A little portraiture with the D800E

Today will be a digital day! Sorry. I actually took a film camera (Nikon F2) when I was doing this shoot but decided to not use film because it would distract me and both digital and film would suffer.

I did some graduation photos for my friend Stephanie. She was a very amicable model and the weather turned out to be excellent, so they came out very well. My girlfriend Meagan was gracious enough to assist me with the reflector. First, here's four shots that were all taken with the 85mm f/1.8 AF-D:

Here's one more. I singled this one out because of how outstanding the results were with a lens I recently picked up. It's a very old non-AI 105mm f/2.5, THE famous portrait lens that made Nikon lenses known throughout the world. This lens is not only bitingly sharp but has fantastic bokeh and a real character that I love. I need to get it AI'd because even on the D800E it doesn't really work, especially not with flash. So this was all fully manual. For reference, the lens was set at f/2.8 and I used fill flash manually:

I really like how the background is echoed by the human form. Notice the slope of the shoulders compared with the out-of-focus bridge in the background and also the light/dark relationship.

Anyway, I might have a film post soon, so stay tuned.