Lensbaby month is nearing its end

I'm kind of getting this Lensbaby thing after about a month of shooting with it exclusively (apart from that week when I got to hire those beautiful primes). I really got to love it. Especially for shooting indoors. Definitely I prefer the Lensbaby over the kit lenses. Yeah, it's a bit of a pain that you have to focus it manually and you can miss cute expressions when photographing children, but when they actually stay still for a few moments, that's when the magic happens :) I'm not saying that I've become an expert at it but I definitely have gained a little bit of experience so I can now have an idea more or less what I'm going to get with the various aperture disks. 

I've recently also discovered a lot of awesome vintage Lr presets that I'm using these days for my post processing so hence the hazy look and all the weird colours and vignetting. 

We're going away for the weekend because a friend of ours is getting married so I might be able to shoot some bits of the couple and the reception. It will be really funny to be honest as I have no fancy gear whatsoever, my light stand and modifiers are still sitting in South Africa, so I'm not sure what I will be able to pull off. I hope I will manage to capture a few decent shots and contribute to the whole experience of their special day. Will see when we're back ;)

Day 5/365 shoot

I've embarked on a 365 project of Ella. So far so good with day 5... Wonder how it's going to be at day 275 ;) 

Did you know how difficult it is to take a picture of your own child with a kit lens indoors under tungsten light? The bloody autofocus just wouldn't focus at all, even at f4. Obviously, being a 2-yo, she'd been constantly on the move. Manual focus, forget about it. That won't happen either. At least not with the kit gear. I was like screw it... let me just go back to my trusty Lensbaby. At least I can nicely blur out any distracting elements from the scene. Took my flash out, popped on the radio trigger, pointed it to the ceiling and was hoping to get something decent. 

Funny enough, some really nice pictures started to come in with the Lensbaby. Most of the time I've managed to get her sharp despite doing it manually. This f4 disk I've had in, worked really well in this situation. I think I started to get this sweet spot thing. F8 or f11 seems to be the one for full body length shots and f5.6 and f4 for head shots. I even managed to pull off a hazy image indoors :)

Then she decided that she wanted to put her pretty dress on to show it off to granny who'd been watching all the while on Skype. When she had enough off looking pretty, she tried my bra on :) That was hilarious :) Shame I didn't manage to catch the last photo sharp enough but that cheeky smile makes up for that I suppose. Here's the photo of the day and the rest you can enjoy below :)


Would you like to stay here?

How do you feel when you're looking at these images? Are they inviting? Are they convincing? Are they a good representation of a 5* luxury hotel? I really hope the answer to all those questions is a yes. If they make you wish you could stay there (even though it's in Nigeria) then I managed to achieve my goal. These are my favourites from the second set of the shoot. Enjoy :)


25mm and 50mm fun - full

God, I love those lenses!!! It's been a whole new territory shooting at 1/160 and above indoors and get those awesome close-ups of Ella :):) Finally I could get some decent shots of her. I'm totally in love with these lenses. Hopefully I will be a happy owner soon :) 

I've already posted the ones for the family on my Facebook, but now here are the ones that stand out from the crowd. 
I love my Lensbaby but to be honest, I prefer that little beep that confirms my subject is in focus over manual focusing.

The 25mm was awesome outdoors! Shap, beautiful colours and farily quick auto focusing too. What I found a bit difficult is to move the auto focus point as fast as Ella had been running around and all over the place :) It's just a matter of getting used to it I suppose. It is really important though, because at f2.8 you have a lot if hit and misses like I had :) Not to mention f2. I liked what I got indoors too, although they could have really added another stop of light to it, then it could have been my favourite lens. 

The 50mm is just brilliant for portraits. Lovely shallow DOF, tack sharp and it's just beautiful. I've found that I constantly had to overexpose with these lenses by at least 1.5 stops. I guess that's the amount of extra light I gained with them :) The only thing I didn't like about the 500mm lens is that in low light, it's still not on top the game. Very slow in focusing and if it cannot find a contrasty enough spot to lock on, it goes out to macro mode straight away, then it takes ages to focus again. This is not really ideal when you're trying to shoot toddlers :P

I have loved every moment of shooting with these lenses. I'm even considering giving up my 2 kit lenses and get these instead. Sadly, I had to return them to the Olympus hire company. But they have the high end top pro gear available for hire too. I'd really love to see what's the deal with Olympus lenses. Any decent lens of theirs is over a £1000 which is a big bummer. I don't know when I'm going to get to the point when I can justify to spend 2.5 grand on a piece of lens... Till then, I have to go back to practice :) So bring on the Lensbaby and carry on with the f8 disk :)

 

 
Posterous theme by Cory Watilo
  
​