Wedding and Rehearsal

Tuesday, and I finally recovered from shooting the wedding, which is a good thing because I have another one that I'm shooting this weekend. I'll be lead photographer at the next one.

I always try to process a few images from shoots where I am second shooter for myself and with all of the fun stuff I was doing I decided on three that I really like.

The first one was the first dance. It was shot at 1/50th of a second at f/4.5 with an ISO of 800. The lens I used was my old 28-105mm at 78mm. I used a Sunpak 544 flash pointed straight up at the ceiling. It was set at 1/4 power which was plenty. I had my camera set to rear sync for the flash so it fired at the end of the exposure.

First Dance

 I really like how the color turned out on this. I also like the slight motion in the lights in the background.

The second one I processed was a little girl twirling on the dance floor with a streamer in her hand. I shot this one at 1/60th of a second at f/4.2, ISO 800 with the same lens. I tried a couple of things with this one,  I blurred the background in Photoshop which is this first one. I then created another layer, applied radial blur and set it to overlay. My wife likes the first one but I like the darker second one more.

First Edit

Second Edit

The last one was one where I set the shutter at 1/2 a second, stopped down to f/10 to compensate set my focal length at 35mm. Keeping the rear sync on I raised the camera above my head and pressed the shutter. This is what I got.

Everyone Having Fun

 You never know what you're going to get when you do something like this but if you do it a couple of times you might get lucky and get something really special.

Wedding Rehearsal and Wedding

I was a second shooter at a wedding rehearsal and wedding over the last two days and am very tired. I was glad to do it though because I have a wedding next week that I am first shooter and needed to refresh the brain on a lot of things. I can't believe how quickly I was able to jump back into it. It took about ten minutes of shooting at the church and the reception hall before I had my camera's settings dialed in at both places.

I shot at the ceremony using an ISO around 8000 with no flash. those pictures turned out just a bit grainy but should be fine with a little processing. At the the reception I was using a Sunpak 544 pointed straight up into the ceiling between 1/2 to 1/16 power. My camera was set with ISO 800, a shutter speed of around 1/100 but it varied which was dependent on the effect I was going for. As always I set my camera to rear curtain sync so the flash was firing at the end of the exposure. You can really get some cool affects by dragging the shutter but you need to make sure that you compensate with the shutter speed.

I'll be posting more about the wedding shoot but I'm really tired right now and have to get to bed because I have a scouting trip tomorrow to look for places for a wedding shoot that I have next weekend.

Engagement Shoot for Jonathan and Anna

Well the engagement pictures are almost all done, I have two or three left to edit. All in all the editing went very well other than hair fly-aways because of the wind another problem I had was cat hair on Jonathan's shirt. Need to make sure you bring a lint brush or roller with you and also make sure you inspect their clothing before you start shooting. Two minutes on the shoot can save you hours in post.

You can see all of the finished photos at:

http://www.robertgainorphotography.com/jonathanannaengagement

Athletic Shoots

Once again I shot a softball game and a baseball game at the same time. This time I was better prepared and was able to get onto the field for a little bit of shooting. It wasn't as windy or cloudy as the last time so I only had harsh sun shine to deal with. It didn't go too bad at all though and I was able to get some great shots.

Seagate Drives

I've been having trouble with Photoshop saving files to one of my external drives. Turns out There have been several problems with Seagate drives on macs using Seagate's software. So I copied all of my files from said drive to my mac, uninstalled all of the Seagate software, partitioned the drive, reformatted using fat instead of ntfs, and copied all files back to the drive. Drive seems to be operating fine now. I guess macs just don't want to use that ntfs file system at all.

Engagement Shoot

Jonathan & Anna

One image from the engagement shoot yesterday.

Editing...

Settling in for a long day of editing and processing. I have to get the engagement photos from yesterday done and make some headway on the athletic pictures that I've shot. I have track, tennis, softball and baseball to edit. This is one of the parts that I'm not that fond of doing. Don't get me wrong I love doing it on my images but working on clients photos it's a necessary evil and I do my best to devote just as much attention to their photos as I do for my own work. I'll probably be at this all day. Just need to make sure that I get up and away from it every now and then.

I've looked over the engagement images and have culled it down from 238 to around 80 images. From here I'll get that down to around 10 to 15 as I look at them more closely while I pick the ones to edit.

Engagement Shoot

Did an engagement shoot today at Cox Arboretum in Dayton between 4:30 and 6:00 pm. It was windy, partly cloudy, and cold. Lighting was a bit tough to handle because the sun kept going in and out of the clouds. I had to do some bracketing to make sure that I got some decent exposures. I had to go from using a Nikon SB24 in a Westscott Apollo Softbox to using ambient light. I would have liked to use an Alien Bees B400 but it was just way to windy. I'll be posting the results on my website in a couple of days.

Athletic Shoots

Shot a softball game at the same time as a baseball game yesterday. It wasn't to bad since both fields were side by side. One problem I ran into was the fence. I had to position the camera so that the lens was between the wire of the fencing. I took a few from up in the stands but the stands weren't high enough for me to see over the top of them. I'll have to rethink some things the next time out.

Photo Processing

I added a new page on processing. This is my basic processing routine. I usually start with these basic steps and move on from there. More often than not these steps are all an image needs. You can access the page by clicking on the link to the right or by clicking here

Photo Processing

Lighting Diagram and Photo from April 13th shoot.

As I promised a lighting diagram and finished photo from Saturday.

Photo Shoot This Afternoon

Well My friend and I had an absolutely wonderful shoot today. The 105mm lens performed admirably. I'll be posting one of the images as soon as I get permission to do so. The sharpness was incredible. I did have to do some minor fixing on the eyes but that was mainly because we were shooting a 7 month old and he just wouldn't stay facing the direction we wanted him to face. I had to borrow a catch light from his left eye for his right eye and dodge the right eye a little bit to bring it out. I also sharpened the eyes a little just to make them stand out but I didn't sharpen anything else. The camera was set to 1/125th of a second with an aperture of f/5.6.

I'll also include a lighting diagram but just to let you know we used three lights and a white reflector.

For the main we used an Alien Bees B1600 coming in from camera right metered at just under f/8.
Fill was a 5 in one reflector using the white side from camera left metered at f/4.
We had a kicker coming in from back left with a 20 degree spot grid metered at just under f/4 as well.
For the background light we used a Nikon SB24 with a brownish yellowish gel. The background was a black cloth.

Vintage Lenses

I've been purchasing some vintage Nikon lenses on ebay and shopgoodwill.com and I've mentioned a few of them in my previous posts. I wanted to give everyone some heads up before you go out and buy some of these lenses. I know these lenses don't cost a lot of money. Most of them can be had for a fraction of their modern counterparts. You will however be giving up on some modern conveniences when you use these lenses.

For example: most lenses that I've been buying are manual focus only, so if you're not comfortable using your fingers to focus your camera forget about it. I've relied on my manual focus skills for the  27 years. I very seldom put my camera on auto focus unless I'm shooting a sporting event and even then I switch back and forth depending on the sport that I'm shooting.

Another issue with these lenses is metering. On some of the lower grade cameras you will not get any metering at all with the older lenses so you'll have to rely on a handheld meter. You should own one of these any way and you should know how to use it. They come in real handy when your setting up lighting. With the higher end camera's you'll need to set up non-cpu lenses in your menu, I'm not going to tell you how to do this, you'll have to break out your manual and read it. Who knows, while looking for this you might find some other neat things that your camera does that you didn't know about.

The final thing you may run into is setting your aperture. On older lenses before AF D models you'll need to use the aperture ring on the lens, If you set the lens up properly in the non-cpu lens settings it should show you the proper aperture in your view finder and on your lcd screen unless your using a lower end model camera.

Nikon has a page devoted to compatibility issues with your camera and older lenses in your manual. If you can't find it you can also go to the site below and select your camera model. On that page there will be a tab called "Lens Compatibility".

http://imaging.nikon.com/lineup/dslr/

Check it out before you go buying that inexpensive Vintage Micro Nikkor Lens on ebay so you know what your getting yourself in for.

I'm also going to put this up in my Links pages on the right over there so you can refer to this from time to time.

Nikkor 105mm f/2.8 AI-s Lens

Finally received my Nikon, Nikkor 105mm f/2.5 AI-s lens from ebay yesterday and am looking forward to using it today. It's going to be my main portrait lens. Did some preliminary tests with it out on the patio and man this thing is sharp. The depth of field fall off is fantastic as well.

I'll be out shooting with a friend of mine today, we're gearing up for a wedding in a couple of weeks. I'll be handling second shooter duties and helping with lights.

It's been a while since we shot together so we're going to pull out all the equipment and do some practicing today. If we get anything good I'll post it up here for everyone to look at. We'll be setting up some lighting ratios inside and trying some different things with ambient and fill light outside. Hopefully the weather will cooperate.

Tennis Match Update and Other Stuff

Had a great time shooting the tennis matches yesterday. It was very windy so the tennis balls were flying all over the place. Used my 70-300mm Nikon lens for the most part. Switched to the 28 - 105mm lens for some of the doubles matches. I shot well over 700 images and have whittled it down to just over 100. I'll probably get that down to around 50 after I start editing.

Today I assisted at a commercial shoot. It was kind of interesting working from that side of it. I had to keep track of model releases, move the lighting around, and other things. I learned some tips on lighting as well.

High School Tennis Match

Shooting a high school boys tennis match this afternoon. I'll be using my D3S, a 70-300mm lens and my 28-105 lens. Looks like it's going to be cloudy today which is a good thing because the courts are not situated well for the sunlight and I won't be able to use flash. Also hoping it doesn't rain. One thing I found out from shooting girls tennis last fall was positioning yourself at the net. you will get better shots. The only thing you have to worry about is getting hit with a ball. I'll post later about how it went.

Nikon Series E 50mm f/1.8

Went down to the Oregon District in Dayton and did some shooting with my Nikon Series E Lens on my D3S. This lens has surprised the hell out of me. I got it from Goodwill attached to a Nikon FG camera for about $40.00.
For a manual lens this thing is great. I can't believe how sharp it is. I've been shooting with it for about a week now and it has not let me down. I've noticed that I've had to slow down my shooting to make sure that I have my setting right. I usually go out and burn off a hundred or so images but with this thing today I came back home with 36 images, some were duplicates because my settings were off. Out of those I uploaded the best 3 to my flickr account. You can check them out here.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/rgainor/8629282072/in/photostream

http://www.flickr.com/photos/rgainor/8629282552/in/photostream/

http://www.flickr.com/photos/rgainor/8628173615/in/photostream/

Another thing I'd like to point out is, I don't believe in the golden hour for shooting outside. These were shot at 1:00 pm. You can tell by the shadows that it was early afternoon. It's ok to shoot at this hour if you take into account the position of the sun and use it to your advantage.

Hello and Welcome to my Blog.

I will be using this blog to keep track of some of the things that I'll be working on. I'll be posting notes on my photography shoots and some of the techniques that I used in photographs, both in lighting setups and processing. This is mainly for my personal use but if you find something useful here great.

Starting out I'd like to list the equipment that I'm currently using. This list is going to change as I add or remove items.(Note: I do have an extensive collection of vintage film cameras that I use from time to time. I also have a collection of cheap plastic 35mm cameras that I also play around with.)

Cameras:

Nikon D3S
2 Nikon D90
Nikon D40X (my wife likes to take this from me sometimes)

Lenses:

Primes

Nikon AF Nikkor 50mm 1:1.8D
Nikon Lens Series E 50mm 1:1.8
Sigma 50mm 1:2.8 DG Macro
Sigma AF 14mm 1:3.5

Zooms

 Full Frame (FX):

Nikon AF Nikkor 28-105mm 1:3.5-4.5D
Nikon AF Nikkor 70-300mm 1:4-5.6G
Sigma APO DG 70-300mm 1:4-5.6

 Crop Sensor (DX):

Nikon DX AF-S Nikkor 18-55mm 1:3.5-5.6G II ED
Nikon DX AF-S Nikkor 55-200mm 1:4-5.6G ED
Sigma DC 18-50mm 1:2.8-4.5 HSM
Sigma DC 50-200mm 1:4.5-5.6 HSM
Tamron AF 70-300mm 1:4-5.6 Tele-Macro (1:2) LD Di

 Lighting:

Alien Bees B1600, B400 monolights
2 SB24 Nikon Speedlights
SB600 Nikon Speedlight

Various vintage Vivitar and other speedlights that I've picked up at thrift stores and other places.

Triggers:

Paul C Buff Cyber syncs

Modifiers

2 Westscott 40 inch Umbrellas
2 Westscott Apollo Softboxes

2 5 in 1 Reflectors, On big 40 inch and one smaller 25 inch

Another light modifier that I use is Savage Trans-lum. I use it for back lighting and building diffusion panels. I get mine from Adorama - http://www.adorama.com/SAT.html

I hope you find some useful information here

Rob
4/7/2013