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.

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...

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.

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.

Well I'm still not sure if the left picture is my favorite from today or the right picture...

The colors an light are just wonderful in this picture. Sadly it's taken from a shaky boat with an even more shaky mono pod around 6.45 am at ISO3200.

Well with a D700 there would be no noise at this ISO level :(

Me and my stupid Idea, for some reason I wanted to go fishing an made sure about everything...

• like the fishes? check
• can afford it? check
• camera can survive it? check
• nice company? check
• are i'm able to get up at 3.00, well I didn't sleep so yes, check
• do I have cloth for this? check

i only forgot one small details...

I'm getting easily sea sick,

well result of the day:

• getting picked up at 3.40
• arriving in berkley around 5.00
• getting on the boat and leave the area
• happily snapping pictures of the san francisco bay
  
• arriving at the spot around 8.00
• donating my breakfast to posidion, 8.01
• laying down, 8.02
• donating my lunch to posidion, 3.00 pm
• coming back into the bay area and try to ish for 10 minutes and wreck the fishing rod
• arriving in port around 5.30 and was not able to catch a single fish and got sponsored by donations

what a waste of 130$ and a perfectly fine salami

The complete gallery of 1001 golden gate pictures can be found here

I guess I'm bored and have way to much time on my hands, but my self portraits start to improve.

They are still not perfectly sharp and in focus, but they become usable.

All shots are done with a 3 light setup,

1 x SB-600 1/2 power on the left
1 x SB-600 1/2 power on the right
1 x SB-600 1/1 power on the front left slightly above me

35mm
1/500s most of them
F/10 to get them somehow sharp since I had to guess the correct focus point

conversion to B&W done during adobe lightroom and slightly enhancement of contrast,coloring of highlights and vignette

The complete collection can be found here


My nose in the second picture is sadly slightly over exposed (guess 1 stop or so) and could not save it in lightroom.

I really like the first one, to sad that only the nose is really sharp in focus. But I was not able to repeat this and started to get dizzy...

Originally uploaded by Salman Hamid

just a wonderful picture and I definably going to try to copy it some time.

possible setup:

1 x background light on a purple/pink background positioned slightly under her shoulder
1 x soft box or umbrella from right above, more likely a large softbox
F/20 and 1/125s with a 200mm lens (FX)

And I guess this was it.

just sitting here and try to blackout backgrounds with the use of a flash,

- simple just reduce distance to subject and increase the shutter speed

Now I want to have nice soft light and so I use a shot threw umbrella.

- does not work, you need to block the light partwise, since umbrellas spell the light in every possible direction. Does not work, since the background comes to a black grey in the best case

So I tried to gobo the umbrella, which basically did not work, there was a difference but not as much as I liked it.
Afterwards I tried a reflective umbrella, which can did provide the same result as before, so no help either.

Result?

a) use only hard light
b) get your hand on a softbox (easy) and a adapter to connect it to the falshes (nearly impossible)

well getting up at 4 am on a Saturday morning and trying to shoot pictures of birds starting at sunrise is way more challenging than I thought.

I took 200 pictures, run out of batteries once (the SB-900 uses way to much juice) and not one really nice picture. So were so so, but not worth it to be stored/posted.

-

Well like always there are challenges, for example shooting pictures in the dark of people playing soccer if there are no overhead lights on...

The SB-900 worked very well for this and has some serious power, but the recharge time kinda kills it and you really have to time your shots.

Well at least I got 2 shot's out of 64 or so

---

Da mein SB-900 am Mittwoch geliefert wurde konnte ich es nun gar nicht mehr erwarten ihn mal ausgibieg zu testen. Der erste war, wie gut ist er um damit aufnahmen in der daemmerung zu machen un er war ueberraschend gut, allerdings ist die ladezeit viel zu hoch. Jedenfalls mit meinen billiegen batterien.
Nun man kann sich ja mal ein powerpack basteln, sobald jemand die schaltung des nikon powerpacks veroeffentlicht.

ok after reading this thread and seeing what you can do with just a single flash,

well I'm not there yet and need to practise way way more...

I just love the softbox effect and that's the one thing I can't do with speedlights :(

and the lord said there will be light and light it was.
Basically I was bored and played with my speed lights and since I always wanted to try to make a self portrait, well here it is.

Is mostly hard light and a little bit soft light to make me a little bit younger...

ok correction,

the damn flash has so many different modes, I was not in TTL, I was in something else. The TTL mode actually works extremely well and I can see me using it for the first time. So in 'A' mode I need to use an exposure comensation of +1 and in TTL mode it's just perfect.

We will see how it performs during soccer tomorrow.

But I really need to read the manual, anyway back to work.

surprise,

my toys arrived 2 days before there estimated delivery and the SB-900 flash is quite a novel of technology. I did not bother yet to read the manual, but I got quite some nice pictures with just playing around with it, except it underexposes by 1 stop, which is kinda sad. But this underexposure could also be related to the use of Tamron lenses and I need to test it a bit more with some Nikon lenses.

A really nice feature is that it calculates the maximum reach for you based on your entered settings. Like ISO and aperture.

Now I just need to find a model to test some 3 light setups...

I finally found a really good review for a panoramic head which explains how to use these things and what's the idea behind it.

link

it look's indeed much better and cheaper than the bogen variation, but I just don't get point how to level this thing in the first place. I mean it's nice to have a level build in, but how do you actually level it?

Specially the whole thing is so simple constructed, nothing can break and the indentation rings are such a nice and simple idea.

some early users are happily shooting movies with the new Nikon D90 and what I see so far is not that impressive at all...

link

It's actually a pretty sad performance, shaky, no precise focus movement. It just looks that AF lenses are not perfect for this kind of stuff and it would greatly benefit from a tripod or in body stabilization.

Which I'm not a huge fan off, just one more thing what can break in the camera...

well time will tell

sleepless and hungry (for some reason our ridge is totally empty) nights in davis.

Well I'm still trying to understand why is the 85mm F/1.4 Nikon lens so famous and people keep writing about it.
I guess this particular gallery is one of the prime examples why I should not get money into my hands anytime soon...

link

These pictures are just gorgeous and I'm actually pretty confident that I could pull it off to take similar pictures, they seem to be 'simple' enough from the lighting and the post processing is also pretty easy to analyze.

My first guess is that he uses 1 large reflector below the model (the bottom) to lighten the shadow under the chin and 1 flash in a softbox to the right. I'm also guessing softbox since it's very soft light which means it has to be large and most likely close from the reflection in the eyes and does not have the look of an umbrella.

I'm not sure if there is a second flash involved as a kicker for the hairlight, since this can be easily done in postproccessing.

Well I could also be totally off since I'm pretty bad at analysing pictures to begin with :P

But in my favorite of this set, well I got no idea, I would guess he just uses natural light which comes from behind him, but I just can't tell since it could be also a gigantic softbox.