We went out and shot some bridals at the Dallas Arboretum this last Saturday. Due to forces outside of our control (hairdresser we were out there shooting in the middle of the afternoon. Overall it was a nice day, it just got hot.
We had a good shoot. First major one with our new camera (Nikon D300). Had the settings that I found off of KenRockwell.com for portraits. Shot the whole day with our Nikon 50mm f/1.4 and a 42″ 5-n-1 reflector. Which sometimes proved to be a little hard because we’d have to back up so far with the 50mm (effectively 75mm) when we shot full length. Tried to stay in the shade for the most part for our comfort, as well as to avoid the harsh shadows of direct afternoon sunlight. The reflector proved to be a priceless commodity at the shoot. It did everything from reflect light into the dark shadows from the sun to help clear off the ground from fallen and wilted flowers from the crate myrtle blooms.
Seeing as we haven’t shot the wedding yet, we’ll add some shots from this shoot a little later. Their wedding is coming up in a week and a half and we are looking forward to having a good time there too.
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Well we finally bit the bullet and upgraded to the Nikon D300 from our D200. Though I initially wasn’t sure how much difference we’d be able to tell between the two cameras, I am quite impressed with the D300. The biggest thing that I’ve noticed is the D300’s high iso behavior. The noise difference between the D200 and the D300 is night and day. I would never push the our old D200 up over iso 400. If we had to go higher I would cringe because I knew how much we’d have issues with noise at these high iso’s (400+). The D300 on the other hand performs beautifully at 800 and even 1600. While it’s not the quality of it’s older brother the D3 it’s a huge step up from the D200. It also responds faster overall then the D200; just generally faster overall.
Another thing that we have noticed is the extended battery life we have with the D300 compared to the D200. Shooting a whole evening doesn’t even put a dent in the battery. One thing we did get for the D300 that we didn’t have with the D200 is the battery grip. This allows you to add another battery and have a much more comfortable grip with shooting vertically. It also has front and back dials to adjust settings and a knob to adjust the AF sensor that is selected. Overall we are very pleased with the purchase.
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We met up with Janie Saturday morning for Senior portraits in downtown Mesquite. The wall that we started out by doesn’t have a building or anything to block the sky as a reflector so all the light was really diffused and soft. This is the first time that we shot the whole day with only the Nikon 50mm f/1.4 and gold reflector. I wasn’t sure how much the 50mm would limit the kind of shots we got but it turned out great. We shot for the most part f/2 – f/2.8, which made for great bokeh and a really short depth-of-field. A couple of times dof turned out to be too short and the picture ended up being focused on something different.
This was also the first time that we used the reflector since we got it. The reflector proved to be priceless because we were able to shoot with her back to the sun, which produced a nice hair/key light, and reflect the nice golden light back up at her. While from time to time we did blind her, the shots turned out great.
After the wall we went to the train tracks which proved to be a nice location because it was away from most everything and gave a really nice non-distracting backdrop. From there we went to the jungle gym, which I had seen a few weeks earlier and thought it would be a nice location with grassy field behind. Lastly we ended up at the cotton mill in downtown. We weren’t the only photographers there that day but we managed to dance around each other and get the shots that we wanted.
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