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OMG Nikon D700 Replacement!

Am I the only person who is searching almost daily to find if there has been an announcement from Nikon about the Nikon full frame D700 Replacement?
Every day I click into nikonrumors.com, or dpreview, or popphoto or dphotographer, and get excited when i see there is a new post and then swear at the computer when it is some new announcement of a crappy point and shoot with a million times zoom!

More details after the break

Photo Critique 1 (Mark Fukui)

Ok this week I got an email from a person who watches my videos on youtube, here is how the email went:

Hey Dom,
 I've been teaching myself photography for about a year now, and i 
 have to say watching your videos has improved my skills and creativity 
 immensely. The hardest thing for me to find right now is a good critic. 
 I show my photos to my friends and family, but they usually just say 
 its good. It doesn't help much. I was wondering if i could send you a 
few photos and have you critique them. I can imagine your a very busy 
 person so if you don't have the time that's fine; but do you know any 
 websites that have forums to critique photos? I cannot upload the 
 photos in this box, but if you if you respond i will send them as 
 attachments. Thanks for the videos again. 

 Mark

So He wants me to be a critic!  And he doesn't want the nice kinda critic so I am going to have to go all Simon Cowell on his portfolio that he sent me!

Shot one, looks like a shot of a woman holding the sun in her hand.

issues with the image, the woman if it was to be a total silhouette is not in front of enough well lit background, she kinda fades into the dark at the bottom of the image.  putting a flash off camera left would have been a very nice touch, keep the camera at the current ambient light settings for that nice saturated sky but lets see the person holding the sun.

2 remove the random sun flare that is appearing in-between the model and her hand.

3,  rule of thirds… the sun and horizon are in the centre… would be fine but you have an object of attention (the model) 

Score 1/5

More after the break

Nikon CLS tutorials

I may only have one Nikon, 2 canons and 1 Fuji camera (which these videos are me working with the fuji) but the Nikon Creative lighting system (CLS) is what makes me go for my Nikon every time I have a shoot that will require flash. I like using flash a lot and thus You will always see me with a Nikon and NIkon flashes.

But what is so special about the Nikon flashes that you cant get with studio strobes or Monolights?

This video is a strobist technique for capturing water droplets falling or splashes. THe images here are to give you an idea of how you can do it and what the images can look like. Dropping different things into the water would make more interesting images. This technique used NIkon cls system to communicate with the flashes from the camera.

I had the camera on manual mode and the flashes just on ttl mode, i made sure the background was black (my folder) and made sure that the flashes were not reflecting off the background.

more after the break

Camera Noise 1

This is going to be part of a series of blog posts about noise

Here are 4 photos, roughly set to the same exposure for the outside light (out the window)

the dark shots are with no flash

the second shots are with flash

Each photo has the central part cropped into via picasa and exported. Resolution size 740x560(roughly)

This is a test of in camera noise and also the noise created by Active D-lighting,

Video and photos of the Moon

Firstly this was not a totally clear night. The Moon had a strange haze around it like there was some moisture in the air. but still there is an impressive video and photos.





The nikon 105mm when put on the canon 550d dslr has a crop equivalent focal length of   168mm

Thats nice but as you can see when we are shooting at 1080p the moon only takes up a tiny part of the image.

but the canon 550d has a clever little movie crop function so that when you are fliming it records from just the central 640x480pixels,  which is a 7x digital zoom

put that together and you have
an effective focal length of   1176mm!   Which is huge!

On the camera I had my settings as soft as possible, generally that is a good tip to stop loss of detail and keep tones nice and correct when shooting the majority of stuff, if you want extra contrast and vibrance just add it in post. but when shooting the moon I think in future I will enhance in camera sharpness and contrast.

Scary acting with the Canon 550D

This was an unusual post. It is a video i did a month ago for an acting student in Edinburgh. she needed a simple video of her acting as 5-9 different people and all having the slight scary, creapy twist.

K is such a lovely girl but when she acts it is kinda scary. 

The video was shot with the Canon 550D at the video settings of 1080p, 25fps, 1/30th of a second, f4 iso 400 

Shot in her bathroom with only the onboard mic, 

Sound effects are from the room and are just her breathing and slowed down or reversed and slowed down, all done in imovie.

Shot with the Nikon 20mm f2.8 ais lens and lit by a mobile phone

Email questions answered (January)

Here are the topics that are covered


Ok here is a big one everyone. 13 emails

Here is how they are broken down
1)how to transfer photos to computer
2) video editing software for dslr
3+4) hello and thanks
5) D7000 for interiors for Bose
6) Dark backgrounds in photoshop
7) simple blog for golf photographer
8) olympus photographer help
9) nikon or canon
10) getting your name out there
11) apprentice
12) street pervert
13) tamron vibration control

Today I got some nice information to help others in the street photography

here is the email

From: David Edge []
Message: Hi
Dom
YouTube wouldn't let me post this, bah!
For an intro to street photography your correspondent could try the
course run by Nick Turpin at the School of Life in London if that's
handy. Even if not - when I went most participants were from Germany.
http://www.theschooloflife.com/Weekends/Photographing-London
The next one is 26/27 Mar 2011

My photos from the 2010 weekend:
http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=452272&id=884230857&l=6bb7378828

Here in Derby, the Format 2011 festival will showcase street
photography.
d.

Sigma 105mm f2.8 Macro lens review and photos

This is the Sigma version of the 105mm f2.8 macro lens which is very very similar to the Nikon (old version) 105mm f2.8 macro