New camera. It replaced my outdated D40 with a newer D5300. Love this little camera! Live view is awesome and helps a lot. It works fine with half-unscrewed lens (I'll explain later), except the actual picture is lighter then what you see in live view mode. I normally take 2-3 test photos any way, to see how the light setup works on shiny LEGO bricks, adjusting small things here and there, so not a big deal. Live view eats up battery pretty fast, but it gives me enough time to shoot a scene or two.
The only problem - I needed to purchase USB extension cord, 'cause the one coming with this camera is just about 24 inches long. Are you kidding me? :) D40 has a nice long one, but Nikon changed the socket and I cannot use the old cord with D5300. Oh well. Guess nobody (except me) worries about cords these days, as long as the camera has wifi.
New lens. I purchased vintage manual 55mm Nikkor-micro f3.5 from e-bay. It's a great lens, and it's cheap (around $60). It lets me get close enough to minifigures when I need to (minimum focal length is less then 10 inches), and I can always step further back if I need a landscape shot.
Why I wanted this lens if I already had Nikkor 18-55 and Tamron 90? Well, I tried those two, in full-manual mode, and they were giving me nasty light flickering, no matter what camera settings I picked or what light I used (tested with daylight too). Long story short - you need to disconnect lens from camera "brain". That's why Canon DSLR + Nikon lens is such popular combination for stop motion animation. But I prefer Nikon cameras, so I half-unscrew the lens :) Camera cannot see what F-stop lens is set for, but it doesn't matter for full-manual mode.
This video explains it all really well.
This video explains it all really well.
Other parts of my setup right now are:
Nikon ML-L3 Wireless remote control (infrared)
Tripod Manfrotto 190XPROB
Hoya circular PL filter is a huge help, 'cause Lego bricks are so shiny.
I also use 2, 3 or 4 regular table lamps with soft white LED light bulbs (covered with cooking paper/wax paper).
No comments:
Post a Comment