Old 50mm f/1.8 manual Nikkor on my D70s

During the years of marriage to D70s I've completely forgotten my old 50mm 1.8 Nikkor lens that is gathering dust together with Nikon FM2.

Figured I might as well try it on the digital camera. Here is the result:



So, yes, it is possible to use an old Nikkor lens on a new(er) digital camera. There are a few buts though.

First- manual focus is a killer. Very hard to get it right wiht small and dark D70s viewfinder. I even started thinking I might need glasses... Well, anyway, manual focus while taking pictures of moving subjects is nothing I miss.

Second- no metering. You have to bother and play setting up the exposure manualy.

Have to be fair- once you do get the borring manual stuff right the picture is great!

BTW, the light is just dinner table lamp. It created quite deep shadows so I put a Lastolite TriFlip silver reflector to bounce some light back into eye sockets.

Feel like putting the new Nikon AF-S 50/1,4 G on my xmas wish list :)

Cheers,
M.

Heavy artillery - Elinchrom BX 500 Ri

It's almost a week since my first ever propper studio lights have arived and now when the initial excitement is over, it's about time to write about the Elinchrom EL 20751KIT Style 500/500 BXRi To Go Kit.

Elinchrom EL 20751KIT Style 500/500 BXRi To Go Kit


It is amazing how much difference working with these lights makes! Knowing that I'm coming from one Nikon SB-800 background, you should not be surprized these Elinchroms made a whole world of difference for me.

Jump inside the post for first samples.

Obviously, first to suffer were my closest ones- girlfriend and dog... :)


The dog got borred in just about no time:

This picture is cross-lit by both Portalite 60x60 softboxes that came with the kit- one camera right at about 45 degree angle, the other one facing the first, so they are firing into each other.

The dog is gone. Time to bother girlfriend!

Tried to light her in a high-key fashion... Lights are at 45 degrees both sides of the camera. White bed cover, white wall in the background. The background did not get completely white so I used the SB-800 with Skyport trigger to do the dirty work. That wasn't realy enough; in the far left top corner there still was a bit of shadow, but total time of post processing was less than two minutes- completely acceptable if you ask me.

A few dozens of shots later I started feeling boredom coming through the lens... The shoot was over :)

The only one left to bother- yours truly! Made a dark and groosome self portrait. One of the Elinchroms with softbox above my head, pointing downwords. Here I'm sitting on a chair in the middle of living room. There was some light spill on to the wall behind me, but it was very minor and, again, a couple of clicks in PP fixed it in no time (just levels, no cloning).



Hope these samples illustrate correctly why I am so happy with this purchase :)

Update with more samples:

- A portrait of a friend I made with this kit;
- Maternity photo session lit with BX 500 Ri kit;

- Added a Rotalux 90x110cm softbox to the kit;

Cheers
M.