Archive for February, 2007

I’m quite unsatisfied with the built-in flash of the D80. Its light is too direct making faces flat without anything in shadow and a very strong shadow on any background – that is accidentally behind my major subject – at the same time. So I tried a Nikon SB-800 speedlight last weekend on a kindergarten event.

Although the flash-light cooperated wonderfully with the camera the test was not really successful. I was impatient enough not to read the instruction manual and just used the thing as I was told: without any special configuration but setting white-balance to flash. I used ISO 200 on the camera and TTL mode on the flash and directed the head of the flash towards the ceiling to avoid the background shadows. I still got some background shadows (although not that strong as with the built-in flash – behind and way below the subjects) and possibly as a result of the white-balance settings and the not perfectly white ceiling I got strangely coloured reddish images like this.

Any idea what I should have done differently?

This photo of an elephant sculpture was taken in the Budapest Zoo and Botanical Garden. He looks so old, wise and sad.

This church is in Budapest, Hungary, just next to River Danube on the corner of Gogol street. The photo at its original size looks a bit hazy or blurred at the edges of the building. I don’t know if it’s caused by some tiny camera shakes throughout the three exposures (even though I used a tripod) or by the HDR enhancement process.

Just one shot from the center of Ljubljana, Slovenia and my colleague’s portrait in a restaurant.

I was on a short business trip in Croatia and Slovenia. While travelling there, not too far from Nagykanizsa, my colleague pointed to a cemetery from the car and said that there is a more than 500 year old tree in that graveyard. I decided to take a few shots when coming back.

When we were driving back the weather wasn’t our friend: it was around 5C, cloudy, windy and even the rain started to drop. But the camera travelled so much and we even had an umbrella, so we took a few pictures.

The graveyard belongs to Sz?kedencs.

Old stones, old tree

And the same thing in HDR

Closer look

The HDR version

And finally my favourite

And in HDR

That place is unforgettable. I have to go back there in other seasons.