brendon

I've had the 1.4 and used it on an F100 and D200. Both the razor-thin DOF (wide open) and the slowness of focusing are

indeed issues. In your question you make many astute observations and bring up all the right issues. I think in your

position I would think of getting the 1.8 or compromising even more and settling for an AFS lens that covers that focal

length, like the 28-70mm f2.8. But that lens is a bit of a monster too. I have not noted CA with the 85 1.4. As someone

else said, where the heck are the AFS prime lenses?

 

Brendon

I think you have good ideas for photographs, and that you compose well. The majority of

your photos also show that you put people at ease and know when to release the shutter.

 

Things to work on: separating the subject from the background, and flash photography.

 

Good luck!

I'll take a crack as answering the lens hood question. A lens hood decreases the amount

of light striking the front of the the lens from the side, from anywhere other than what you

see in the viewfinder. Such light tends to bounce around inside the lens (reflecting and

scattering) and thereby decreases the contrast of the image that arrives on the sensor. It's

a little like fogging a print in the darkroom by having an extraneous source of light

besides the enlarger.

 

The effect is most noticeable when it's the sun striking the front element of the lens (when

the sun is not in the photo you're taking), but the effect can be there even if it's a weaker

source of light.

Just a thought--think about an adequate supply of memory cards and extra batteries for your

flash! Like they said above, practice! And best wishes. -Brendon

The 85/1.4 has an autofocus run by a motor in the camera body, not the ultrasonic motor

that focuses so fast and silently in other lenses. In my experience with that lens on a D200

and an F100 it hunts for focus despite its speed. And the DOF is so small at max aperature

that I have given up trying to manually focus with moving targets. The 50/1.4 would be a

little more forgiving in DOF, but again it's not an AFS lens. My guess is that other responders

here are going to suggest you get some power to recycle you flashes faster and stick with the

lens you named as well as a smaller (shorter) lens.

I've used Nikon Capture NX, Bibble, Aperture, and Capture One. The Nikon product is worse

than useless on a Mac, and it tries to do too much for any platform. (It's masking feature

would be a great Photoshop plug-in, though!) I found Bibble to be clunky and slow.

CaptureOne lets you very very quickly do the things you need to do when you first import

your images--white balance, toss the technically useless ones, and fix exposure, among a

few other features. It then cranks through the files and delivers the formats you need.

Aperture is slick if you're a Mac person; it's quick on the new machines and has a useful and

flexible file management.

FUD = Fear, Uncertainty, and Doubt. "Any strategy intended to make a company's customers

insecure about future product plans with the purpose of discouraging them from adopting

competitors' products." So some of the stuff floating out there in cyberspace about Vista is a

lot of noise from people and companies threatened by Vista. (just trying to clarify the earlier

excellent comment.)

Reviews of this lens are great, and it gives you two stops more than the highly touted Nikkor

28 f2.8. It costs $400. It's a DX-sized lens, so it's light & less expensive than it would

otherwise be.

Butter to torn on yore speel-checkers!

Stopped for a quick photo.<div></div>

I think Jon is trying to slip one past us. Very good!

I was thrilled when I learned the D200 could be teamed up with some of my old MF

Nikkors. But much of my excitement was short-lived, because my wide-aperture lenses

are so finicky about nailing the focus. Perhaps my older eyes and slower reflexes are to

blame, but I suspect that part of the issue is the monotonous focusing screen in the newer

cameras; I had really come to depend upon the split-image and microprism parts of the

screen (on MF Nikons) to get the focus right. This is a bigger issue for the longer focal-

length lenses, like the 105mm f2.5, that I find impossible to use effectively with a D70 or

D200 when the subject isn't still. The 35mm f1.4 is a GREAT lens, and I am able to focus

it well enough to get sharp images.

 

Good luck and happy shopping!

Gotta check out Christopher's inexpensive answer above. Brilliant! Thanks for the laugh.

Every time consumer reports does an issue on computers, Mac crush all the PC meakers in terms of reliability and customer service. They're more expensive, but more reliable.

I've been frustrated by what a slow, memory-hogging monster this NX program is. It is very annoying and time-consuming to slog through a bunch of raw files to do white balancing and curves. Not only does the program bog down my Mac (a G4), but its controls are not particularly easy to use.

 

Contrary to an earlier post, I found the noise reduction in NX to be unimpressive. It's no better than that of CaptureOne (by the company PhaseOne), which has a much easier workflow. And the noise reduction in NoiseNinja is much, much better than either.

 

What NX does well is masking. It is so much faster and easier to apply changes to only portions of your photos with NX than with Photoshop. The learning curve in NX for this function is not steep.

 

In the near future, we can hopefully look forward to a fast version of NX, and one that works on the new intel-based Macs. Down the line, I hope that someday someone (Adobe? or Apple? or Nikon?) will integrate the easy-to-use masking of NX and the noise reduction of Ninja into an imaging program that works on raw files, doesn't change the pixels in the original file, does robust color management & printing, and understands our workflow. All for under $100, of course!

 

-Brendon

Check out this web site to get a sense of the relationships among focal length, film size, and aperature as they relate to DOF. The short answer is that DOF decreases as the size of the medium (film or chip) increases. (One reason it's so hard to get good DOF with a small digicam.)

 

http://www.dofmaster.com/dofjs.html

 

The focal length conversion factor between 35mm film and 4X5 film is 3.7. So in terms of angle of view, a 50mm lens for 35mm film about equals a 180mm lens for 4X5. Using a 180mm lens at f/5.6 @ 20 feet with 4X5 film gives a DOF=4.18 feet. Using a 50mm lens at f/1.4 @ 20 feet with 35mm film gives a DOF=4.15 feet.

 

The bottom line is that (mathematically) when you move from 35mm film to 4X5 film, you increase the aperature four stops to maintain the same DOF.

 

-Brendon

If you want professional results, why don't you go see a professional? Like a physician or a physical therapist. It is ironic that this post appears in a forum in which every few days a professional photographer lectures a newby that they should NOT shoot their friend's wedding, because to get professional results we should rely on professionals.

 

That said, the advice about and link to equipment seem pretty helpful.

 

-Brendon

The cases made by Nikon are an utter waste of money. I bought mine with my F100, put it on once, took it off because it was cumbersome, and never used it again. Wanna buy it from me? ;)

 

-Brendon

I thought you did great both days! Perhaps the light was a bit better on the 24th--was it overcast or later in the day? I really liked your posing of the groomsmen and bridesmaids in the shots rfom the 17th.

I do photography for fun and cannot afford PSCS. I bought Elements and a copy of "The Hidden Power of Photoshop Elements" (used) for $7 through amazon. It comes with a disk that lets you use a bunch of PS functinos that are otherwise unavailable in Elements. The book is an intense journey into postprocessing that goes way beyond balancing colors and adjusting levels and curves.

 

Anyway, whether such an addition to Elements would be enough for you is a question for you to decide. But it would also provide a means of testing out some of the features of PSCS before shelling out the price of the full version.

When I first read this I was a little irked that people were picking on wedding photos. Weddings are where a huge number of photographers actually make a living, and they do get to document some pretty intense emotions among people dressed up to look good. And lots of "rules" and expectation about what shots are needed--perfect category in which to bend and break the rules to artistic effect.

 

But it's really been fascinating to read what people can't stand, with occasional explanations. And Humor! Thanks Alexandre for getting us to chat about this and to listen to one another.

.....that the prime lens zealots have not gone off.

 

What I mean is that a larger max aperature is often present on prime lenses, and that this is quite a useful feature if controlling the DOF is important. And 50mm 1.8 and 1.4 lenses are quite affordable.

 

-Brendon

What are the benefits and pitfalls of composing your photos diagonally? I have

seen many examples in this forum and among the portfolios of the participants.

The majority of these compositions appear contrived, but some do not. When do

you think this compositional trick works, and when should it be avoided?

 

I have searched the archives and there are a few threads in other forums, but I

was interested in the perspective of wedding photographers regarding wedding

photographs.

 

Thanks!

Working with a RAW image converter really helped me to get control of the whole white balance issue. After the 15 day free trial I bought CaptureOne LE, which in addition to being really slick about white balance has the same bulk-processing capabilities for saturation, tone, curves, and sharpening. If I want to photoshop stuff I save as TIFF then switch programs.

 

Neil van Niekerk has a good discussion of the pros and cons of various solutions to RAW workflow, and it looks like he's tried every software program that exists:

http://www.planetneil.com/faq/workflow.html

 

The only reason I could see for NOT using these converters or Photoshop plug-ins is the fact that they have their own noise-reduction algorithms, which will be different from those written by the company that made your camera. It's a theoretical concern; I've not had any problems with noise.

 

-Brendon

.....unless lightning strikes!

 

 

Ouch.