Weekend twofer: Using the NEX-5N with off-camera flash and a legacy Vivitar 28mm f2.8 lens.

I have been wanting to test drive the Vivitar 28mm f2.8 lens that I received this week, and have also been wanting to put a little more mileage on the flash gear that I recently purchased.

So I figured - why not do both at once?

For these photos I'm using the Vivitar 28mm f2.8 lens (via the FOTGA MD to NEX adapter), Cowboy Studio NPT-04 wireless flash triggers (via the JJC MSA-10 hot shoe adapter), a Yongnuo 560-II manual flash, a Westcott Apollo 28" softbox, and of course - the Sony NEX-5N.

That's a mouthful.  :)  But outside of the camera itself, everything else including the lens is less than 250 bucks in gear. And could have been done for less (I could have gone cheaper on the softbox).  It's kind of amazing what you can do for very little money these days.

Anyway, it's just me and my kiddo at home today, so she posed for some pix.  Our dog was at our feet as usual, so he got into the pix too.

Here's what's interesting about using flash.  I do far less post processing with off-camera flash than just shooting available light. The pix are pretty much just there without having to do as much work.  It's kinda nice.  It makes shooting more fun when you aren't looking at your LCD thinking, "Well, I can tweak that later..."

For these photos, in Adobe Camera Raw I added a touch of sharpening (because all RAW pix need sharpened), and for my personal taste I bumped up the vibrance and clarity a small amount, added a touch more vignette, and that's it.

It's a pretty basic setup.  The light is on camera left, about 45deg left and 45deg up.  I turned the light to feather it away from the back wall just a bit.  I wanted the bricks to go a little darker.  I shot a few test photos until I had the exposure where I wanted it, and then brought my daughter in (interrupted her weekend cartoons).  She let me take pix for about 10 minutes before getting too bored with me.

Here are some highlights.

So, of course I couldn't take pix of her without her wanting to take some pix of me. So I (yikes!) handed over the camera to my 3-year old.  I prefocused the camera and put a little toddler chair on the floor. I told her to sit in the chair, and put the camera strap around her neck to prevent accidental drops.  I knew if she took pix from that toddler seat, and I was in the other chair, that they'd be in focus.  And (miracles will never cease) they were!

I could tell when the lens was pointing at me, so I kept telling her point the camera higher! lower! to help her compose the shot.  :)  And then she'd shoot whenever she wanted to.  It was pretty entertaining.  

So, here I am, as photographed by my 3-yr old.

[Edit:  I forgot to put in the pix of the lens.  Enjoy.]