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Really Fun Shoot With Dana

Saturday, October 13th, 2012

Dana was referred to us by a previous client and I’m always a bit nervous when that happens because I feel like I have to live up to what they’re expecting. That didn’t last long with Dana though as we got some great shots out of her really early into the shoot. That always makes me more comfortable and I’d imagine her more comfortable, too, knowing she’s going to be able to take something out of this shoot.

She was a natural when it came to headshots and that made her super-easy to shoot.

I’ve been using the D800 for these shots with the 70-200 VRII taking advantage of that short minimal focal length and standing about four feet away. We’ll try and post the lighting in more detail as soon we can squeeze in taking some example shots during a shoot. For now, here’s Dana’s choices for her final shots.

More headshots to come!

David Dvir

Posted in Business of photography, Updates | No Comments »

2D House – Now With More Headshots!

Monday, June 11th, 2012

I was thinking some time ago “am I working as much as I could be? Better yet am I working as much as I want to be?”. The answer was regretfully “no”. I mean we’ve been pursuing things to a point where I’ve been quite happy with results and the amount of energy being put towards business. Ultimately I knew we could be doing a bit more, though. As a result a lot of things have changed recently and I’ve been attempting to restructure my business plan a bit differently. Trying to be even more efficient with the existing workload and combining that with a desire to do more than I’ve been doing of late, a new link has been born upon 2D’s navbar.

I present to you all, headshots!!

The decision was a spontaneous one, I’ll admit. Regardless I’m quite happy with it so far. Turns out headshots are a lot of fun. I’d love to say they’re easy but I can’t. I can say that they’re very rewarding and offer a massive opportunity to learn and hone your skills. I put together a quick portfolio and will officially be offering my services to any and all who may seek a simple clean headshot. My style is far from determined but for now I’ll enjoy the mystery behind it. Below are a few samples of the brief gallery we’ve got going on and to see more or find out additional details just click here.

I’m really looking forward to developing this new skill and meeting a whole whack of great peeps.

‘Til your headshot session – cheers!

Dave

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5D MKIII vs D800 vs 5D MKII

Friday, March 2nd, 2012

So the new Canon 5D MKIII has been announced. There’s a number of great write-ups about it already so go ahead and check them out if you haven’t. I’m more interested in comparing the first looks of this new camera with those of the D800 from Nikon.

Now to be honest and fair, it must be said I haven’t had the privilege of wielding either of these bad boys so this entire post is essentially based on speculation.

If you’re comparing these two cameras the first thing I notice is the price difference. Not huge but $500 is worth noting, the Nikon being on the lower end of that imbalance.

Next is the photo quality. So from what I can gather, the D800 will boast a significantly higher resolution sensor but it will be likely giving up some low light quality along with perchance some dynamic range. This toggles the favour over to the 5D MKIII although it’s tough to know how it will perform at high ISO’s as well, it does at least have a 2 stop edge on the D800 in their respective native ISO ranges.

But is photo quality what I think of when I think of the 5D? Well no. Not for me. I’m not denying that it’s a great stills camera and it always has been. But from my point of view one of the most amazing things that made the 5D MKII what it is today was its video abilities. So I beg the question “What are we getting out of the 5D MKIII that we didn’t out of the mII?”.

The answer… not much it seems. There are some nifty features they’ve added into the MKIII but honestly compared to the mII it doesn’t seem all that impressive. It looks like Canon has focused on improving the photo quality of the camera while leaving the video quality relatively equal to that of it’s predecessor. I do realize that the quality of video has improved in that they’re suggesting it handles moire better but that just isn’t enough for me. Maybe I would have liked to see 1080p 60fps? I’m not really sure. And maybe their issue is that the 5D MKII was SO great. How can they really improve on it? Again I’m not sure. But with the D800, in my opinion, offering a significant feature of clean video output while matching all the other specs it seems to me that the cheaper body from Nikon is the winner in this battle.

Sufficed to say that the ISO range doesn’t make much difference to me since I don’t image too many people are going to be thinking of the D800 as anything but a studio camera. At least that’s my opinion of it with a 36MP sensor.

Again there’s lot so of testing to be done, and it may turn out that either camera could blow the other away after real comparisons are made. In the mean time, I’m thinking that Canon was a bit late to the party offering a camera that’s quite similar to the D800 but more money and less new features compared to their respective predecessors. For what I make out of the 5D MKIII it seems like the better option might be to stick to the 5D MKII. Nearly half the price and much of the same features, the tried and true MKII might remain king of Canon’s lineup simply due to it’s hard to replace nature.

What are your thoughts?

Dave Dvir

Posted in Business of photography, My two cents, Reviews, Updates | No Comments »

The Camera Circle of Life

Saturday, January 7th, 2012

Many people see investments like the new Nikon D4 as ridiculous. They cost an arm and a leg but how can anyone afford them? Well there’s something of a camera-circle-of-life out there involving your old gear that if you’re not a part of, you really should be.

When I buy a necessary items of equipment, like a camera, I like to think of it not as a piece of technology, but something that helps make my business run. I have a studio which I pay a constant rent for. I also renovated the location which cost me a decent amount, but when I think of my rent, I don’t include the cost of the renovation, just the monthly fee. Cameras should be seen in the same light. Yes I paid around $5K for my D3s two years ago. But I won’t be holding on to it if I buy a D4. Why would I? I’m going to sell it. I’ll probably receive around $4K for it and I’ll have to cover another $2K and change myself. This hike in price is also unusual as most replacement bodies come in at around the same price as their predecessor was when it was new. Normally, you’d need to cover about 20-25% of the cost of the camera if you sold your old one.

This, folks, is how we justify these purchases. It’s not that we’re simply dropping $6K happy-go-lucky styles. We’re continuing our “rent”. This difference in price is the rent we pay for our cameras. Yes we did put down a lot at some point, but forget about that. That investment is gone and you won’t be needing to recreate again. From now on, you need to put aside about $50, maybe $75 each month and you’ll be able to replace a D3s, or a D4 relatively easily. This camera rent will keep me and my company up to date with technologies for the foreseeable future. I even enjoy thinking that new technologies will be available and I’ll only have to drop 20% of the asking price in order to play with it myself.

For anyone on the fence about buying new gear, or any gear for that matter, I think it’s important to keep this notion in mind. You’ll have to make an initial investment. But when it comes time to upgrade you won’t be looking at reinvesting that same amount. The world of up-to-date gear may not be as scary as you once thought. And also keep in mind that the launch of the D4 means plenty of D3s’ and D3′s on the used market. Which likely means an increase in D700′s and D300s’, too. The circle of life goes on… enjoy my horrific drawing.

Thanks for reading,

Dave Dvir

Posted in Business of photography, My two cents, Updates | No Comments »

Nikon D4 Announcement

Friday, January 6th, 2012

Everyone’s heard about this by now but incase you haven’t seen the video check it out. I know what I want for my birthday this year hehe. I think it’s available February 16th. The next 5 weeks will be hard to endure.

Dave Dvir

Tags: Nikon D4
Posted in Business of photography, Updates, Videos | No Comments »

Underwater Photo Shoot, In Depth Behind the Scenes

Thursday, January 5th, 2012

So we decided to work on an underwater photoshoot. We also thought we’d make a behind the scenes video for the shoot but with a less common addition. We wanted to add every step of the shoot into the video. It makes for a longer clip although very informative. Most questions should be answered within the video but I’ll try to explain some additional information below.

Some addition info that we’d like to share:

You don’t really need high end gear to make these shots work. Yes we had an underwater kit and yes we did use pro bodies/lenses. However the shots themselves could be recreated with most body/lens combos. Your shoot may not even be underwater, it may be in a desert, and that’s the main focus we’d like you to draw from this BTS. Another thing we wanted to mention is that electricity and water don’t typically mix. We were very cautious with our setup near the pool and made sure there was no chance of anything falling into the water.

Once more I’d like to thank Isaac Levy, Leanna Lee, Amanda Taylor and Paul Bongiovanni for their efforts in this shoot. If anyone has any questions or comments please feel free to ask and we’ll be sure to get back to you. Also, as we err speak… ? type..? yeah type, as I type, Kevin is working on a more in-depth tutorial for editing one of the images. We should be releasing it sometime very soon. In case people were more curious as to how we ended up with our final images. The tutorial will be on the image directly below.