Friday, May 28, 2010

A new Nikon for the studio


My second camera when I was still in high school was a Nikon F with a 58mm 1.4 lens. That was far enough back that it was before they could get an aperture that wide in a 50mm lens. Since then I had moved through different Nikon film cameras (ending with a Nikon F3) and different lenses. My first DSLR back in 2006 was a Fuji S3 which used Nikon lenses. It still takes beautiful pictures, but had a DX chip and couldn't take my old lenses. Well despite the terrible economy, I broke down and bought the company a Nikon D700. I really did my homework on this one but this camera has more benefits than I had ever expected.
Before I took delivery of the camera, I sent three of my lenses out to John White to be "AI'd". These were the same lenses I had had back in the film days and had the forks that used to catch the meter pin of the old Nikon F (I just couldn't give them up). He converted them for a super reasonable price and did it super quickly. The D700 allows me to enter up to 6 non-CPU lenses in the menu and when you select one of those, the camera can "see" the proper f/stops and meter through the lens. For an old guy like me who spent the first 30 years focusing SLR's and view cameras manually this is fun! I have 3 zoom lenses that I used with the Fuji S3. These went from 15mm - 450mm and did a great job for my clients. Now however, I have an additional 4 prime lenses of 28mm, 50mm, 55mm micro and 105mm. They are sharper than the zooms and working perfectly on the full-frame D700. I am enjoying walking around with a digital camera and a 50mm 1.4 lens so much that I am considering shopping for two more of the older, sharper pre-AI lenses. I'll have John White convert them for that reasonable price, and then have a total of 9 lenses. Wow!
Oh did I forget mention that I bought the MB D10 battery grip and that the camera can shoot 8 full size raw files per second? I think I am sounding like a geek now but this is just too much fun!



Monday, May 17, 2010

Annual Reports

It's not always what you know.
It's not always who you know.
It is always who knows you!
That's a good thing to remember and helps to explain how I got a full day's job shooting for this annual report for the Endo Pharmaceutical company. My friend is Clint Morgan of Morgan Designs. Because he knows me he called me and offered me this job. While it has nothing to do with the food I normally shoot (see my food photo blog), because Clint knows me and some of my work he knew I could do this job well and offered it to me. My client is happy, his client is happy and I am happy too! Isn't that a great way to do business? So remember, be a friend to your clients, let them see what you can do and take good care of them always. That way, since they know you, they will give you fun work so you can make money. It's a wonderful way to live your life.