One of the best pictures were I was able to reveal her black hair nicely since it was very dark. The disadvantage of the hair light is that It spilled to much and so I got this ugly shadow on her leg and left to her leg :(

I need to gobo the light next time.

I really like this picture, but it also shows that the D200 collects dust at awful speeds and I have to clean it yet again.

I mean I changed the lens maybe 5 - 6 times since the last cleaning...

another strobist meeting and we are making progress with learning how to use the softbox.

Lesson of the meeting:

• if it's dark, don't trust the display since your eyes get more sensitive to light (it's obvious, but i keep forgetting it)
• I really have to learn how to read histograms
• if you shoot in the dark, bring a powerful flash light (in my case I should buy one)
• find a way to mount a flash light
• don't forget to use your white card

what I'm good at?

• relax people and comfort them
• stupid jokes

what differs me from other photographers?

• the model is the middle of the attention and not just a prop
  
• I really try to work with the people and relax them if they are nervous or make them laugh
  
• provide as much feedback as possible
• keep as much distance as possible and shoot mostly at 150-200mm outsides, 35 - 55mm does not really work for me most of the time

anyway some pictures from the last night

Kiko (just during talking and playing with her, gallery is here):







Kim (posed, by scott and taken by me):

we making progress MAP

it looks like obama is going to make the race!

correction we are definitely making progress here and it looks like the USA has it's first black dude as president.

Originally uploaded by Vimages

Nice example lightning which actually works quite well on men and is pretty easy.

2 x SB-800 as rim lights
1 xSB- 600 in soft box as key light

Definitely going to try this with the next male victim I find...

Ok all 600 pictures are sorted and we ended up with 200 usable pictures and maybe 30 which I consider good and 2 - 3 which I consider perfect.

But I really have to learn how to light a guy, since none of the pictures of Michael turned out as i wanted them to be. Men and women seem to be different...

Differences in the D80 and D200...

D200



D80



two cameras with the same chip and the same weakness seem to produce the same images quality when you use the same lens on them.

What are surprise.

So were is the difference again?

Basically it's just in the handling, speed and the stability of the body.

All I can say is thank you Kimberly Vincent.

One of the pictures from you is more or less the best picture I have taken so far. And I honestly do not know how to improve it.

The complete gallery can be found here

Best Picture so far"







Highlights from today:

well I tried the first time to do some serious work with the D200 and I keep going back to the D80 since I just know it's so much better. The D200 is very different, but in the end I shot 400+ pictures with the D200 and only 150 pictures with the D80.
The 5 fps make a huge difference and I understand more and more how I can get the most out of my little speed lights.

Well 621 pictures to sort from the shot with kim today and I guess I end up with 50 pictures which I really like. Many are just underexposed (65 completly dark), since the speed lights could not recharge quick enough and I do not want to go over iso 200 - 250 if I can avoid it.

well we shall see...

Also the 17-55mm F/2.8, well I just don't feel the love and guess end up selling it very very soon. I bought this lens now twice and it just does not feel right for portraits. It was nice that I had never to change lenses and just could work with the two bodies.

But in future I put the 70-200 on the D200 and the 17-55 on the D80, since I use the first combination much more often.

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'

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

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

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.

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...

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...

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...

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

----

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.