don’t let the form + design of what exists today shape you’re future. i’ve custom designed everything from bags to gizmod’s in the past + have no intention of stopping now. after a series of flights lately i came up with a concrete concept for a fantastic new bag.

however, knowing that the complete design manufacture process is well beyond me i approached my friend matt in bend, oregon to set me straight. matt’s a creative industrial designer who’s actually developing a complete set of camera bags for a client as i type this (more on that soon).

his response to my request was so well thought out + insightful I thought i’d share it (with his permission of course). though i’m not thinking of a production mass market run at this time he brings up too many good points to pass up that relate to any branding/product work that you do. (+ just so you know i’m already moving on the automated taffy puller…)

Heath

Yes, we do do one off designs when presented with a good product. The process question is more of a book than a response. It is a tough road, however if you are interested I can guide you through. We have a monthly column in a local publication (http://www.cascadebusnews.com/index.php?m=2&s=78&id=942) that covers this process. Here are some of the high points… To keep it simple:

1) If you are worried about protecting your idea(or someone stealing it), start using NDA’s (non disclosure agreements) with anyone out of your close friends and family.

2) You want to do some market. The internet works wonders in this area. Start with simple google searches for products similar. This should take no more than a few hours. If you still have something you want to pursue, analyze (provided there was some unearthed competitors) competitors and tailor your product to capitalize on weaknesses of other products and strengths of yours. Note; sometimes competition doesn’t actually look like competition. If you had a revolutionary idea for a digital day planner (being silly of course), you could go out and see that your idea was far superior to anything on the market, however you may ignore the smart phone technology. Another example, the competition in a premixed canned bloody Mary is not other premixed canned bloody Mary’s, its beer, zima, wine, mixed drinks etc… The point is: avoid tunnel vision. Further your competition may not exist yet. If you were coming up with a new baby bottle that dwarfed all other baby bottles, there is a strong chance that P&G may see your design, and make their own version.

3) You know your competition, now you want to know what their IP encompasses. In google, under the more tab there is a patent search filter. Click on this and search for competing patents. This can be tricky as the search terms are very important. You have to find the right combination of phrases that will get you staring at that one patent that hampers your progress. You can certainly have someone do this for you, but since you are a clever guy, I am sure you can handle it. 99% of the patents won’t need a second glance. The other 1% can usually be worked around.

4) Next analyze your market. Who is buying your new home automated taffy puller. What are the demographics. How will you market your device etc… Out of this should come a plan for how you will attack your market, what channels are there to get your product to those buyers, and what price will they pay for the product.

Note: this is a lot of words for a process that in many cases may take a lot of time and research, however it may be a very simple process as well. This usually happens when a person with a product has intrinsic knowledge of the problem and industry.

5) You’ve done your homework. You know how, and you know what price people will pay. These previous steps all led up to giving your product designer the right information. You should now sit down with someone like myself and go though your product in detail. A good product developer should be able to digest all this information and by the end of the conversation have the product 90% thought out and designed in their head. For instance one of the key pieces of information is selling price and how many you expect sell. This determines manufacturing methods, what continent it will need to be produced on, limitations on design based on production methods, nifty additions to the product that may improve functionality. Additionally they should be able to tell you roughly how much money you (Heath) will have to fork out to make molds, samples, and production runs. If there are many parts going together to make one big assembly they will tell you how to produce the tools needed for this assembly.

6) If you are not scarred yet then the critical moment comes. Now you actually have to pull the trigger, or go back to drinking beer and swimming in your pool. All previous steps were at little or no cost to you. Once you bring in the designer your costs add up. And the process is not as easy as we make it sound. Often it can take a year or more of iterations to get the product ready. The process can cost as little as a few hundred dollars all the way up to 10-30k.

7) After the design is done it is time to source your product. The suppliers will make molds prototypes etc… and start sending you parts within a few months. At this point it is time to fine tune your product and get it just right.

If the product has some important features or applications you will want to test the pants off it. Often it will require some special equipment to do this testing.

9) Once through these hurdles you are ready to order a production run of parts and initiate your sales and marketing plan.

if this is not your cup of tea for the time being, then check out this fine design in a travel bag from speck products. + while you’re waiting for your flight why not reread your canon 5D II manual again.

here’s a run through of the latest from adobe on the lightroom front. version 3 beta 2 came out a week ago + i took it for a test run on a shoot for top secret project called broken. adobe’s refined a handful of things with this beta + there’s something like 350,000 of us current users waiting for the real thing sometime this summer. among other features is a revamped tethering capability that is solid so far.

to get tethered shooting working you’ll need a few things:

first, make sure your camera’s compatible. the canon 5dII is good to go as are most recent bodies.

next you’ll need either a usb or firewire cable (should come with camera). at this time it doesn’t look like the wireless transmission units currently on market are compatible. i imagine this could change in the future.

then download lightroom 3 + it’s as easy as file/tethered capture/start tethered capture.

overall it couldn’t be smoother. granted i was working with a short cord + raw images + all was solid. i would definitely like a few more things, however;

the ability to have the raw images on both the card + the hard drive. better yet an option to toggle back + forth so that if you’re ever card free you could always shoot tethered. better workflow wise though to have all the images in one place. if you start tethered + then jump off you’ll have images in two different place but not in a completely redundant way.

like to see more options on the shoot bar within lightroom. great to see the camera controls + have a nice lg shutter but the horizontal bit takes too much room. i’d like to be able to opt for a vertical stack as well.

this would be brilliant for video as well. when’s that out adobe? you’ve gone far enough with this beta to include video import + metalogging into lightroom so how far off are we? be way smooth to pull a histogram up with live video while you have one subject interview another etc, without you even being in the same room. the day that comes around + works wirelessly i’ll be one happy puppy as canon already has video doable over their WFT-E4A.

if that isn’t enough of the future for you in one day, try this from the photoshop front or this from ol’ pogue himself on the iphone front.

and lastly, rip jim marshall

back from an intl trip last week + had a question that fits timing wise in more ways then one – “you’ve mentioned pelican cases before, what’s your fav travel tools + best way to protect gear”?

thanks for the question bob. this is tough + easy. easy because there are a number of options (lowepro, crumpler, tenba, dakine, lightware, photojojo, petrol…) + tough because though there are choices a plenty in my mind there’s nothing that covers a wide variety of work styles with a modular system. i have word that there’s a remedy for this in the works so stay tuned but more often then not it’s about evaluating your style, goals + gear + then mashing together a system that’s fluid for you.

the perfect set up for me would be highly versatile + functional with minimal extras. simplicity over saturation. i take this into my own hands when feasible. in fact, as demo’d in the attached video, i’ll strip down major manufacturers designs + recalibrate them for my own needs. in this case that’s a jumbo sized lowepro super trekker awII reconfigured for an elinchrom ranger battery pack with two heads + accessories. we use this set up for local travel/on site schlepping + the pelican 1610 hard case for flight or other rough travel.

that said, my current methods tend to fluctuate as gear is added or subtracted from inventory. i like to have one main storage with everything camera wise in it for easy access + local transportation. this is paralleled with similar set ups for lights, video, underwater housing, assistant’s bag, point + shoot, etc. flight travel usually works well with what i have as i’m currently in a lowepro rolling backpack that’s carry on sized (road runner aw). between that + pelican’s 1490 hard case for a laptop + hard drive the basics are with you all the time. if lights are going then i use a pelican 1610 hard case (see above). when i heli in somewhere (or snowmobile) i’ll opt for the lowepro omni trekker combined with it’s pelican 1550 mate.

definitely keep a headlamp in your bag, a copy of your photographer’s rights, any credentials you have, business cards, model releases, a blower, a lens pen, a cotton cloth, zip loc bags + silica packets. photograph everything at least once a year for insurance + travel purposes + you might even want to before each trip. a checklist isn’t a bad ideas as well, especially as your war chest grows or if you’re working with other shooters. + keep it all labeled clearly so you too don’t end up with well used cards from calumet sf’s rental dept.

for me the crux is always after the traveling, once you’ve arrived. + that my friends is what i’ll get to next.

during the course of any give year i do a handful of talks + presentations that vary from teaching style to pure fun, from stills to video mash ups. if there’s one thing that comes with these it’s that you’ve got to have a nice little kit together to make them all successful as each location has it’s own challenges.

due in part to these presentations i’ve acquired a huge number of cords, plugs + adapters that no normal person should have in their possession. design in general is too underrated these days but why we can’t see more in the way of streamlined collaboration for the sharing of imagery i’ll never know. imagine if we had a system wide plug + play setup…

apple hasn’t helped with their ongoing port extermination (mini-dvi, firewire 400, etc). here’s the history if you’re into it but with any 2009 mac you’ll be looking at a mini display port. your output with most projectors is usually vga but definitely look before you leap. before any show, like a shoot, do a scout if you can. at least talk to the host about the set up, equipment, sound system.

here’s my kit:

pelican 1490 case
freitag mac sleeve
mac book pro (with guts + a remote)
imovie, quicktime (7 over latest) + keynote
laser pointer
mini display port to vga adapter
mini display port to dvi adapter (for apple cinema displays + the like)
mini dvi to vga adapter (for your friends with macbooks, powerbook G4′s, etc)
extra mac battery
pc audio cable 3.5mm (the longer the better)
belkin mini surge protector
duct tape – cord coverage

if you’re looking for more, try this.

here’s a take on the histogram vs light meter debate via ‘digital imaging expert’ tim grey of microsoft fame. this was from his near daily q+a posting with readers.

One of the most useful advances of digital photography is the histogram. If one still uses film, say in large format photography, a histogram is available only after the film has been scanned. Is there a light meter that produces a histogram that would be useful in large format photography?

Tim’s Answer:

I completely agree with you that the histogram is incredibly valuable, which is why I’m including an in-depth article about histograms in the upcoming issue of my print publication, Digital Darkroom Quarterly. Histograms provide extensive information about the exposure in an image, and are valuable for evaluating that exposure for a given image, or for evaluating what an optimal exposure would be for a given scene.

Light meters, on the other hand, simply measure a specific luminance value. That value is averaged for the field of view being observed by the light meter. This is useful for determining appropriate exposure settings, but it is only based on a single luminance value. This is very similar to using the meter in your digital camera in order to evaluate the light levels in the scene you’re going to photograph.

As you’ve no doubt realized when using the meter in your camera, you can get very different results depending on where you point your camera (and depending on what metering mode you use). This is the limitation of a light meter. A histogram, on the other hand, shows you the range of tonal values present in a scene in a relative sense (by indicating the relative number of pixels at each luminance value in the scene captured in a given digital image).

So, to answer your question, no, there isn’t a light meter that will provide you with a histogram for large format photography. You can view a histogram of the scanned image (which is affected by the scan settings, obviously, and thus not necessarily a completely accurate histogram relative to what was present in the original capture), but there isn’t a light meter that will perform as you’re hoping.

However, you most certainly could use another digital camera to give you a good sense of what a histogram would look like for a given scene you plan to photograph with film using a large format camera. There are certainly many variables here to create challenges for you, but if you could frame the scene on a digital camera exactly as you will frame it for the large format film capture and then capture the image digitally, you could get a pretty good sense of the exposure situation. Obviously you would need to apply appropriate compensations based on the behavior of the film and the desire to maintain density with film rather than the brightest possible exposure without clipping for digital, but the point is that you could use a digital camera to provide you with a much better sense of what to expect within the scene you’re photographing, which can help guide your exposure decisions.