9 posts tagged “nikon”

My cousin Hayley is all sorts of cute, and this picture makes me smile every time I look at it. This photo was taken Christmas morning. She was unbelievably wired and all-too-anxious to open presents.

Check it:

• Nikon D300 + Nikkor 50mm f/1.4D
• 1/100 sec at f/1.4, ISO 3200
• In-camera monochrome Picture Control with added sharpness and contrast.
• RAW image edited in Lightroom to match camera LCD preview as close as possible.

I think I’m going to be shooting a lot more low-light images in black and white. This is just too awesome.

(BTW, this is Jeremy. He’s a kick-ass photographer.)

Brittney and Kate were kind enough to model in their wedding gowns for a fun little photo shoot this past weekend. Someone also decided to bring pink flasks as props. Let's just say much hilarity ensued during the afternoon. More images from this shoot on the way later this week (after I finish processing things and after all the crazy-busy Christmas stuff).

Kimberley and Kirt said they wanted to do some jump shots as part of their session. So, we went up to the roof of Mia’s apartment building, set up some lights, and did some jumps in the dark. It was awesome.

Here’s Kimberley and Kirt posing for a relatively atypical couple portrait session. They didn’t want anything that looked like portrait studio or fashion work, so we just goofed off in Mia’s apartment building until we got tired of shooting.

Here are a couple more shots from the first photo shoot with my new Nikon D300.

The location is Mia's apartment building. The model is Tara. I wasn't really planning on doing the fashion editorial/film noir thing going into the shoot, but that's what I ended up with. I must admit that I do like the looks I got that day.

After dinking around casually with my Nikon D300 for nearly two weeks, I finally got around to doing an actual photo shoot with it this past weekend. I must say that it really is leaps and bounds better than my D70 and D70s both in terms of operation and image quality. For the $1800 I paid for, it had better be!

Using the camera is a dream. All the controls are quick and easy to access. Auto-focus is fast. The viewfinder is big and bright and has all the shooting info I need to see. The 3" LCD is absolutely wonderful for chimping. And the camera just feels well-balanced in my hands.

Image-quality-wise, it's awesome. Color, exposure, sharpness -- the all rock. Mostly, though, the amount of shadow detail and dynamic range is simply amazing. In the shot above, the model and city were actually mostly in silhouette. Even though she was lit with three speedlights, the sun was still too much to overpower. Despite that, I was still able to pull out a ton of shadow detail in Lightroom and get pretty darn close to the shot I was originally envisioning in my head. Sure, I could've spent more time tweaking light setup to get it right in-camera, but it was freezing out there, and we really needed to move to the indoor shots. Basically, I was lazy and hoped that I could salvage the shot in post. And I managed to do it.

In short, I'm loving this camera. Worth every penny.

So, Mia and I were walking around Bellevue Square on Saturday, and I wanted to stop by Tall’s Camera to see if they had any Nikon D300’s available to test out. I had pre-ordered a D300 body from Adorama back in September and have been dying to try one out ever since. It just so happened that they had an open one behind the counter.

I asked to try it out, and the guy behind the counter (Bill) handed it to me with an evil grin on his face. He wouldn’t put a battery in it, because the shop wanted to keep the shutter actuations at zero for whomever wanted to buy it. Made sense to me. I really only wanted to handle it. As soon as I put my hands on it, Bill snatched it back.

“Hang on a sec. Put your hands down and close your eyes.”

I obliged and closed my eyes.

“Now, breathe in.”

I could feel the camera body near my face, and I took a deep breath.

“Take in that fresh camera smell.”

It was an odd moment, but, man, I loved it. Mia was laughing the entire time.

I opened my eyes again and asked if they had any available.

“Well, it just so happens that we have two bodies here. This one and another one sitting right over there in that unopened box. You want it?”

Bill had an evil grin on his face again. Mia was squeezing my arm tightly and squealed slightly (she seemed just as excited about this as I was). I couldn’t take it anymore.

“Yes, I’ll take it.”

And now I have a brand-spanking new D300 in my hands. It rocks.

I got some new gear. :)

The first obvious new thing is the Pocket Wizard in my hand. I got a set of 4 last week (2 are in my possession, 2 more are coming) after getting completely fed up with my Gadget Infinity triggers not being completely reliable. The GI triggers aren’t horrible, just not what I would like them to be. Going on the fritz in the middle of a shoot is not pleasant. I’m still going to hang onto them, though, because they are nice and compact and will come in handy when there are too many PWs around.

The second new thing is the D70s used to take this photo. I found a used one at Kenmore Camera on Tuesday morning that looked like it had either barely been used or cared for extremely well. There’s a tiny bit of wear on the screen protector, but it’s tough to see and plus that’s the whole reason the screen is there. The AE-L/AF-L button, which I use for auto-focus, is a bit squishy, but I’m sure I’ll get used to it soon enough. It came in the original box with manuals, 2 batteries (bringing my grand total power supply to 4 batteries), a charger, and an unused strap. And, best of all, it only had 4000 shutter actuations on it. That part sold it for me. It set me back $600, and I probably could’ve found something cheaper on Craigslist or eBay, but I highly doubt I would’ve gotten one in such great condition with so few shutter actuations. I think this is a great replacement for my busted D70 and will hold me over just fine until the D300 ships. :)

So, yeah, I’ve spent a bit of money in the past couple of weeks, but it was going to eventually happen anyway. Time to find some more paying gigs and sell more photos to pay for all this stuff!