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: $0.00
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I was good, I topped my self before buying the D300, I did take the 200$ 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

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Hi gert, It pays to shop eBay! You've earned US $200.00 cashback. To get your money: Click the Get cashback button to access or create your Microsoft account. 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...

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...

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.

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.

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.

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)