Test your gear expertise

http://edition.cnn.com/2011/IREPORT/09/22/...irpt/index.html

All camera salesman should poison people like how celciuz did.

Dreamy.

So do I!

I think the Nanocoat is purely marketing strategies, I believe there are so much more features to look into (newer) pro grade lenses, e.g. amount of glass elements, etc. These lenses no doubt will give extraordinary color renditions, bokeh rendition, sharpness, etc when used correctly. So called "premium" image quality of what you have paid for to give you the satisfaction in the outcome.

DISCLAIMER: This doesn't mean cheaper glass sucks. Just more satisfaction from more expensive glasses.

Does Nikon pro grade lenses have weather resistance?

This post has been edited by geekster129: Oct 11 2011, 06:52 PM

Yalor... more like a syok sendiri effect...chimp at the viewfinder... feel damn syok... tell the models "wah sui ar!" "this and that", but go back home at LR.. eww!! I have to do RAW edit everything from scratch...

Remember these few hints if you're shooting wedding dinner indoors (without flash)

1. Depending on your focal length, use correct shutter speed to prevent shaky photos. If you're shooting action, don't lose those shots to low shutter speed, you would rather bump the ISO so that you have a good shutter speed and have some noisier photos (this can be fixed in PP), than shaky photos that are totally irrecoverable

2. Get your WB (white balance) right. Usually the restaurant will have more yellowish lights, so it's better if you could set to a correct WB. I bet most shots are "normal" group photos, and people will argue with me to shoot RAW then fix later. Well, you will appreciate how much lesser PP will be done and speed up your workflow. Besides, any layperson don't really like yellowish photos and that will be usually the obvious "flaw" they comment.

3. When shooting group photos, try to use a smaller aperture (e.g. about 5.6-7.1) so that you can ensure a larger DOF to have everyone in focus.

4. For A mode (Aperture-priority mode), it's a semi auto mode whereby when you fix the aperture value and let the camera figure out the shutter speed to get you an optimal exposure based on how you meter your subject. Remember also that not just making the f value bigger (smaller aperture) will make the SS slower (to get more light). If you increase the ISO, it can make the SS goes faster as well, which goes back to tip #1.

1 thing I want to point out about A mode is that many beginners tend to become careless when the camera decide the shutter speed for them. When you use a flashgun, you can lock down the minimal shutter speed like let's say 1/60s for the A mode. Sometimes, if you're not paying enough attention, the camera may decide for you a very slow shutter speed like 1/15s, 1/20s, 1/30s while he/she may be zooming at the longest focal length, say 55mm on a 18-55 kitlens or 18-105 kitlens. I've seen a case before where the person using the DSLR was shooting at a very low ISO rating, around ISO200-400 indoors without flash, resulting very shaky pics and almost close to became unusable. So you have to be extra careful on this.

S mode (Shutter-priority mode) in weddings, well the common usage I can think of is during the Actual Day whereby you would want to do a panning shot at the wedding car as you would lock down to a slow shutter speed and let the camera decide the F value for you)

This post has been edited by geekster129: Oct 12 2011, 06:53 PM

24mm should be damn wide on FX, but 17mm on DX not so wide....

Hehehe... I'm kind of greedy at that 1mm extra.

I saw a lot of "red rings"

You can look out for Ted Adnan's workshop at his blog. He's doing a lot of flash photography workshop lately.

http://tedadnan.com/blog/

It's normal. The label on your lens which says 3.5-5.6G has a meaning. It indicates the largest aperture the lens is capable to be set at different focal length. This is called a variable aperture lens. Meaning depending on how much you zoom, the maximum aperture allowable will change as well. At 18mm, probably you can open as big as f/3.5, at 55mm, probably you can open open as big as f/5.6 only. Most Nikon zoom kitlens behave this way.

Unlike fixed aperture zoom lenses, like the 70-200 f/2.8, no matter what focal length you choose, you can open up as big as f/2.8, be it at 70mm, 85mm, 100mm, up to 200mm.

This post has been edited by geekster129: Oct 15 2011, 09:19 PM

This:



Compare to this?

Seeing the photographer's Godlike skills of advancing to the next frame of the film so fast, that's what I called a Pro!

At one part, the Nikon logo looked like the Nintendo logo..lol

This post has been edited by geekster129: Oct 17 2011, 01:49 PM

^
Looks quite f/1.8-ish to me...

There are some other pictures in that blog, some of them probably at f/2.8 maybe?

This post has been edited by geekster129: Oct 17 2011, 05:45 PM

I had bad experience with Fotokem too. I think it was around 7 years ago when my dad bought me my first digital point and shoot camera. It was a Canon Powershot camera, and digital cameras at that time can easily reach more than 1k.

The service and experience and not so good in terms of the pricing and the customer service. Pay by credit card and they use dirty tactics try to charge more... and free gifts need to wait somemore.

I have the same remark. You could have shown more of the ladies body using the headroom on top. I think you leave too much headroom and made the pic looked a bit empty. How you crop the hands made the pic looked a bit imbalanced and not comfortable to the eyes. Psychologically speaking, the viewer might be curious about the part that is missing in the photos, they would like to see some of the hands which can contribute to the body language of your subject.

Having said so, it's not definitely wrong to leave some headroom (probably you want to use the rule of third concept and put the subject's eyes on the ROT points for artistic reasons). Like the pic celciuz posted, the headroom is there but at the same time, it still looks natural, because the photo looks "complete", however, if you leave the headroom and wasted it for parts of the body which you should show, then it's not so good.

This post has been edited by geekster129: Oct 23 2011, 04:23 PM