Mr. Photoman

I have a small tip for Nikon flash users. Most of the time, if not all the time, when I use my flashes (sb800 and sb600)  they are always of camera. Often it will happen that I balance them in some form or another with available light. Now it should be noted that I always have my camera and flashes set on Manual, but this tip should also be use full if your using TTL. Usually when I’m getting my exposure right I will take a couple of shots with ambient only. When I’m happy with everything I start firing away until I feel the need to change something and then the process starts all over again.

The thing I never really liked is the fact that disabling the flash disrupts my workflow. I prefer much more to just press and hold a button and take the shot and release the button to take me back to flash, AE-L hold style. It so happens that you can! Yesterday I was browsing the menu of my D300 (I’m sure you can at least do this with a D90 D200 and D700 as well) and found that you can reprogram the (for me useless) aperture preview button to do it for you. This has made me so happy I felt the need to share it and make those users that are as anal as I am just as happy. So here’s how to do it:

Press MENU –> Go to the Custom Settings Menu (the small pencil) –> Choose “f Controls” –> Choose “f5 Assign Preview Button” –> Go to the “Preview Button Press” option –> Select Flash off  –> And, very important, press the OK button.

And that’s it! Try it out, you don’t even have to take your camera of you face to do a quick ambient exposure!

This morning I went trough my list in Google Reader and thought it would be fun to do a post on what sites I follow.

In general there are two different categories of blogs/sites which I visit, the ones where I go for learning and the ones where I go just to look and get inspired. I’ll start of with the inspiration section.

I think looking at art is a key part of enhancing your artistic eye. Browsing those sites often takes me longer then reading through a couple of blog posts. Bookmarking a photo to comeback to it later is one of the tactics I use to dissect composition and lights being used (Read-It later is great for this). I have a big weak spot for portrait photography so the combination of those two elements are what I usually focus on. Now I  can hear you thinking that those two elements are important in every form of photography. That’s true of course, but to take nature photography as an example, you wouldn’t be talking about lights used but rather the light that was available (and how that was utilized). Of course there’s still a whole bag of corner cases. Anyway on to the list! Here they are in no particular order:

• ReduxPictures, on location photojournalist style photography
• ONEXPOSURE, really good source of inspiration only your best pictures are allowed here. And yes, they have judges.
• ArtPhotoBlog, a blog of photos from different photographers all over the world. I really enjoy this website and can’t wait for new editions to it. The work is great but updates infrequent, so be patient and enjoy.
• Flickr last 7 days, probably no big surprise here. This is one I visit every now and then.
• The Big Picture, picture stream from The Boston Globe

Is that it!? Yeah pretty much! The truth is that OneXposure and the ArtPhotoBlog pretty much fulfill my needs. OneExposure offers great work and updates are really frequent, this morning I had 17 new photos. The last time I looked was last evening. ArtPhotoBlog I often visit even though  there are no new editions.

Okay, so now for my blog list, comments will follow after:

• Strobist, great place to learn from a speedlight carrying guru. Treasures of knowledge can be dug op here.
• Squeeze The Lime, learn from these to Belgium photographers through podcasts and screencast.
• Kelby Training, a site filled with hundreds of screencast about photography, photoshop, lightroom and much more. It’s payed subscription but well worth the money, go check it out every class has a couple of free videos.
• Photocritic, nice read with good resources.
• Lightroom Killer Tips, I’m a lightroom user and this site has loads of good tips and resource. The author of the site, Matt Kloskowski, also has screencasts on Kelby Training.
• Joe McNally, ever  wonder what a forest of speedlights looks like? Want to learn the left handed mind like water camera body grip? McNally also has video’s on Kelby Training but actually has a reputation far exceeding that of the Kelby website. This guy has done a lot and understands light.
• 1001 Noisy Cameras, the tech and gadget side of photography. Go here to find rumors, big stories and links to reviews. I much prefer using this website above DPreview only. This website also links to DPreview reviews and previews but also to loads of other.

I’m sure I’m still missing a couple of blogs but I think this list consist of the ones I most actively read. I want to mention the Strobist blog and the guys from Squeeze The Lime extra as I think they are really doing a wonderful job in sharing their knowledge. I’ve learned a lot on these websites which would have taken months even years of searching and trying to find that stuff out for my self. Be sure to visit those and go through their archives. If you’re interested in of camera strobes and in general learning to see the light I would recommend diving into the Lighting 101 course on the strobist site and go from there.

Okay last but not least if want to share 4 book titles (you know hard-copy). I actually have loads of books on photography, but I wanted to mention these three as they are great to get your self started on composition and feeling good about the work you produce. Art is in the eye of the maker.

• Photographic Composition, by Tom Grill & Mark Scanlon
• Learning To See Creatively, by Bryan Peterson
• Art & Fear, by David Bayles & Ted Orland
• Light, Science & Magic, by Fil Hunter, Steven Biver and Paul Fuqua

I’ve learned a lot from these books when I started out (I’m still starting out, been starting out for the past 8 years). I would suggest you read Photographic Composition first, it provides very good basics and a bit more theory then Learning To See Creatively, this way you can read Learning To See Creatively book after Photographic Composition and you can skip some of the theory and focus a bit more on the photographs and their comments.

Art & Fear discusses the questions artist often have about there own work. By addressing those it attempts to explain some of those questions, but also to provide you with a clearer view and a better feeling in creating your own work.

Okay that’s it for my list! I hope you found it interesting and discovered a couple of new sources of inspiration and information.

It would be great to see a couple of comments with your favorite reads and tips!

After creating my diy Sunbounce with flash attachment I got tempted to order an actual Sunbounce (without the flash attachment). So I checked out the dealers list and ordered one at Adorama. Here’s my short review of it (if you just want the review and don’t want to read about my order adventure just skip the first section)

One small note to people living outside of the US when ordering at Adorama. When I tried to pay for my Sunbounce Payall wouldn’t okay the payment (I always use Paypall if I can as I don’t want to type in my credit card info on websites). I made an exception this time and decided to enter my creditcard information anyway. A couple of things happened, first of all my Bank contacted me the next day to verify, in there eyes suspicious transaction from a company called Adorama, if I could verify that I ordered something there for the given amount, I could so everything was fine. The second thing that happened is that I had to pay a whole load of money to UPS, on top of the delivery costs I already payed Adorama. Puzzled as to what might have happened I set out to research if I payed double or if something else went wrong. I finally find out that you’re warned by Adorama that there might be extra costs involved when it comes to importing, how ever the bad thing here is that they only warn you after your transaction is complete and you payed them, bad bad boys at Adorama.

Anyway on to the important stuff, the Sunbounce Micro. In short? Well you have reflectors, and there is the Sunbounce, no they’re not paying me to write this, but the Sunbounce is worth every penny. It’s light as a feather and really strong. It’s also much easier to work with then the foldables, it’s really a breeze to get them in position.

At first I was a bit worried if you would actually ever take it apart, I got this really nice bag with it so that I can always take it even if I’m not sure if I’ll use it. The thing is it really took some effort to assemble. It came to a point that I started doubting if what I was doing was actually correct, I was afraid that I would rip the fabric. I decided to sit back for a moment and double check what the Sunbounce looks like assembled on the Sunbounce website. I discovered that it takes some force to get together and that the fabric might look thin but it’s in fact very strong. So if you get one of these don’t be afraid to apply some force.

And although it was hard to assemble, it’s actually reasonable easy to get it in the bag and out ready for use. You just pull out the aluminum tube at the back, roll it up and slide it in the bag. When you need it it’s really not that hard to get the tube back in position.

The Sunbounce might set you back a couple of bucks but considering its build quality I consider it well worth the money. The only disappointment for me is the big price tag on the flash attachment. Considering the amount of money it costed me to get the Sunbounce shipped, it will not be likely that I will pay for the expensive flash attachment and again layout down the fat cash to get it over.

For those that have no clue as to what a Sun-bounce with flash attachment is, check out this website.

If you just want to see the images of the DIY Sunbounce, just scroll down.

Already a while back I’ve seen this videocast from Bert Stephani and was very impressed with the capabilities of the Sunbounce with the flash attachment. Immediately after watch the videocast I set out to get my hands on one. Big disappointment, the pricing is far from reasonable if you go for the absolute cheapest solution it will set you back $273 for a 60×90cm with a white reflector (single sided), ouch. Just to put that price a bit in perspective, a 5-in-1 (gold,silver,white,black,diffuser) fold able reflector would set you back around 35$ for a similar sized one.

That made me consider an attempt at building my own, especially as I have a 5-in-1 reflector and, better yet, also a collapsible holder for it. The nice thing is that the reflector holder has an light-stand mount on it so basically that means you have a place to start screwing things on to, and that’s what I did.

So next thing I needed was a mount to attached the flash to on one side and the reflector holder on the other. I realized that I still had one of those ancient film lamps lying around somewhere (see image) that I could ransack for parts. As a film lamp like that comes with the same universal tripod mounts as we’re used to in the photography world my job was super easy, I just had to screw everything together and Bob’s your uncle! The nice thing is that Nikon includes handy little stands with every flash they sell, what is even better is that on the underside of those stands you’ll find (you guessed it) a little hole with which you can attach it to a tripod.

Now in my case it was all very easy, I had the reflector and the holder which I bought new in a set for about $50 on offer. I did a quick search on what those parts would cost separate at the moment and it came to a total of about $70, but I’m sure if you search a bit better then I did you can get them cheaper. And even if you don’t have an old film lamp lying around, which is pretty likely, it’s still pretty easy. What you would need is about 2 screws (same thread as tripod attachment) and something to give the flash head a little distance from the reflector, I would go for aluminum which is easy to bend (if not to thick) and to drill holes in, also it’s nice and light.

So what does the original Sunbounce have what my DIY doesn’t? Well it’s faster in and out of the bag of course, but the main thing is that it can stand a lot more wind then my DIY version. The difference between the 2 is that when the wind starts to really muscle up the original will take to the air assistant and all and with the reflector completely intact, my DIY version on the other hand will probably loose its reflector and leave the assistant standing with a silly contraption and a surprised look on his or her face.

Anyway check out the images of the DIY below and if you want to see photos made with it just check out my flickr stream I’ll tag the photos “diy-sunbounce”.

Has it already been 3 months since my last post! I do have a good excuse for my silence which is indirect also the reason for writing this post. On the 13th of January my mother past away very sudden and unexpected, she leaves behind a huge emptiness. For that reason I decided a couple of weeks ago to start an 365 days picture diary which I started 3 days back. Not only is this going to be good for my photography skills but it will also have a strong therapeutic value. Having said that not every photograph is going to express feelings of loss, it’s just my day to day life.

I hope you will join me on my 365 day journey and subscribe to my flickr set, feel free to comment and hope to see you there soon.

Tomorrow is the opening of exposition 100×100PHOTO  at gallery Espai in Barcelona. Which is of major importance to me as it is the first time a photo produced by myself is part of an exposition in a gallery. Me and the wife had hoped to attend the grand-opening but sadly we don’t have time to catch a flight to Barcelona. However we do have plans to go in January.

The lineup of the exposition looks really nice and I think is certainly worth a visit when you’re in Barcelona anyway. They must have had loads of work preparing for it as these photos come from all over the planet all by different photographers, really great initiative!

If you went leave a comment with what you thought of it!

After some searching around I decided to buy it second hand at a very good price. I was only able to do a few test shots as my camera is still out for repairs. So for now just a picture of the lens it self. If you’re looking for an objective review on this lens checkout the page of Ken Rockwell about this lens

Although my camera is out for repairs I’m looking for a new Portrait lens. Up until now I did all my work with the Nikor 50mm f1.8d af. This is a fine lens a specially for that price. It’s sharp at every aperture and the AF is fast. Taking in to account that I only use it on my D70 with a crop factory of 1.5 the focal length amounts to 75mm (50 x 1.5) which is a good length for portraits.
So the Nikor 50mm f1.8 will most certainly stay in my bag.

The 50mm length is called a “standard lens” what I want now is a “tele lens” really made for taking portraits. I’m only talking about prime lenses here as I much prefer them above zoom lenses for taking portraits. I really like my portraits as sharp as they can be and the color and bogeh from a good prima is almost unrivaled. I say almost because I know there are a couple of really good zoom lenses that come a long way.

Nikkor AF DC 105 f/2.0D
If I used 35mm film and not taking any price considerations the choice for me would be easy, without any doubt I would go for the Nikor 105mm f2.0 AF-DC witch in my opinion, and loads of other photographers, is the best portrait lens you can get for your Nikon.
But is so happens that I want to use it on my Nikon D70 and I’m on a budget. This means that the focal length on my D70 is 157mm thats a bit long for indoor work also if I would want to take a full shot of a model I would loose eye contact with him/here. This would mean that for most of my indoor work I would still have to use the 50mm. Also the price of this lens is around a 1000 Euros. Combining these two factors this is not the lens I’m going to buy.

Nikkor AF 85 f/1.4D
This is the second lens on my list and and it’s just great really nothing wrong with it. The length on my D70 is 127mm which is fine. The bogeh on this lens is really good because of it’s rounded diaphragm. And the optics are really good. Also the lens barrel is metal so really strong. It uses IF (Internal Focusing) so the auto focus is really fast. I think this is the best portrait lens you can get for your Nikon digital camera.
So why I’m I not running to the store to buy it? Well remember the part about price considerations? For this kind of quality the price really is reasonable you can get on for around 1100 Euros. But as it is even more money than the 105mm, I have to let this dream go and look further. But! not much further because this lens has a cheaper brother!

Nikkor AF 85 f/1.8D
So compared to the f/1.4 what are the differences ? First thing to notice is that it is not as sensitive also when looking at it the f/1.8 is made out of plastic (with metal fittings) as opposed to the metal barrel of the f/1.4. Another thing to notice is that it doesn’t have a rounded diaphragm so to the bogeh compared to the f/1.4 is not as nice. And there are probably some other point that I’m leaving out. Does this make the f/1.8 a bad lens? No! Lets brake down the differences.

Sensitivity
This really doesn’t make the f/1.8 a worse lens. Some people need that extra stop but I sure don’t. For me f/1.8 is already really sensitive. So no issue.

Plastic
This is all about build quality. The f/1.4 is really beautifully made it feels very solid also when used with MF and metal of-course is stronger that plastic. What a lot of people notice as well is that the f/1.8 is made in China as a posed to the f/1.4 that is still made in Japan. I do not care to much about this anymore. Fact is that now a days most companies produce there products in Thailand or China. And 10 years ago this would still have said something about the quality of the product. But times change and this still is a mid range Nikon lens which is designed in Japan and made in China. There are some articles out there discussing this issue in more details I suggest searching for them.
So how is the build quality of the f/1.8? It feels really good and it fits really nicely on the camera body with it’s metal fitting. The big differences here is the focus ring. The f/1.4 has a really nice dampen focus ring so also when using MF this lens does great. The f/1.8 provides a focus ring as well but not nearly as good as the f/1.4 it’s a rubber ring at the end of the barrel that’s (i think) not dampen i just would not want to use this lens using MF. But then I do not want to use the D70 in MF as well as I just do not like the weird focus dot system the D70 uses. So again no issue for me.

Rounded diaphragm
So that leaves me with the rounded diaphragm issue. In my opinion it’s really to bad that the f/1.8 doesn’t have the rounded diaphragm as it is a nice feature to have in portrait photography. A nice natural blured background (bogeh) can really work miracles in a good portrait in my opinion. So how did Nikon round the diaphragm? Well they added a couple of more leaves to it. There is an easy bogeh test you can do with your lens.
1. Switch you lens to manual focus and set it to infinity
2. Make a photograph with lights in the foreground ( a city photograph in the evening)
3. Zoom into one of the light dots in your photo.
Of-course the effect all depends on you aperture setting, and the effect all depends on the type of lens you’re using. So experiment with it. But when looking at the zoomed light dot you can see that it consists of multiple corners the amount of corners changes with your aperture setting. The corners you are seeing equal to the amount of corners on your diaphragm at that opening. The less corners you see, the better your bogeh. This all depends heavily on the type of lens you’re using so take that into account.
There are a couple of other things you can look for but I will explain this into a detailed bogeh article in the near future.
So the f/1.4 has an exceptional nice bogeh but again the f/1.8 isn’t at all bad in this apartment either. There are a lot of photographers out there that just love the bogeh of the f/1.8!

So now the thing that makes you forget all the short comings that the f/1.8 has compared to the f/1.4. Remember the part about price considerations? The f/1.8 is almost a third of the price of the f/1.4!
This means I can buy a really good portrait lens and staying well with in my budget. For me the choice is clear I’m going for the f/1.8. And until Nikon comes up with a DSLR version of the 105mm f/2.0 DC, I will probably keep using the f/1.8 for portrait work.

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If you’re looking for more in dept reviews about these lenses and other Nikon lenses check out this link:
http://www.nikonlinks.com/equipment_lenses_general.htm

Check out this articles section later for my review of the Nikkor f/1.8 D 85mm.

So yeah I was a bit lazzy and only send of my D70 a week ago. Just called the local Nikon importer and repair times are 4 weeks.

Nuclear Nightmares: Twenty years since Chernobyl

Is a impressive collection of photographs by Robert Knoth with reporting by Antoinnete de Jong. Instead of showing photographs of the ruins and deserted streets of Chernobyl this report shows the people and the life they now lead. In my opinion they really succeeded in giving a face to this region in a very respect full way.
http://www.pixelpress.org/chernobyl/