30 Jan 2013

Sunflower Centre


Nikon D90, AF-S DX Micro Nikkor 40mm f/2.8G, ISO200, Manual mode, f8, 1/125s, Nikon sb700 triggered wirelessly via CLS and bounced into an umbrella to camera left.

19 Jan 2013

Another Take on Photographing a Bottle of Wine


As you know I recently posted something on shooting a bottle of wine in a light tent, to see it CLICK HERE.

Well, this time around I wanted to try something a little different than the last shoot and go for an entirely different look.

The Power of Bounced Flash!


Nikon sb600 atop my D300s turned backwards and about 45° upwards to bounce onto the wall and ceiling behind me. This simple technique resulted in even and soft lighting from a large light source and great highlights in the eyes of the subjects!

13 Jan 2013

Should I work for Free?

Click on the link below for a well laid out and easy to implement graph to help you decide if you should indeed work for free:

Should I Work for Free?

And here is a handy jpeg (you can download it from the site above) that I am going to print out and hang in my office for easy reference:


:-)

11 Jan 2013

Portrait of Ben (with Attitude)


Elinchrom D-Lite-it 4 snooted and shot from behind and right of the subject to give a little hair light action, Elinchrom D-Lite-it 4 through a smallish softbox aimed to just skim across the subject from camera left without throwing too much light onto the background, edited in Lightroom 4.3 to grunge the portrait up a bit. I used my favourite 50mm f1.8D attached to a Nikon D300s, with all manual settings applied.

6 Jan 2013

Head to Head Shoot-out: Nikon NX2 vs Lightroom 4.3 vs DXO 8

For everyone expecting a full size analysis with clever, long and fancy words I am afraid you are going to be very disappointed. This is a straight shoot-out between Nikon NX2, Lightroom 4.3 and DXO 8. As such I will just show a number of photos that have been given only very basic and gentle massaging in all three programs. In DXO 8 it was entirely default settings, in Nikon NX2 I checked the buttons for auto repair of chromatic aberrations (CA's) while all other settings were left unchanged from default, and in Lightroom 4.3 I checked the boxes that enables the profile correction for camera and lens combination and that corrects for CA's while all other settings were left unchanged from default.

I used a hand held Nikon D90 with a Nikkor AF-S DX 18-105mm f/3.5-5.6G ED VR attached. The lens is well known for having loads of distortion and CA's.