This year I decided to treat myself big time for Christmas.  I decided that after 4-5 years of using a Nikon D70s it was a time for upgrade.  After a lot of tought and deliberation I decided to go ahead and get myself a brand new Nikon D300s.

As good as D70s served me I did have a few issues with it.  Most notable was a tiny viewfinder and relatively in-flexible AF system.  In addition the high ISO noise was not something everyone would be comfortable with, but I learned how to shoot dance at 800 ISO, which produced decent photos.  For the most part the noise at high ISO was not as much of a problem as the loss of contrast was.  As soon as I bump the D70s to 800 ISO or past it, the photo contrast, vibrance and general color reproduction go to hell.   When this is coupled with a plethora of dance photos I take it really bums me out when I loose a lot of color dynamics from the stage lights.  This was good enough for me to force an upgrade.

More…

Well I haven’t been writting much since I was very busy with a take-home midterm we got, plus we had bunch of Navy guys come in for a review at work, so I had to spend a lot of time on that as well.  Now the things are quiet again.  I turned in the midterm today and took the day off, so decided to go to Issana’s work place. It’s a little farm in Bellevue next to Kelsey Creek Park.  It’s free admission and anyone can just walk in and take a look at the animals, most of which you can pet as well.  I did some picture taking there so check it out in my photos section or click here.

Tomorrow I’m off to a cheese festival and then I should be making some Bosnian pies.  I hope they come out good, it will be my first time making my own philo dough.  I should also continue my plasma posts tomorrow.

Since I will have almost 2 weeks off during this Christmas break, I decided to do something worth while.  Since one of my bathrooms is free I decided to put in a portable darkroom.  The idea is to have a darkroom that will take me no more than 10 mintues to setup and teardown.  This way the darkroom will be fully mobile and the only reason to use the bathroom is because it’s easy to make it completely dark.  I will also hope to be able to pack it up in my car and take it to other places, but I’m not sure how much use I will have for an “on-location” darkroom.

I purchased what’s supposed to be the center piece of the darkoom 2 days ago.  It’s an Omega C-700 enlarger.  I got in on Ebay for $28.  Can’t beat that price.  I’ve been looking at chemicals I need, and it looks like I could have everything I need for the darkroom for under $100.  I like the enlarger since it has the color head and there is no need for sheet filters, everything can be just dialed on the head, much easier.  I hope to get it sometimes after the Christmas rush and test it out.  It should also be easy to fold it up and store it when not in use.

The plan was to go shoot some film in the next few days and try and develop it, but the weather has been ridiculous and I don’t want to drive around unless I really need to.  I will be posting some progress of the darkroom once I get the enlarger.  I hope to be able to take some awsome B&W photos of the dancers and print them on large sheets, talking bigger than 11×14.

Winslow photos are finally up.  I’ve spent the last night editing the Winslow photos and working on Enertia’s practice photos. I’m getting close to finising it up.  Hopefully I can be done by the end of today, and then I can concentrate on EnLair photos.

To check out Winslow photos click here.

I’ve spent this Saturday taking pictures of EnLair dance company at Broadway Performance Center.  I was there from around 2pm for a tech rehearsal until around 9pm when the show finished.  They had another performance today at 2pm, but I decided not to go since I already have around 1000 pictures, and I hope that there would be at least 100 good ones in there. Major challenge this time around was a complete lack of light.  This was the darkest show I had to shoot.   Dark clothing on dark background and you get NO light bouncing back to the lens.   Even with a f2.8 lens I was getting about 1/30 – 1/60 and that’s at about 2/3 – 1 1/2 stop underexposed with 1600 ISO.  Generally I’m able to push it up to 1/125 when the light is semi-normal as it is with most Enertia dances.  I hope that the pictures will come out ok, since at these speeds it’s almost impossible to catch any movement, unless the girls are able to hover motionless in the air for a brief second

The plan is to work on the pictures throughout this week and hopefully have them done on the weekend.  The problem is that I’m currently out of space and my 1TB fileserver is not ready yet, so I’m hopping to get it up and running ASAP.