Sydney Photographer

I took my camera to our SFC Christmas Singing Practise at David's house. SFC South-West are going to be singing at the OLMC Parish in Mt Pritchard at the 10:30 Mass on Christmas Day. Here are three of the photos from last night.

I was using my new Nikon D200 with the D70 kit lens: 18-70mm F/3.5-4.5 G in combination with two off camera SB-800's triggered by the CLS (Creative Lighting System). Both flashes were on 100% output. The focal length was at 18mm so there is distortion at the corners. The photo was taken at 1/80 sec - F/13, ISO 400.

In an ideal world, I would have a light meter. But I don't own one (too expensive, don't really need it). The light meter would be handy to save blinding my subjects with too many test fires to get the right balance of light in combination with the depth of field.

I only took two "wide view" photos to not disrupt the practise session too much. The photo above was the last of the two which utilised two flashes. I realised I needed more light towards the back of the photo from my first shot below... So I placed a flash behind the certificate frame on the shelf. I did photoshop this photo. The flash was a too strong and blew out the wall. So I had to paint it back on. If I had the opportunity to take another photo I would have pulled down the flash power down by a stop or two.

The photo below was taken with only one off camera flash so I had to push the lighting up towards the back of the photo a stop or two using photoshop. The colour of the photo is a little off.

The photo above has exactly the same settings as the photo above. As I said, more light was needed because of the depth of field that I needed to keep all the subjects sharp and in focus. I was lucky because I simply just guestimated all the parameters that I needed: ISO 400 to grab enough light, f13 for the deep depth of field, 1/80s to keep the photo sharp enough with no blurring...

Here's a portrait of Ryan playing the grand piano. Using the same camera but with a 50mm f1.4 lens. Settings are: ISO 100 @ 1/80 sec - F/2.8. Off camera SB-800. I think flash power was at 1/32 or 1/64. If I had a chance to redo the photo I would move the flash to above and forward of Ryan's head to eliminate the soft shadow on the window blinds. I would probably use the second light to light up the back of the photo.

Eric & Prescilla's Wedding was held last Saturday, 2nd December. I wasn't there as the official photographer, but as a guest. (Oh, and I wasn't the one who took photos during the mass since I was busy 'commentating' the mass) I was using my brand new Nikon D200 with a single SB-800 speedlight. The lenses I had was the 18-70mm D70 kit lens and a 50mm f1.4 Nikkor lens. The official photographer there had two sets of D200's, both had flash brackets - to eliminate/decrease shadowing. One D200 had a Metz flashhead attached and the other had an SB-800 with the TTL Remote Cord (SC-29) since the flash was on a bracket. I'm not too sure what lens he had but they could have been the D70 kit lens or the new D200 kit lens which is the Nikon 18-200mm f/3.5-5.6 G ED-IF AF-S VR DX Zoom.

You can take a look at their Wedding Photos here. There are 65 photos in total which I shrunk down to a max height/width of 640 to both speed up loading times and save bandwidth.

It's done. I've bought myself a nifty new domain - my own name. After a few years of owning the Photos2View domain, I've decided to buy my own name in dot com land. I've spent the day uploading a blog platform to blog.marcopalmero.com and updating my portfolio page which I copied from the original site as well as add a few new photos.

I've decided to start up another blog - this one - which will be purely about photos, photography and the stories behind the photos.

Yep, My first Entry. Noting to say except some Lorem Ipsum: Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetuer adipiscing elit. Aliquam nec neque. Fusce a risus. Nulla vel augue. Nam viverra auctor risus. Nam ac justo. Nunc mollis elit ac sem. Pellentesque nec libero. Phasellus facilisis felis quis metus. Fusce sodales erat nec tortor. Etiam pretium, enim ac egestas tincidunt, odio elit aliquam odio, at rutrum est elit ut nulla. Vivamus eget diam vitae nisl facilisis nonummy. In ligula ante, vulputate quis, feugiat a, ultricies nec, augue. Sed a nulla. Ut posuere sodales dolor. Nulla facilisi. Nam purus sem, fermentum auctor, dignissim eu, ullamcorper eget, felis. In ultricies. Sed risus. Quisque et ante vel turpis euismod accumsan. Vestibulum ante ipsum primis in faucibus orci luctus et ultrices posuere cubilia Curae;

Just testing out posting up pictures in a blog post. I hope it works...