An Evening with Joe McNally

[Cross posted from my blog]
So thanks to a tip from a friend taking a course from him, I found out that The Joe McNally is in Vancouver and was doing a lecture downtown. Being that I've read and pimped his book before, and he's done picture for oodles of places, including National Geographic, it was a pretty good idea to give it a listen, especially a the low low price of $45.

The talk included a session of talking and then some lighting setup and demo. The talk itself wasn't completely new material to anyone who has read The Moment It Clicks or seen his Authors@Google talk. Basically he's a great talker, funny, and with good stories and better pictures.

The lighting setup was also very cool, starting with a straight on camera flash and a model (a dancer) and moving to a softbox, hair light, background light, eye "zapper", and shoot-through diffuser all configured from his D3 with some magic do-everything flash configuration system, it was very cool to see the quality of pics on the screen change with each iteration and go from "ugh" to "wow" and then to "holy balls wow".

Course now it's a matter of getting my ass off the couch and to taking pictures so when the course is offered next year I'm worthy of taking it :)

Wireless Flash With Pentax

Lately I've been getting really interested in Strobist stuff, and was getting ready to write an article on my experiences getting wireless flash going on my K20D, however, looks like Michael already has! Well worth the read, and fixes a lot of the "gotchas" that I found in my struggles. I'll probably still let you know how it an my first strobist shoot went last weekend though!

Best Moon Yet!

I'm sure I've said it before, and I'm sure I'll say it again...

Tonight the moon was halved and bright, so my trust 300mm sigma came out again and I started shooting away. This time I was a bit more methodical, going from f5.6 up to f11 with shutter speeds from 1/60^th to 1/15^th. Seems the Sigma 70-300 I have performs best around f8.0 and I got this baby (which stood out even in the LCD display of my K20D in terms of detail) at 1/20^th @ f8.0. I convinced a bit more detail to come out with a bit of sharpening in lightroom, but other than that it's as shot (outside of the crop of course). Check it out... clicky clicky on the image to blow it up to full size!


Amazing to see what a bit of careful picture taking will do for you eh?

Moon Photography Tips

Digital Photography School posts a great set of tips to make moon photography simple.

Photokina 2008 Is Upon Us! Pentax Has New Toys

So here's a slew of links from DPReview, as Photokina 2008 is now upon us. Pentax has delivered a few new items, according to the newsfeed, here are some of the more interesting ones:

• The K-m (AKA K2000), an entry level, 10mp system which is probably based on a stripped down K10D. The hands on notes how it's engineered to be lightweight, has newly engineered "DA L" lenses (24g lighter). Compared to the K200D it's got a lower end AF system (5 vs 11 areas), goes to ISO 3200 vs 1600, and has slightly faster FPS. It is also 2.3oz lighter.
  
• The new Pentax smc DA-L lenses got their own entry as well, showing off the new DA-L 18-55 and 50-200. Super lightweight blah blah (7.1oz and 8.3oz respectively). Not particularly exciting, though I'm interested in seeing some IQ tests comparing the DA-L lenses to their DA counterparts.
  
• Along with the DA-L lenses comes Two New DA* Lenses, a 60-250/f4 and a 55/f1.4. The 60-250 would be the complement to the 16-50 (though it'd be nice to fill in that missing 10mm in the middle). The 55/f1.4 will turn into a 75mm(ish) at 35mm, making it a nice portrait lens, but this doesn't excite me that much, but I like that Pentax if fleshing out their DA* lineup.
  
• Last and definitely not least is the ultra-wide lens and 1.4TC announcement. Is a 15mm/f4 confuses me a bit, they have a 12-24/f4 already and the 10-17mm fisheye. I suppose this is case of ensuring that they have the DA* line in each of the "areas" already hit by the rest of the DA line.
  

So all in all not bad! I'm still happy with my K20D (even though my posting lately is proportional to my shooting lately), but seeing Pentax up the specs on their entry level models is nice. I can't quite afford any of the DA* lenses yet so I can't comment on the other ones (other than "donations accepted" :)

One thing I do note is that they are putting a lot of investment into the DA[*] line, which says to me that Pentax is not working on some imminent full frame camera. If they were, I would guess we'd see less of the DA format (APS style) lenses and more of the "F" series full frame ones appearing.

Who knows though, really what they have up their sleeves. Wonder what the rest of Photokina will bring?!

Tweaking nVidia Cards for Lightroom 2.0

Yea, so I've had a bit of a downtime photography wise lately, I've been searching for inspiration and am working on getting back in the saddle as it were. Still browsing the blogs for nifty bits of info to share though, which is where I found some nVidia tweaks for Lightroom 2.0 which are supposed to speed up the adjustment brush and previews. I'll be playing with this tonight to see how well it works, as right now Lightroom 2.0 feels way slower than it should :\

Lightroom 2.0 Released

Just a few days ago I was wondering when Lightroom 2.0 was going to show up with a second beta or a full release, and today, like magic, I see the announcement of Lightroom 2.0! The press release doesn't have a lot of details (like what has changed since the beta) beyond the standard groundbreaking blah blah most accurate blah blah.

Here's some links with more information and news of the announcement.

• Lightroom Blog
  
• Lightroom Journal
  
• DPReview
  
• Lightroom Killer Tips
  
• Lightroom News (details on beta-to-release changes)