Nikon SB-600 Speedlight

http://www.nikonusa.com

This is my latest acquisition. I took me a long time to come around to a flash, I think that I'll be glad that I did. Studio photography isn't my thing so I don't have a lot of experience with a flash. I guess my hated of flashes started because the built in flash on all of my cameras are simply crap. They should be put on only for those who use cameras as point and shoots. Right away I found out that this flash is different. Yes is still has that horrible "Ghost Story" look when you point the flash right at the subject, but it gives me the ability to point the flash elsewhere. There is a manual mode so I could simply adjust the power, or "degrees kelvin", to have a softer shot, but I think bouncing the light is much better. It gives the photo the appearance that the light is coming from elsewhere, like a lamp or an open window, instead of the camera. There are several advantages to this. With a direct on flash, you get to see every detail of a persons face with no contrast and creepy shadows, or no shadows (which I think is even worse), in the background. I would put an example photo in here but Blogger doesn't allow photos in the middle of the text. If anyone from Blogger sees this, fix it, because it is really stupid that you can't. Anyway, a bounced flash adds shadow because the light isn't being forced onto the subject, it is coming at the subject after it has bounced off of something else which means it will look like everything else. There is also a diffuser that I want, but that can wait until my birthday or Christmas. The reason I got this in the first place, is that I have an opportunity to be taking senior photos this year. Unless you bring the subject to the sun, there will not be enough light, even outside, to get a perfect portrait. That's why studios get so bright when taking pictures. In order for me to take good senior portraits, even outside, which is where most seniors in Western Washington have their photos taken anyway, I need a flash to fill the face of my subject. I still hate flashes, but this flash is growing on me. I'm sure there will be some flash work up here soon.

August Thoughts

Hot August Nights? Nope, just the sun setting through the pollution and smoke from Vancouver B.C. The weather has been freaky lately. This sun is actually blood red at this point, but my camera refused to see it. Also, we just had a massive thunderstorm roll through. Now when I say massive, I mean massive for Western Washington. For the rest of the country, if a thunderstorm had child, and that child farted, and that fart had a child, that would be the relative size of our thunderstorm. It was cool though. Unfortunately the clouds tonight, are preventing me from seeing the Aurora Borealis. That happens every once in a while down in WWa. When the pollution levels are really high, and we are experiencing solar flares, usually now in August, we can have a rare viewing of the extraordinary sight. I need to get up to Fairbanks at some point and really experience the lights. August is a great month. Everything about it is awesome except one thing, the heat. I hate the heat and this is the month where it flourishes. Lazy days and fun all around. My class is almost over, I'm turning in my last normal assignment tomorrow and the final is due on the 12th. I think I'm going to go to the land of Macro for the final. I need to find the cause of all of the freaking dust on my negatives. I have already cleaned the camera like 500 times, and I clean all of the negatives before using them, but most of them all have the same damn pieces of dust on them. I think the problem is in the negative holder. After the 12th, school is over until September 21st so even though I took summer classes, I still get a good month+ off. Good deal. I've been going back and forth on shooting in a RAW format on my digital camera. Shooting in RAW/NEF format has several advantages, the biggest one being the ability to change the exposure in photoshop. That will probably be extremely helpful when shooting football. The downside is that it takes forever to go through all of the photos. I need to open every file, set the exposure, then save them as JPEGs through Photoshop. That would take forever for the number of photos I take during a football game. If I was shooting a wedding or something special like that, I wouldn't mind spending an entire day working on photos, but because I have about an hour and a half to work on an entire game, I don't think I'd be able to get it all done in time. Maybe for the Saturday games I can spend the time, but it just won't fit into my schedule, especially when school starts again. That is the best thing about having school start so late, High School Football season is half done by the time I go back to school so I can have all of September to really get some good shots. I guess I'll have to make my decision soon as the first practice is on the 18th of this month. August will be over before we know it and with it, summer will start to die. Autumn comes in September in Washington and I can't wait. That means that Winter is right around the corner and this year, the government is predicting a great one. Well, a great one for me anyway. Snow, snow, and more snow. That is awesome.