Thursday, October 30, 2008

DSC_0911-2


DSC_0911-2
Originally uploaded by gert wohlgemuth
since i got my D200 last night and the 17-55mm F/2.8 on Monday and the westcott Apollo soft box today, well i had to play around with this and find a patient model.

May I present, mister 'J'

current impressions, the D200 is vey nice and has a lot of potential, but for quick shots and snapshots I will use the D80. You really have to use a preset white balance in case with the D200, since the auto white balance is pretty bad.
Also the ISO of the D80 is better than the iso of the D200, not that it makes much sense since they both use the same chip.

what's nice about the D200?

- no need to enter the menu, all features can be reached by a dedicated button
- fast, 5.6 frames per second
- the buffer holds 11 pictures and not 4 like the D80. Which basically means I can take 21 pictures in a row at full speed
- metering seems to be much more accurate
- 9 frame bracketing, I guess I play with HDR a bit


so last week I decided to attend my first photo contest which is hold every month. Well I got place 10 out of 133 with 'shall we dance'

Tuesday, October 28, 2008

so it happened, the wonderful live.com deal is finally over and now my wallet will be able to get some rest for a while.

Sadly I did not get this wonderful deal for the 85mm F/1.4 here :(

http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=280280660453&ssPageName=ADME:B:SS:US:1123

even for this price it's still a nice deal, but my wallet is more than exhausted right now

Monday, October 27, 2008

danielleb&w


danielleb&w
Originally uploaded by mrgphotos
this is a random shot I discovered and roughly shows were I would like to end up style wise.

The lighting is nice but don't really see the point of the beauty dish here. It adds a nice hairlight. but that's it and can be done in otherways.

Well I try to recreate it once I have 2 soft boxes

Saturday, October 25, 2008

well after I was asking in a forum last night about the quality of my pictures for commercial work, well the message was clear good, but focus on one topic. In my case portraits and get out and shoot more pictures, of people which are not in your portfolio yet.

http://forums.dpreview.com/forums/readflat.asp?forum=1014&thread=29801895

Time to ask some more bartenders out.

I think I need about 4 more month realistically to get the complete portfolio running to 50 - 80 pictures. Right now it's just to empty.

it's getting late here and I'm playing around with my new white balance card (It was on sale, 30 instead of 80$, I had to get it...) and I have to say I'm impressed what kind of difference it makes on the exposure and how much nicer it is to have a perfectly set white balance.

The exposure is more or less a quarter stop more to the right and needs no further adjustment in lightroom.

Now I can't wait to see how this works with flashes.

Friday, October 24, 2008

ok the second step to get my name out started,

now we got a homepage registered and need to build a webpage as portfolio, since nobody can remember 'berlinguyinca.zenfolio.com'

http://itsaboutlight.net/

should be much easier and we need to start the work for a portfolio now. Which means I need 25 models...

Thursday, October 23, 2008


stupid ebay I just noticed that I spend

$1,828.99

in the last 4 days on it, well I get 500$ cash back and should be able to sell the 17-55mm F/2.8 in January for 900$. Which leaves my expenses at 500$ and for this I got an airport antidote bag and D200 + MB-D200 so it all works out in the end...

...but this stuff gets definitely addicting and I should delete my account rather quickly...

Wednesday, October 22, 2008

just reading a review of the D200, damn I did not know that the camera has SUCH more features than the D80.

http://www.dpreview.com/reviews/NikonD200/

i can't wait till it's here in 10 far far way days...

well I'm guess I'm set now and only need paying customers to make my money back. I just found this incredible deal on a D200 + Battery grip + 2nd battery = 750$ - 180$ cashback.

For information, this was the camera I originally wanted to buy last year, but I went with the D80 since it was 800$ cheaper and I could not convince myself to spend so much money for a camera. Now I ended up with both of them.

What does the D200 provides me with?

can shoot 22 pics in a row instead of 4 with the D80
can shoot at 5 fps instead of 3 with the D80
stronger AF motor
weather sealed
meters with any nikon lens ever released. And the old lenses can be bought cheap.

Example:

85mm F/1.4 Nikon = 1100$
85mm F/1.4 Nikon AIS = 400 - 500$

now who would like to hire me? I'm cheap to get so far...

Monday, October 20, 2008

would a new camera improve my picture taking abilities in the case of these pictures?
would a 85mm F/1.4 improve my picture taking abilities in the case of these pictures?
would another flash improve my picture taking abilities in the case of these pictures?
would it make sense to replace my 2 el cheapo lightstand with some nice one?

no (but a backup would be nice, just in case, maybe I get an old D50 or so for 300$, or if I can stretch it a D90)
maybe
yes
hell yes

Anyway we went out to sacramento old town and starting snapping pictures at 5 and were done at 8 and boy I'm exhausted the stuff does get heavy quickly and I was very happy that saeed helped me to carry all the stuff.

The beginning felt a bit of awkward for me, since I did not really know what todo and all my ideas did not work, since the locations were closed or moved out of the way on this particular sunday....
Saeed was a great help in getting it running, since he just picked a spot and we started shooting. It was the worst possible spot and I would never had choosen it, since the background was way to busy and I just straight deleted these pictures, but it broke the ice and the creativity started.
The beginning looked like this and is nothing great or artistic. But use able



Once we got warm and the sun came a bit down we could proceed with some more advanced and creative stuff



shortly afterward we tried the first thing what I thought about and the train finally was in the right spot and the light was perfect to shoot some ambient style stuff. But a 85mm F/1.4 sure would have improved some stuff, but I still think it's a kind of a special purpose lens



and some more of this



now I finally started to get creative and played with a couple (3) of speedlights at the one particular train, while saeed was shooting pictures of stormy and he seemed kinda unhappy that he had to use film...





after we exhausted this location we moved on to a hallway I discovered earlier and I could try something what I planned since a long time. Saeed proved to be an excellent assistant and started singing to make the couple dance, while I was setting up the lights.







Once we were done there and I was sure I got what I wanted we moved on to another location I found earlier and stormy got excited by this little store with red neo signs and some light bulbs. I'm not sure that this works for me, but it was worth a try. Basically I would had needed a couple of softboxes to really make it work.



once we were done and I just basically gave up, well we discovered a nice harley davidson and the proud owner allowed us to sit on it and take pictures. He said something like "I bought this baby and put 30k$ into it" , well I stayed far way from it, since I'm way to clumsy...





Well I guess we all had a lot of fun and learned something, for example I prefer hard light so much over soft light, soft light is just not my style

The complete gallery can be found here

http://berlinguyinca.zenfolio.com/f241338389

and I really have to say with every photo shoot I improve more and more. But one day I have to learn how to post process the pictures in photoshop, so I actually can print them large and the skin still looks great.

Basically all these pictures are taken straight from the camera and I just adjusted the contrast using lightroom, cropped them to the composition I wanted and converted them to black and white. The whole process took like an hour to sort the 400 pictures, delete the once which were setup shots or which just did not work.
The main thing is, natural light photography only works shortly during the golden hour, otherwise your pictures just look 'dull' and no play with photoshop makes a good picture out of a boring picture.
Now once you bring flash into the equation, this changes everything and makes it so hard to get the exposure were you want it, since the auto adjust features in lightroom just don't work anymore and I don't own a light meter. (And don't really need it anyway, since I can 'chimp' from the camera display. At least roughly...)

Saturday, October 18, 2008

well I guess there is something weird going on with my D80, it just takes forever to aquire the focus with my tamrons 90mm F/2.8 and 70-200m F/2.8 but works wonderful with a 35mm F/2, 50mm F/1.8, 10-20mm F/4 - F/5.6

It works fine during the day outside, but in a normal lit room, well It's a nightmare and it always takes 2 - 3s to acquire focus instead of the milliseconds it should take.

Now are I'm spoiled by the small primes or is there an AF problem. I guess I test it more during the shoot tomorrow and on another camera.

i can't believe it works...

Summary
Total pending cashback: $200.00
Total available cashback: $0.00
Total paid cashback: $0.00
Total cashback: $200.00

Friday, October 17, 2008

I was good, I topped my self before buying the D300, I did take the 200$ live.com rebate on a 17-55mm F/2.8 which made it cost 700$ instead of 900$ (used lens, mint condition) and will go on craigslist after christmas for 850$, if I don't fall in love with it...

Well It was my first ebay purchase in a long time, I hope everything works out and I'm kinda nervous about my luck.

But this finally gives me a complete F/2.8 or faster setup:

17-55 F/2.8, 70-200mm F/2.8 for studio and assignment work
35mm F/2, 50mm F/1.8, 90mm F/2.8 for creative work

and it also stops me to go FX anytime soon, since I have now two DX lenses

17-55mm F/2.8
10-20mm F/4 - F/5.6

missing to make life perfect, at least photo gear wise (personal wise it's sadly more complicated)?

studio strobes (2 x AB-800)
D300
85mm F/1.4
300mm F/4

----


Hi gert,
It pays to shop eBay! You've earned US $200.00 cashback. To get your money:
  1. Click the Get cashback button to access or create your Microsoft account.
  2. Microsoft will notify you that your cashback is available after 60 days (in case you decide to return your purchase).
    Then, simply tell Microsoft which PayPal account you want your cashback sent to!

mhm D300 for 1200$ instead of 1700$,

...hard decision...

Thursday, October 16, 2008

well I just did something were I thought it was never possible, I sold my eve-online accounts for 150$, but I think i paid like 230$ for playtime over the years...

I didn't play this game in ages, but I will miss it...

..and the lens or cam is yet a bit closer...

Wednesday, October 15, 2008

well I'm really considering to order this for my Germany/Finland trip.

It would give me endless possibilities, but do I need it, only one way to find out.

Monday, October 13, 2008

Since I was not able to go to SF, thanks to stomach issues. Well I went back to Sacramento in the early evening and capturing some street scenes.

And I guess these two are the best from this day with the best composition.

Saturday, October 11, 2008

spending an evening and a day in sac to test some location and lightning conditions for an upcoming shot.

Well that's the best I could do, since my own shadow kept popping into the picture at 10mm - 20mm. But I guess I'm not that mean to take pictures of a woman at 10mm anyway and rather at 35 - 90 - 200 mm.

Well the last two days I spend testing a 24mm F/2.8 lens AIS from a friend on a D80 body to see if it's good or not.

Well the conclusion is very simple, it's a pretty bad lens. Or at least the version I played with.

It is not a big deal to get the exposure right with a variation of +/- 0.25 stops on average. The test sample contained roughly 100 pictures and I tested it at different apertures. It performs ok at F/2.8, not thing to sing about, but if you manage to get the focus right, well it's fairly sharp. The out of focus rendering is not that great and actually pretty ugly.
The diffraction limit kicks in around F/11 and I did not bother to test it at much lower apertures, since the results were just soft and fuzzy, at least on my D80. It also suffers pretty badly from CA (purple/blue), which is easily corrected, but still annoying.
If you shoot directly into the lens, well you get all kind of fancy flare, so it's a big no.

What else can I say, look at the pictures which are all straight out of camera and shot in raw. ISO was around 320 for most of these shots, since I had no tripod handy and they were slightly cropped.


Thursday, October 09, 2008

well I convinced my self so far that I don't need yet another camera and should stick with the camera I got, since It does help me to take wonderful pictures.

But I'm going to test a specific lens/camera combination during fleetweek this weekend and if this combination works (it does not work on the D80), well all bet's are off...

But would the D300 in 95% of the situation improve these pictures? In some cases yes since It has a much better ISO handling (usable 3200 and acceptable 6400, but a D90 could handle this and would be much much cheaper, roughly 1k$ cheaper...) and a much superior auto focus (ok only D300 could handle this, but I can't afford lenses for wildlife anyway...), which I noticed the first time when I tried to shoot birds, but landscapes normally don't move that fast...

What my shot's would highly benefit from would be much better post processing skills, but I also notice that my exposure got way better during the last year and the Paris pictures look partly pretty bad compared to the Boston pictures.







Monday, October 06, 2008

It sounds crazy but I might actually manage a deal to get my hands on a D300 quite soon without killing my wallet.

The focus system looks so nice...

Sunday, October 05, 2008

the 300mm F/4 AFS I want to order since one year is finally in stock at adorama and now I don't have the money for it. Life is just not fair :(

Whenever I got the money it's out of stock for 5 month +

I did not want to buy any photogear this month, but I saw this great deal on gridspots for 8$ a piece and just could not say no.
But I still want this panorama head and the flightback for camera gear for my trip to europe.

Ich wollte ja eigentlich kein fotozeug diesen monat kaufen, aber als ich ein paar 'grids' fuer 8$ das stueck gesehen habe konnte ich einfach nicht nein sagen.
Aber ich moechte ja immer noch einen panorama kopf kaufen und eine spezielle tasche fuer mein gesammtes zeug fuer den europa trip in november december.
Vielleicht naechsten monat. Aber ich denke ein panorama vom potsdammer platz waere einfach nur super schoen an der wand.

Friday, October 03, 2008

Since I just needed to get out of Davis, well I went yet another time to San Francisco and managed to get some nice shot's. Particularly since it was so cloudy and rainy. So I mostly worked with my 35mm F/2 and played with death of field and tried some landscapes.

I really love the pictures of the trees and would have just preferred that it was less windy, since they are totally blurry and so not suitable for a print.