Arefel Photography Blog

Early morning light

2010-09-30T16:42:00.000+02:00

I wanted to create a picture that invokes the sense of early morning light. This can be a typical cold blue light.
To achieve this, I set my white balance to tungsten, which causes a blue color cast on the whole image. When you find the color too blue, you can compensate a bit by using white balance compensation. Reduce for less blue, increase for more blue color. In the case below I used a white balance compensation of -2.

I then used a flash to separate the foreground from the background. To achieve this, I underexposed the image with two stops. I then used a SB-800 (camera left) in wireless TTL mode to light the foreground. The flash is fully zoomed to 105mm, as this gives a more directed beam.

The flash was gelled with a CTO gel, to compensate for the tungsten white balance, so subjects in the foreground look natural.

The result is the image below.

If I had not used the tungsten white balance, the whole image would in various shades of green as this is what the park looked like at the moment I photographed it (about 11:30 in the morning). This would be a very dull picture. By setting the white balance to tungesten, I can make the green of the lillies pointing out of the water look really green by compensating with a CTO gel.

Back since a long time

2010-07-12T20:30:00.000+02:00

It's been too long since I posted here. I thought I'd celebrate it by applying a new layout to this blog. Hope you like it.

I have been experimenting a bit with product photography. As I recently purchase a set of Altec Lansing speakers for my iPod, I thought it might be fun to create an image of this that could be used in an advert for the speakers: setting must be outdoors, as the speakers can work on batteries (11 hours lifetime!!). So, I decided to photograph the speakers out on the terrace.

This is the result.

I created the picture with the following tools:

Nikon D80
Nikkor 50mm f/1.8 AF
SB-800 flash

The iPod speakers are in the shadow of a sun umbrella, the background is in the full sun. I first created a photograph without flash, underexposing with 2 stops, making sure the iPod speakers are too dark and the background is slightly underexposed.

I then added flash to the camera left. Flash was set to TTL, no modifications. I think the result is quite OK, maybe even useful for a magazine.

Let me know what you think!

Off-camera flash and white balance

2010-04-03T15:07:00.004+02:00

I once saw a picture by Joe McNally where he photographed a pretty standard office, but played with off-camera flash and white balance. I think the picture was in his excellent book 'The Hot Shoe Diaries'. The woman in the picture was behind computer screen. McNally had played with off-camera flash and with white balance. I decided to create a similar photograph. The first step in the process can be seen below.

The image was created by setting the white balance to tungsten. This creates the blue color cast in the picture. The shutter is set to 1/250s, which almost kills the ambient light. My daughter's face is lit by an SB-800 Speedlight with a difffuser on, which is laying in front of her, hidden by her left arm. ISO is 100, f/4.0.
The image is taken around noon, but by almost killing the ambient light, it gives an atmosphere of the end of the day, with no indoor lights on.

Next step in the process is give my daughter's face a more pleasant tint than the pale blue. To achieve this, I put an orange gel on my on my SB-800, which neutralizes the tungsten white balance for her face. The result is the picture below. Again 1/250s, f/4.0 and ISO 100. Both pictures have been taken with a Nkon D80 and a Nikkor 50mm f/1.8D AF lens.

If you have comments, let me know.

Lightroom 3 beta 2

2010-03-23T14:13:00.001+01:00

Adobe has published beta 2 of Lightroom 3. You can download it from Adobe Labs - Adobe Photoshop Lightroom 3

PocketWizard - First FlexTT5 Nikon Prototype Test

2010-03-12T14:01:00.001+01:00

This is cool news for Nikon shooters!

PocketWizard - First FlexTT5 Nikon Prototype Test

Nikon will provide 'better balance' of ISO and resolution: Digital Photography Review

2010-02-24T13:20:00.000+01:00

Interview with Nobuaki Sasagaki, General Manager of the Marketing Department of Nikons Imaging Division on dpreview.com

Sony announces Micro Four Thirds competitor

2010-02-23T10:36:00.000+01:00

Sony has announced a compact camera with interchangeable lenses and the characteristics of a DSLR. This seems a competitor of the Micro Four Thirds system.

Ronald Lips Photography - Home

2010-02-22T21:24:00.002+01:00

I posted new photographs on my web site. It has been a while since I updated, so there are new images in several categories. Please check it out and let me know what you think!

McNally teaches color control for free on Nikon site

2009-12-21T09:24:00.000+01:00

Nikon has published a number of excellent free videos by Joe McNally on color control / off camera flash as well as repeating flash. Have a look on Photography Shooting Techniques .

Especially the repeating flash video contained a lot of new information for me. All videos are definitely worth checking out!

RSS2Twitter - update2

2009-11-29T12:10:00.002+01:00

I am now using RSS2Twitter to publish new posts to Twitter automatically. Seems like a great way to mash up a number of services (Blogger, RSS, Twitter). I will keep you posted on any experiences I have with it.

Update:
First issue: URLs to my blog are translated to URLs to comments to my blog entries, not to the blog entry itself. Problem has been reported using GetSatisfaction. Hopefully this gets solved quickly, as otherwise there is no point in using this service.

Update2:
I moved to twitterfeed.com. URLs are translated properly.

Lightroom 2.6 Available on Adobe Labs

2009-11-19T11:56:00.000+01:00

As Lightroom is my primary post-processing tool, this is of interest to me: Camera Raw 5.6 and Lightroom 2.6 Available on Adobe Labs - Lightroom Journal

Also note that Lightroom 3 is in beta now, release date currently unknown.

Off-camera flash - Speedlight Modifier

2009-11-10T19:01:00.002+01:00

As you may know, I am into off-camera flash. Does anyone have experience with the Calumet Speedlight Modifier ?
I know Honl makes similar systems and I am just wondering if anyone has experience with either systems.

Please share your comments!

Off camera flash - kids watching TV

2009-11-01T15:55:00.006+01:00

I made this picture when I was away with my family for a weekend. After a day spent walking, the kids watched TV. The light was fading. I placed my SB-800 flash off camera outside the room, in the garden (camera right). I was gelled with a full CTO gel to achieve the sunset effect from the outside (it was completely clouded by that time). I also put an omnibounce diffuser on my flash.
I used ISO 200, f/5, 1/30 second, with the background under-exposed about a stop. I did not have a reflector screen with me to fill the shadow side, so in Lightroom I used the fill light feature of the developer module to lift the shadow sides a bot.

Below a diagram of the setup.

Rumor: Nikon D800

2009-10-27T11:36:00.002+01:00

Ken Rockwell has some speculation on the upcoming release of the Nikon D800. Interesting to see if he is right....

Adobe Labs - Adobe Photoshop Lightroom 3

2009-10-25T16:46:00.001+01:00

I was away for a couple of days and saw that in the mean time Adobe launced a beta of their Lightroom 3 product. I have not used it so far, if you have any experience with it, please share it!

You can take a look at Adobe Labs - Adobe Photoshop Lightroom 3

BBC - Landscape photo of the year 2009

2009-10-20T11:57:00.000+02:00

Some great landscape pictures on the BBC news site.
BBC NEWS | In Pictures | In pictures: Landscape photo of the year 2009

New portraits in gallery

2009-10-18T13:55:00.003+02:00

I posted new images in my gallery on www.ronaldlips.nl: Portraits Have a look and let me know what you think!

Nikon D3s launched

2009-10-14T09:55:00.003+02:00

Nikon has launced the D3s professional digital SLR. See here for the press release: Nikon | News | Nikon D3S .

DPReview has a brief hands-on review of it.

Sharpness of the Nikkor 50mm f/1.8D AF

2009-10-12T20:17:00.005+02:00

Have a look at this crop of a picture I took with my new Nikkor 50mm f/1.8D AF. I love the sharpness of the lens and the rendering of the color as well as the bokeh. It was taken at ISO 100, f/2.8 at 1/320 sec.

I'd be interested to know if you have any experiences with this lens and if you are as enthousiastic as me.

LEICA vs Canon vs Nikon sharpness

2009-10-06T09:35:00.001+02:00

Ken Rockwell has written an interesting article comparing Canon and Nikon's latest to the new Leica M9. Actually, for outdoor shooting he prefers the Leica for portability. Quality wise the M9 can compete with the Nikon D3/D700 and the Canon 5D Mark II.

Have a look at his article :
LEICA vs Canon vs Nikon sharpness

Additional test results Nikon 50mm f/1.8D AF

2009-10-05T19:41:00.003+02:00

I have added a number of photographs to a Flickr set that show the exceptional sharpness of the Nikon 50mm f/1.8D AF lens. The only remark that I have that I did notice some chromatic aberrationm, which was easy to remove in Lightroom though.

First test shot with my Nikon 50mm f/1.8

2009-10-01T22:07:00.011+02:00

This is a first test shot with my new 50mm f/1.8D. It was taken at f/2.8, 0,5 second exposure at ISO400 with my D80. I like the sharpness of the picture. It was taken with avalable (lamp)light only, my camera supported on the floor. I will be taking more pictures the coming days at lower ISO levels

Nikon 50mm f/1.8D AF

2009-10-01T16:30:00.006+02:00

Today I bought the Nikon 50mm f/1.8D AF lens. Having read many reviews on this lens I decided to buy it. Main reasons:

Smallest aperture of f/1.8
Very sharp lens according to many reviews. See for instance Ken Rockwell
Cheap. Because this is a lens easy to make, using a proven design. I bought at
Supports FX. I own a Nikon D80, but possibly in the future I will move to FX. This lens fully supports FX and DX. It is my intention to buy only lenses that support both DX and FX

I will post pictures in this blog to show the performance of this lens.