Children Photography

It's been quite a long time I didn't do blogging here. I feel guilty actually, not because of leaving it not updated, but that I didn't take much images currently. Note that here is the place for mere photography purpose.My question is..." Then why I bought the costy D300?"

Just as this thought has passed by my brain, I jumped up from the sofa, and took out my camera, then started to explore all the content of the in camera menu, then played with the settings. I found that, there are so many things inside the D300, more than what is included in my ex-camera, the D80.At first, I felt so strange for all of them. But after going through all of them, I found that it's not actually that hard. Just that it gives us more flexibility in settings, to achieve what we want. The default settings for all the picture preset are actually conservative. My problem is to try out the contrast, the color, the sharpness, and also the brightness. It seems really time consuming, but once I have set them properly, the images I take will look more natural and the time spent for the post processing will be lesser, I guess:)

The image above is one of the successful test shot I took a week back. I used the "monochrome" picture control, increase the sharpness by 2 steps and the contrast by 1 step( I don't know why, contrasty images turn me on). I didn't use my external flash, SB800, and adjust nothing for this image.
I do actually suspect that the copy of my 50mm f/1.4 has the front focusing problem! According to the forum of dpreview.com, many users say that the Nikkor prime lenses in the range of 50mm and 105mm have to be adjusted in the D300's autofocus fine tune, as normally they have the issues of either front or back focusing!
I am not quite sure about that, but it seems that the above image is sharp for my cousin's PSP player and also her t shirt, though I actually focused on her eyes! Her front hairs also look sharper than her eyes or glasses, agree?
Fortunately, if the users of Nikon cameras other than newer models got the bad copies of these prime lenses, they are not able to fix it. It's either they send their copies for the adjustment, or they have to stay happy with what they have owned:(
I will explore more about this lens and try to master it.
Btw, the two kids in the first image are my cousins. They have been addicted to all type of games in the world for more than 5 years. The taller one was holding a PSP player, which costs them about RM900 few months back! OMG, the girl is just 13years old and the boy is just 12!!! I wonder where they got the money to buy such an expensive thing at this age, as their parents are so against them to play it until their school result are degreading:(




I am so addicted to children photography after teaching Guan Lun, a Taiwanese cute boy who learned under me for the 3 months holiday back in Malaysia. He is so cute until I kept on snapping his actions and expressions during my classes. I am so fortunate that those children who allow me to snap them are not hyperactive, but they also turn to the direction of my lenses and show me some funny and interesting expressions.
This girl is my new student, she is the younger sister of one of my great student! She is 8 years old, and requested to learn the piano after few years influence by her sister. This girl is the most talented student of mine since I started teaching music. She is so talented until she relax all her fingers on the keys in curved shape while pressing the keys with other fingers, wihtout my guide!!!She can easily understand what am I saying, and does it on the spot accurately. She dares to explore, to attempt and to ask for more. The only bad thing about her is that, she is in fact quite lazy to learn too many music if the homework exceeds 4 pages!



Well, she is also lazy to take out the pencil box, as she knows I am going to give her loads of homeworks on drawing the clefs and the new learnt notes. Look at her boring face:(



Sigh...is theory of music that Boring???


Here is another close up shot of her...



I think I really love to snap children, as they are not shy to pose for me. They actually love it!
So, i guess i can snap as many images of them as possible, they dont charge me, they dont feel shy, and the most important thing, they love it!

p/s: I think I should take more images.