Reptile & Amphibian Forums

Damon,

In your post below, "Orange, gray, white, and black...", the photography is absolutely stunning. I was wondering if you might give me a few tips. I'd like to set up and take similar pictures of my own snakes. I've been collecting rocks and wood from around my property and was thinking of setting them up in a 3x3x3 box.
Can you give me some lighting and lens suggestions? I currently don't have any good lights. I use a NIkon D70s with Sigma 18-50 (3.5-5.6), Sigma 55-200 (4-5.6), and Nikon 70-300 (4-5.6) lenses. I'd like to get this NIkon 50mm (1.4) lens as well:

http://www.nikonusa.com/Find-Your-Nikon/Product/Camera-Lenses/1902/AF-NIKKOR-50mm-f/1.4D.html

I think it will be a vast improvement over the telephoto lenses I have. What do you think?

What kind of lighting would you suggest for someone on a budget?

I shoot in raw and jpeg and use professionally Photoshop on a daily basis (though not as a photographer).

Thanks, Damon (and anyone else who wants to chime in).

-Mike
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I shoot with a D70s as well. I think you've got plenty of lens there to get the shots you want, especially with slow moving critters like snakes. I'd look at lighting before buying fast glass, you can get plenty of good results once you understand lighting. You can go as cheap as a few general photography bulbs, clip lights from the hardware store and a shooting cube made out of foam core.

All of these were done with the 18-70 kit lens, I'll mention the set/lighting:

SB-800 flash bounced off of the top of her display enclosure with florescent lighting. (btw, mixed lighting often makes a mess of things - I was digging the pose and it happened to work)

Blue posterboard under 2 Alien Bee strobes.

SB-800 flash in black PVC cage.

I dont remember where I bounced the flash on that pic, but it looks like I had it pointing straight at him by the blowout on his neck.

And just to keep it OT, here's a little beauty I got from Mike Russo earlier this year. I dont really like this pic for a number of reasons, but the subject makes me smile.

In a nutshell, I think you've got plenty of equipment, you just need to teach yourself to use lighting better. There's a book called Light, Science & Magic that's really good for basics and you can set up all kinds of creative "poor man's" light stages. I even built a tower out of cages and shot on the top of it while standing on a ladder so I could bounce the light off of the white ceiling and walls once! I also found that the D70s seems to shoot really dark so I had to play with the settings quite a bit. I always shoot on manual settings and in RAW, .jpg never gives me what I want and Auto just makes a mess of things.

Of course all that said, I've convinced myself that I need to buy a 105mm lens for my camera to take better pix. And a d300 to go with it. Now where did I leave those money tree seeds...
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Julie
www.[url ban]/gfx

Thanks guys!
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1.1.0 Hondurans Het Amel
1.1.0 Hondurans Anery, Het Hypo
0.1.0 Honduran Hypo
0.1.0 Honduran Hypo, Het Anery
0.2.0 Pueblans
1.0.0 Pueblan Hypo
1.0.0 Thayeri MSP
0.0.1 GBK Blair's Phase
1.0.0 California King
0.1.0 California King Blue-eyed Blond
0.0.1 Speckled King WC
0.0.1 Jungle Carpet
0.1.0 Ball, Normal
1.0.0 San Diego Gopher, Poss. Het Applegate
0.0.1 Sulcata
0.1.0 Girlfriend, Caucasius Mexicana, Fiancee Phase

http://www.cafepress.com/shedz