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...)

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

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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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)

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.