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Today was quite a day. After working on rebuilding Toby the steam roller for a decade, my father-in-law Bob was finally ready to take it out for it's first proper run. Both Maisie and Jack got to have their first ever rides on Toby, sitting on the bright red toolbox on the back of the tender. They both loved it, so I can see many summer days ahead of us visiting Toby at a steam rally or two.

After the excitement of her turn on Toby, Maisie relaxed in her usual way sucking her thumb and cuddling her doudou and bear. Even the sun made an appearance to warm her up a bit.

Here's Maisie sat on the toolbox on the back of Toby during it's first proper run out after a decade of work to completely rebuild the steam roller.

After a decade of effort to completely rebuild Toby the steam roller, my father-in-law, Bob, was finally ready to take it out again on its first run today.

Maisie and Jack were very excited to have their first rides on Toby, as was Bob!

We've finally finished work in the studio and everything is ready. My Dad has worked really hard making everything and putting it all together so I now have decent storage and a new cyclorama / infinity wall to play with. He's now enjoying a very well earned rest ... until the next job!

This shot is from a lighting test. I was setting up the background lights to see what sort of aperture I could get out of them when trying to make a pure white background. Maisie started dancing and playing around so I grabbed this shot.

The main limitation with the studio is the low ceiling height, but with a white background you can easily play around with the composition in post (See Zack Arias' white seamless tutorials) to make it look as though it was shot in a much bigger space.

Strobist

We're Gonna Need a Bigger ̶B̶o̶a̶t̶ Studio (Setup)

Ranger Quadra A Head, A port at 5.0, 21cm reflector with barn doors, camera left
Ranger Quadra A Head, A port at 5.0, 21cm reflector with barn doors, camera right

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This was the first lighting test of the cyc / infinity wall now that all of the painting is finished and it is ready for use.

I set up a couple of Ranger Quadras fitted with barn doors to control the light a bit, as I haven't made my black and white V-flats yet. A quick shot at f/11 easily gets me to white with the Quadras both set to 200Ws. I didn't have time to measure this accurately though so I might be throwing too much light back there. Anyway, it bodes well as I've just received a couple of Elinchrom Style RX600 units which I plan on using for background lighting most of the time.

A quick shot of Maisie, using this setup, is here.

Strobist:

Ranger Quadra A Head, A port at 5.0, 21cm reflector with barn doors, camera left
Ranger Quadra A Head, A port at 5.0, 21cm reflector with barn doors, camera right

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