Dan Tidswell's photostream  

Oh yeah she's cute now but wait till you see the nappy :-)
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Shot in available light with my favorite lens, the Sigma 85mm f/1.4. This was snapped at f/1.8 ISO-1600 1/125sec.

Shot in Castle park Colchester on a bright winter day.

Mini review of the Samyang 14mm f/2.8 IF ED UMC

This is a full 21MP (12MB) image taken on a Canon 5D Mark II and Samyang 14mm lens, it's a particularly cruel image for a lens to render with lots of fine details and a high dynamic range. I also bracketed and made this into an HDR which is something I require from a lens that does not support a filter system.

After reading some positive reviews of the lens I decided to compare it to a Canon 14mm f/2.8 that I had on long term loan. In a nutshell this lens is excellent, it costs £260 compared to the Canon 14mm which retails for £1600 and with very little effort can be made to perform equally as well.

It's a fully manual lens so you have to set the aperture and focus yourself, this is easier than it sounds and takes only a few minutes to get the hang of. It has some moustache distortion which is easily fixed with a Lightroom lens profile, Those are the only negatives that I could find. On the positive side the image quality achieved from this lens is astounding, everything is razor sharp right across the frame! After testing it I gave the Canon 14mm back and put the Samyung into my kit bag where I expect to use it regularly.

Happy Christmas to all my friends on Flickr. Everyday I eagerly check your latest work, admire your pictures and hate you for being so much better than me :-)

Lets make an effort to meet up in-real-life next year for some street photography in London. I hereby promise to buy coffee for anyone willing to make the effort.

Have a great holiday, take lots of pictures and keep safe.

Dan

This year I've shot literally dozens of corporate headshots for businesses in Essex. I love the work and get a real kick out of seeing them in print or even on the company website. I often shoot 10-20 people at the same company in one day, so I have to nail the lighting quickly.

About 90% of the time I turn up and find that I've been allocated the smallest room with the worst lighting in the entire building, I see this as a challenge rather that a hinderance and strive to setup at least two lighting scenarios that I can switch between quickly, I always get the safe shot first then as time permits (you only get fives minutes usually) I switch over to the edgy setup and bag a few keepers.

This technique has paid off more that not and I've nailed some really greats shots over the last 12 months which the clients have been delighted with.

Strobist: Softbox cam left, reflector cam right - safety shot :-)

Large softbox camera right and another in the window. Original image was shot on a wet overcast day so a warm up gel was added to the softbox and the white balance altered in post to fake that summer light.