My Valentine's day with Godox...

How I spent Valentine's day... 

Alas my wife has gone for a business trip to the other end of the globe, Many thanks to YL Camera for arranging to acquire a whole plethora of Godox lights to keep me occupied for the evening. 

The AD-400 mid powered lights were of particular interest as they came with their own battery packs (look Ma.... no wires!). These are the easiest wireless strobe light systems that I've ever come across. Without spending any time on the manual which came in the box like a hero we manage to assemble the lights, set the channels and groupings, adjust our relative strobe intensities and we were off! 

Our condo courtyard is not the most picturesque environment for portraits and these strobes were powerful enough for us to shoot at ISO 200 @ f8 to completely isolate the awful background into the shadows completely! 

Having toyed with little confidence with chinese strobes over 4 years ago I am pleasantly surprised by how far the Chinese have come along. These strobes are really well built, easy to use, feature rich and its modular design suggest that parts are available as replacements (e.g. bulbs, batteries, brackets etc). I would be quite inclined to switch to this system in the event that my European strobes prove to costly too maintain.

Happy Valentines to all! Unlike me I hope you are spending time together physically with your love ones!

Setting up the Godox lights was a breeze!

The Godox P120L Deep P120H Parabolic Deep Softbox 

was surprisingly light when fully assembled

The Transmitters come in all flavors... Canon, Nikon, Sony etc

The settings on the triggers is so easy an intuitive to use!
Figure it all our without the manual!

The AD-400 lights come with their our rechargeable batteries packs!

The LCD display very informative and the scroll wheel control much like 

Canon's cameras is a no brainer to use!

Everything comes in a neat foam padded

The AD-200.  The little brother...

My First week with the D500

Carrying on the work of the D300

I've been waiting for this camera since my D300 which was released in 2008 became outmoded by the advancement of technology.  Although the D300 was a very reliable workhorse.  It's ISO performance and limits of its image quality was starting to show its age.

When Nikon announced the D500 in January this year I was really excited with the news, after waiting over 6 months since the announcement I finally have one in my hands.

The camera does not disappoint, every glowing review about it speed, it's snappiness in focusing lifted from the flagship Nikon D5, it's FX rivalling ISO performance and it's excellent built quality (although made in Thailand) has lived up to it's hype. Not going to elaborate more on these points as the reviews are ubiquitously found online.

One of the big differences with this camera from previous lines of cameras from Nikon would be the touch screen.  This is the first DSLR with a touch screen which I actually like and find useful.  You can scroll through photos with a swipe, you can pinch to zoom into photos, and for the first time you can scroll through hundreds of photos at a time by just swipe past the lower edge of the screen.  This has always been an area where Canon's big thumbwheel always excelled and Nikon has finally provided a comparable interface.

Best Nikon Touch screen currently in the market

There is not many bad things I can point to with this camera. However after using it for over a week 2 annoyance stand out.  With the D500 they itchy designers have swapped the positions of the MODE and ISO buttons on the top panel and this is creating havoc for me as this layout is different from my D300, D800, D3S & D4!  Why would Nikon do this?  The other big annoyance is the batteries. Although the form factor for the battery is the same,  Nikon has somehow tweaked the capacity sensing circuitry in the camera to only recognise its new batteries with the fine print Li-ion20 markings.  Although all the batteries from my D750 & D800 can fit in this camera, they report a lower available charge and results in shorter battery lives.  All my compatible batteries that work on my D750 & D800 do not work at all with the D500!

I am sure there are still many areas of this camera which have yet to surprise me as I use it more and more.  Nevertheless it's becoming my goto camera for now as I it works so well in the areas which matter to me.  Speed, Focus, Low-light and Image quality.

Nikon has relocated the ISO & MODE buttons

Spot the odd man out?

Why is Flash Photography Important?

Although I took up photography quite early in life flash photography was never one of my fortes.  It was really complicated.  You had to know the GN number of your flash, you had to estimate the distance that you wanted proper exposure, you had to factor in the film speed that you were using and then you had to do a calculation that took all these factors into consideration to arrive at the proper aperture to set for you camera.  On top of that if you had to bounce the flash then your distance calculation would be more like rocket science to work out the indirect distance and reflectivity of the surface that you were bouncing off... Good luck.

When I took up digital photography everything had changed,  not only do you have the immediacy to review your results on screen. You also had the benefit of highly sophisticated Through The Lens (TTL) exposure systems which would measure the amount of light in the camera via a pre-flash to calculate in real time the ideal flash power to regulate in order to give you perfect exposure every time.

If you're depend on event photography as a living, regardless if you cover weddings, birthdays or corporate event you'll find that flash photography is one of the most important skills which you have to master.  For a photo to be technically right the focus and exposure has to be spot on, everything else would be a secondary consideration.  When I was trying to learn flash photography I was very fortunate to have been under the guidance of a very experienced wedding photographer.  He taught me how to shoot at high ISO's, When to fill and when to bounce, how and why you would want to use a side bounce and what to do when all else fails.

Those days of apprenticing taught me valuable lessons which I find myself applying everyday in my work.  In shooting events, portraits, products, food being able to use your flash effectively & creatively makes all the difference in your final result.  To have an image in your mind and being able to apply the right combination of lighting techniques to realise the image is very fulfilling. To bring to life drama, highlights, shadows and subtlety from you 3 dimensional subject via your painting in light.