Which Camera?!?!?!

Once in a while I get a question or two about photography, so I figured I may as well answer them in posts so the masses (all two of you) will get to read my words of recently acquired (and usually quite plagiarized) words of wisdom.

Question (not the exact words):

Dear photographer of extreme talent, much humility, and understated elegance,

I am interested in getting into photography a bit (or upgrading to a DSLR). What does the great moment capturer and pontificator have to recommend?

Yours truly,
Bobby Dooley

Answer:

That is a wonderful question Mr. (Mrs.?) Dooley, although I do take issue with some of your accolades, if you would be able to see my face (no one has since I was 15) you may see a hint of a blush.

Being that I have the (mostly) unhelpful tendency to read way too much (instead of just going out and shooting), I do end up knowing more about photography and cameras than I know how to actually take pictures.

I could go through all the pros and cons of different cameras and camera companies, but that would be boring and the end result will be the same.

So here's your answer Bobby: Buy yourself a used Nikon D90 (for around 500 buckaroos), a used Nikkor 35mm f/1.8 DX ($170), a used Nikkor 18-70mm (around $140) and a used Nikkor 50mm f/1.8D lens ($80). If you could only get one lens, get the 35mm.

A great place to buy used camera gear is Fredmiranda.com. You have to register (free) but it's worth the time. Do not buy a used camera body on craigslist unless you know what to look for. Lens are cool though.

Why buy used you ask? Cameras (especially lens) hold their value extremely well, and if you don't like what you got or want to upgrade you could always sell for the price you paid.

Why Nikon? Good question. I'll answer that in another post. (Basically better autofocus, better ISO (sometimes), better build, and more lens to choose from (including a whole slew of awesome and cheap manual focus lens))

Why the D90 and not one of the newer Dx000 series? the D90 has a built in focus motor so it works with a much larger variety of lens. The dx000 only work with the newer AF-S, which cost a lot more and many times are not any better.

Whats a post without pics (you ask)? Another good question. So here are some photos from a wonderful session we had in Agoura hills (I think).

I think she was dancing here. Quite a fun girl this one was.

Focusing while swinging, not for the faint of heart (nor for the Canon owners :))

repeat after me: smaller apertures, smaller apertures, smaller apertures. Good.

Love the faces this one was making.

Wood: High in starch, unessential amino acids, handprints and zinc.

Kids and funny faces. It's a part of growing up (once you grow up it becomes adults and funny faces)

I love, love, love this one.

Whatcha snappin' at Mr. Bearded man? (Hey missy, I'll have none of your adolescent smart-rear end talk. It's Rabbi Bearded man to you)

Me like. (smaller apertures!!! @##$%#@%$#*%)

Gotta lov her hair.

Mother Daughter

Impish I-Got-Mommy's-Coffee look

Getting into the square format a bit

Film!!!!

More film!!! (I'll post about what and why another time)

I need to do more of this. Get a bit more of the environment in, I need some wider lens(es?)...

Couldn't resist the color combo.

Any more questions? Email me or leave a comment.

Have y'all a good day (who cares if it doesn't make sense. Life hardly makes sense anyways).

Eli Chaim's Upshernish Invitation

Oh my, this one is old. Just posting for completeness' sake. (Also because it seems, that for some odd reason, much of my traffic is driven from people searching for "upshernish invitation" on google).

This was designed for my bro's son (photography not by me, and the aleph beis is a pic of a poster my wife made:)).

Enjoy.

And if your interested I have a special shoot + invitation deal. Shoot me an email for details.

Huntington Beach Central Park Shoot

Okaaaaay. Someone needs a beer.

I'm going to shorten this post.

Few weeks back.
Awesome shoot.
Much fun was had.
Central Park.
Crazy Fun Rambunctious Boys.
Good pics.
(some words go here)
And the pics:

Got many, missed many.
Will speak soon.

Engling

It's been a while (I feel like it's always been a while). Thank God I've been quite busy these last few weeks and haven't been blogging as much as my psychiatrist says I should. Parenthetically (I figure I use parenthesis a bit too much, so if I just write "parenthetically" I could cheat a bit) I saw a Psychic Reading shop going-out-of-business sign. Shouldn't she have known that it wouldn't work? (Why do I assume it was a she?)

The point being I had a wonderful shoot a few weeks back with the Engel family (the Sender branch) @ Heritage Park in Cerritos. I finally got to use my gigantic 300mm f/2.8 ai-s lens! (for those who do not read camera tongue, that means: very large, heavy, long, manual focussing lens). Used it for some group shots to get everyone in focus and still have the background mushy like I like it (unlike cold cereal , which theoretically, if I would eat cold cereal, must be crisp).

The kids had some fun and even listened a bit! Yes it's a Chanukah miracle (which happened a month or so before chanukah).

Without further blabbage, here are some of my favorites:

Hello?! Could the photographer please attempt at getting both eyes in focus? Sheesh. (I actually copied the right eye on top of the left eye to make it a bit sharper)

All he's missing is a bottle of Vodka and some herring

I love how they're all looking in different directions

Cutie

Psssst. I'll let you sit in the front if you hand over that lollipop.

Behold the handiwork of the ridiculous large one (the lens, not the photographer)

I actually bribed him to stand still for a bit while I manually focused @ f/1.2 (in regular people talk, that means: very very hard to do)

Now I have to email my psychologist (he got demoted since the beginning of this post) and tell him not to worry, his patient is healthy and has not thrown a glass bowl in over 3 days now (hooray!). Onto some oven baked, sweet potato latkes.

Rapaports @ Central Park (another pre Upshernish Shoot)

It's been a while since my last posting. Shame on me. This past Sunday I had the priviledge of doing a photo shoot with the Rapaport family (well most of them) at Huntington Beach Central Park (actually it's the park behind the library which is not technically Central Park but it kind of stole the title from the park across the street).

We scheduled it for a bit before sunset (finally, convinced someone to shoot when the light was good instead of when was convenient. I'll never get it. Someone spends big bucks to do a photoshoot, but chooses some wacky time when the lighting is horrible and the pics just don't come out as good as they should have), and it really paid off. Definitely my best shoot yet.

Funny thing is (not ha ha funny, just funny), I'm in middle of revamping my lens lineup (more on that another time), I sold both of my portrait lens, and am expecting one any day to be delivered, but in the meantime I was stuck. So I quickly bought this old manual focus Nikon 180mm f/2.8 lens (Nikon's first lens with special ED glass). Normally I wouldn't do a shoot with a lens (and a focal length!) I'm not used to, however this time it turned out beautifully. Yes I missed a few shots I normally would have gotten, but overall I hit a lot more than I expected (I wonder why I think anyone cares about this stuff).

Mainly this was a shoot for Meyer's Upshernish, hence the lack of extraneous Rapaports. Hopefully we could do this again with the whole fam...

Anyways, on to the pictures. I'm not going to post all of them, if you want to see more, check out my flickr page (click on any of the pics, they should take you there, if they don't, your browser's sick and should see a doctor):

Actually this was taken with the 50mm, the rest were with the 180 (isn't that interesting).

Love his hair. Many are going to miss it. They'll survive.

These Rapaport kids are a photographers dream. They all have these awesome eyes... and cute smiles (unless you ask them to smile, then it gets dorky)

I almost nailed the focus on this one, good enough to print. Thats manual focus for you (autofocus isn't much good for subjects running toward or away from you anyway).

Yum.

And then we saw the light...

Yup. (All those white dots are bugs...)

Wonder how often this happens.

Okay, that was definitely more than I expected to post, but I just can't hold myself back. Until next time...

Moishe's Upshernish Invitation

A few weeks ago I went to Central Park with my brother Yossi and his son Moishe to take some pics for his Upshernish Initation. 'Twas fun as always but the sun came out earlier than expected (it keeps on doing that, maybe I should change my expectations), and he kept on chucking his yarmulkah (which is cute for pics but not for the invitation). So here's the final invitation:

And here are some of the shots we took there.

[mudslide:flickr,0,49206655@N07,72157624530785225]

How'd you like that spiffy new gallery?

Now my only issue is what category do I put this posting in? If I put it in design then peeps looking for photography won't find it. If I put it in photography... If I put it in both then the thumbnail will be in two places on the homepage. Life is so tough.