My Beautiful Bride photo taken with D5 / 105f1.4 AFS
I’ve had the most amazing weekend of shooting and in large part, shooting with the new Nikon 105f1.4 AFS lens. First and foremost, it’s one sexy lens. It has a 82mm front element and the rest of its stubby barrel is just as wide. It has a really large manual focusing ring with remarkable quick and smooth response which is really important when shooting with such narrow DoF. It does not have VR which might bug some, doesn’t bother me. I’ve only shot it at one f/stop since I got it, f/1.4 (Thanks B&H!). My “real” shoot that I really wanted this lens for is later today so I spent the weekend like always, married to a new piece of gear shooting it at lots of subjects. Here is my dear Sharon posing on her birthday while up in Minot celebrating. The band of focus is on her eyes and the C-53 just 10″ behind her is out of focus. Gorgeous!
This is a pricey lens, a very specific tool with a very specific task. It’s to isolate the subject while still relating it to its background. With that in mind, you can easily fold its qualities into your style of photography if you understand this. There are two photographic examples here. The bottom photo, the subject is large and the background is a great distance from the focus point. The F-106 Dart almost looks like a toy rather than one large, bad ass interceptor. Change the dynamics to a close up of a plane prop where the subject is small and the background is close and the feel dramatically changes. In all of these examples, the sharpness is spooky sharp. The blur is soft and even with a special lusciousness to it. It’s these qualities and more that make this lens so amazing and I’m sure, end up in the list of Nikon legendary lenses. I have more to say about it, but right now, it’s my favorite lens in my bag!
I just got back to the office to find that B&H had delivered my brand new Nikkor 105f1.4AFS lens. Oh my, is it simply a thing of beauty! Seriously, I’ve had the lens just a couple of days and already I can’t put it down. At f1.4 (which is where it counts since that’s what we’re paying for) it is so radically sharp, I absolutely love it. And don’t be mistaken, we are paying for it to be sharp at f/1.4 and nowhere else. Over the weekend, I was just working on getting back from 10days on the road so didn’t have time to do a formal field test. But after just a few clicks, I knew I was in love!
While this sounds simply silly, but it has to be the sexiest lens on the D5 of any lens! It’s big, 82mm front filter and it ain’t light. All that just adds to its sexibility in my book because when you hold it, you know you’re holding one helluva piece of glass. But what is really important is how it performs and getting right down to it, it’s gorgeous! I didn’t have time to do any real world shooting so I enlisted my trusted old friend Ricky for a quick demo. You can see in the two images the incredibly difference in the DoF between f/1.4 and f/16. You can see how the background which is 15feet away disappears and reappears with the switch in aperture. You might also notice that at f/1.4, that Ricky’s nose is not even sharp, just barely the eyes (Ricky is the size of a human face). That’s exactly what I wanted and couldn’t be happier with the preliminary results. I’ll be doing a shoot this coming weekend with this lens so will have more to say but for now, all I can say is, gorgeous!
On our project, video is a HUGE component of the content we are creating. Being the producer, director, and still shooter, I shoot about 90% stills and 10% video shooting the D5. Brent on the other hand shoots 90% video and 10% stills (but as you can see above, he’s great with stills too!). We have D5s, D500s and D750s in the equipment locker along with a war chest of lenses. Brent being the video guy, I wanted to present you that side of the D500 & D750 as he shoots with them exclusively. Understand he depends on the D500 and that’s his primary body. So here is a working look at both the D500 and D750 in Brent’s words.
Having been fortunate to fly with and film the Texas Flying Legends Museum for six months now, I’ve put a lot of time in on my D750, and now a D500, recording the flights and performances. So I wasn’t really phased when I was sent to Minot, North Dakota to cover a one-and-a-half-day airshow, stills and video, all by myself. Our previous shows were the whole team, with me being responsible for just video, over the course of a few days. I had my trusty bodies, though, and plenty of equipment to make it work.
It is pretty common for photographers to have a couple bodies, makes for easy lens swapping, and with aviation, having two lenses already set up makes for not just speed, but keeping that ever sensitive sensor dust spot free, a big factor with DSLR video I find.
But by the end of the event, I noticed the D750 didn’t work for me the same anymore. The quality was there; all of the video it shot was beautiful. But it was harder, less intuitive. What happened?
The D750 and D500 are a great fit for the work. Both are light, easy to get into places I need to be, and have all those useful video features like the flip LCD. A D5 would be all wrong these days, with the added weight and size making the overall video rig feel unbalanced, heavy, and difficult to keep stable for long periods of hand holding. But why did the D750 no longer feel as good as the D500? Three things really stand out in my mind.
First, considering just video, the D750 options are so limited now compared to what the D500 does. I can shoot 4k, 1080p, 1080p with EVR (Electronic Vibration Reduction), and I can set 1080p to be standard DX or 1.3 on top of that. The FX 24-120 can get all the way out to 270 in 4k. This gives me so many ways I can shoot the same thing completely differently with a single body. Now if I was requiring myself to only shoot 4k, then perhaps I’d feel that limit again. But in the meantime, all of this range allows for a critical component to me, less weight and size while doing more.
Secondly, changing video settings was made to be fast and intuitive on a D500. On the D750, you’ll eventually find your fingers doing some tricky gymnastics in order to change simple things. Much to the bane of the still photographer, the button layout on the D500 is made for video, like having both the Info and i buttons in exactly the right spot, or ISO by the shutter. They’re not hidden on the D750, but compared to the D500 where changing the ISO is the button right on top by the shutter and a flick of the thumb wheel, the D750 is clunky now. Even the simple touch screen auto focus makes things so much simpler. Having to manually move the focus box across the screen, and then focusing, is a lot of time where I’m probably missing shots. Taping right on the spot I need is instant. That D500 LCD is extremely sharp compared to the D750 as well, making visually focusing much more reliable.
Third, and very important if you’re a one-man band for still and video, is how the D500 handles stills. Again, this isn’t a quality comparison at all; the D750 takes beautiful stills. But the D500’s biggest advantage here is just how quick I can change between stills and video. It’s all about finger gymnastics.
When I shoot video, I’m in Manual. When I shoot stills, I’m either in Aperture Priority or Shutter Priority, depending on whether or not a prop is involved. Which means going from video to stills, I have to turn live view off, switch out of manual to the correct mode, and now I’m shooting again, and vice versa to get back to video. Is this vastly more complicated on a D750? Not at all. But for the feel for the D500 works and flows much faster and easier, possibly because I like the D500 Mode button as opposed to the D750 Mode wheel, which others may prefer.
(As an additional bonus, don’t forget the D500 gets 10 fps and never stops, where the D750 does 6.5 and absolutely fills the buffer.)
By the end of that event, I looked through my footage and found I kept more D500 footage than D750. It’s really that simple. I didn’t like a single D750 still I took of the Texas Flying Legends, because they all had issues that resulted from either my finger gymnastics trying to get the D750 set back and forth from video and stills or a full buffer. Those stills are filed in that one special folder for “remember what went wrong here.” So unfortunately I don’t even have a comparison shot to show for stills.
P-51D Mustang “Little Horse” captured by D500 / 24-120VR
The D500 feels really good. It got me all the footage I needed, without any moments of frustration getting in the way of the shot. Whether still or video or switching between the two, it’s the body I grab to get the job done, no matter the job.
Oh … this is going to be great! I can’t thank Lexar & B&H enough for making this possible, and free to all! Here are the details when it comes to gear, KISS!
Here’s my list of gear:
and that’s it! I’ll have all of this in a sling bag for ease access. You don’t need any lens longer than 400mm and wide is for the static work. On the bus ride out I’ll go over all the photographic strategies from gear, settings, subjects and shooting techniques. It’s going to be a grand day and we can’t wait to share it with you!
And here are the other details:
Sunday 8/28 Visit the Aerodrome:
Meet outside the B&H Super Store (420 9th Avenue NY, NY 10001) at 8:30 AM
Bus Departs promptly at 9 AM arriving at the Aerodrome around 11 AM. During the ride, Moose will be offering tips and getting you excited to photograph this unique opportunity.
11 am to 12:30 Photo Walk the grounds, the museum and explore all the Aerodrome has to offer.
12:30 to 1:30 Lunch is served in a picnic area. Box Lunch will have a meat and veg choice.
2:00 to 4 pm Photograph the air show! Board the bus directly following the end of the show and return to the B&H Super Store (estimated return 6 pm)
Dress comfortable for a long day and please, leave your tripods at home.
Old Rhinebeck Aerodrome Website: http://oldrhinebeck.org/
Monday 8/29 Crit Session:
9:30 AM come to the B&H Event Space with your best 3 pictures (large jpegs are fine) loaded onto a thumb drive.
10 AM to 11:30 Moose will review your photos and give you critical feedback.
Noon: Didn’t get enough of Moose? Stay for Moose Peterson’s Guide to Aerial Photography Event Space presentation. (Note: must sign up separately for this segment, visit http://www.bhphotovideo.com/find/eventDetails.jsp/id/2374 to learn more)
Having been to O’Reilly’s before, I knew the opportunity was here for some really fun portraits. Now I could have done these with just a straight camera shot, but that’s just not right to do to folks. I could have gone with the flash on the camera, but those portraits never look all that great. So I went with a little panache thinking, I wanted some real studio lighting for folks but I was traveling half way around the world. Luckily for me, B&H had just delivered their Impact DLSR lighting gear to me which made my decision real simple. I talked about all the gear on my last Podcast, here’s the whole list:
As you can see from the Before shot (no flash), the light was simply not going to work for a portrait. It especially wouldn’t stop the action of Eric and his response to being descended upon by the Australian King Parrots or the Crimson Rosellas. Needed flash as a light and a freezing tool. The shot was pretty straight forward, -1.7 was dialed in the camera for the ambient light exposure and 0 compensation was dialed in the flash. Using the WR-R10/WR-T10/WR-A10 Wireless Remote Adapter Set was essential for speed, placement of flash (didn’t have to be line of sight) and one less thing for the birds to use as a perch. As it was, I had to keep a foot on the light stand to keep the birds from knocking it over as they took off after perching on it. But the best part was the fun this brought for all of us. Because of the ease and speed of the entire system, everybody had their portrait taken being mobbed by the birds and the expressions on their faces was simply brilliant. It was so easy, Kevin took over at the camera so I could have some fun! And that’s what photography and our gear should be all about, making things easy so we have fun which is why I so love the Impact lighting gear!
Flash is such an important tool and with the introduction of D5 / D500 and SB-5000, it was made even easier to use. The issue still is us, humans that is, in “seeing” light and being able understand when we need to meld ambient light with flash to tell our story. The way we meld the light taking advantage of the computers in our cameras and our flash is through exposure compensation. That’s the purpose behind this post.
In this photo of a Spitfire pilot in the cockpit wearing full scramble gear, it was made on a day when the ambient light was dull and directionless. I needed to dial in exposure compensation for the ambient light and for the flash. The body has only one exposure compensation button but your flash has two (at least with top end Nikons) buttons, one on the flash and one on the body. In this case, I depressed the Flash button on the back, left side of the D5 and dialed in -1. I then depressed the Exp Comp on the SB-5000 and dialed in the amount I needed to meld the light. I did this because I figured I would need to go to -4 stops comp on the flash so it would barely kiss the pilot. The water on the canopy was going to create a ton of specular highlights if the flash was too bright. The flash on its own though can only go to -3 stops so to get to -4, I had to dial -1 into the body (it only effects the flash). This actually permits you to have as much as -6 stops flash exp comp if you want. But here’s the point. You can dial in flash exp compensation in the body easily and, and you can forget that easily and that might really goof you up. It has me more than once. There is a warning in the viewfinder and on the top LCD (see photo above) that will tell you but if you don’t look closely (or you forget to wear your reading glasses), you’ll miss you’ve turned it on. Remember this tool and remember to look for the Lightning Bolt with the plus/minus sign. Great tool for light just remember the reminders!
