PhotographyBanzai.com

As I’m a believer in going to the source to make sure things go well, I just sent a general inquiry email to Ricoh Japan . For people who are actually good at Japanese, pardon my low quality letter. I think it good enough to get my point across though. If you see odd squares and such below in my letter to Ricoh, that means your computer can’t display Japanese because the proper fonts and/or system data isn’t installed. はじめまして、　スコットです。 メッセージはアメリカから。　　RICOHは日本の会社です、そして日本語を書きました。　少しが分かります。　すみません。　　私は頑張ります。 This message is from America. Ricoh is a Japanese company, so I wanted to write in Japanese. I only understand a little. Excuse me. I’ll keep trying. RICOHのPENTAX買収のニュースを見ました。　　良いニュースですね！　　RICOHは古いKーMOUNTレンズを作りました。　　GRーDIGITALも良いカメラ見たいと思います。 I saw Ricoh’s pentax acquisition news. It’s good news isn’t it! Ricoh made old K-mount lenses. The GR-Digital is also a nice camera I think. 私はPENTAXユーザーです。　「*IST　DS」カメラから。　（K１０D、Kー７、Kー５も）。　　そして、ペンタッ...

I decided to do more practice with the two off-camera flash units. This time I was using a single apple with a sheet of glass (glass from a simple picture frame) to play around with reflection and flash placement.  The equipment: Two Yongnuo YN460-II set in S1 mode at 1-3 bars of power. They were mounted on Flashpoint stands. Camera was a K-5 and DA* 55mm f1.4 lens. A glass picture frame as well as a plastic container. First off I just tried photographing the apple on the picture frame. The frame came with a matte black background:  Apple I had to clean up the black area on the left a bit by “burning” the blackness to make it less reflective and showing imperfections. I had first started off by using the healing brush, but it wasn’t enough.  Apple Next up I decided to get some spacing between the glass and table by using a plastic container. I also put one of the flashes under the glass to provide some floor lighting:  Apple on glass. Apple reflected I noticed a...