Yes, today’s the day. I turned 49 today and quite frankly, I don’t feel a bit different than I did yesterday.
I was hoping that my order from B&H would show up before today so I’d have a present to open as it were. It didn’t. This order is for a new Nikon SB-800 as well as some light stands and umbrellas. As noted in my first post, I’m going to be taking a senior portrait and based on what I’ve learned at Strobist.com I want to be sure to have the equipment to do it right. Since it’s “family” I want to make sure I can do my best. After all, it’s not every day someone actually asks me to do something with my camera.
This image was my first real attempt at off camera lighting and was done after reading Strobist.com. I used my Nikon D80 with the SB-800 off the camera. The flash has it’s diffuser cap on and was also bounced off the ceiling. Rather than trying to set the flash manually, this shot used Nikon’s Creative Lighting System. After a couple of shots using that, I also tried it manually and the results were the same after some experimentation. Here’s an excellent piece on CLS from Oleg Novikov’s site. I’m going to have to learn to light manually, especially to use the eBay slaves, but CLS works and works well as far as I can tell.
Speaking of photography, I’m afraid I’ve been quite delinquent recently. I never seem to have the time I need to get out there and get it done. I know it sounds like an excuse, and it is, but I belong to an organization that makes frequent demands on my time outside of work and from Thanksgiving through January there’s quite a bit to do. I’m hopeful it’ll slow down a bit in a fortnight or so.
On the blog side, I’ve put in flickrRSS linked to Strobist.com group on flickr. I initially used my own images there, but I realized they wouldn’t rotate very much, at least not until I’ve got a bit more time to do some work. I’ve also put in a self-serving link to my wishlist at B&H. In a perfect world I guess I would have put that up before my birthday.