nathansanborn

<p>John, you are absolutely correct that there are reasons to use different lenses, and many good reasons to invest in better glass, but unfortunately "getting better pictures" isn't one of them.</p> <p>Test my theory, rent a 5D III, or a 1DX, and a 24-70 2.8, and use the heck out of it. In the end you may like that setup a lot better, and it may be capable of doing things your current kit isn't as good at... But you'll notice that all of the shots kinda just look like your pictures, the same way that the shots from your current kit look like your pictures.</p> <p>Yes, many of the top pros use the top gear, then again, so do a lot of wealthy amateur photographers, and yet they achieve very different results. I have a really nice kit, and I've taken some really good shots with it, but I've taken more bad shots with my 2.8 glass than you have with your kit lens. It was never the lenses fault.</p> <p>The best photo I took last year was shot with my iPhone, it had nothing to do with the device used to capture the photo, it was because it was the best lighting, composition, and subject matter. If you start to think about light, composition, and subject, then you can pick any lens and body and make great pictures.</p> <p>Here's a great example <p>Now, for pure lens advice, if you like the 50 1.8, but it's too long, consider a 35 1.8.</p><div></div>

<p>When I've done this in the past I've used an acrylic sheet to hold the negative, and shot my flash through an umbrella behind it. The double diffusion did a good job of evenly illuminating the negative. My challenge was keeping the negative and the camera parallel to avoid distortion.</p>

<p>The key to doing what you want is light fall off. Read about the "inverse square law". What this means simply is that the farther away from the light source you move the darker it gets. So to get something well lit while something else is dark, you need there to be a big difference between the distance of the light to the subject and the distance of the light to the background. This may be hard to do in a very small space, so the key is to move the light as close to the subject as possible.</p>

<p>You can send a DMCA takedown notice to the web host, in this case probably Facebook. I would google "DMCA" to get more information.</p>