Camera bag

Finally, I found the right camera bag for my super sized cameras. It is not too small, not too big, just enough to fit one of my two cameras with many of my camera accessories. It is actually not a camera bag. I stumbled upon this $10 wine and cheese cooler. The bag is padded all around but probably not enough for camera equipments so I added some extra padding with bubble envelopes and some cartons I obtained from Michaels' a couple of months ago. With some Krazy Glue and some more foam sheets, I've got a camera bag. The outside is black and has that nice design I can take the bag to parties and wedding receptions.

There is a small compartment at the top to store various little items. The bottom compartment is where I'd store the camera, lenses, and a flash.


Here is my oversize D300 (with a lens, a battery grip and hand strap) fitted in the bag:

Macro with the 50mm and extension tube

Alright, the excitement is fizzling. The 50mm lens with an extension tube can do macro but what I have noticed is that the depth of field is too small for anything but tiny bugs that are 2 mm long. Yes, 2 millimeter. That is not very long. That is the depth of field I have to work with at f/1.8 or f/11. Practically speaking, most insects I'd run into are significantly larger than 2 mm so I think I need a different solution for macro photography. I need a depth of field of at least 15mm.

I used to have a Vivitar 70-210mm lens. Maybe I should not have sold the lens.

First macro shot with D300

Here is the first shot I took with my D300 and the pancake 50mm MF AIS lens with an extension tube:


As one can see, about 19 mm of the ruler fits onto the sensor of the D300. Given that the D300 sensor is 23.6mm wide, the macro setup produces a 1.24:1 ratio. It is better than the 105mm macro lenses but obviously, I'd have to get pretty darn close to a subject with the 50mm, in fact, about 10 cm, a tiny bit too short for live insects.

Here is my D300 fitted with the 50mm attached to a simple extension tube. The extension tube has no electronic contacts.

Exposure metering of the D300

One thing I have started to really like on the D300 is its ability to meter with the old lenses. I have a Nikkor 50mm f/1.8 AIS manual focus lens, and I like using it with an extension tube for better than 1:1 macro photography.

When the 50mm lens is fitted on a D80, I have no clue what shutter speed to use to properly expose the sensor to the subject. I would shoot in manual mode, guessing what shutter speed to use. I would also have to turn the built-in flash to manual mode as well. The whole setup of shooting small insect this way is too cumbersome and I may not have the chance to shoot the bug a second or third time. The D300 however can meter the light required for perfect exposure. The built-in flash or pop-up flash just work. The D300 does all the work for you so all you have to worry about is concentrate on the subject, compose, and shoot. Nice, D300.

Missed my 18-200mm lens

I was in Vancouver for a week for a wedding last Saturday. Before the trip, I decided I was going to bring four lenses: 80-400mm, 50mm (manual focus, to play with), 17-50mm (for the wedding) and 18-200mm (attached to a D80 body, for the wedding, and for walking around with). As it turned out, my equipments could not all fit into my backpack and it was getting pretty heavy. I decided at last minute then to leave the 18-200mm with the D80 behind.

That was a mistake. I could leave the D80 behind but I really missed the 18-200mm focal length. I ended up having to switch between the 17-50mm and the 80-400mm lenses at the wedding reception (because sometimes I wanted to shoot close-up from afar), on the ferry to Vancouver island, at the top of Grouse mountain, in Victoria, etc. I also found that at the civic wedding ceremony that was held outdoors, that the 17-50mm was a bit short on the focal length side. I did not want to buzz around close to the couple like a bee during the ceremony. The 18-200mm lens would have been perfect then. Oh well. I should be better prepared next time.

Pocket Wizard, or not?

I have been contemplating at the Pocket Wizard. It sounds like a fantastic way of triggering one or more flash guns remotely. I even found a number of knock-offs that could work like the Pocket Wizard on eBay.

But then, what about the IR wireless trigger built in the D80 and D300? Would it not work just as well as the Pocket Wizard?

I need to do some research before shelling out some more bucks for this cool accessory.

Fill-in flash in bright daylight

I am confused. The other day I was at Centre Island taking pictures of friends participating in a dragonboat festival. It was a bright day with a fair amount of sun. I thought I could just connect my SB-800 speedlight to my new D300 and the camera will just know what to do with the flash. Well, all the background of all the shots I took with flash was over-exposed. The highest speed the camera could be cranked up to was 1/320 sec. I could not figure out it could not go higher. I had set the D300 in Aperture Priority mode.

I just re-read an article I wrote in 2008 about using the SB-800 with my D80:

http://photonfarmers.blogspot.com/2008/09/d80-and-sb-800-high-speed-flash-sync.html

In the last paragraph of the article, I said the D80 would not be able to shoot faster than 1/60 sec in Aperture Priority mode with the hotshoe flash on. It would sound like what happened on the island ... except that today, I thought I'd retest the SB-800 with both the D300 and D80 in Aperture Priority mode.

In both cases, with the SB-800 mounted, I pointed the camera at a bright scene that required a high shutter speed of exposure, like 1/2500 sec. I expected the camera shutter speed to be set automatically to 1/60 sec. To my surprise, the shutter speed adjusted appropriately to 1/2500 sec.

I thought, from my earlier 2008 experiment, that the maximum shutter sync speed in Aperture Priority mode is 1/60 sec (if a faster speed is desired, the D80 needed to be in Shutter Priority or Manual mode.) It does not appear to be the case. It worked fine in Aperture Priority. Could a newer firmware I might have upgraded the camera with, allowed for faster shutter sync speeds with the SB-800??

It does not explain what happened at the island though. Maybe I did not set the D300 to sync with the hotshoe flash in FP mode, as I do not recall seeing the "FP" mode on the SB-800 LCD panel. The "FP" mode needs to be turned on for the camera to sync with the SB-800 up to the camera's own maximum shutter speed. It could also be that I did *not* use the SB-800. I might have just used the built-in flash, which I think was limited to 1/320 sec.

In any case, I am now more ready for a wedding in a couple of weeks. I am sure my relatives will want their pictures taken everywhere, so I had better be ready for it.