Rambling on…

DIYPhotography.net has a great tip on how to protect a strobe on a stand / tripod. Use a frisbee! I actually had a tripod permanently disabled when my son toppled it over. This tip could probably protect your tripod as well. Hit the link for details.

Photographing portraits isn’t the easiest thing to do. Foremost in my mind when doing a portrait shot is mostly technical things. Stuff like:

• Did I get the lighting right?
• Am I using flattering angles?
• Am I being creative with the subject and background?
• How do I avoid the reflection in the glasses?
• Do I need a gold/silver/white reflector?
• DAMN! I need another flash!

But that’s the easy part. The most difficult bit (for me anyway) is always the interaction. Depending on the subject, this can be easy.. or HELL. My first few tries at portrait photography were disasters.. I went in feeling all tense and intimidated, which naturally resulted in crappy shots. But I’ve realised a couple of things that has made more recent attempts at portraiture easier to handle.
(continue reading…)

As you may already know, Tango and I, armed with our trusty Nikons went to Bukit Jalil to get some photos taken at the Xtreme Nights event held on 7-8 December. Yes, there were cars. Yes, there was booming music. Yes, there were loads of riced up cars. Yes, there were models.

So where are the pics? Well… let’s get the boring stuff out of the way first huh? Bring on part one….

“What?! Where are the chicks??!” I hear you exclaim? Laterlaaaa… doing post processing…

I came across this link to John Harrington’s article while perusing Rob Galbraith’s excellent site.

It’s not your standard review/comparison… but it’s definitely worth a look.

I was over at Bukit Jalil doing some photography (okay, okay… it was more like drooling) for the Xtreme Nights car show. As it was night event, the lighting conditions weren’t ideal. At one point, it was even threatening to rain, but thankfully, it stayed dry while I was there (apart from the puddles of saliva). Anyway, back to the point of this post, I realised a couple of things about the behaviour of my Nikon D70s while taking the pictures. Two things are particularly interesting for me:

1. Exposure Bias (EV) does affect Manual (M) mode

I always thought EV doesn’t affect the manual meter, afterall, you’re in FULL control. You decide what you want the camera to do, and you look at the exposure meter to decide how you want to expose the image. But actually, it does. Setting an exposure of -0.7EV and dialling in the controls for shutter speed (assuming the aperture is not changed), the shutter speed will be higher if you’re bringing the exposure meter to 0EV. This is confirmed in page 86 of the user manual.

2. Slow/Rear Flash Sync doesn’t limit your shutter speed

I always had the problem of the D70s hitting the 1/60s shutter limit set in the menu (in Aperture priority mode) when lighting conditions were difficult and a flash had to be used. This meant that the flash was always going to be the sole light source and that the resulting image wouldn’t be natural in its lighting. Setting the flash to either Slow sync or Rear sync solves this problem. Although now you’re faced with a longer shutter speed and steady hands (or a tripod) would be required.

Although I’ve used this camera for almost 2 years now, I’m still getting to grips with it. And I still love it to bits!

p/s: Yeah.. the pics will be coming soon.. once I get round to processing them. I went with tango, so go here for his shots…