photo booth photostrip: 4 images in one colums. There are variations… I’ve seen 3 in one column. For my photostrips, I wanted the typical format, so I set the tool to do 1 column and 4 rows. I kept the check mark on Use Auto-Spacing after messing around with it in a failed attempt to get padding automatically set up on the horizontal.

Everything else I left along. Once you click OK, you will set it work by opening each image and putting it into the end result. I found that the padding was lacking on the top and sides, and it was sufficient in between each image. So, I added some width and height to the canvas (Image > Canvas Size).

I tried making an action that would run the Contact Sheet II tool, prompt me for the folder location, then use my pre-stored parameters to create each strip… but, I was unable to. The action kept using the same folder, so I gave up on it. I did make an action to extend the canvas size.

One thing that keeps me from wanting to buy now it is that there is no way to mount it to your camera while shooting. They are in development on the Orbis Arm, that will allow you to fix the ring flash to yoru camera… but, that means there will be more cost.

There is another ring flash adapter out there, the Ray Flash, which sells for $300 (US). This attaches to your flash while the flash is on the shoe mount. Makes me wonder how much cheaper the Orbis will be once the “Arm” is figured into the price… maybe $250, or more even? The Orbis looks more promising as it has a larger surface for the light to dispurse. This would mean that the light would be softer than the Ray Flash.

Well, maybe if I feel ambitious enough, and can find the time (shyeah, right)… I can make a DIY ring flash that I’ve been eye-balling for a while now. It looks fairly simple to do, the final outcome is clean looking, and it has a bracket that mounts to the bottom of the camera body.

I do remember that she had about 50-60 pieces, and wanted modeled shots as well as studio. Well, it turns out that she had some model friends, so that worked out for the posed shots of the pieces being worn. And, I set up a small rig in my kitchen which consisted of PCV pipe, a white sheet, and two shop lights. In the end, I’m proud of the outcome.

Along with a bevy of other fixes/improvements, the ones that caught my eye included:

• Focus acquisition performance in dynamic-area AF mode has been improved.
• Focus acquisition performance with contrast-detect AF has been improved.
• Auto white balance performance has been improved.

For a description of changes to the menus included in the update, download the D300 Firmware Update PDF from Nikon from here.

For a complete list of improvements and instructions on updating your D300, follow these links: Windows | Mac