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photo session with various 85mm lenses

March 30, 2011 Neil vN 23 Comments

photo session using various 85mm lenses  (model: Jess B.)

A fast 85mm lens is an essential addition to any camera bag, whether an f1.8 or f1.4  or even an f1.2 aperture. With their shallow depth of field, and the pleasant perspective for portraits (when not used with a super-tight composition), these lenses will have your subject just pop from the background. Jessica and I are busy with a new project - testing various 85mm lenses - specifically for how their bokeh appears in comparison. It is proving a tad more difficult than I had hoped for to show when poor bokeh is truly  Read more inside...

comparison: Lowel ID-light & MicroPro LED light & Dedo Ledzilla

March 25, 2011 Neil vN 27 Comments

comparative review: Lowel ID-light & Litepanels MicroPro LED light & Dedo Ledzilla

The use of video light for stills photography has become ever more popular in recent years, as high-ISO capable cameras made it possible to shoot in lower light without having to resort to flash. The immediacy of video light - the 'wysiwyg' nature of video light - makes it an interesting light source to play with and experiment with on a shoot. The dramatic quality of the light is also quite appealing. Broadly speaking, there are two kinds of video light out there: - the traditional  Read more inside...

Auto FP flash setting for Nikon D300s & D700

March 13, 2011 Neil vN 33 Comments

Auto FP setting for Nikon D300s & D700 - high speed flash sync

The Nikon D300s and Nikon D700 have a custom setting to enable high-speed flash sync - custom fucntion e1. However, you have the option of setting it to either 1/250 Auto FP, or 1/320 Auto FP. I've often been asked which is the preferable setting ... and you know, I never quite knew either. So it was time then to systematically check this out and see what actually happens at either setting - 1/250 Auto FP and 1/320 Auto FP - for both the Nikon D300s and  D700 ...  Read more inside...

Video tutorial – Using the ‘black foamie thing’

March 8, 2011 Neil vN 98 Comments

 

Video tutorial - Using the 'black foamie thing'

   Read more inside...

photo sessions – Shawna

March 7, 2011 Neil vN 4 Comments

photo sessions  - Shawna - using a variety of photographic lighting options

Shawna is the delightful model I used while I was in Las Vegas a few weeks ago. She helped us out during the mini-workshops I offered, as well as some photos of my own.  I've posted a few photos from these already, but thought it might be interesting to show a further selection of images and discuss them ...  Read more inside...

photo session – Shawna – with the PocketWizard AC3 ZoneController

February 28, 2011 Neil vN 47 Comments

photo session - Shawna - using the PocketWizard AC3 Zone Controller

While in Las Vegas for WPPI 2011, the team at PocketWizard asked me if I would be interested in them shooting a short video clip of me using the new PocketWizards for Nikon. I didn't hesitate in saying yes!  Here is the description of the setup of the one photo sessions I did. There was another one, which I will post in a day or so. I will post a link to the PocketWizard video clip as soon as it is up. For this demonstration of the PocketWizard FlexTT5 and AC3 ZoneController, I relied on Shawna, a favorite model,  Read more inside...

video light vs bounce flash

February 23, 2011 Neil vN 12 Comments

video light vs bounce flash

It's easy enough getting nice clean open light with a single on-camera speedlight when shooting indoors. By bouncing your flash with the idea of getting directional light from your flash, you can effortlessly get portraits like this. As usual, I used the black foamie thing to flag my flash and get more light on the one side of my subject's face. In this case, more subtly so than some other examples on this site. We were working in the same location here as shown in the previous article where I photographed Shawna using only the available light that was  Read more inside...

Photography: Direction of the light – using available light

February 22, 2011 Neil vN 17 Comments

Photography: Direction of the light - using available light

This striking photo of Shawna illustrates something that I want to underline: at some level, our consideration of the light that we're using remains the same, whether we're using available light, or flash, or video light or some other continuous light source. We need to consider the direction and quality of the light we have or are creating. We then either need to adapt our lighting, or adapt our way of shooting our subject, to complement our subject.  So let's look closer at the light / lighting used for this photo ...  Read more inside...

using a small softbox for lighting an intimate photo session

January 22, 2011 Neil vN 37 Comments

using a small softbox for lighting an intimate / boudoir photo session

With intimate photo sessions, I use a number ways of lighting my subject. This helps to bring some variety to the images. It helps mixing things up a bit by not using just one specific way to light the session. While I sometimes use a softbox, the medium sized softboxes (or the 24" x 24" softboxes) are just a little too big to swing around in a small room. With a recent on-location photo session in New York, I used the Lastolite 8.6" Ezybox (B&H) a few times. I took it along on that photo session because it  Read more inside...

softbox vs shoot-through umbrella vs bounce umbrella

December 20, 2010 Neil vN 32 Comments

Comparison between a softbox, a white shoot-through umbrella and a bounce umbrella

I've had several requests from readers of the Tangents blog about how the light from a softbox would differ from the light from an umbrella. Spurred on by that, and by my own curiosity, I met up a while ago with my favorite model, Anelisa, specifically to do comparison shots. And here it is ...  Read more inside...

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