egoldstein

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<p>I've taken photos of both of my children's deliveries. A few of the photos would be not the kind to display publicly but do capture some rather raw emotio. It was before digital so it was film. I would use the camera you are most comfortable with and set it to fully automatic. This is not the time to be experimenting with new equipment or techniques. <br>

That said, even if you get the 5D unless you have a lot of time to master it so that you can use it without thinking about it, you may still want to use the 20D due to your comfort level with it.</p>

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I can vouch for the D80 as an excellent choice. It has automatic when you are taking photos of the kids and full

manual when you want to be creative. You can also still find some new ones but they are going fast.

 

For specific examples of photos take in Chicago, even some at night:

 

<a href="http://goldstein.smugmug.com/gallery/5631165_GwVrM/1/346042638_5xGz2">Chicago Portfolio</a>

It will show underexposed since the settings you need to take the picture with the flash are in fact underexposed for the natural light. The i-TTL metering of the flash will take care of (or come pretty close) illuminating the scene with the right amount of light to match the settings.

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You may want to check out the Boston Camera Club - www.bostoncameraclub.org. They will most likely have something going on.

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I use the D80 and an SB-600 in exactly the way you indicate and anywere from 45 - 75 degrees on the flash head tilt. You do not indicate whether or not you are using a diffuser of any sort. I use the Sto-fen and with this set up get excellent results nearly all the time. And yes, flash zoom does work when the head is tilted.

 

There are a couple of things: The images will be less "flash" looking and might only be appearing as under exposed when compared to the on-flash pictures.

 

Also, Keep in mind the angle of the flash head. If you get too close and keep the angle set to 45 degrees the bulk of your flash might be shooting right over the subjects head and bouncing off the ceiling behind them. When getting closer you can try shifting the flash head up a notch to bounce more light to come from directly overhead.

If purchasing a setup is cost prohibitive, another alternative is renting equipment. Most major cities have shops that

will rent equipment. This would allow you to get some of the best equipment for single use without having to buy it.

 

Of course once you try the best equipment it will be everything you can do to keep yourself from buying it (hence the

reason for many shops to offer rentals).

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Thanks for the advice. I'll keep up the practice. Hopefully the next ones will be better.

Another One:<div></div>

For my Wife's Aunt's 80th birthday I was asked to take the pictures and used the opportunity to experiment with off

camera set up for the first time. Using my D80 and 2 400 w/s (i think) strobes triggered optically by my SB600.

One strobe set to 1/2 power the other to 1/4 power into silver umbrellas and metered to about f.8. Rental equipment

is wonderful.

 

How did I do?<div></div>

In Lightroom you can create "Virtual Copies". This keeps one file, but if you choose, say to export to JPG for

posting, it will export two JPGs. I can't speak for other software.

Setup: I have a D80, use Lightroom with Elements on a Windows computer.

 

I am looking for some advice on the digital workflow. Each shoot might have up to 150 images so we are not talking

huge numbers of photos YET. I want to get this refined before it does.

 

My workflow goes something like this:

1) Download NEF from card in card reader to a PhotoArchive Directory YYYY-MM-DDShootName sub-directory

(using Windows Copy/Move)

2) Import NEFs to PhotoWorking Directory using Lightroom to add a directory with same naming convention as

above converting to DNG, and renaming with YYYYMMDD-Shoot-#### during the import.

3) Select Picks and Excludes, Adjust white balance, exposure, saturation, etc. in Lightroom

4) Fine tune adjustments in Elements

5) Export from Lightroom to full size JPG in PhotosFinal Directory using Lightroom to create a sub-directory with

above naming convension and Rename to YYYYMMDD-ShootName-####.jpg during export.

 

The workflow works , I get the RAW files archived, the DNG files for working with and the JPG output for e-mailing

uploading to share site etc. I think I have a pretty good handle on Lightroom but any thing I am missing would be a

big help.

 

Questions:

 

1.How do those of you who do this with hundreds of images at a time do it? It seems there must be an easier way

than managing three separate directories of images.

2. When editing the DNG in Elements it needs to convert them to a TIFF but then I wind up haveing two copies of the

image one good and one even better, any way to avoid this?

3. One last question, not quite related to workflow but Lightroom, is there a way to keep the import dialogue box from

storing the entries from the previous import? There have been times I've had to re-do an import because of this.

 

Thanks for reading and offering any advice you can.

Ken Rockwell's site also has a lot of good information:

http://www.kenrockwell.com/nikon/d80.htm

For what it's worth...mine is another vote for shooting both. I am not a pro-shooter, but I often will shoot hundreds of shots when I go out and I shoot both, I shoot mostly in Program mode so 9 times out of 10 everything works pretty well and the JPG comes out just fine. For the 10th time that something is wrong, or the colors are not as vivid as I would like or are too vivid for my tastes, or there is a spot of sun in an otherwize shaded picture or vice-versa, I love being able to go to that single NEF file, fix it and re-export it, and yes re-apply the tags, etc.

 

Yes, you will want to keep more memory cards on hand during the trip but memory cards are cheap.

 

The only disadvantage I have found to shooting both is that you need to manually sort out the NEF and JPG files when moving them to you computer. I find this to be more than outweighed by the flexibility of just using the JPGs when I can and fixing the NEF when I need to.

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I have an unusual approach. I have an Oversized fanny pack from LLBean (Trail Lumbar Pack, Mountainsmith also makes good ones) that has both waist straps and shoulder straps with sternum strap like a backback. In this I have my D80 in a Quantray Camera Holster, the SB600 in its padded case and the 70-200 in its padded lens holder.

 

I love this set up for out-door hiking because it is very easy to drop the shoulder strap off and slide the bag to the side of my hips for top access to the bag without lifing a flap first, it has two water bottle holders (also good for extra lenses in padded holders), and is designed for hiking (read comfortable for hours on end). It has an extra front pocket for keys, fleece vest, snacks, and other items.

Zeff Photo in Belmont, MA also rents equipment.