Kids will be Kids I have been Traveling quiet a bit lately and have had no time to post some fun Kid's pics from over the past 3 months or so.
Here is a small selection of some fun pictures!
Vancouver Photography
Nikon 105mm Micro
Nikon 105mm Micro
I went out today and purchased a used Nikon 105mm 2.8 Micro VR lens. I bought it primarily to use for Wedding Detail shots and some commercial shots, but after giving this lens a little test-drive today; I have decided that it could possibly be used for many other applications as well. Macro is just one of the many amazing uses.
This is by no means an official review and I won't be posting 100% crops, because that just takes to much time and is tedious haha!
The feel of the lens is pretty amazing. It’s pretty beefy and has an incredibly sturdy feel to it. The Af-S on this camera is extremely accurate and quick. It does skip around a tad bit when you are extremely close to your subject, but it doesn't skip around enough to make me crazy.
The sharpness of this lens is truly amazing, but I think my favorite part is the fact that you are not completely dedicated to shooting Macro. You could be shooting a very fine detail shot of your Bride & Groom’s Wedding rings and then all of a sudden without skipping a beat you can suddenly turn around and start snapping portraits as well. I am extremely happy to have added this to my kit and I know it will get lots of use!
Here are my not so interesting images, but I had fun shooting them and I guess that is what counts!!!! ;-)
This shot was taken at the closes focusing distance. 1ft or so. You have to stop down a bit in order to widen your depth of field otherwise hitting focus is a defiant fine line.
The sharpness on this flower is really incredible.
Never Ending Fog here in Vancouver.
Fogcouver
Fogcouver
Well its been around 2 straight weeks of fog sitting over the beautiful city of Vancouver, but today the sun finally came through and the fog dropped low enough to get some nice shots of Downtown Vancouver. The sun was setting and I headed out to start shooting. The shots where taken on a Nikon D800 with a 70-200 2.8 VR 2.
I stitched together a couple of Pano's using Autopano Pro. Super easy amazing program that doesn't make your computer churn as much as when trying to process large files in Photoshop.
Here are some of the shots that I got.
As the Sun set's behind Vancouver Island, you can just see the Lighthouse at Lighthouse Park clearing from underneath the fog.
City of downtown and finally be spotted after almost 2 straight weeks of Fog Cover.
West Vancouver's shore line has not seen the sun in weeks!
Landscape shot of the city
Sun setting behind Vancouver Island. The ships in the Straight of Georgia have been sounding their fog horns non-stop!
19 image Pano Stitch---Keep Scrolling to the right on the picture to see the whole Pano. Or click the image to enlarge it.
Portrait Panorama
Portrait Panorama
The other day I ran across some information about the Ryan Brenizer Method. I would try and explain it, but I know right off the bat that I would explain it wrong. So basically to sum it up, you just take a portrait shot of your subject with a telephoto lens (preferably 1.2-1.8 f-stop) and then you keep shooting all around your subject like you would with a Pano. Once you are finished, you then merge them together using some kind of Pano software and "voila" you get an amazing photograph with a impossible depth of field! You are really creating your own lenses!!
Here is his Website, which I highly recommend you check out. WEBSITE
or some video info on You Tube: Link
Here are my 2 attempts. I have a lot of work to do, but I am so excited to try and apply it so some of my Wedding Photography and Portrait work!
This is my first attempt at the Method. This image is around 24 Images merged together. The high-res version is incredible, because you can basically zoom in forever. There is a defiant fine line of focus in the shot, but I am only shooting with a Nikkor 85mm 1.8 and would love to try it with a f1.4 instead. Also, these shots where taken RAW on a Nikon D800 and it took forever for my computer to minimize them to jpegs and then attempt to crunch them into a Portrait Panorama.
Here is a Sample of the images that where taken to create the image above. 24 images where merged together.
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- Portrait Panorama
Round 2. This image actually stitched together very easily. Around 25 images. No real fixing in postproduction. The image itself is not to thrilling, but practice makes perfect and I need to keep on practicing the technique to really feel comfortable applying it to my work.
Ok so this image is not the method at all. I just took a couple of stills as well while I was shooting. This shot was taken with my New Sigma 35mm 1.4 lens, shot on a Nikon D800. I love the lens by the way. Super creamy Bokeh and super sharp, fast focus
Overall, I would recommend downloading and paying for a very long 2-hour video produced by Ryan Brenizer on the method. You can download it from his website. It’s a crazy interesting affect and I am super excited to practice and learn more about it. I am going to keep trying to post more samples as I play with this method, so hopefully I can start to shoot more overlapping images and not have to do to much crazy post in fixing messed up areas.
Software that I am using:
Lightroom 5 to sort the shots and to make the RAW files into JPEGS
Autopano Pro 3.0 to create the Pano's. Photoshop will work too, but you might wait forever for the program to rifle through the shots.
October Portraits!
October Portraits
October was the month of Portraits. I went on Vacation with a new Sigma 35mm f1.4 lens and loved every shot that this incredible lens could take. I had a great time taking pictures of my Nephews and Nieces and truly appreciated Sigma's fast quick focusing system; seeing as the kids would not sit still for a second.
Here are some samples of the images we got!
Amazing 1.4 Bokeh in the background.
Just checking things out!
Walk with Poppie!
Ok got them to sit still for 3 sec.
Best Picture EVER!!!