MonoChoromatic

I been trying to do a showcase using my hats for a long time. Obviously I have a white, gray and black one. I was trying out how to light them. This proved to be a challenge because I had good natural light coming out of the window, however, I had to add fill to highlight some details hidden behind shadows. I ended up using ambient light and an SB900 underneath as fill flash.

Fleetweek 2009

Every year there is a naval and air show hosted right on the waters of the San Francisco bay. They has various ships, propeller stunt planes and the blue angels. Today I came out with a Nikon D90 and 70-300VR lens. This was my first airshow and it was hard to track the faster planes flying above. After about 30 passes I got the hang of the pan and had better focus control over my shots. The D90 and 70-300 proved to be a difficult combo. It would zoom from 1.5 to infinity before it would lock on. This 1/2 second delay would cause me to miss my shot. I learned to pre-focus on something close in distance like a boat out in the bay. That way I would just raise the camera upwards but still have a close focus on the planes going by.

New Tripod

I got a nice tripod from my girlfriend as a birthday gift. I look forward to taking with me on all our trips and taking great landscape shots, especially at night. So what did I get? Well my philosophy is, the best tripod you have is the one on you. So I decided to get a small compact tripod. After lugging around a big aluminum one, getting carbon fiber is a must. So here it is, its a Benro C-068m8 travel angel tripod. I have also paired it with a Markins Q3 ballhead. I am really impressed with its sturdiness and light weight.