My weekend with the Samsung Galaxy Note

I got this HUGE device on Friday and have to say I LOVE the screen's color and shrpness. A 5.3 Super Amoled screen with 1280x800 resolution is perfect to watch Netflix and surf the wed for long periods of time. I wouldn't use it as my primary phone, but as a second phone it's perfect. 

 Pretty good battery life, and it uses ATT's fast 4G network. With the large screen and 4G connection, you will fly thru your data plan quickly. So you should consider getting a larger data plan, which ATT have recently increased the prices of...not really happy with that. 

Adding Nikon lenses to a Samsung NX100!

My ongoing adventure with my Samsung is taking advantage of it's ability to mount different lenses to the body. Not just regular stock lenses, but with an adaptor, I can use my Nikon lenses on this camera. Now I have a great wide angle, and to my total surprise I have the BEST macro set-up using a Nikon PB4 bellows set-up. I've used the PB4 with film and digital SLR's but because of the size of the cameras I couldn't full rotate the camera body to take advantage of the bellows movements. Also, a DSLR with the bellows is heavy, and puts a great strain on any tripod mount I would put it on! With this camera body on the bellows it's better balanced and easier to use! The adapter cost me $18.00! Best deal this year!

Using a point and shoot for interiors.

Over the weekend, I picked up a Samsung NX100 CHEAP! I don't have a point and shoot for the holidays. It gets old using a DSLR all the time. While getting the feel of the camera, I noticed that it has a flash hot shoe. After a few minutes I discovered that it will trigger all the remote triggers I have. What I decided to use is the my Phottix Starto, to get my strobes off camera. I lose TTL but getting your flash off camera opens a lot of options! The NX100 also has full manual control over aperture and shutter. It has a top synch speed of 1/200 of a sec so I can "pull" detail in windows if I need to. 

For the attached images, I used 1 SB600 at 1/4 power triggered by a Phottix, I also used a SB800 in SU remote mode that will fire when another strobe goes off for fill.

I like the size and speed of using a camera like this. It's going to be fun playing around with this set-up!

 

Senior Portrait

A few weeks ago, my niece informed me that she had ideas for her senior portrait. Not such an unusual request, except her father is also a photographer. I got the assignment of something outside and lite!

When shooting outside, normally you'd have to deal with the the stray sumlight coming thru the trees. This really isn't a problem for the background, but stray sunlight causes problems with possible blown highlights if they fall on your subject. 

What I did was use a large trasnlucent scrim to shield the sun hiitting her hair, and I also used a a black scrim in conjuction with the large white scrim to further control any specular highlights on her head. For fill I used a lard white reflector. 

I did slight variations of this to get several different moods and looks to my niece.

Wide Angle Lenses

There is nothing more impressive than seeing the super large lenses that sports photographers use. You simply assume that they are professional photographers. Because of the field that I specialize in, I don't have any ultra telephoto lenses. I do on the other hand have quite a few ultra wide angle lenses, which I think are just as impressive as ultra telephotos. These are 2 of my favorites...