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I started out with a Nikon D100, and grew to a Nikon D300 in those 5 years. The Nikon D200 was in my possession only about 6 months or so. Man, the noise on that body was humongous.
The Lightroom library shows me that I started (semi-serious) with photography about 5 years ago. 2005 was a bit of a slow year though.
It seems that the number of photo's I make grows exponentially.
At this rate, my Drobo wil run out of space in about a month or so :)
Been experimenting the last couple of days with off-camera flash. Not entirely to my satisfaction, but learning every second more and more about (studio) flashing.
At the moment I have a Nikon SB-600 which is nice, but two (or more) would be a lot nicer (Photography Acquisition Syndrome, anyone???). Also some stands, claps etc. would be nice. Getting a flash off the floor (or cases) and into the air requires a lot of ingenuity.
This way, the gear-wish-list keeps growing and growing. Oh man, that Nikon 200-400mm f/4 lens is not getting closer this way....
Ordered a Phottix remote trigger set Tetra 1 x triger 2 x reciever kit last night for a couple of bucks (due tomorrow from Arend Handelsonderneming). About time that I started to get more familiar with creative off-camera flashing..... Did I say 'creative' and 'I'?
A good time to start with some self portraits to get used to the lighting..... So expect som creepy pictures here and on my flickr page. :)
Last Tuesday we had the 'Digital Presentation Night' on our local camera club. I expected that most of the members would 'just' bring photos. Therefore I decided to do something different.
I like black&white photos, so I made a small presentation showing the original photo (unedited) and the final (B&W) result. The responds was actually better than expected.
The original presentation (created with Adobe Lightroom) can be viewed here (flash-required).
Metallica @ AhoyLast Monday I visited the Metallica Death Magnetic Tour concert in Ahoy, Rotterdam (NL). A relatively small establishment for a rock band like Metallica, but great for the fans (if you got tickets), since the podium was centered in the middle of the arena. So everyone was relatively close to the stage.
I brought my Lumix LX3 for this occasion (since I won't be allowed entrance with my D300 + 70-200mm lens). This was the first time I brought a (P&S) camera to a concert, so I had no idea of what to expect of the quality.
I must say that I did try several settings, but the iA (Intelligent Auto) mode left me with the best images. Downside is that this mode produces only JPEG's and no RAW files. The A, P, S and M modes are too susceptible to the light changes (over- or underexposed, or just blurry images), and the light conditions change a lot (almost every second).
The movie-mode of the camera performs relatively well. Extremely bright lights results in vertical lines across the movie. The audio is not that good, but hey... it's a digital still camera with filming capabilities.
The only downside of the camera was (and still is) that it lacked zooming to 400 or 600mm :).
The photographic results can be seen on my flickr page.
We had a presentation of a local photo journalist this evening on our camera club. It was to hear what his job was about. But after hearing his story, and seeing some of his portfolio I decided to stick with my current career. I'm just not that type of a photographer. I like shooting what ever I want, and not what someone else wants. I guess I would be a terrible wedding photographer :).
Thankfully not everyone likes the same thing, otherwise it would be a boring (grey) world.
During the break I had a little conversation about the photos taken by the National Geographic photographers (which is also a form of photo journalisme). That it might be nice to do those kind of photo shoots.
But if you've seen the National Geographics 'The Photographers' DVD you might change your mind on that as well :). It's not as romantic as you might think.
This is the final version which I presented during the cutlery results evening. One of the local camera club assignments.
Twins
More photos on my flickr page.
Most things, if not everything, are stored on digital media nowadays. Parts of your life are registered on your hard disks, CD's, and DVD's. But what if one of those fail? Do you have a backup?
Backing up to optical media (like CD and DVD) is cheap, but with cheap also comes questionable quality. Will those files you've backed up two years ago still open? I don't know, and I don't care actually. I back everything up to external drives. A 500GB drives is cheaper than a spindle of DVD's matching the storage capacity, and a harddisk is faster and can be reused if nessecary. Another drawback of DVD's is that they have a relatively small capacity. I would need tons of DVD's just to backup my photos.
Most of my work is being done on my iMac. Attached to my iMac is a Firewire drive configured for Timemachine. This is done for quick and easy access to the average screw-up on my behalf (like deleting a file or directory by mistake).
At least once a week, or after certain events, like shooting a gazillion photos, I make a backup to my local server (which could as well be a network attached storage device, or a USB/FW drive). This backup remains onsite. For real disasters (like the burning down of my house) I have an offsite backup. This backup is made on a small 320GB 2.5inch USB drive (<€100) and runs whenever I think I need to do that. This drive is encrypted with Truecrypt, so if someone steals the disk, they don't have access to my (precious/private) data.
Ideally, you could store drives with a friend or family. Every time you visit you exchange the drive. You do need at least two offsite drives for this to work.
The only thing that can go wrong (in the terms of data loss) is that the house burns down with me in it, while I'm backing up for offsite storage. Well, in that case I don't need the backup since I won't be around needing it ever again...... Or when Murphy visits.
I did think about a real online offsite storage solution (like Amazons S3 service), but the problem is my Internet upload speed. E.g. if I shoot 8GB of photos on one day it take almost two days to upload that to any service. Furthermore, online storage of >100GB of data aint cheap either. So, the offsite disk drive is a relatively simple, easy and cheap solution giving (me) a good backup strategy.
Every now and then, I stumble on a discussion about stealing the bread out the professional photographers mouth.
These (forum) discussions start with a amateur photographer asking advice about settings (like ISO, Aperture, etc), equipment etc. regarding shooting photos in a certain area (groups, head-shots, whatever). At first; some quick and helpful answers from other enthusiasts, but then the 'pro' photographer enters the 'room'.
Within minutes they turn the original question into something else.... A discussion about fairness, skills, and stealing the bread from someone else has begun....
Somehow they (the pro's) feel threatened by average Joe holding a digital camera (dSLR), and shooting (a cousins) weddings, or doing some work for a foundation or whatever. In most cases a low/no budget shooting.
On one hand, I can sort of sympathize with the pro's, because it's not pleasant to see other people 'stealing the bread from your mouth'. On the other end, they should (or could) have seen it coming.
Ever since the day digital photography became affordable to the public, more and more people started carrying cameras, and they are all photographers (technically). Just because you made it your profession doesn't mean that others can't play that game in their spare time.
If you don't have much money, and you want a photographer shooting your wedding pictures you might end up with a nephew (or another acquaintance) shooting those photo's. Is that a bad thing? I don't think so. It just means that you've got competition. The bad competition might produce crappy photos, but then again 'you (the customer) get what you've paid for'.
If you don't want to give advice to an amateur photographer don't start moaning and bitching, but make sure to make a difference in your line of work (value added services e.g.) or find another job. Shooting photos is no longer for a select few. You are the professional. Act accordingly!
A while back I wrote something about Path Finder as a probable Finder substitute. Well, it's been a couple of months, and I must say that I'm still using the crappy Apple Finder.
Why? Well, I guess that it kinda grows on you, eventhough Path Finder has 'some' neat features. It just didn't feel like a real substitute. It felt more like an add-on.
So, back to Finder with its little annoyances like;
I have high hopes up for Snow Leopard. Hope that Finder gets a real good overhaul.