I actually did this one prior to the pirates photo. I think it is a little better but sharpness is gone. I have some lighting ideas to make this a little better and I read where a lot of what you see in Dave Hills photos are composites, shooting things separately so that every thing is artificially sharp. Makes a lot of sense that he did that and if you watch the behind the scenes of girl on adventure he does that with the motorcycle shoot.

Practicing creating "Dave Hill Effect" on old photos. I still don't quite have it but I think I'm getting closer. Here is a before and after of a photo. I really think I need some big soft boxes and a ring light after looking a videos from Dave Hill's site.

I'm at a tipping point with my camera equipment. I really need to update my camera because my backup digital rebel is starting to slow me down during wedding shoots. The noise and slow raw image writing is a real pain. The problem with getting a new camera body in particular either a Canon 5D mark II or the Canon 7D is that the resolution of my current lenses will probably cause the images to look less sharp. To add to my apprehension about what to by, Canon is in the process of updating the particular lenses that I am considering buying. The Lenses I am wanting are the EF 70-200 f2.8 IS which was just announced on Jan 5 that it is being updated, and the EF 24-70 f2.8 which I have read is being upgraded with new IS components which it currently doesn't have. I really like what I have read about the new focusing, metering system and new wireless command of the flash on the 7d, but would really love to have the full frame, low light and image quality of the 5d. There is about $900 difference between the 5D and the 7D with the 5D being more expensive ($2600 and $1700).

Current pricing on the 70-200 lens is $1700 and the 24-70 is $1300 my guess is that the newer lenses are going to be more expensive (Nikons new 70-200 is $2400) hopefully Canons new lens doesn't make that big of a jump.

I'm going to have to make a trip to Roberts to gets some hands on of the new cameras and lenses. I've tried going to Cord Camera but they don't keep cameras in stock which totally blows my mind that a camera store doesn't keep cameras in stock.

Bye bye Geocities

A few weeks ago I received an e-mail from Yahoo that they are closing down Geocities. For me this is a good thing and a bad thing. Good because it got me motivated to actually figure out how to customize my smugmug pages. This consolidates my photography files in one site instead of having to maintain two. The bad because most of my promotion information points to the geocities site. I still have a lot of work to do on my smugmug site but I think right now its very usable and probably already better than the Geocities site.

While posting on Bloomington Indiana's Flickr group I was reminded of a DIY PVC construction guide that I came across about a year ago. The guide is free to download. It looks like most can be completed in a weekend. I haven't built one these but have built my own PVC stands in the past. Use the tinker tubes link to the download site. Enjoy.

The setup

Again using my wife as the guinea pig I setup the camera to show how simple it is to do a portrait shot.  To camera left is a Canon 430EX with shoot through umbrella. In the back is a Canon 420EX with a Honlphoto snoot. on the right is a SP studio systems 5 in 1 reflector with the gold side towards the subject I believe the camera settings were 1/250 f2.8 iso 400. The hair light separates the subject from the back ground. In the making it look natural post the setup was nearly identical except that I used the white wall camera right to reflect light onto the dark side of my wife's face.  Use a wide aperture when taking a portrait, I set up the center focus point, focus on the subjects eyes, recompose and take the shot.

I came across a pretty good site last night and thought I would share the link with you.  The link is to a site that has instructional videos for photo shop and light room.  The site is "The digital Photography connection.  See link in side bar