Thanks to the generosity of Nina K who let us played around and learnt some useful photography tips in her studio and I finally got a chance to take some photos with serious lighting. The Darwin Photowalks group arranged the event and lucky we had some brilliant young dancers as the objects of the session. We had so much fun with indoor and outdoor session with the dancers and ‘amazed’  how good lighting set up  can give a big difference on the quality of your shots as long as you set your speed, ISO, aperture and white balance right.

Nina allowed everyone of us to use her studio lighting with some tips she shared. I was not even sure which lens I suppose to use before getting into the shots. From what I gather, the best way to take some portrait or action photography in studio is mid range lenses and also depend on how big the studio is. I don’t have a sharp mid range lens so I just used my Canon 50mm 1.8 most of the time, except when taking the whole group within the studio or outdoor. It worked OK for me except some frames are cropped unwantedly so the object lost their part of hands or leg, but I still get the sharpness. Tried with standard 18-55mm but not as sharp, so I couldn’t be bothered.

This is one of the moment when you have some photography gears that you dont use often but when you do, they dont work as you wanted to :)). When it was not my turn to use studio lighting, I used my flash and remote trigger so I could take some light from the side of object and not straight from the camera but only for few shots, the rest didnt work due to battery problem so I have to stick the flash on the camera which means I had to use light from the camera angle. Moral of the story: check all of your gears that involve battery and make sure you have some spares.

Here are some shots that I like, some minor post processing was taken to play around with the colors; critics and comments will be highly appreciated:

One of the dancers at the session – Darwin Photowalks January 2013

One of the dancers at the session – Darwin Photowalks January 2013

One of the dancers at the session – Darwin Photowalks January 2013; When unwanted lights collide, it gave me extra light from the right side that made the skin tone on the face looks flat, but it gives a stronger line on the eyes.

One of the dancers at the session – Darwin Photowalks January 2013

One of the dancers at the session – Darwin Photowalks January 2013

One of the dancers at the session – Darwin Photowalks January 2013

One of the dancers at the session – Darwin Photowalks January 2013

One of the dancers at the session – Darwin photowalks 2013

This photo didn’t use the studio lighting and just natural light from the door, I like the shallow depth of focus using Canon 50mm 1.8

In Studio with Nina K. This was using my own one side lighting..

Darwin Photowalks January 2013 – In Studio with Nina K, Indoor session