Sunday, November 09, 2008

well the workshop at Preston castle is done and it was just an awesome experience to work with so many photographers. Explain things to them, give them ideas what to do with the models when they felled unsure. Pointing out interesting lighting situations. And the best was that the instructors just let me do my thing, since I seemed to get it right more or less.
I did not had the chance to take many pictures and directed and assisted more.

Things like,

  • why don't we put her in the front of the window and you see how the sun shines over her shoulder and gives it this nice rim light effect? Now we put the reflector in front of her to bring her face on the same level.
  • or if we move these models about 3 feet more to the left, well this gives you less clutter in the background
It was also nice to see the differences between the models and how they acted around the photographs, how they got excited when people actually showed them the pictures they took. Just to treat them as humans and not as subject.

For me it was a great opportunity to work a day without a flash and rediscover the use of ambient light and a reflector. But for this you always need an assistant or be able to hold the camera with one hand very still. Which was my biggest issue, most of the pictures I took are blurry, since the flash did not freeze the motion and you really have to keep your shutter speed high.
And boy the D200 sucks above iso 400, it's just a nightmare an you loose all details in the eyelashes.

You can find the gallery of my pictures here

And here are the best shots from today,









The differences between getting it right in camera and getting it right with post processing.

I took this picture over a year ago when I got the D80 and spend several hours to improve it with photoshop and to make it perfect. Adding layers, blurring parts of the skin adding several contrast curves to make it look 'professional'



And it was taken with just a single SB-600 and an omni bounce directed at the ceiling on camera

Now let's look at this picture



It has a similar look too it from the black and white conversion and I spend like 2 minutes on it post processing. Basically adjust the contrast and convert to black and white. Done

The difference is not the camera or the settings. They are more or less comparable. F/3.5 (90 mm) vs F/5 (200mm) gives a similar depth since the distance was more important in this case. The 200mm had maybe a bit more DOF since I was a a bit farther away since I wanted to get the shoulder in the picture.

The shutter speed is 200 vs 250. Which does not matter since the ambient light is basically knocked out in both cases.
Now the big difference I that I now have a rough understanding of what I'm doing (I still have a lot to learn) and that I used much bigger light sources which softened the skin for me. I still use a SB-600 speed light (2 actually), but thanks to the use of the umbrella (40") and softbox (28"x28") which are placed about a foot away from the model, well the skin is much softer and we have this big reflections we all love so much.
You can see the exact setup in her earrings (second picture) or in the eyes (first picture)

The first copy I got of the 17-55mm F/2.8 was pretty bad and just didn't work for me. But the ebay copy if got for so much cheaper is just amazing. I did not do any landscape with it yet, but the results I get from it pretty much speak for them self. It does help to have a pretty subject.






I also feel less and less the need to buy yet another lens. Can it be that I'm at the stage were I'm happy with what I have and actually concentrate more on taking pictures?

This would be truly awe full...

I would trade my D80 for another D200 in an instant. Now I have two cameras and today is shot like 300 pictures with the D200 and only 60 with the D80. I actually swapped lenses between the D80 and D200, since it just felt so much better to shoot with it.