We just shot another wedding this last Saturday in Mesquite at Mimosa Lane Baptist Church. Overall the wedding went very well and the pictures turned out great. We got to go around taking details shots and our 50mm f/1.4 turned out very useful again. I really like the lens because you have so much control over depth of field. The ability to blow everything else but the subject is really neat. I tend to shoot the 50mm at about f/2 – f/2.8. If I get much bigger then that the depth of field gets so short the subject isn’t even in focus.
It was a nice day so we got to take some of the formal pictures outside, but we were mainly limited to inside with only stage lighting. I don’t understand why they build these churches without windows in the sanctuary. It’s so limiting as far as light goes and the look of artificial light is so much different. We definitely prefer natural light over artificial because it produces a much softer, and more pleasant light which we like.
They are off on their honeymoon this week and I’ve just finished the proofs and they are off to the lab to get printed. I’ll come back and add some pictures once they get a chance to see them.
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So tonight was our first exploit into sports photography. I know that Assistant AD for the district because I played basketball for him when I was in high school so I asked if he could get me a sideline pass. He very graciously did and so I had the opportunity to stand on the sidelines of the high school football homecoming game to take pictures. I had a really good time and got some great shots. I also was able to play around with the auto focus system of the D300. Football, as we all know, is very fast moving and blurry out of focus pictures aren’t any good. I shot most of the night at ISO 800 or 1600. This sufficed to stop the action as far as motion blur goes. I also shot at aperture priority with f/2.8. Through all this I was able to get the right shutter speed to handle the action. The only complaints I have was that the auto focus on the 80-200 AF-D was a little slow in some situations, but the 51 point 3-D tracking was priceless.
So along about the 4th quarter one of the professional sports photographers I had kinda been hanging around and shadowing a little (without him knowing) came up and offered for me to use his 300mm f/2.8 with VR that he wasn’t using. I very quickly agreed and we walked over and hooked it up to out D300. The difference was amazing! Not necessarily in image quality as much as easy of use. The auto focus was blazing fast and the VR was great. Every time I’d hit the shutter button half way to focus the VR would start up and the lens would have a little vibration. It was weird at first. The other great thing is that with my DX sensor I had effectively hooked up a 450mm f/2.8 lens. You can get real tight with that kind of length. I had a blast shooting with his 300mm and it was a real experience to use a real professional quality lens.
The photographer that I borrowed this lens from was shooting a Nikon D3 with from what I could tell a 600mm f/2.8. He could shoot from behind the end zone and then when the action went to the far end of the field he’d pull out his tele-converter. He could shoot the whole field from one end zone. The other thing that I noticed was how unbelievably fast he was clicking of pictures. He was definitely running at top speed and probably shooting ISO 6400, which the D3 is famous for.
I must give a big thanks to my fellow photographer that let me borrow his lens. I’ll leave everything anonymous just because some people don’t like to be named on the net. But thanks alot.
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Last night we shot some friend’s maternity pictures. So far they look great. I tried a new Picture Control profile that I downloaded from Nikon that is suppose to emulate the profiles from the older Nikon Dx2. I like the way the flesh tones turned out alot better then how the straight from the camera flesh tones from the Bridal shoot last weekend.
We got new Alien Bees lights a couple months ago to do two dances for the local high school. We got 2 – B800’s and 1 – B400. We also got a Medium Photoflex OctoDome w/ grid, a Large Photoflex Litedome and a Small Photoflex Halfdome2 w/ grid. We are still getting use to them and I’m still searching for exactly how I like to set them up. We shot with a plain black backdrop. One B800 had the Octodome on it setup just to the left of the camera. The other B800 was setup to the right and behind the subject to add a nice key light. The B400 was setup with a boom overhead for a hair light, which is important in my opinion because she had dark brown hair which tends to get lost on a black backdrop.
We tried something different and shot most of the evening at f/8, which we usually don’t do because we want the background to be out of focus. But, being a solid black background this shouldn’t matter and we should get really nice crisp images from the stopped down lens. Shot everything with our Nikon 18-200 DX VR AF lens that we originally got with our D200.
For the most part we shot with little contrast and had very little shadows. We also cut off the front fill light for a side profile shot that would only highlight her belly. From my initial look these turned out nice. We also did a couple of shots that were only the front fill Octodome and used the black side of the reflector to put an even darker shadow of the backside of her belly while both parents had there hands together on her belly. Overall I think the shoot turned out real nice.
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Our Nikon 80-200 f/2.8 AF-D came in today! This is the second of our fast glass lenses. We got the 50mm f/1.4 a little while back and it makes a great portrait lens. I wish we could actually use the full field of view from the lens but our Nikon D300 with it’s DX sensor is limiting.
But, back to the 80-200. It’s a nice big and heavy lens. Definitely alot more sturdy then the other lenses we have. This is where our DX sensor comes in handy making it effectively a 120-300mm lens. I shot a few test shots when I got home from work with the dogs in the backyard. I definitely like the depth-of-field provided by the f/2.8. Bokeh looks nice and blows the background way out to focus the viewer towards the subject of the photo. With football season starting up, I look forward to shooting from the sidelines.
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