Wednesday, June 16, 2010

An eventful day with the 200 f2 aka "chubby"

In the period of 2 years, I purchased a 70-200 VR, sold it and got the 70-200 VRII, traded that plus my 24-70 2.8 for the 200mm f2.0 VR. Shooting at 2.8 still left me wanting more subject isolation as well as better overall sharpness, which was why I opted to jump for the 200 f2.0.

I knew it was going to be big, heavy and downright intimidating to its' subjects. My main concern however, has got to be weight. A little bit about myself, I'm 205lbs, fairly fit in every way and hand holding the d700 with mbd10 and the 200mm f2.0 from 8am to 2pm was a total drain on me. This was on top of carrying my D3x w/35mm zeiss! I need to write a thank you note to New York Sports Club in my building.

I utilized the R-strap attached to the tripod foot for better weight balance, and also taking stress away from the camera lens mount. Yes, that could warp very easily with a lens that big. Heck, it warped with both my 70-200 lenses. Had to send it back to nikon twice to get it fixed. A hard lesson learned, thankfully it's fine now, thanks to the toughness of the R-strap. I may need to order the double strapped harness to hold two bodies.

Here are some pics from that event.
Event link

If you noticed plenty of orange on the presenters, I blame the orange (yes, literally, orange) flood lights for that. I tried to neutralize them with an sb-800 with a gary fong diffuser hidden by those plants. It worked in some shots, not so well when they were further away. I could've balanced my camera out to match those lights, but then my background would be out of whack. So, white balance was all over the place.

Thursday, June 3, 2010

Happy 1st Birthday Ellie!

We threw a BBQ and invited a bunch of her little buddies.
I hate shooting during high noon sun so, I opted to wait for golden hour.
_D3X7001

Here are the rest of the images from that day. Pics were taken with D3x and 135 f2 DC
http://www.flickr.com/photos/38437144@N07/sets/72157624057124879/