My most awesomest lens so far (and why)

One of the large advantages of Nikon is that they never upgraded their mount (where the lens attaches to the camera) so basically any lens made since the mid 70's works with the camera (Canon changed their system in the late 80's). Coupled with the fact that well made lens last a very long time (a Leica lens from the 20's will probably work better than most new lens) this makes it quite fun to look for and buy used Nikon lens. After spending way too much time researching lens (though not trying them out) I ended up with a few good old lenses (so far).

So far I bought: 18mm f2.8 prime lens (very wide angle) - very used 35mm f/2 prime lens (moderately wide) - lightly used 50mm f/1.4 lens (normal, pretty much the way we see things) - new 105mm f/2 DC (short telephoto, totally rocks for portraits and currently holds the title of "my most awesomest lens so far) - used 70-210 f/4 (telephoto zoom, good for kids running around) - used

Now I am sure I'm going to sell some of them and buy different ones, but the advantage of buying used (if you do your research) is that you could use the lens for a year or two and sell it for at least how much you paid for it.

Back to our broadcast:

Why the 105mm DC rocks: 1. It's a great length for faces. You could get pretty close without the nose looking like a watermelon (which for kids may look cute but adults will shoot you and never let you take their picture again) 2. It's fast. The aperture opens up to 52.5 mm. Thats half of 105mm. Hence the f/2 (focal length divided by largest aperture opening = f/x). What that does is allows mucho light into the camera allowing for two things A. great background blur (very thin depth of field, i.e. not much in focus) B. Fast shutter speeds for action or low light when you would normally need a flash. 3. It's sharp as a victorinox chef's knife. 4. It does something magical to skin tones (not sure how to explain that. Magic.) 5. Built like a tank. 6. Has this "Defocus Control" thingie which theoretically allows you to change the appearance of the out of focus areas (known as "bokeh" for some strange reason). It also allows you to use it as a "soft focus" lens which gives a dreamy look to the pictures.

What's not that hot: 1. Slower than newer lens to focus 2. Has some focusing issues sometimes (trying to figure out when) 3. Ridiculous button that you have to press to focus manually (and you have to pull a switch on the camera. Ridiculous.)

Now for some much awaited examples:

that's wide open at f/2. If you check out that full size image you could see how sharp it is. All I did was slightly boost the saturation. And check out the skin, mmmmmmm, and that beautiful background bokeh...

and

@f/2.8. This is my sister Devorah Leah Ashkenazi. Colors were edited but didn't touch the skin or background.

and

Mendel and Bubby @ f/3.2 (should have been at 4 or 5.6, I keep on doing that)

and

@ f3.2. Don't look at it full size, I kind of missed the eyes a bit (nerd. Me, not the kid.).

and

Mendel @ f/2.5

and

Chanaleh @ f/2.5

and

some dude @ f2.2

and last but not least.

This was actually taken with the 35mm at f/2.2 (bokeh isn't nearly as nice, but the picture is cool) and edited quite a bit in photoshop.

The point is, that even without the "defocus control" (which I haven't really played around with) this lens is the bees knees (which may or may not be kosher. Ask your local Rabbi, who may or may not know the answer.)

First Paid Event!

Pulled off my first paid gig a month or two ago. I was nervous as anything. Thank G-d the Blesofskis are one of the most chilled people I know and they made it a lot easier. Overall I did a decent job. They were very happy, however I am always looking for things I messed up with.

Im going to try to post an evaluation of myself after each gig, we'll see how that goes.

What I am happy with: 1. I got there early and scouted the scene for lighting, settings etc.

2. I found some cool backlighting in middle and utilized it a bit.

3. Looked for patterns, and overall snapped some great shots.

Things that I messed up/could learn from

1. Make sure the area is clear of rubbish. (Check out that plastic string on the grass.)

2. Use a smaller aperture when dealing with more than one person, or when dealing with a close up and the subject is facing slightly to the side (straight on, or more to side both work with large apertures, straight on because both eyes could be in focus, more to the side because it's okay if the other eye is not in focus, but when it's a bit to the side then it just looks like you missed).

(if you check out the larger sizes, you could see that the dude on the right is slightly out of focus)

3. Don't shoot up at someone on a bright day, the sky will totally overexpose and spill into anything your shooting at. Not pretty unless you're going for that look. (I don't have any pics of this, they weren't worth saving.)

4. Shoot at smaller apertures when dealing with subjects moving at or away from you to allow a larger margin for error with focusing.

(again, in the large version you could see the running kid is slightly out of focus)

And that's all folks.

@ The Cow Farm

Had loads of fun taking pics at the cow farm. Tramped around with my tripod and had some fun self portraits.

And

And

(that's would be me as reflected in my wonderfully portable 27" iMac)

And a nice low light pic (taken at f/2.8, iso 1400 (my Rebel would quake at such numbers, the D700? Bring it on!) didn't have my 50mm f/1.4 yet).

And some random cow-farmy pics:

And finally, a cow.

Mmmmm tongue (do you think cows like how their tongue tastes, maybe if you feed them enough pickle juice or something).

Now, lest you be under a wrong impression, I do not spend all my time time at the farm taking odd pics. Rather I have a very rigid schedule, composed of time-wasting, graphic design, truck checking, cow inspecting, book reading, iBook reading (yes I have an iPad, more on that some other time), learning, sealing, sleeping, cooking, eating, coffee-making, amongst other things.

Happy cow thoughts.

D700 - First Impressions

As you may have heard, I recently picked up a Nikon D700.

1st impression: Wow this thing is heavy.

2nd impression: holy moly this manual is huuuge (as in 444 pages)

3rd impression: It's all in English (obviously wasn't printed in Cali).

Seriously, this is one beast of a camera.

Here are my favorite features (as of yet, just got the camera late last week):

Auto ISO: You tell the camera what is the slowest shutter speed you want and the highest ISO you want and it will magically raise the ISO when the speed gets too slow. This is something I have dreamed about and saves hours of fiddling with buttons and dials and switches and menus oh my!

AutoFocus: This camera does a better job focusing on the eyes (which is where you usually want your portraits focused) in full autofocus mode (no points selected) than my Canon did with a certain point selected and aimed right on the eye.

AutoFocus 2: The Nikons have this amazing tracking mode where you tell the camera what you want to focus on and wherever that object moves, it follows, and it works! I shot my bro-in-law running around with an old 70-210 lens and it got 7 out of 10 hots in perfect focus (where my canon would get 1 out of 10, the first one).

Okay. Pause. I started this post almost two months ago. In the interim my camera died! Took my cf card out, stuck it in my reader, transferred the epics my comp, put the card back in the camera and BANG. Camera shut off and wouldn't turn on.

Shoot back in time a bit. (I'm writing this on my iPad so it's going a bit slowish). I was looking at dif places. To buy a camera online and eventually settled on ButterflyPhoto. Why? Because Bing gave me percent back and it was a good price to start (almost too good). Extremely stupid reason to choose a store. Before I bought it I called to make sure it had a USA warrantee, they said yes, but I should have asked for an email to that effect so I would have some proof if it didn't. So i get the camera, doesn't have a warrantee inside and comes with a European wire with an adapter. Warning bells go off, I call ButterflyPhoto freaking out and they tell it is a USA warrantee but since things are odd (they said it usually comes with both wires, one must have fallen out. Right.) they would send a USA wire and a 3 year warrantee from CMS (never heard of them), and they would sen me an email certifying it was a USA model (which they never did).

So a few weeks later after being in shooting heaven my camera won't turn on and I highly doubt that Nikon will take care of it.

So I timidly go to the Nikon repair center in Manhattan Beach (Cali) and lo and behold it's a USA model under warrantee and they said they will take care of it!

Turns out the card reader screwed up the CF card which screwed up the camera and pushed some pins into the AC power thingamajig (holy cow! My iPad actually recognized that as a word, but it can't get a city name straight unless I capitalize it). The Nikon rep said it was my fault and they shouldn't have covered it but they did anyway (4 points for Nikon).

Morals of the story: 1. Forget about saving a buck here and there, just buy the camera from B&H and get over it. 2. Don't spend too much time worrying if your camera has a warrantee. 3. Get a decent CF card reader. 4. Don't tell you wife that the camera you just bought instead of a dishwasher is broken and might not be under warrantee (I didn't tell her until it was at the Nikon repair center and they assured me they would fix it). She really appreciated not having to worry along with me.

Now that I got my camera back, I want to shoot instead of writing reviews, so I'll get back to that eventually.

Tracht Gut Vet Zein Gutg

Texas Hold Em'

First official photoshoot (occurred a few weeks ago). I walked around the park like 3 times, scouting out the best "open shade". Never found any. But we did move around bit, hanging out under the trees, getting some fun sunny shots, hanging out by the lake, good times. It helped that the fam I was shooting had mucho patience and the kid was ultra cute (you should hear her vernacular!).

She picked these flowers and paraded all around with them, couldn't have been more perfect.

But then, the figurative skies darkened and imaginary rain began to pour.

I had an epiphany: My camera could not autofocus on any of the outer focus points to save its life. I threatened to drown it, choke it, burn it, blend it, all to no avail. So I was left with quite a bit of beautiful out of focus pics (and some in focus ones thank gosh). And so started my search for the lean, mean, spot on focusing machine (which I wouldn't have to mortgage my apartment for, which I can't because I'm renting and my landlord would blow a fit).

I am proud to proclaim my victory over darkness: the Nikon D700 (thank you Mr. Szental for your wonderful help in the matter).

"But you are heavily invested in Canon?!" exclaims my dismayed (imaginary) reader.

No I'm not, silly. 3 lenses and a flash does not a heavy investor make. To the market they must go. Although I shall miss my first love with photography, I have to move on to greener and in-focus pastures. Out with you, my beloved 100mm f/2.8 Macro, the junk blurring, 50mm f/1.8 and you shoddy wimp of a lens you 18-55mm aperture changing piece of garbage. Off to the trading market with you all. Goodbye to my Canon Rebel T1 and all of its 18megabytes. Marvin K. Mooney, the time is now.