Pictures of athletes

Even though I’m not into watching sports, I do enjoy a great picture of athletes doing their job.

On the Boston Globe webpage, there is a gallery of the 2010 Winter Olympics currently held in Vancouver, Canada, and you should really consider stopping by for some truly amazing pictures.

Tags: athlete, getty images, olympics, portraits, shooting, skiing

I will now continue my story on my first 10 years, if you have not read the first part you can read it here:

My 10 years with digital photography – Part One

When I got my camera phone

In 2006 I got my first camera phone – And my first thought about camera phones, was that it not good for anything. But the camera in the Sony Ericsson W800i was 2 megapixels, so it was actually just as many megapixels as my old camera that did not work any more.

So it was a nice transition to using mobile phones to take pictures, and now I take a few pictures a day with my cell phone, especially the children when they make fun or you are out and about, because you usually got your phone nearby.

But after a few months where I only had a cell phone to take pictures with, we bought a Nikon L11 at 6 megapixels. It is a very nice pocket camera that we still have, and especially my wife is happy that she can have it. It is okay to bring along when you visit family or friends. I always enjoy looking back at pictures, especially 2-3 years after.

So I used it as my main camera for awhile, nothing serious but for various snapshots.

But my big dream has always been to take portraits, of my family and friends – but also of amateur models. But to arrange a photo session, and then show up with a pocket camera and then try to instruct the model, that’s not serious enough. You must have a proper camera, so you also for the models shows that it is serious. It is fine to have family and friends to pose in front of a small camera but a digital SLR radiates just believed it.

A Nikon D70 for loan

In march 2008, I got the opportunity to borrow a camera, a Nikon D70 DSLR. It was a really good beginners camera, and since I already in mid-2007 had decided to go for a Nikon DSLR, this was a nice opportunity.

And that was despite the fact that I already had (and still have) a Canon SLR camera, not digital but an old analog camera. But when investing in new equipment, would I still buy new lenses for the camera.

When buying gadgets and gear, it’s nice to get a little 3D focus and a little ding and a little pow, I do not just need a camera that tells me when I can take the picture or not, or where everything is controlled manually – it may well have some features, I don’t mind.

And back then it was the Nikon D300 DSLR that looked like the best one at that time, and had the cool stuff. So I aimed for that.

The ability to borrow the Nikon D70, was also a great opportunity to get a knowledge of Nikon’s menu system. I had tried some friends of Canon cameras, an EOS 30D, an EOS 400 and EOS 450, and miscellaneous pocket cameras.

During the same period I began following David Hobby’s blog – Strobist.com on how to work with light, and his angle to move the flash from the top of the camera to an angle that makes the pictures even more exciting.

When using a flash, whether it is built into the camera or put on top of the camera, it gives a very flat light. And angling the flash upward to bounce off the ceiling doesn’t always do to job properly. That’s what David preaches.

But after following his blog and playing around with the D70, I found a group on flickr called Copenhagen Strobist. They had in April 2008 a meeting in Valby Kulturhus (the local cultural community centre), but unfortunately I was unable to attend.

So I began to keep an eye on the group and in May 2008, there was another meeting. This time, a place where one would not pay to participate, so it was open to all who wanted to participate. I wrote to one of the organizers, if it was okay to attended even if you only had a camera. And not all all these fancy things like remote triggers or flash with stand and umbrella, it was.

The first portrait of a stranger

So sometime in May 2008, I went to my first meeting, Copenhagen Strobist Meetup 02 – As it was named.

And there I met some of those who founded the group, and it was damn exciting. Partly because it was professionals, and also people who have photography as a serious hobby. And it was just what I wanted with my hobby, I want to have it as a serious hobby, and make it exciting. I do not need to turn it into a revenue source, but rather have it as a hobby I can immerse myself in.

I met the others and was first tried it there to meet a strange girl, and then take some pictures of her. It may seem cross first time, it is to stand up and then just take some pictures of a person you do not know. But the meeting was regelsat and there was a model contract and good help from the other photographers, so my first portrait pictures were taken that day.

And as the evening progressed, I was allowed to try some of the other equipment. What I tried a little remote shutter release as I had to bring up my blitzsko, and with it I could remotely control his 2 flash bulbs.

All good things come in threes

My third meeting with Copenhagen Strobist was in August 2008 at Mosede Fort in Greve. I brought 2 camera tripods, and used the direct flash to illuminate the models, it’s okay for lighting  – but I’ll immediately emphasize that an umbrella does wonders to soften the light.

But after taking some good pictures which I also really pleased that it took some time, the winter session was upon us, and the Danish climate is unfortunately not always great for outdoor portraits. Therefore it took some time before I got back to shooting pictures, it’s a little bad – because I can feel that if the sessions are too far apart, I loose the sense of instructing the models, which is something I still need to work on.

Next post will be about 2009, a year that gave me a lot of new equipment and experience.

Tags: D70, Gear, Nikon, Photography, Strobist

I have a photo session this weekend, and I’m looking forward to it – Expect more images saturday or sunday, including a full review.

A small teaser – location is at Hotel Fox, a very stylish hotel in Copenhagen with 61 individual designed rooms.

Adobe Photoshop Lightroom 2.6.1 is in other respects said to be the same as the recently published Lightroom 2.6 release, which added support for a variety of cameras from Canon, Nikon and other and fixing a processing issue on PowerPC-based Mac OS machines. The latest release, is only Leica M9 for users, others should stay at their 2.6.

The glitch which caused crashes when processing Leica M9 images seems to be included in the final release of Lightroom 2.6, as Adobe was making changes to improve image quality based on customer feedback.

Lightroom 2.6.1 is available for both Windows and Mac OS operating systems.

Tags: Adobe Photoshop Lightroom, Leica M9, Lightroom

The first to two years I took digital photos, my meta data was messed up by my camera software, due to this I store the first couple of years as folders named by who’s on the pictures.

Since 2003 I store my images in the following structure:

{Year}
{Month}
{Day} (And then in some cases a description)

This is how my folder for December 2009 looks like:

2009
12
02
05, A trip to Sweden
17, Circus at school
20, Visiting Uffe and Maj-Britt
24, Christmas
27
28, At the Zoo

How do you store your images?

Tags: How to store images, Image library, Library, Pictures, Store

January is usually the month when various websites and television media publish top 10 lists, and this January the media have focused on the last 10 years in the zeros. So I’ve decided to use the opportunity to tell you about my first 10 years of photography, especially digital.

Feel free to join in with your own experiences.

I’ve always been fascinated by pictures, especially portraits but for many years I lacked the equipment to pursue my dream of being able to take really good portraits. Around 95′ or 96′ I got myself an old Zenith camera for 10$ – but there were too many things I knew nothing about, for example the shutter speed actually can be too fast for the speedlight. So I burnt a lot of rolls of film on that account.

But in 2000 I got into the wonderful world of digital cameras, the family’s first camera was a Canon S10 at 2.11MP which we got as a wedding present in July 2000. I used the included 8MB Compact Flash card for 1½ years before upgrading to a 64MB, and looking back at it, it is a little annoying that at the time I knew so little about it that I actually prefered the amount of images on the Compact Flash card over the size of them.

At that time I had no problems in reducing the size to 800×600, instead of 1600×1200 to make room for more. Certainly not anything I could think of now where it should be as large as possible – and only in RAW.

Another thing that annoys me when looking back, is that I realized to late the value in having metadata in the images when it is taken, the focal length, whether or not the flash fired, etc. etc. The problem was that I used Canons program ZoomBrowser to download images from camera to computer. And if I had rotated the images in the camera, eg. rotated portraits instead of waiting till I imported them to my computer. But that method destroyed the metadata, but it took a couple of years before i realised that.

So in that period of time, I only have the metadata on half of my pictures, the other half lack the information.

The camera worked well until 2004 when it began to be somewhat unstable. There were some times you have to take the card out and put it in again. And the battery was beginning to act up, it was a NiMH battery and those have problems when they only are used half before charging. Not like the new kind that are able to handle that.

With a fully charged battery I could turn on the camera and take a few pictures then it went off again, so I bought some new batteries and the camera lasted about half a year more, finally the camera completely stopped working.

In September 2004 I bought a used Canon EOS 650 on Lauritz.com, again, I tried me with an analog SLR. And it was clearly better to have a camera which had no automation, rather than my old Zenith camera. But still, I didn’t think that I learned anything about taking pictures with the camera, at least not techincally. I shot a lot of rolls of film, but I didn’t get them developed right away, some times months before developing them. And then I could not remember how the camera was setup when taking the pictures.

But I think that most rolls of film have been developed.

Since our Canon S10 camera was busted, and we only had an analog camera in 2005, that I do not have so many pictures in digital form from 2005, only around 200 images, it has to.

Perhaps I should start scanning them.

Part two will follow in a couple of days.

Tags: Canon EOS650, Canon S10, compact flash, Lauritz.com, Looking back, meta data, Photography, RAW, Top 10, ZoomBrowser

Today Nikon released a new firmware upgrade for the Nikon D700.

Here are the changes made:

• Auto white balance performance has been improved.
• Support for 64 GB memory cards has been added.
• When ISO sensitivity settings>ISO sensitivity auto control in the shooting menu is set to On, the Maximum sensitivity option can now be specified in steps of 1/3 EV, 1/2 EV or 1 EV, according to the Custom Setting b1 ISO sensitivity step value setting.
• The length of time the camera waits before adjusting focus in response to sudden changes in the distance to the subject can now be selected from 5 (Long) , 4, 3 (Normal), 2, and 1 (Short) from Custom Setting a4 Focus tracking with lock-on.  With the increase in the number of options for Custom Setting a4 Focus tracking with lock-on, this item will be set to 3 (Normal) after firmware upgrade.  Adjust this setting as needed.
• When the camera’s AF-ON button is pressed, the monitor turns off and a focus point can now be selected using the multi selector.
• When the MB-D10 AF-ON button is pressed (with AF-ON selected for Custom Setting a10 AF-ON for MB-D10), the monitor now turns off and a focus point can be selected using the multi selector.
• A Use GPS to set camera clock item has been added to the GPS item in the setup menu.  When Yes is selected, date and time information acquired via connection to a GPS device is used to set the camera’s internal clock.  After selecting Yes for the first time, turn the camera off and then on again to reacquire GPS data.
• When Enable is selected for GPS>Auto meter off in the setup menu, the time until meters turn off is now extended by up to 1 minute to enable camera acquisition of GPS data immediately after the camera is turned on, and immediately after meters turn on.  (only with GPS Unit GP-1)
• When On is selected for Long exp. NR problems were experienced when shooting at shutter speeds slower than 1 s but faster than or equal to 8 s.  This issue has been resolved.
• An issue that prevented display of the focus point with playback of images captured with continuous shooting has been resolved.
• When the virtual horizon was displayed with shooting in live view tripod mode and live view was then cancelled, the focus point displayed in the viewfinder could not be moved.  This issue has been resolved.
• When some memory cards were inserted in the camera, “CHA” was displayed in the top control panel and images could not be captured.  This issue has been resolved.
• When [M] exposure mode was used in live view shooting via Camera Control Pro 2, the electronic analog exposure display did not function.  This issue has been resolved.

Full details and download:

Nikon D700 firmware 1.02 – Windows

Nikon D700 firmware 1.02 – Mac

Tags: Firmware, Nikon, Nikon D700

Yesterday Scott Kelby announced the return of D-Town TV, but this time it will be a show dedicated to all DSLR’s – Not just those from Nikon.

The show will air on January 7th 2010.

Read the rest of this entry »

Tags: D-Town TV, Nikon D-Town, Scott Kelby

Professional photographer Mark Wallace has created a distance demo of the PocketWizard Mini and Flex.

Please PocketWizard – Begin shipping the Nikon version!

YouTube – Distance demo with PocketWizard Mini and Flex.

Tags: AC5 Soft Shield, Canon, Flex, Mark Wallace, Mini, PocketWizard, Remote Trigger, Snapfactory

Photographer Joey L has created a very funny video called “Nikon Girl” and if you can spare almost 4 minutes of your precious time, it’ll make you laugh. Have fun!

Or stop by Joey Lawrence | The Blog – The Photo Club, my alter ego is born.

Found via Nikon Rumors for Nikon enthusiasts.

Tags: Canon, Hip-Hop, Joey L, Joey Lawrence, Nikon, Nikon D200, Nikon Girl, Rap