Over the last three days, I had an outage on my blog. There were some technical problems from my side, which are rectified now.
Normal posting will continue tomorrow.
Thanks for your understanding.
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I took this photograph of Kgomotso at the beach in a session, where I played with some concepts that I learnt from Strobist. In the past, I would have just packed in my camera and worked with available light. On this occasion, I packed in light stand strobes and lots of courage. For a good part of the photo session, we were standing in water. Not only we, were standing in water, but also the lightstand with a strobe. It is amazing how powerful waves can be. One wave threw over the lightstand and with it my strobe. Thanks for insurance companies… The strobe died a heroic death in the seawater.
Nevertheless, we had lots of fun with the portraits and this image here was taken before the accident. One strobe was direct from the camera right from the bottom up towards the face.
On Sunday, Cape Town hosted the biggest bike race in the world with 35 000 participants. In 9 years of living in Cape Town, it is the first time that I went to watch and take some pictures. Enjoy.
Google launched Google Sites, which allows you do create sophisticated websites without knowledge of coding or bothering with uploading a Content Management System to your server. Find out more here:
I just visited Apple’s web site and found some interesting tutorials on working with their applications, including iWeb.
Linkedin is a networking site for business professionals. Linkedin says about themselves: “LinkedIn is an online network of more than 17 million experienced professionals from around the world, representing 150 industries.” I signed up for my account in the beginning of last year. The way Linkedin works is that you create your own public presentation with the help of Linkedin’s template. You invite friends to join your network, which is a rather slow process. The nice thing about Linkedin is that you can see not only your friend’s details, but also their friend’s and their friend’s details. To protect users from spam and to keep the network a network of friends, you can get introduced to those 2nd and 3rd level contacts, but can’t contact them directly.My Linkedin world went upside down over the weekend. Read the rest of this entry »
So I downloaded Aperture 2.0, moved my current version to a different location and started to play with it. My first impression: It is great. There are some fantastic improvements in regards to speed and what you can do. There are some things that was not that impressed about, but about that later. In the beginning let me get some steam off. I was able download and install Aperture 2.0 without major problems. Apple’s Server was a bit slow, but I reckon that had to do with the fact that they were still updating the site, when I tried to download the application. All is well. Read the rest of this entry »
Did I mention that the server upgrade went smoothly? Not really in the end. After some further checks, I found out that everything did not run as smoothly as I thought in the first place, with the exception of this blog.My normal photography websites were all based on Joomla, which is a great way of publishing your websites. Read the rest of this entry »
Merry Christmas everyone. May you have a blessed time with your family.
If you are still waiting for Santa Claus, you can find his current location here
You even have the chance to check him at work in Google Earth, following a link on above page.
Joomla is in my experience the most useful content management system (CMS) for general websites. It took me a while to figure out a way to design an attractive webpage for my photography business. Now, that I found an interesting solution, I want to share it.
If you haven’t done so, go to www.joomla.org. Joomla is an open source project, which means that the source code for the CMS is available to developer. Open source does not always mean that software is for free, though it is most cases. Joomla is based on Mambo and split away from Mambo, about two years ago. Read the rest of this entry »
I found this article about using your manual at Nikonians’ Blog.
Read the article here. It is very useful.
This week has been very busy and I concentrated on upgrading my website. I will be posting at my regular schedule again as from Monday.
Would you have asked me 3 months ago, if I think that a calibrator would be an essential tool for digital photographers, I would have said that you don’t need one. How wrong I was! It made such a huge difference, using the calibrator that I want to compare it to my experience, when I printed my first b/w print in our school’s photo lab. It is that huge!
Why should you bother and what changed my mind about purchasing a calibrator? Read the rest of this entry »
In order to have more control over my blog, I moved this blog to http://blog.jurgen-photo.com . If you bookmarked this blog in your browser with the old address, please update the link.
As I am settling into my new home, you might see some changes in the layout as I want to make the most of this blog for everyone.
I noticed that my feed settings were setup incorrectly. When you subscribed to the feed, you were only able to see the heading of my posts. You should now see the intro of the post.
Let me know if you have problems reading the feed in your feedreader.
Have a great weekend!
This is a feature from Google calendar I was waiting for. Over the last year, I transferred my planning from my old fashioned calendar system to Google Calendar. I get my reminders sent to my cellphone via sms, receive confirmations of appointments… I can share my calendar with my wife or friends and can limit, what they can see. Google Calendar is linked to Gmail and emails with appointment requests are transferred automatically to the calendar. It is one of the things, I don’t want to miss. What I was missing though, was solution for my cellphone, when I am out the office and want to make new appointments or check my availabilty for the next couple of days. Finally, Google produced a solution for my need.
If your mobile phone has the capacity to access the internet, you can log into your Google calendar by going to http://calendar.google.com. I got used to check my emails on the go and being able to check my calendar the same way is exciting. The capacities of the new feature are limited though. You can quick add new events, which is great, but you can’t edit or delete current appointments. If you need a quick overview over your schedule for the next couple of days or enter quickly a new appointment into you calendar it is a useful tool. I assume that Google will upgrade the application in the future.
Check out the announcement from Google’s blog.
Technorati Tags: Google, Google Calendar, Mobile Phone
I just checked some interesting links in my Google Reader and want to share them with you. Not everything is photo related. Enjoy
If you have to give presenations, you might want to read this: Compulsive Obsession with Details will save your Neck
Have you ever wondered how the Magna Doodle works? We had a huge discussion about that with friends tonight. Here is the answer
This is a bit of an older one from Strobist’s webpage. It might not be the easiest way of getting a white background. Sometimes you just have to do, what it takes to do that shot. Check it out here
Technorati Tags: Magna Doodle, Photography, Presentation, Strobist
After I described the setup and shared some test results, I want to go a bit more into the detailed camera and flash settings that I used. The description might sound far more complicated than what it is. Actually it is extremely simple. There are just a few things to remember along the way.
Let’s move right into it. First, the description for the D200.
1) On the back of your camera select the Menu button
2) Select the Custom Setting Menu
3) Select Bracketing/ Flash
4) Select Built-in Flash
5) Select Commander Mode
6) You are in Commander Mode
The built in flash operates now as commander for your external strobes (SB-600 or SB-800)
That is not too complicated. Just remember, when you are finished working with your external speedlights, to set the Built-in Flash Mode back to TTL.
For the D70 or D70s, you have to follow this route. For the D200 it is optional and sometimes the best way of doing it.
1) Put one of your speedlights (SB-600 or SB-800) into the hotshoe of your camera
2) Hold the SEL button pressed for a couple of seconds.
3) You should see the following selection, if not move up or down with the + or - button.
4) Click SEL again shortly and move via the + or - to MASTER
5) Hold the SEL button again pressed for a few seconds to confirm to get to the following screen
You are ready to work with your wireless flash setup.
On your flash display, M refers to Master (Built-in on the D200)
For both options, A and B refer to Flashlights that you define to group A or B. The display on the SB-800 gives you the option of a group C as well, This option is not available on the D200, if you work with the built in flash. Now, you need to set up your remote strobes in the same manner as in the setup of the flash as Master with one difference. You select REMOTE as option. The screen on the speedlight looks now like this:
By clicking SEL you can select either the Channel (1 to 3) or the Group (A to C). Within your selection you move via clicking + or -.
Now it is up to you. Select your sync time on your camera. I normally go for M or S. With the D200 you can go to at least 1/250 s to sync with your flash. Longer exposure times are of course possible. Experiment with the manual settings. The secret lies in the balance between exposure time and aperture. Try it yourself and document the results for your own notes.
If you have any questions or comments, feel free to leave a comment.
Technorati Tags: Nikon D200, Nikon SB800, Photography
The yearly TED conference (T for Technology, E for Entertainment, D for Design) brings together on one weekend 50 of the best thinkers and inspiring public figures to give a talk of 18 minutes each. The event is all about sharing ideas and concepts. According to TED’s website, the conference in Monterey, California is sold out 1 year (!) in advance. This talk is from Feb 2006. I found it interesting enough to link to it from this blog as I found it again today. This is one of these presentations which don’t lose value by being 1 year old or older.
It is worth taking notes and apply the new knowledge. Enjoy it.
There are far more talks available on TED’s web-page. You can not only watch them online, but also download them to your computer. Follow this link
Technorati Tags: Achievement, Personal Development, TED, Tony Robbins
As announced yesterday, I worked a bit more with my Nikon D200 and my SB800 strobes to work in a setup as used by the strobist. I allowed myself the freedom to use the built in wireless strobe control system, called CLS. David Hobby from the Strobist Blog uses Pocketwizards to trigger the flashlights. There are two reasons, why I didn’t go this route at least for now.
- The Pocket Wizards are rather pricy, at least from a South African perspecitve and I want to keep the expenses low.
- A quick and not comprehensive websearch did not result in any import of the Pocket Wizards in South Africa.
I couldn’t find any volunteers today to work with me as models, so I had to the experiments on myself. At least I warned you. I thought about the setup for a while and came to the conclusion that I want to try to balance the outside light with the strobes inside. So, my first step was to do a quick measurement of the outside light. I did that using the spotmeter in my camera, checking the exposure of the vehicle in front of the house. A quick test shot pleased my expectation and started working with the strobe.
I mounted it on a lightstand fitted with an umbrella. A combination, I would also use at a customer’s site. In the past I would have relied on the built in TTL system and would have chosen a TTL +1 or similar for the flash exposure. Well, this time I went straight to manual operation of flash and camera. I selected the aperture/ time combination I measured earlier and did my first testshot with the flash with a guessed 1/4 of the strobe power. Life would have been great, if the first test would have been perfect. I played around a bit with the right relationship between aperture, time and flash intensity, until I got the balance of light, I was looking for. Finding this balance, did take only a few minutes, as I also played with the position of the flash to avoid reflections etc. In this photo, you can see the even distribution of light between the outside and inside. Is this always the most pleasing result, I would go for. Probably not, but this was not the aim of the experiment.
The next step was for me to put a person into the picture to work with foreground, middleground and background. Achieving a nice exposure went smooth and easy. Looking rather intelligent and getting the focus right not that much. That is rather a problem of self portraits…
To get my ego really going, I took another picture with changing the balance of the light and depth of field to give it a bit more tension and a feel of three dimensions.
Later one of my cats decided to get cozy on the couch and it was amazingly simple to adjust the light to the new setup. I reckon that is one of the big advantages of working this way. You have far more control over the design of the light and can change settings on the go according to the needs.
The last image illustrates the setup of flash, camera and cat.
My conclusion after these simple shots is: The technique is fast, simple and allows massive amount of control over the outcome. It is up to me to refine it and apply it to different situations.
Technorati Tags: Nikon D200, Nikon SB800, Photography, Strobist
Google added a new and very useful feature to Picasaweb. You can now create Flash slideshow on Picasaweb and include them in your blog or webpage.
5 different sizes of the slideshow are offered:
144 px, 288 px, 400px, 600px, 800px
Here is a 400 px of one of my portraitsessions:
For more info check Google’s blog:
Official Google Blog: Oh, the places you’ll go….
We brought my brother in law to the airport this week and I was able to do this quick snapshot as the sun just set. The airport is the international airport of Cape Town. One of the smaller international airports in the world.