Archive for the 'tools & techniques' Category

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…and without

Related posts:
Playing with the LucisArt Photoshop filter plug-in
A bit of LucisArt again

Taking photos is fun and it is even greater fun when you can use top quality professional equipment. However owning top quality gear hides a few traps for the inexperienced.

I have been a happy owner of an AF-S VR Zoom-Nikkor 70-200mm f/2.8G IF-ED lens for some time now. It is definitely a professional lens and it performs extremely well even in my unprofessional hands. But in spite of that I encountered issues with owning and using this great piece of glass.

I spent a bit more than a week with this pro thing - and of course with my family - during my holiday. I carried the lens in my Lowepro Slingshot 300 AW with other pieces of my gear and held it in my hands for quite a few hours. The lens’ 1470g weight has been proven many times on my shoulders and in my hands. It is heavy, man. My wife could make just a few shots with it because of its weight.
Trap #1: Professional photography equipment is heavy in most of the cases. These things are designed for providing quality results for commercial photography purposes and making them light weight is not a primary requirement.

After making a few shots with my new lens I fell in love with its bokeh - the smooth haziness of the out-of-focus areas - which can be especially useful in portraiture creating a nicely blurred background.

taken with an 18-135mm “kit lens“

taken with the expensive 70-200mm lens

My very first impression was that this effect can be achieved only with such a top lens, and it took me quite a few weeks to realize that even I managed to make a photo with comparable bokeh but with a much cheaper lens.
Trap #2: thinking that only expensive gear can give you the desired results.

When photographing people with this 70-200mm lens I realized in pain how far I have to walk away to shoot a standing figure. I should have known what I will get before buying the lens. I had been told by a friend that this lens is a professional and generic purpose lens used by the pros every day. I checked the reviews and evaluations of this specific glass written by professionals and they stated that this is a great thing to have. But they know what to expect from 70mm and I did not. It was also a kind of surprise to me that I cannot focus when going too close to my object, which means that this glass cannot be used as a micro lens.
Trap #3: buying something when you don’t know exactly what to expect.

A 70-200mm lens is definitely a telephoto lens. With all of of its advantages and disadvantages. Landscape photography is mostly done by wideangle lenses. Within buildings you might want to use normal or wideangle ones and for photographing very small objects you use micro lenses. But if you are - like I was - travelling, carrying your camera equipped with your beloved, expensive and heavy lens and you are - just like I was - reluctant to change your lens - because of loving your new purchase so much or being afraid of dust getting into your camera - to an other one that would fit and serve better in the given circumstances, then you have chosen the wrong lens for your trip.
Trap #4: using your top quality gear in situations where other ones - possibly not that good pieces - would be better.

I’m thinking of buying an other lens. A wide-angle zoom. And if I had bought a pro lens for telephoto why should I buy a cheap one for wide-angle? I need exceptional quality, right?
Hey, am I stupid? I am still not a professional photographer. Why on Earth would I need an other lens in the wide area when I have the 18-135mm kit lens? What are my problems with it?

1. It is a DX lens, which means that it was designed for “small” sensor of the Nikon DSLRs and it does not give a full frame picture. But I don’t have a full frame DSLR (even Nikon does not have.)
2. It has cromatic aberration. But that can be handled in Lightroom, right?
3. It is vignetting. But that can be handled in Lightroom as well, right?

But I need it, period.
Trap #5: you cannot stop if you are in the loop of top gear.

Good gear is not evil though, but one should be prepared to use it both mentally and practically. I heard it many years ago that before buying a house the buyer should rent it for a while to probe it. A colleague of mine refused to buy a used car without a test drive. I know it is not always feasible but in most cases you can rent or borrow the pro camera, lens, flashlight or whatever you are planning to purchase. Do it and decide after that. And eventually it will give you pleasure.

Additionally to the previously discussed masters (Dave Black, David Berman- also known as Sitbonzo and Dave Hill) I must mention a photographer working in New Zealand. I found him through an article on Strobist - the blog that is about teaching the digital photography community how to use flashlights off the camera. The article is about Brent Williamson who is using one remotely controlled flash and the Sun as light sources and makes amazing portraits with this technique.
His blog is the Stateofthenation and this is his Flickr photo stream.

All these guys inspired me to take the photos below. Bear with me, these are my first shots of this kind.

My best and most patient models: my family.

I used my Nikon D80 and a still borrowed Nikon SB-800 speedlight. My wife was standing with her back to the Sun and I placed the flash on a tripod opposite to the Sun a bit above her head level. The D80 built-in flash was in commander mode where I disabled the built-in flash itself (it flashes though once for TTL, but not when taking the picture) and the SB-800 was in remote mode and manual. With this scenario I could adjust the output level of the remote flash from the camera. For this shot it was 1/2 or 1/4. I also used the diffuser dome from Nikon supplied with the SB-800 attached to the speedlight.

I did not have to use any transmitter-receiver devices other than the camera and the flash themselves.
I know that from artistic point of view the composition of these shots are far from perfect and the light could have been more ambient. The shadows are quite strong but I kind of like them this way. My purpose was to make eye-capturing portraits.

And a behind the scenes photo at the end with my lazy assistant

Some posts ago I wrote about lighting tutorial slideshows by David Berman and Dave Hill’s works and his behind the scenes photos.

Today I came across Dave Black’s Website and the huge amount of workshop materials he published. Many, many great sample photos with detailed explanations on how he captured them. They are very useful whatever level you are in photography.
My personal technical favourites are on how to use remotely controlled Nikon SB-800 speedlights to light your subjects here, here and here.
But the most meaningful one at this moment in my life is the Principles of Success full of good pieces of advice for beginner - and not only beginner - photographers.

His pictures are copyrighted so I could not post any of them here.

Twelve original photos made by Roger Fenton - one of the most important photographers of the nineteenth century - have been found in the Library of Manuscripts and Rarities of Eötvös Lóránd University (ELTE), Budapest, Hungary. These works from the dawn of photography are without example in Hungary and it is still a mystery how and when they got to the Library or even to the country.

Roger Fenton was a pioneer of photography and regarded as the first war photographer photo-documenting the Crimean War in 1855 in extremely difficult circumstances (he got cholera and broke several of his ribs).

The found photos were made as salted paper and albumen prints and require special protection and care. Ten of the twelve images - sized 30×40cm in average - were made in 1856, two in 1858 - as a trusted photography history expert determined.

Original article in Hungarian on index.hu

These pictures were post-processed using the Sculpture variant of the famous LucisArt filter plug-in.

This was the original image:

And an other one:

And its original:

Related posts:
Playing with the LucisArt Photoshop filter plug-in
Isn’t it more interesting? (LucisArt)