Min DOF Photography

Oh yeah! I’ve checked with google and it finds nothing. The lens is not even listed on Sigma’s site. Now let’s get to the description:

- it’s designed specifically for APS-C digital SLR cameras

-it produces a diagonal angle of view of 180° when mounted on Nikon and a bit less on Canon (I’d say around 170°)

-min focusing distance is 13.5 cm, so you can do nice close ups

-HSM AF motor. Silent and fast as usually.

- EX built (you should know what that means)

- its dimensions are relatively small, but it’s pretty heavy (just a personal opinion of course)

I snaped a few shots of the lens and went for a walk. So I’m posting a few shots, more are following at the end of this week.

Field of view is really crazy

This video, more or less an interview with Uroš Uršić (ok, Uroš Uršej, but they messed up ) aka Lucifix appeared on Čarli TV. You can see most of the exhibited photos and hear words of wisdom from Slo-foto’s big boss. It’s a shame they didn’t put any footages from the opening, but I guess the cameraman doesn’t like big crowds .

I dug this one from the archive. Winter is far from being my favourite season for sessions, so you’ll have to wait a few more months for something fresh. The girl on the photo is Eva, I find her to be one of the best models I’ve ever worked with. I know this photo is more or less just a simple portrait, but I find her look (as in glance, not physical appearance) really special - If you view the photo in the LARGER version (click on it).

Yo ass best be in KUD tomorrow, 8PM sharp! The exhibition is about showing the best photos slo-foto has to offer and I’m proud that one of mine is amongst them.

Link to the complete article.

I got a call from Lana yesterday, she asked me if I’d take a few photos of her. She is a model on the wedding fair, which is organised this weekend in the congress center of hotel Union. So I went there today with a couple of ideas in my mind, since I already shot a wedding there last summer and I knew which locations are cool to shoot at. When I got to the entrance, a stretch limo was parked there. Great, I immediately started thinking about how I could use the limo in the shots. Unfortunately the company’s representative that was showing their wedding dresses (and of the one that Lana was wearing) wasn’t to keen about the idea of taking the dress out, since it would get wet. I had no other choice than to “obey” her, since I wasn’t shooting for them. Otherwise I’d just ask if they wanted good photos or not. I’m sure they wouldn’t care about the dress anymore . So I had to find another place to shoot. The exhibition halls were way too crammed to shot in and I couldn’t find an interesting location to shoot anyway. So we went to the adjacent hotel and shot on the staircase and in the elevator. I wish my reflector wasn’t stolen along with my Audi. I had to really improvise with my flashgun (it was to dark to shoot without it).

Here are a couple of shots. Make up by Tina. You probably know her better from this magazine cover.

I’m dissapointed to see that the megapixel madness is starting to “infect” the DSLR class. And we’ve seen where that leads. Image quality of today’s compact cameras is in most cases worse then it was 3 years ago. Although Nikon has managed not only to get away with 12 mpix on their APS-C (D300), but to make a big step forward regarding image quality, especially regarding low noise levels at high ISO settings. I don’t believe Samsung is able to raise the bar that higher, but lets sit back and wait for first reviews of the production model. Note that putting 14.6 mpix on APS-C sized sensor is like cramming over 34 mpix on FF. I wonder which lens can resolve such resolution? Here are the specs (source Dpreview) that were posted on the Norwegian’s distributor for Samsung:

Specs:
14.6 MP (CMOS)
Good old SR
Resistant to rain,sand and dust
Double dust removal on image sensor(whatever that means)
2.7″ LCD
Live view
One-press raw(as in K10D I guess)
ISO 3200
Price 10% more than K10D when it was introduced here in Norway

I don’t even know where to start huh. We had a great time and so many bad things happened at the same time. It all started with the gearbox that got stuck on my friend’s car. It happened right before the Austrian border. We called AMZS to get our car towed and none of us had a clue, that we’d have to argue for 3 hours over the phone with their incompetent operator. I won’t go into details, since it would take a full Word page to describe it in detail (I already wrote it, but cut it out). Perhaps some other time, because it’s really one of those stories, that seem to be too unbelievable to be true. While we were driving to Ljubljana, a couple of friends had to be left behind because the truck takes only 2 passengers. They nearly froze their asses, since all the pubs were closed at that time and even got chased by some faggots. After all that drama we took our car and with a few stops came to Prague. The most interesting was in Česke Budejovice, where we stopped to buy local currency (It’s not wise to exchange currency in Prague, since their taxes are pretty high). We were fascinated when we walked across their main town square. It’s enormous for a city that size (95.000 inhabitants), it’s larger than all Ljubljana’s squares combined. It’s surrounded by magnificent buildings, a beautiful and again huge town hall for a city of that size. And in the center of the square there was a beautiful and again huge fountain (at least 3x larger than Robba’s fountain in Ljubljana - so that you can get the picture, since I didn’t take my camera out of the car).

After we arrived in Prague in the evening we went out to grab something to eat and to find a nice pub. We thought we got the beer for a really nice price. It was 1,5 EUR. Wrong! That was the priciest beer that we drank in Prague, the normal price was 1 EUR. And ofcourse I’m talking about first class beers like Pilsner Urquell or Staropramen - I was told that the latter is not recognised to be a top class beer, but it’s still my favourite Czech beer. The days went by, we were partying at night, wondering around the city during the day, shopping (there were -60% sales all around the city center). On the new year’s day my car got stolen. It was parked right under our window in a very well lit street in the city center. Noone heard a thing, we just found out it was gone in the morning. I reported the theft to the police, fortunately the Tourist agency employee translated everything for me, since there was noone on the station who could speak english. I knew that my car was already in a chop shop waiting to be sold for spare parts. So we went on partying like nothing happened, we just had to cancel the new year’s eve dinner in the castle, which we wanted to attend, because we still weren’t sure how much money we’d need to get home. All the other planes weren’t canceled, we went to a hip hop party for the new year’s eve and sightseeing the other afternoon.

Photography wasn’t a priority on this trip, so I didn’t take that much shots and I never managed to get to take any sightseeing photos during the day. Here are a few:

Gunpowder tower

Since I’m a fan of sushi, we went in a Japanese restaurant.

Sake:

Sushi (the colours are off, but that’s what you get with multiple “light” sources and pushing it all the way to ISO 3200):

Charles’s bridge:

New year’s eve hip hop party. The music really sucked, I heard 5 good songs at best. But we had a great time never the less, and the beer was still pretty cheap .

Leprechauns were all over the place:

And weard waiters…

Subway:

I really tested his limits, lol. I had to be annoying to see if they’re well trained and self-restrained:

I got the replacement for my replacement Sigma. The 18-50 2.8 Macro. I hope it performes well, I’ll test it on my Prague vacations, I’m leaving tomorrow for 6 days. And the last but not least, Widget bucks IS paying (I just got the check today).

I’ve made a few snapshots, it looks like it’s front focus free. That’s always nice to see that, when it comes to Sigma+Canon combo. Besides that, I must say I was satisfied with the non macro version (optically they should be more or less equal), it passed the test nicely, I’ve just had a few AF problems in low light situations on the wedding. I hope this one will perform better, I’ll report about it when I return from Prague. Below you can see the snaps I mentioned earlier.

I focused on the letter M.

This standard FF test was done in a hurry, without a tripod etc. But I can assure you it’s accurate enough to check the focusing accuracy (just not 100% as it would be in case it was made by the book).

I shot a wedding yesterday, that took place at Kendov Dvorec in Spodnja Idrija. The schedule was tight, by far the tightest I’ve ever had. I arrived at Kendov Dvorec 40 minutes earlier, to check the place out, to find a few nice spots to shoot. And I was limited to indoor spaces, since it was way too cold to shoot outside. To my great disappointment the place had only a couple of places, a room and a corridor, which were barely suitable for shooting romantic shots (after the ceremony). Why barely suitable? Because there were no large windows so that I could shoot without the use of a flash unit, the place was barely lit (I guess that adds to the mood) besides that the spaces were really small, so I had to shoot with the standard zoom lens, 85 mm was way too long. That means great depth of field etc, I had to shoot really differently, since my style of photography (natural light, min dof etc) was totally out of the question in there. The bride had to get dressed before the ceremony, so I couldn’t shoot romantic photos before the ceremony. The ceremony with all the congratulations, group shooting and rice throwing, ended at approximately 12.45 and we had to get to the church at 13.00. In the mean time I snapped (yeah snapped, no time for realxing the models, for working out the poses, face expressions etc) 5 different shots indoors and a few shots outside. I had around 6-7 minutes to do the complete romantic series. The Shot style, if you ask me (but at least they get to shoot pro models). After that, shooting the church ceremony went pretty smoothly, since there was plenty of time. We returned back to Kendov Dvorec, for the “lunch” which officially started at the moment we arrived (14.00). There was time to make a few more outdoor shots, but anyway, I couldn’t do more outside shots (even if I had the time) of the bride, she’d freeze at -7C.

On my way home I thought I blew it. That I didn’t make enough good shots (although bride&groom really wanted just a few romantic shots). Besides that, I wasn’t really sure that the “rice throwing” shots came out good, since I had quite a lot of flash problems (I really miss Nikon’s flash systems for weddings). Is it possible for the TTL to act somewhat differently, less accurate if you use a different lens (I used Sigma 18-50 2.8, which worked fine with my 430 ex on a couple of previous occasions)? Anyway, seeing the photos on my computer monitor was a relief, all in all, they came out pretty good.

I didn’t ask the newlyweds for permission to post photos, so I’m just going to post this one. This time the “spot” window light came in handy, otherwise it was just “burning” the snow-white bride’s dress and messing up the light metering.

Oh yeah, I forgot to write down what I’ve learned yesterday, or better said, I got my assumptions that when one’s pressed with time and works in really hard environment (tight spaces, bad lighting, freezing temperatures outside…) it’s really even worse than what you expect. Pressure is building up, when you see most or none of the things you planned aren’t going according to plan. I did good with some shots, messed up some, but when I look at the selected photos, I’m satisfied with the results (regarding the circumstances). But enough of the excuses (which of course are not really excuses, I just wanted to share my experiences with you), all that the clients are always really interested in, is the end result.

Check the banners in the sidebar and click on them to get full details on the offers. And get yourself (or someone else) a perfect christmas gift, damn it. Even Santa orders from me .