photographing sparklers
photographing sparklers
I've had a few people ask me about this image which I posted as the opening image of a slideshow of a recent wedding I photographed. The question was how I lit this, and if I had used flash. The answer is perhaps a very reassuring one .. I only used the light from the sparklers, and no flash was used. What helped here was that there were numerous sparklers, giving a fairly even light over the bridal party. The light from the sparklers is very short-lived, so you have to be all set to grab as many frames as you can when this opportunity arises. With Read more inside...review: RadioPoppers P1
[ click on the photo to see a larger image] Apathy Angel against the backdrop of the Manhattan skyline. The settings for the image above was 1/2000 @ f1.6 @ 100 ISO, and the reason for the wide aperture was that I wanted to have the skyline appear as that dreamlike haze in the background. The bright light though, forced a very fast shutter speed. In this case 1/2000th would let the background over-expose a little and blow out somewhat, but give me some detail. But to control the lighting on my model more specifically than just the available light, I used flash. For the lighting Read more inside...
from the hip …
Here is a simple technique which some of you might already know of - shooting from the hip without looking through the viewfinder. At weddings, when photographing the party and dancing during the reception with a wide-angle lens, I often don't hold the camera up to my eye. Instead I rely on the infra-red beam from the speedlight to show me what the camera is focusing on. Then, using the focus-lock-and-hold method, I keep focus and reframe the shot if needed. This way I can shoot from the hip without looking through the viewfinder, but still have images that are well composed. Here are Read more inside...
broken Canon 580EX II hotshoe foot
One of the most visited pages on this website is the instructional post on how to repair the foot of the Canon 580EX speedlite. Since the foot of the original 580EX is made from plastic, it is easy to break ... but also easy to repair. I broke the foot off my 580EX II some time back, by lowering my camera too fast to the ground by the strap. The camera and lens tilted over, and the flash smacked the ground a touch harder than the gentle soft landing I anticipated. Because the foot of the 580EX II is now made of metal, there is nothing to give, except the body of the speedlight. And this Read more inside...
Using lens flare for that golden glow
Using lens flare for that golden glow effect
I've had some questions about images that I have posted which show a lot of lens flare, and specifically the image above. And the question also arose what kind of Photoshop actions or effects I used on that image. The answer is simple .. none. While that image isn't quite "straight out of the camera", it is (nearly) "straight out of the raw converter". Something I find myself doing quite often on days when I photograph in the sun, is to seek out the sun purposely in the frame of my camera .. and allow the sunlight to flare as a burst Read more inside...review: Nikon SB-900 speedlight
review: Nikon SB-900 speedlight
With the SB-900 Speedlight (B&H), Nikon's flagship flashgun, it is clear that they did their homework. The SB-800 was a great flashgun, but there were certain things about it that were very frustrating, but the Nikon SB-900 gets all of this right. A huge improvement is that the SB-900 rotates 180' to either side! Right there in this image is the main reason to get the SB-900 ... it now rotates 180' to the right, instead of stopping short at the 90' mark like the SB-800. This is a huge benefit in bouncing flash with specific effect Read more inside...dreamy goodness: Canon 200mm f2 L IS
Canon 1D Mark III - Canon 200mm f2 L IS USM (B&H) - 1/300th @ f2 @ 125 ISO [ click on the photo to see a larger image] Canon recently upgraded their legendary 200mm f1.8 with an 200mm f2 version which has Image Stabilization. So out of curiosity I rented this lens from LensProToGo, to play with it and test it out. Here is the beast of a lens: the Canon 200mm f2 L IS USM (B&H) This is the kind of lens which is best used (or in a way ONLY to be used) at its maximum aperture. That wide aperture of f2 gives you an incredibly thin depth of field, and hence, that dreamy Read more inside...
Nikon D700 : preview
hands-on preview: Nikon D700
Nikon D700 ..-. 1/125th @ f3.5 @ 32oo ISO. [ click on the image to see a 100% crop ] The Nikon D700 camera (B&H) and Nikon SB-900 speedlight (B&H), were released today, to my great anticipation. I expected to see D3 quality images in a body about the size of the D300, and accessibly priced for what it delivers. This evening I drove in to Manhattan so I could roam around Times Square to test the low-light capabilities of this camera. This after all is what the D3 is renowned for, and the D700 promises to deliver the same image quality. Read more inside...modifying a modifier
This idea of how to modify that black foam half-snoot that I use to flag my speedlight with, was sent to me by Randall Todd. It allows the flag to be attached to the speedlight much easier than my less sophisticated method of using hair-bands. "I have made and used Peter Gregg's ABBC and found it to be very useful. Instead of using his big rubber bands I went with a Velcro design. The attached photos should show if fairly well. It's simply 10-1/4" of the fuzzy side of sticky hook & loop material on the outside and about 9" of "3M" rubbery shelf liner on the inside. I used a Read more inside...
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