Tonight, before running out the door to the Scouts concert, and because Winter from Sunlight Sucks wanted a picture of me… I took a picture of myself.
Easy peasy picture, single shot, high aperture, on camera flash, dark room, fish eye lens and a remote trigger. Like I said, easy peasy.
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I decided to make my email response to Sudeep’s comment question into a full on post. I figured someone might find it interesting besides Sudeep and myself.
These pictures were taken with the Nikon 60mm f/2.8D AF Micro-Nikkor Lens. I opted for this particular lens for a few reasons.
I went with the 60mm lens over the 100mm lens to allow myself to get closer to my subject and to prevent as much vibration as possible. Shorter lens, less shake.
I also went with this particular model because of the build quality. The new Nikon 60mm f/2.8G ED AF-S Micro-Nikkor Lens is a great lens with some wonderful features especially for new D-SLRs. The build quality is not up to par with the the lens I ended up choosing. The ED lens is all plastic body with glass lenses, where as mine is metal.
The heavier lens helps steady the hand plus is obviously more durable. All the way around it feels and acts like a superior lens.
Hold the two in your hands and you will know the one that is right for you. Plus, it isn’t any more money. It is in fact, cheaper!
There is one caveat for Nikon D60 and Nikon D40 owners. The Nikon 60mm f/2.8D AF Micro-Nikkor Lens will operate in manual mode only with your cameras. The D40 and D60 both lack the motor drive/pin to take advantage of the auto-focus of this lens.
If you need autofocus, or want a lighter lens for your camera bag, do not feel bad about getting the Nikon 60mm f/2.8G ED AF-S Micro-Nikkor Lens. It is a fantastic lens with great optics and wonderful digital features.
There are other good lenses from Tokina, Tamron and Sigma, but sometimes going with Nikon really is worth it. There are times when Tokina, Tamron and even Sigma are the best choice, but this is not one of them.
If anyone would like to to elaborate more on that, let me know. I will be playing more with my new Tokina AT-X 107 DX AF 10-17mm ƒ/3.5-4.5 Fish-Eye over the next few days and will post the results here.
Tags: Lens, Nikon, Photography, Q&A
So a couple of days ago I went on a midnight Wal-Mart run for, of all things, potting soil for our garden. I just happened to walk by the electronics department and lo and behold, what sits before me? Two Nintendo Wiis! This is pretty amazing considering that the average time a Nintento Wii lasts on the shelf is only one hour.
Ten minutes later it was mine and the second one? Sold to girl who was equally surprised to see one actually available to be purchased.
I got an extra controller, nuchuk, Super Maria Galaxy, WiiPlay and went home to set it all up. Takes only a couple of minutes, three cables, that’s it!
And after one hour of play time, one hella fun hour of play the Wii, I was wondering… Do I really want to keep this thing? I’m going to let Ryan make that decision. I hate to spend $398 on something I don’t need when there are things like lenses that I want more and possibly even really need.
What do you think? Keep the Wii or be half way to the one of the lenses I want?
Loading ...I decided to dip my hand into this tight aperture (f-22 to f-36) on a mirror game, literally.
Hard to take a picture of your own hand… Lesson = learned.
Next time I am going to spin that dradle, I bet it would make for a pretty awesome shot.
Looks like motor oil but it is honey. Sweet, delicious honey injected with red wine to increase the golden color. Thought up that one on my own ;-)
Learned how to double my money in a flash!
My prized Nikon F3. I never use it, but I do prize it. Click for a larger version.
I didn’t have any food coloring and corn syrup to make fake blood so I just tried some of that wine. No go. Just couldn’t get that blood look. So here’s the pic sans faux blood.
Funny story, after putting all of this stuff up, i accidentally cut myself and bled all over the mirror haha, damn the timing.
Tags: Blood, Honey, Jew, jewish, Mirror, Money, Nikon, Photography, Picture, Ryan, WineI’m supposed to be working on this big project for my photography class. The basis of it is experimental lighting to enhance a photograph. I have done some quick and dirty examples of how doing some simple changes to your lighting and camera setting, you can turn a shitty picture into a great picture.
The first example is using a high aperture (f-22) along with a super bright light (650 watt) to light a scene versus using an automatic setting on a camera such as my Nikon D80. First the auto setting shot.
All and all, it isn’t such a bad picture. The problems are getting true whites and true blacks as you can see in the shot coming below.
Obviously better whites and blacks here. Also, I manually set the white balance as opposed to the camera deciding what was white.
This next set is much more obvious. I took a picture of my mother’s Aggie class ring on a mirror, a blush compact mirror at that. With this shot I compared again, a 650 watt tungsten Arri light with the built in flash on my camera. I again modified the f-stop to 22 on my manual shot.
As you can see, the flash blew out the color of the gold and the lower f-stop picked up all the light hitting the mirror. It’s a plain old gross picture. However, let’s see what happens when we set the aperture to f-22, pound the thing with 650 watts of light.
I swear, it’s like magic. The silver mirror turns to black and the gold, which was previously washed to a pale yellow, is now a deep, rich 14ct gold. Look at that reflection!
These pictures are just the foundation of my project, showing how small changes in light can totally change a picture. I intend to include emotive portraits and many other genres of photography in this series. Here’s to hoping I can make it happen and make it something special, unique and captivating.
Tags: Aggie, Arri, Class, Family, Light, Macro, Mom, Nikon, Photography, Project, Ring, School, Scraps, Spoon, StrobeI just got a new toy from Nikon. A relatively cheap one too. It’s a Nikon 50mm 1:1.8D and I’m loving it. I’ve only taken a few pics but that extremely low, but not by any means the lowest from Nikon, aperture makes for quite a fast lens.
I took these pictures in my basement tonight with the shutter at around 120-1200 depending on the picture. What’s great about that is I can turn my ISO down to 200-400 and get a late night shot… without a tripod.
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Tags: Lens, Nikon, Photography, Yay Loading ...
