hospital – Ming Thein

November 19, 2012 by Ming Thein

This hospital has turned into one of my regular clients – I went back for another couple of shoots. Incrementally, we’re working our way through the departments and refreshing their image banks. I’m also hoping to shoot live surgery at some point in the future, but no idea if that’s going to be cleared by their board or not – there are so many things that might be unacceptable both from a hygiene point of view – you can’t autoclave a camera – as well as privacy etc. Still, it’ll be an interesting experience. At least light shouldn’t be a problem, given those fantastically bright operating theatre fixtures. (Side fact: one of the reasons why I didn’t go to med school was because I couldn’t stand the sight of blood. But oddly enough, operating a camera makes me focus on shooting and completely ignore everything else – the resultant being that I’m happy to shoot in places which I’d never even think about visiting ordinarily.)

But, I digress. With this post, I wanted to talk a bit about lighting on location. Hospital lighting in the wards tends to be uniform, flat and uninteresting: fluorescent tubes, more fluorescent tubes, and yet more…you get the picture. If you’re lucky, they might even be color matched. Fortunately, to keep patients feeling comfortable with the ambience, most of the time they’re at least daylight-balanced tubes (this is important, because it means you don’t have to gel your flashes to balance out ambient).

A typical scene involves some equipment, a doctor/ technician, and a patient. And the interaction is what we’re trying to capture, along with some sense of context, along with a bit of ‘ooh, look at the fancy machine’. This means that lighting is a bit of a challenge because you’ve got to have a nice diffuse source to make the humans look good, as well as something a bit punchier and more directional to give the machines some depth and dimensionality. On top of all of this, there often isn’t that much room in which to set things up, and ceilings aren’t that high. Oh, and it’s also a working hospital, so time is very much of the essence.

Composite shot – the glass was far too reflective and dark (it was a sleep lab, after all) so I had to shoot one of the monitoring post, another one of the computer screen, and a third inside the sleep lab itself from approximately the same angle of view of the operator and line of sight.

The setup I go with is a pair of speedlights on stands with umbrellas; either shoot-through (for the primary light on the humans) or bounced reflector (for the machines). Sometimes I’ll add a third speedlight as a catchlight or to brighten up the background a bit. For the most part, Nikon’s CLS/ iTTL system works pretty well, though the background speedlights sometimes don’t trigger due to being out of the line of sight. But a little tweak to position and usually all is well again. I was considering radio triggers, but then I was told that they weren’t allowed in the hospital as they might interfere with critical equipment such as pacemakers and life support machines (!) – probably best not tried, then. MT

Setup. This room was luxuriously huge.

This one, not so much.

I don’t quite remember what I shot what with, but a typical loadout for this kind of job goes:
Bodies: Nikon D800E (primary), Nikon D700 (secondary; now D600); Sony RX100 (B-roll)
Lenses: Zeiss ZF.2 2.8/21 Distagon, Nikon AFS 28/1.8 G, Zeiss ZF.2 2/50 Makro-Planar, Nikon AFS 85/1.8 G, Zeiss ZF.2 2/100 Makro-Planar (sometimes).
Lighting: 4x Nikon SB900s and plenty of batteries; shoot-through and reflective umbrellas; stands.
Support: Manfrotto 1052BACs for the lights, and a Gitzo GT5562 GTS Systematic with Manfrotto Hydrostat head for the camera.

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On Assignment: Time factors and big magnets

August 22, 2012 by Ming Thein

MRI machines are a lot thicker than they look on TV. Nikon D800E, Zeiss ZF.2 2.8/21 Distagon

I’ve shot for hospitals before, though not under these conditions. The day – well, night – before the shoot, I didn’t know I was going to be shooting the next day. Turns out that the hospital ordered a new MRI machine, at a cost of just RM13,000,000 – making it by far the most expensive object I’ve ever photographed. Here’s a bit of background on MRI machines: they’re so heavy that the room has to be purpose built to accommodate it, and the machine settled in then the rest of the place completed around the outside. (The control booth wasn’t operational or in place when I went there.) Apparently the magnet has to be cycled when it’s new to run in; during breaks in the cycling when the magnetic field strength dropped to zero was the only time we could go in to shoot it – they never fully turn the thing off. The upshot of all of this was that I had about half an hour to complete the shoot before they had to gas the MRI machine up with helium and start the cycling process again.

Inside the donut. Nikon D800E, Zeiss ZF.2 2.8/21 Distagon. Single SB900 with an umbrella outside to illuminate the patient and room. I don’t know why, but I kept thinking of Star Wars whilst I was inside here shooting.

There were about ten shots to complete inside the room – several of the room and machine itself, a few with a patient in it, and a couple with doctor-patient interaction. Needless to say, everything required lights to be brought in; not because ambient wasn’t bright enough, but because even, flat light is great for soothing patients but utterly crappy for providing definition on white objects. I used two SB900 speedlights for this shoot, triggered by the built in on my Nikon D800E. One was the main key light on a stand using an umbrella, and the other was placed to provide background fill. Whilst they work fine with line of sight, I do find myself wanting to hide them in ever more creative places; the inside of the MRI’s donut hole being one. I think I must be one of the few people to ever stick a flash inside an MRI machine. Perhaps I’ll pick up a set of Pocket Wizards at some point.

Half an hour and one haematoma on my finger later (I clipped it between the leg joins of my Gitzo while rushing to pack up) – good thing I was at a hospital – we were done. Possibly the most rushed shoot I’ve ever done, but also rather fun.

The Mammomat. Has a rather neat carbon fiber um…rack tray, too. Nikon D800E, Zeiss ZF.2 2/50 Makro-Planar. SB900 with umbrella from top right. The bluish color is actually a big glass panel that’s part of the machine; it changes color which supposedly helps keep patients calm.

The session actually started off here, in Mammography – it’s challenging to make a room that’s designed to have some separation between the x-ray source and the operator booth look cosy and inviting. And even more challenging was to show the process with a model patient in a way that didn’t reveal any skin.

The trick with lighting here was to balance the mid-warm ambient fluorescent with flash to provide definition and shadows; I shot manual for all of the exposures at about 0.5-1.5 stops under ambient. A SB900 with umbrella behind and above the subject provided face definition, with a second naked one on the floor provided room fill.

Showing everything while showing nothing. Nikon D800E, Zeiss ZF.2 2/50 Makro-Planar