Working with Nikon’s Wireless flash system really rocks in my book! Coming from the days of the BC-7 (that took a flash bulb), this system is simple and incredibly efficient. With the SB-5000 at the core, using the WR-R10, you can work wirelessly with the SB-5000 with the D5, D850, D500 and D7500. The one issue I have with this system can be quickly and easily dealt with. Rather than having to access the Menu or push a bunch of buttons a bunch of time, you can do it all with one button. Here’s a simple 2min video how to achieve this ease. Keep in mind that the WR-R10 must be plugged into the camera to do the following programming (starting with the D850 in the video):
The bottom photo was shot with the D7500 and a boat load of SB-5000s as you can see in this BTS D7500 video. The top photo was taken in a new KelbyOne Class we just taped on the Nikon Wireless System (out in Dec). Both shot wirelessly and completely controlled at the camera with just one button.
About a month ago, rGPS reached out to me to give me their product a try. To say I was really skeptical is an understatement but to be fair, I loaded it and gave it a try. The concept is really simple, crowdsource photo location finder to aid you when in that locale to find a place to shoot landscapes. With a click, if the locale sounds interesting you have a map guiding you to that locale. After checking it out for a month, trying some of the locales, I’m impressed enough to pass rGPS along to you. You can get it for FREE and then if you like it, go Pro. When you find yourself shooting in a new place and need suggestion where to go, you’ll find rGPS pretty darn cool!
While I don’t love to do it, but when there’s grass getting down low ain’t so bad (cause getting back up is a tad easier). The need to get low is great when you have a background like you do in the top frame! So going down low is really the only option. You can a hide a whole lot behind a plane when you go down.
So just like with the American Golden Plover photo, how low to go really is controlled by the background itself. You can see here that I’m really in the grass. And in fact, to hide that building, I sent a tad off center to hide it. Here’s my trick for this shot. Once I get down, I don’t wanna keep moving around for images size. So what I do is set the 24-70VR to 24mm, look through the D5 and physically move until at 24mm, the plane fills the frame from wing tip to wing tip. That’s where I get down. Then I will take that shot and a series zooming into 50mm and then 70mm. It’s such a simple and effective technique you gotta put in your bag of tricks!
Long ago, I took a class taught by the CIA on high-resolution photography. We’re talking Tri-X film days. The goal of the class was to take a photo of a government building and be able to enlarge that photograph to see the stars on the American Flag. Fast forward to digital I have often tried to do that same thing but have always fallen short. Might have come close but as they say, close only counts in hand grenades and atom bombs. Well, those days might just be over.
Out on The Palouse shooting yesterday with the D850 / 80-400VRII at 400mm. Shooting this really cool scene when Sharon said, “There are numbers on those doors.” I previewed the image on the LCD and then zoomed in as I had many times already with the D850. Above you can see the arrow and below is that number. Now that’s just darn cool!
My new class on Camera Gear Care has just been released over at KelbyOne. I’ve been FLOODED with emails asking where to get the supplies. It’s the same list you’ll find just a month ago here on the Blog. Here ya go again :-)
Just like daylight TL, the new D850 takes heavenly lights time-lapse to a whole new level of easy! At the same time, it produces some pretty darn clean results. I started with the D850 with the 14-24f2.8 attached to a tripod. I wanted to test the system (this was the 2nd TL I created) using what I call the “too tired to think” settings. With the camera set to Auto ISO with max of 6400 and shutter speed of 25sec, New Auto Natural WB, Aperture Priority at f/2.8, I went into the Time-lapse menu and dialed in the settings. I set the duration to 7hrs, frequency to 1 every 30sec, Exposure Smoothing and Silent Shutter (which freakin rocks!). I shot one with the EN-EL15 and one with the EN-EL15a battery hot out of the charger, both creating a time-lapse 16sec long, from a total recording time of 4:45hrs (battery died at that point). The D850 creates right out of the camera a 4k time-lapse movie as easy as touching the menu Start (yep, Menu is touch activated!). Really way too simple now, thank goodness. Now you can create an 8k time-lapse with the D850 as well. You would need to shoot Nef’s and then run those through a 3rd party program (like Photoshop) to create that high res time-lapse (which would produce the best results). Either way, it’s so simple it’s a ton of fun! Oh ya, didn’t know neighbors were going to throw an evening party. Kinda lit up the trees. mtc
