Category Archives: Photographs

The Nikon D800 in the studio

Nikon bodies, Nikon lenses, Photographs

There is no better bargain.

I have been taking studio pictures with my Novatron strobe outfit for almost three decades now with the cameras ranging from rangefinder Leicas, through Rollieflexes, and Canon and Nikon DSLRs. Autofocus in the DSLRs instantly obsoleted the film equipment which was sold. Maybe the lenses were better, but nailing focus every time beats optical quality in my book.

My Nikon DSLR journey started with a D700, then the D3x, the APS-C D2x, and finally the D800. The latter was introduced by Nikon in 2012 for $3,000 and I paid just $525 a few months ago for mine with 16k clicks. Clicks are not that important for a body designed to deliver 200,000 of them, but a USA legal import is. Nikon USA will refuse to service grey market imports. Check the serial number and look for the ‘Nikon USA’ sticker inside the battery compartment.



The all important sticker.

Suffice it to say that, with the introduction of mirrorless bodies and new lenses to fit, Nikon has comprehensively trashed the used value of every DSLR they ever made and most of the lenses which fit it.

Yes, the D750 and D780 and D810 and D850 have better low light sensors but that is of no use in the studio environment. With powerful strobes I’m mostly using ISO 200 or less.

Two things stand out in my D800 experience in the studio. Even in the low ambient light that I use with weak modeling lamps in the strobes, focus is nailed every time and as for absence of sensor noise it is simply extraordinary. Definition is like nothing I’ve ever seen and while I am strictly an SOOC guy, knowing that I can crop when needed is comforting.

Maybe a Phase One or a digital Hasselblad with a large medium format sensor will render more detail for the mega buck cost of entry, but as I have no interest in making billboard-sized enlargements, call me a happy camper. And keeping the additional $12,000 in my pocketbook is a benefit not lost on me.

Do I have a complaint? Of course. Just take a look what this little outfit weighs with the 28-300mm AFS zoom and loaded battery grip:



A waistline comparable with that of most Americans.
Can you spell ‘obese’?

I extolled the D800’s many virtues, weight aside, here, but as ever pictures speak louder than words. Here is Dutch, a gorgeous Hungarian Vizsla, in a recent studio session, SOOC naturally:



A beautiful hunting dog, descended from Hungarian royalty.


Sharp enough for you?

One final advantage. Even my ancient, non-subscription Lightroom v 6.4 from 2015, bought and paid for just once, happily processes D800 RAW files. Try that with your latest and greatest Nikon body, or pay the nasty people at Adobe a monthly fee of $20 in perpetuity – and good luck getting off that treadmill. It’s not for nothing that the US DoJ just sued them for shady subscription practices.

Muscle cars and bikes

Photographs

At the annual village car show.




My 1975 BMW R90/6.


Rabbit tail.


Bizzarrini P538S.


Wide.


Teddy.


Joker.


The ultimate SUV – the Toyota Landcruiser.


UFO.


Schnauzer.


Camshaft bumper.


British and Best.


Lucky six.


Death’s head


Grrrrr.


Beautiful lines on a Studebaker.


Fins.


My 1975 BMW R90/6 and a 220hp BMW race bike.


All snapped on an iPhone 12 Pro Max using Apple ProRAW.

Low key Sam

Photographs

Show me the whites.

One of the fun aspects of my ongoing studio project where local dogs are the sitters is that I can experiment with various lighting setups. I use up to three Novatron strobe heads variously arranged and my long suffering teddy bear, Dr. S., is my model for experimenting in advance of real sessions. The good Doctor is my age and we tend to be like minded. And his fees are reasonable.

So when I first met Sam, as jet black as dogs get, I resolved that only an ultra low key setup would do, and here is the result:



White eye, beard and chest patch are all that relieves the blackness.

Nikon D800, three Novatron heads, 28-300 AF-S Nikkor at f/13, ISO200.

Studio dogs

Photographs

How to do it.

Dogs in the studio are much harder to direct and photograph than people. They are temperamental, have short attention spans and their movements are mercurial.

Ash, the Bernedoodle, was no different. (A Bernedoodle is a non-allergenic, non-shedding Poodle-Bernese Mountain Dog mix). She was very active, hopping on and off the posing platform, the owner had at best marginal control of his pup and, unusually, the dog proved very sensitive to the strobes going off.

Here is the studio setup:



One umbrella top light and one naked main light. The fill at left is not used.

And here is the result:



Ash the Bernedoodle. The naked main light provides the
catchlights in the eyes, making the animal come alive.

The posing platform is elevated 8 inches from the floor to permit a smooth contour in the backdrop, and comprises a plywood sheet on a steel base, raised on cement breeze blocks. It is very robust.

To get that gaze I had the owner lie on the floor in front of me with a doggie treat. That got the dog square on to the camera. Then one squeeze on the squeaky toy in my hand saw Ash elevate her gaze and Click!, the image was made.

Dogs with long step muzzles, like Ash, pose a focus problem in this sort of pose, so the optimal spot focus point (forget all that matrix focus gobledegook – the camera has no idea what it should focus on; use spot focus, lock, recompose) is midway between the nose and the eyes. You want both sharp. And I use f/11-16 to increase depth of field, adjusting ISO and lighting intensity to permit use of a small aperture.

Using continuous lighting in this environment is an exercise in futility. You need flash to freeze motion and obtain the best definition. I tether the camera to a wall mounted monitor, using an ancient MacBook Air, with a cable and see the results pop up in Lightroom in a couple of seconds, allowing both photographer and owner to judge lighting, pose and exposure. A far better alternative to chimping that minuscule LCD on the back of the camera.

And while you can easily spend over $1000 on a three light studio strobe system, replete with rechargeable batteries (one more thing to go wrong) I use my 30 year old hard-wired Novatron outfit which can be found for far less on eBay. I wrote about that some two decades ago here and the remote flash trigger I use, which continues to work perfectly, is described here. Tripping risk is minimized by running all the wires under the place rug you can see above.

And you can forget your fancy 85mm portrait lens. What is called for is a wide range zoom and maximum aperture is irrelevant because even on half power the Novatron strobes only require f/11-16 at ISO200. My lens of choice is the 28-300 AF-S Nikkor and the results in a big print will knock your socks off. I use a Nikon D800 and find that fixed focal length lenses are of little use with dynamic dogs as subjects.

To learn about studio lighting I consult just one book – the George Hurrell bible. Hurrell may not have had the benefit of digital sensors and stroboscopic flash, but then again his sitters included Joan Crawford, Norma Shearer, Humphrey Bogart and Barbara Stanwyck.

The Krays

Movies, Photographs

English gangsters..

The night club scene of 1960s London was dominated by two gangster brothers, the Kray Twins. Identical twins, Ronnie was seriously insane and Reggie just a tad less so. Each committed murders in public and ended up serving a life sentence in gaol.



Reggie and Ronnie Kray by David Bailey, 1965

While the brothers established a measure of respectability after opening an upper class night club which was a magnet to the knobs and actors of the time, they inevitably returned to their roots of psychotic violence and mayhem, their empire ending once they were incarcerated.

David Bailey’s superb portrait of the pair pulls no punches. They are in your face, the submissive Reggie and the dominant Ronnie looking ready to lay about them with whatever weapon came to hand. Bottle, lead pipe, knife, sword (!), gun. You name it. They were not fussy. Bailey grew up in the same poor East End of London as the Krays so he will have been particularly attuned to their make up. It shows.

Two excellent movies have been made about the Twins. The deeper psychological portrait is to be found in The Krays where the Kemp brothers from the rock group Spandau Ballet deliver insightful performances. The more recent offering, Legend, sees Tom Hardy deliver a tour de force performance, acting both brothers. The script is less nuanced but the movie is worth watching for Hardy alone.

Bailey’s picture haunts me to this day. The other week I was taking some studio portraits of a pair of Welsh Terriers owned by friends and, well, I couldn’t help but plagiarize Bailey’s composition. Buckley, the male at left is clearly submissive, while Tilly, the female is the dominant one of the pair.



Buckley and Tilly, the Welsh Terriers.
Nikon D800, 16-35mm AF-S Nikkor, Novatron strobes.

Welsh Terriers were bred to flush out badgers whose setts (underground homes) would cause foxhunting horses to break legs. You probably should not mess with these boys any more than you would with the Kray Twins.