More Than A Test
November 5th, 2023
When I bought my new Nikon Z7ii and finally got the Nikkor 24-120 lens to go with it, I set up a shoot with a new (to me) model to test them out together. Rayn Ravyn is a beautiful lady and a great subject for this test.
I’ve added these black and white conversions to my current portrait project. I think they fit very well.
And, of course, we did some nudes in addition to the test photos and the black and whites.
Netti Nude
November 1st, 2023
Yes Netti and I shot a few nudes at this shoot. She is such a lovely lady, how could I resist.
More Netti
October 29th, 2023
Some more “Noir” and more of Netti.
Netti is a lovely lady and a joy to work with.
Netti Portraits
October 22nd, 2023
During our “Noir” shoot I also did several portraits of Netti.
Netti is a lot of fun to work with and has a great personality. You can see a little of that coming through in these last two photos.
Noir Netti
October 18th, 2023
Netti Compton came to the studio and we decided to shoot some Noir-style things. Be careful of that dame! Netti is a great model and great fun to work with.
While we were at it I did a few soft-focus things.
And I couldn’t resist playing around with a few other effects in software just for fun.
More Carrie at School
October 15th, 2023
Here’s another set of photos of the lovely and talented Carrie Turner at an old schoolhouse.
The old classroom offered a nice background with a lot of options to use the light in different ways.
And working with a beautiful model obviously didn’t hurt.
For these photos I used a trusty old Nikkor lens that would connect with the new Nikon Z7ii. It was a lens for a cropped sensor, so it didn’t take advantage of the full-frame sensor in the new Nikon. And it was only an adequately sharp lens, so it couldn’t show the full quality of the new camera. Nevertheless, it let me make some nice photos of Carrie.
The light streaming through the windows offered an opportunity for some high key photos.
It still remained for a new lens to arrive to let me see just what the new camera could do.
Back to School with Carrie
October 10th, 2023
For a time beautiful, talented model Carrie Turner had studio space in an old school building. We did a couple shoots there. These photos are from the first time we worked together there.
I was working with my new Nikon Z7ii camera. I didn’t yet have a z-mount lens to use with it, so I spent this shoot playing around with other options. The two photos above were made with a pinhole on the new camera. So, don’t worry, it’s not the camera causing the softness…
After playing with the pinhole I put my old single-element soft-focus lens on the new Nikon to see what it would look like. I love that old lens, but hadn’t used it much since I went to digital cameras because the crop-sensor digital Nikons made it too long an effective focal length to be very useful for portraits. But the new Nikon Z is “full-frame” so the lens was back to it’s 100mm focal length.
Along with being soft focus, this lens does some fun things with flare and backlight.
And Carrie’s brilliant modeling took full advantage of the qualities of this lens.
I also used some more “regular” lenses from my old Nikon F-mount collection.
Some of the old lenses began to show just how sharp the sensor in the new Nikon could be.
A Fine Day
October 7th, 2023
From the looks of the memories my computer shows me, October 7 seems to have been a great day for making art over the years. Above and below from 2004.
This next one from 2013.
And three from 2018.
There were, of course, lots more from each of those days, but these are the ones that popped up in my memories.
This is More Than a Test
October 3rd, 2023
When I got my new Nikon Z7ii the camera body arrived before the lens I had ordered for it. But I did get an adapter so I could use my old F-mount lenses with the new camera, so, of course, I had to do some testing.
I got together with wonderful model and muse, Eden, to start learning the new camera. The only lens I owned that would properly “talk” to the camera with the adapter was my old 18-200 crop-sensor lens. Not the sharpest lens out there, but everything worked automatically, so I used it for most of the shots.
And I did use another old lens…my 50-year-old soft-focus lens. It’s my favorite soft-focus lens, but I hadn’t used it much for many years because its 100mm focal length made it somewhat less useful on crop-sensor cameras. But the new camera is “full-frame” so I was happy to find that the old lens worked well on the new camera.
Not too shabby for a camera test shoot…
Eden in the Studio
September 28th, 2023
A few studio figure studies with the lovely Eden.
