Wildlife Photography across the Water: studio

Friday, 6 April 2012

D800 studio test

They say that the D800 is primarily a landscape and studio camera so i set up a couple of studio lights and again Alfie was the unfortunate model as he is cheap and my wife said that she wont let me shoot her with the D800 after seeing some images on the web where you can see every bump,pimple and hair, It was a quick test and really i was getting ready as my neighbor has a new cairns terrier puppy that i will soon be shooting, I set the lights up using a hand held light meter and set them to 1/125@F11, The aperture at F11 puts me into diffraction territory as the D800 has so many pixels that after F8 the image will soften slightly as you stop down, I thought that i would start with F11 and see how good or bad the image would look as a dog as a longish face and i didn't want a blurry nose and its quite a nice aperture to use outside for landscape work, As you can see the D800 really is at home in the studio, The files are beautiful and the images has plenty of sharpness and detail

This image is cropped by 25% from the original

And this crop is 100% of the cropped image above

Alfie soon showed that he was bored and so we stopped the session

And a couple of 100% crops of the above image showing the detail

So the D800 passes the studio test with flying colors which was hardly surprising, Now if the weather brightens up i will see if i can get some macro images

Dave

Monday, 5 December 2011

The weekend

Where did the weekend go? 2 partys, some shopping and a family shoot and whoosh its Monday, I have spent today processing the weekends images which i hope they are happy with, Its nice to work in controlled conditions and it was nice to have the studio lights set up again, Its certainly easier to make money doing portraits than trying to sell an images of an opossum but not half the fun, Either way i enjoyed it even though they say dont work with animals or children, 1 girl of 2 and a half and one of 21 days, I have continued to put some bait in the garden and something has been coming in and really digging to get every bit, I think the disturbance is too big for an opossum and must be either a fox,raccoon or dog, I will be keeping a closer look out to see whats going on, I really hope its not a dog and that a fox or raccoon is now feeding there but we will see

For those of you interested both Martin and Myself have Elinchrom D lites for our studio gear, Very easy to use and not overly expensive, I have the D-lite 4 with a 53'' octa softbox as my main light and a D-lite 4 with standard softbox for fill

Dave

Bio's

David Courtenay, a self taught wildlife and nature photographer, has been capturing images for over 30 years. He has had a passion for wildlife since early childhood and remembers being glued to the television whenever Survival, Wildlife on One and other natural history documentaries were shown. In the 2006 he swapped his established career for the life of a wildlife photographer, such a move demands a measure of uncompromising passion and commitment.

David has travelled extensively throughout Europe as well as spending more than 7 months in India working with local guides and trackers in search of Bengal Tiger, Asian One horned Rhino and Asian Elephant. He has also photographed Wildlife in Australia, Malaysia, Thailand, Sumatra, Africa, Canada and America. Working closely with Conservation companies he tries to raise funds to help Wildlife that has been put on the endangered list by poaching and habitation loss

Martin Dyer has had a passion for avian wildlife since childhood, particularly raptors. Photography was also another keen interest and it was with the specific availability and control of the whole process that digital offers that Martin was then able to combine the two in 2003. Based in the UK, Martin is a regular visitor to Scotland, specifically the Isle of Mull to watch the Eagles resident there. Other trips to Europe and around the UK are usually part of Martin’s agenda in a typical year.

However, as a firm believer on making the most of the local patch, Martin has spent a lot of time and hard work creating a wildlife garden which is reaping the rewards with many new species and varieties of wildlife. A keen member of a number of wildlife photographic groups, Martin is keen to expand his portfolio into other areas of wildlife, and has already established a wide portfolio of images of fungi.