Nikon D750

Been busy with work and lots of travelling and I haven't been updating this blog for months. Lets end the year with few gear reviews/first impressions posts. Those seems to be anyways the most interesting content for readers.

D750 feels like great successor for my trusted workhorse, D700. This camera with small prime like 50mm is compact, has great grip ergonomics (something that should have been in Df) and feels FUN. It is great camera for both studio & event photography. List of first impression below after using the camera for about two months and having multiple outdoor & studio shoots.

What's Your Story?

Joe McNally

It was great to see the presentations from Bill Frakes & Joe McNally at Nikon What's Your Story? event. Day was filled with presentations about new Nikon D4 & D800 cameras, Photoshop 6 features etc. but I think lots of people were there to mainly see Bill & Joe. We not just value their work in the field of photography but also the way how they share their experience of making the photos via blog writings, books and speaking in the events.

Roosa

First studio photos from this year.

Focus breathing

Handheld photos made from around 2 meter distance @ 200mm (AF-S 70-200VRII left & AF-D 80-200 right). Because of heavy focus breathing (change of focal lenght by focus distance) of new AF-S 70-200/f2.8 VRII you get lot less than 200mm FOV when focusing close to minimum focus distances (1.4-2m) :/  By reviews I wasn't sure how big drawback this would be in real use, but now after using the 70-200VRII some times at studio, it feels annoying. For headshots, you need to sometimes crop final image while older 80-200 would have delivered tightly framed shot. 70-200 with this trait is still fantastic lens and VRII makes it awesome for low light shooting. Would I have ever noticed this without internet reviews? Probably not :) Ignorance is bliss.

Charging...

Preparations for tomorrow's photography session. Got those high capasity (around 2500mAh) Eneloops (as seen in the the top of picture) recently. Should have about 25% higher capasity than regular Eneloops. However, they can be only charged around 500 times (compared to 1500 with older Eneloops).

I am switching little by little to low self-discharge NiMh AA batteries. More convenient to use as you don't need to constantly recharge them.

MiniTT1, FlexTT5 & AC3

I had quick test with PocketWizard MiniTT1, FlexTT5 & AC3 ZoneController for Nikon. With AC3 & ControlTL  (Control the Light) you can wirelessly control remote flashes in TTL or manual mode. There is lot to digest with all the settings and PocketWizard utility software tweaking (going through all the manuals are about reading 50+ pages) but I got the wireless controlling with AC3 to work at first try. Reliable triggering, even through walls. The standard what you would expect from PW products. Turning the control wheels of AC3 was faster way to adjust power settings of remote SB-800 connected to FlexTT5 than doing it old fashioned way from camera/commander flash menu.

When one teaches, two learn

Around two weeks ago I spent one evening teaching flash photography basics for friends. 1-3 lights setups using everything from vintage Nikon speedlights (SB-24) to battery powered heavy duty lights (Pro-7b). Why to use certain modifiers, how to guide model, what to do when wind destroys gear (like it did on the workshop) etc. Teaching is interesting way to rethink why you do the lighting certain ways and also get some new ideas from the people participating workshops.

Post apocalyptic gang

From the post apocalyptic themed shoot with Jamo. See more photos after the link

Two setups

Sometimes you need or want to use only one light, and sometimes lot more. First setup what I did in this shoot was with basic four lights setup. Key light from beauty dish, fill from softbox, rim light and one light for background.

Berlin

Visited Berlin a week or so go. Great city to see. Our hotel was close to this Checkpoint Charlie tourist attraction.



See the full set from Flickr

Studio photos

Some blog updates after looong break. Going to start by posting some recent studio photos (below) and maybe product review or two later. Let me know what you think, and should there be more reviews or lighting diagrams how the photos were done.


Emma

New photos

New photos from recent studio photography workshop.

Live music photos

Tori Amos, Provinssirock 2007
My photography and this blog started with live music photos and macro shots. As the results were more interesting with live music photos here are some of them from years 2006-2007. In this time I was shooting without photo pass in the middle of festival audience, dodging elbows.