Wednesday 14 July 2010

some post today he hadn't gone away!

Had my C&G L3 course certificate today through the post of course... a credit for my presentation! and a distinction for the studio work! not sure how you get a distinction in presentation (well done Eric, I'm copying you next time) as Mr Steve said on a disk is good enough?

College photo blog link from Mr Steve

Hi All please follow the link to Mr Steve's/ college blog

http://cityguildsphotographycourses.blogspot.com/

Tuesday 13 July 2010

The Wedding of Angie & Kev

It's only five days to Angie and Kev's wedding day,  as I have been asked to capture those special moments    I asked Angie to provide me with the rings and the order of service so that I could take some images prior the the wedding, It would also be one thing less to think about...  Here they are:














Friday 9 July 2010

Moira Furnace

There I was sitting on the fence, wondering if anyone one was coming to my first visit to Moira Furnace, I was a bit early at 6:45pm so `i thought I give it a bit longer. I sure everyone was waiting round the corner for the clock to strike 7 and dead on Pip, then Lu and Ralph arrived, and finally two more for the pot made 5.

we wandered around watch the skies become more overcast as the seconds ticked by, oh well time for some close crops again.



















































A fox at 200mm on the left,
and the cropped is...... on the right




Finally Pip 'Checkin' it out"





Monday 5 July 2010

Newton Park & a July 4th Wedding

Just started to edit the images from this Sundays wedding at the Newton Park, It would be rude to post any images on here before the happy couple see them. Just to say I have captured some wonderful memories, with assistance from Joe (thanks Joe). a full days shooting starting a 10:30 am and finally going home just after 8pm. here's a couple of tasters I can post.




Thursday 1 July 2010

Flash and max shutter speed

I have started reading a book by Neil Van Niekerk, a South African wedding photographer based in New Jersey USA (see Blog link: Planetneil).

The book explains techniques on use of 'on camera flash' in which he explains the benefit of using the camera maximum flash sync speed, on my canon 5D MKII this is 1/200 sec, as the datum then adjusting the other parameters to suit to enable the ambient background light to be seen whilst using the flash in TTL mode to fill in at it's optimum efficiency, thus improving battery life, recycling speed and a fast enough shutter speed to reduce camera shake.

in the following Images which I have taken to show this effect I used my ever willing model (my daughters make up doll) with one 100w bedside light set at 90 degrees to the models left (right of the images) creating some tungsten side and ambient light. all of the following image are uneddited apart from converting to Jpg. As I always shoot in RAW I have plenty of scope for editing for white balance etc.

F/4.0
1/4 sec
ISO 800
3100k / cloudy

we can see here a warm colours prevailing in the ambient light, with no flash and plenty of modelling on the face. a slightly soft image even with the help of IS on the Canon 24-105mm lens



F/4.0
1/200 sec
ISO 1600
5550k/ Tungsten

we can see not much change in ambient lighting, but because of the the faster shutter speed I think a noticeably sharper image and better modelling because of the bounced fill flash



the following set shows that the only changed parameter is the shutter speed, the fill flash is taking up the slack filling in / adding to the ambient.

f/4.0
1/8 sec
ISO 2000
5550k / Cloudy
no flash


f/4.0
1/8 sec
ISO 2000
3100k / Tungsten 
no flash



F/4.0
1/200 sec
ISO 2000
5550k / cloudy
bounced fill flash over my left shoulder and 45 degrees up, again I think noticeably sharper. You will notice that the ambient lighting is still present in the background.

F/4.0
1/200 sec
ISO 2000
5550k / cloudy 
bounced fill flash over my left shoulder and 90 degrees across



I will be using this in my flash wedding photography along with other tips from Neil's book, more to come.....