My blog, although I don’t see myself as a blogger but as a Photographer I will try to blog some interesting material during the weeks.
Expect at least 2 updates a week.

Mini review Minolta 85mm 1.4

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Today a mini review of the Minolta 85mm 1.4 AF lens.

 

Lens : Minolta 85mm 1.4 AF
Year : around 2000 (?)
Price paid : app 650.00 US

KONICA MINOLTA DIGITAL CAMERA

Now one could argue on why to buy a fast 85mm lens, I already own the Sony 70-200 f2.8 which is a very nice lens and is used in 80% of the sessions I do and the DOF on f2.8 with a 70-200 on 200mm gives you a very very nice portrait look, so why would one buy a 1.4 85mm lens?

 

Well there are different reasons, first of all for example street portraits. The 1.4 speed will give you a lot of “speed” for when the light situations are not perfect or when shooting inside, however the length of the lens makes it a bit of a limited lens, it’s a great portrait lens but if I would have only one lens on my body I would prefer the 24-70 f2.8 for street style shooting or the Minolta 35-200 if I don’t need the speed. So for me to be honest buying this lens new was not an option, with prices for the incredibly nice Sony 85mm 1.4 (which I shot the first few weeks when I got my A99 for review) in the 1300.00 Euro range, for me that is just a bit too much for a lens that I would just use on some occasions when I want to “play” with it…… But luckily we have internet where I found a “Like new” version for app. 650.00 US which I actually was willing to pay. So how does the lens perform.

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Dragon lady

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One of the workshops I love teaching the most is the workshop I do together with Nadine (our crazy stylist).
In this workshop you are not only seeing some crazy designs/stylings but the students are also triggered to use their own creativity and even help out on the set as you can see in this fun backstage image.

Manon Maart 15 2013 - -82-EditNow before you think that this is the actual shot…… this was just a backstage snap.
During the second part of the workshop Nadine decided it would be cool to use one of our new backgrounds and build a (for me) dragon lady, well at least it reminded me of a dragon lady, but some of the students saw more of a spanish team…. this is one of the reasons I never really name my shots or tell a story with them, if someone makes their own story it’s often a disappointment for them when they hear they are “wrong” 😀
I used the Elinchrom Beautydish with grid as main light, one Elinchrom strobe with snood/grid (and red gel) on Manon’s leg and as you can see two more strobes to light up the smoke that we were using. From the final results I choose the next two which I liked the most.

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Mini review Super Takumar 55mm f2

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Now this is a funny little lens.
Lens: Super Takumar 55mm F2.0 M42
Year : around the early 1960’s
Price paid : $ 19.00 (yeah no kidding)
Pentax55This is a lens that is fully manual and needs a convertor to be used on your system, this means it will work on all systems that provide a convertor. The mount is called the M42 mount and has it’s origins with the company Zeiss for it’s Contax S cameras but was also used by Pentacon a brand name and later Praktica. Because it was a great mount that could be used for many different systems the popularity grew very quickly in America it was used by Pentax so as you can see it was for that time the “universal” mount.

 

There are some different convertors available to mount these lenses on your DSLR, the one I would advise you to buy is the one that supports the AF confirmation system. This means that although the lens is 100% manual you will at least see when you have proper focus, the convertors will retail for between 20.00 and 40.00 US so they won’t break the bank.

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Your own studio

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Well this is something I get asked a lot, and I mean A LOT, so I thought it would be nice to put the  best tips I can give for your own studio in a small blogpost. As you might know we are still in the middle of moving from our old studio to the new studio and a lot of the mistakes we made with the old studio were not made in the new one of course…. but we made some new mistakes of course as it will never be perfect from the start, so let’s go and make sure you don’t make these mistakes.

 

Let’s start by a few things that are really important:

TFC Januari 13 --191-Edit

Size of the studio
Make sure that you have your seamless on the longest side, meaning you can move away from the seamless as far as possible, this helps you by getting the model on the paper while shooting full body shots. If you have too little space you have to use a wider lens and this means your model will probably hit the sides of the paper.

 

Now what size is perfect?
Actually NO size is perfect.
When you own a small studio you want bigger, if you have a bigger studio you want even bigger, if you have a really large studio you want even larger. I always compare it to the goldfish, if you place it in a bigger bowl it will grow and grow. We photographers do the same 😀 you will always find new gear and new props that you need to store, and that will stand in the way. However height is I think very important, try to get a space that has at least 3.50 mtrs of height otherwise it will be very difficult to get a full body model shot from a lower angle when using seamless, higher is even better.

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