Baby Photography : Hudson + Family

I have to be honest, I really don't advertise that I do family and baby photography. While weddings are my mainstay, I do genuinely enjoy photographing babies and their parents. As a parent myself, I know that baby photos hold unrivaled sentimental value. So when one of my wedding couples calls me up for photos of their new arrival, I'm extra excited. My family photo sessions have the the same casual, lifestyle approach that I take with my engagement photos.

Baby Photos : Adams Sangamon Park in Chicago's West Loop

Renaissance Blackstone Chicago wedding : Vicky + Ed

When I say that everyone's wedding is unique, Vicky and Ed's wedding certainly lived up to it.  An early morning start, three Bride's dresses, two ceremonies, and a whole lot 'a fun and games.  Chinese weddings are steeped in traditions like door games at the Bride's house, a tea ceremony for family elders, and multiple wedding dresses.

Check out some of the highlights from Vicky and Ed's big day with their ceremony and reception at the historic Renaissance Blackstone Hotel in downtown Chicago.

Bride's Getting Ready : Bolingbrook, IL
Couple's Reveal : South Water Street Park
Photo Shoot : Grant Park South
Wedding and Tea Ceremony : Renaissance Blackstone Hotel
Reception : Renaissance Blackstone Hotel

Chicago Wedding Photography Video Promo

As a wedding photographer, I get the privilege of peaking into the lives of my clients.  It's a special day and without a doubt, a stressful one for most.  Couples are looking for their wedding photography to look more natural and organic rather than uncomfortable and overly posed. Being able to form a rapport with my couples is the key to getting them to be more comfortable in front of the camera and that really allows me to open up and get the most out of the capturing the moments from their big day.

One of our hottest offerings are our photo fusion videos.  They combine cinematic wedding videography and still photography in short form video to really tell the story of your wedding day.

Looking for a Chicago wedding photographer or cinematic wedding film?  Contact today us via phone or email to schedule your consultation.

Hands On : Nikon D7000

In the past several years there have been a few digital SLR cameras that have been real game changers for me and in each instance, allowed me to push the photography envelope even further. While I had been shooting film for years, digital was an unexplored territory for me. It was the Nikon D70s that was my gateway into the digital SLR world; it wasn't particularly stunning and was more or less useless above ISO 400 but nonetheless, I was hooked. In December of 2007, after being on a long waiting list at my favorite camera store, the Nikon D3 was mine.  I didn't have to just learn a new, more complex, camera but I also had to learn a new of shooting in low light.  Previously unimaginable, I was able to get usable shots at ISO 3200 and even 6400!  It completely blew my mind and forever changed me as a wedding photographer.  About a year after the release of the Nikon D3, I became enamored with the silky smooth video that was being captured from HD digital SLR cameras.  The Canon 5D Mark II lead the pack with its full frame sensor and 1080p video capture.  Suffice it to say, it was my next game-changing acquisition.

Fast forward to Fall, 2010...  Nikon [finally] announces that they're releasing a HD digital SLR that records in 1080p and is to offer stellar low light performance.  Enter the Nikon D7000.

This isn't going to be some drawn out review of all of the features of the new camera.  Nor will it be full of photos of the camera and detail of the menu system.  You can head over to dpreview for all that technical stuff.  I've only had the camera for a couple of days and have not yet had a chance to run it through every single field test imaginable yet.  As a wedding photographer, you can rest assured that it will be used to shoot everything from dimly lit churches to fast motion in bright daylight.  For now though, I'm sticking to what I've found out so far.

Ergonomics : As this is ultimately a prosumer camera, it's a lot lighter and smaller than my D3.  When mounting my 70-200mm f/2.8 on it, the camera body feels somewhat anemic in comparison.  Hopefully it will begin to feel more natural once I get a battery grip on it.  I have to say that I'm really liking that the toggle for video live view is right next to where my right thumb rests on the back of the camera.  Looks like they took a page out of the Canon 7D book on this. 


User Interface : Being a long time Nikon shooter, most aspects of the user interface, from the command dial to the GUI, seems familiar enough to navigate through without needing to refer to the manual.  Speaking of which, I still haven't opened the manual yet.  It does have some elements that are borrowed from some of Nikon's consumer cameras that took me a little getting used to.  One in particular is the toggle for selecting between continuous and single AF servo modes.  On every other Nikon digital SLR I have, it's a 3 position switch that's in the front of the camera body.  The D7000 has a 2 position switch with a button on it that must be depressed while using the rear sub-command dial to change between continuous and single modes.  Maybe I should pat my head and rub my belly at the same time too...

Speed : The three aspects of speed that I'm most concerned with are: write speed, CH shooting speed, and AF lock speed.  The D7000 scores good marks in all three categories.  I use class 6 SDHC cards that the D7000 seems to have no problem writing to.  Seems to slow down a little bit when writing to two cards at the same time but this should not be surprising.  Nikon claims 6FPS while shooting in CH mode; this sounds about right.  While there have been many occasions where the 11FPS on my D3 has come in handy; I think 6FPS is more than sufficient on this camera.  Getting the AF to lock quickly was not an issue when shooting stills.  The continuous 3D AF tracking in video mode however seemed to be a bit lacking.  Okay, it was a lot lacking...  While it's a step in the right direction, I really hope that the contrast detection-based AF algorithms will get make some major strides as the next generation of Nikon pro bodies come out soon.

Video : Finally... 1080p recording comes to Nikon.  I'm super excited about this and look forward to throwing just about every lens I have at this camera to see how it performs.  A couple of major observations so far though:

1. Only 24p is available at 1080 resolution.  I prefer shooting at 30p so I have a few extra frames in case I need to drop the speed a little.
2. Continuous AF is not quite mature enough to trust using.
3. Glad Nikon dropped motion JPEG for the codec.  h.264 is now widely recognized and just performs better than motion JPEG in my opinion.  
4. Up to 20 minutes of straight recording time is class leading.  My 5DII stops around 10-12 minutes.  I haven't tried running video for long periods of time yet so I'm not sure how prone the CMOS sensor is to overheating.  Another thing about a CMOS sensor, it does suffer from the "Jello effect" so remember not to pan too quickly.
5. With an APS-C sized sensor, it is worth noting the sensor

High ISO Performance : It's not a D3.  For some comparisons, I took a series of shots with one of my D3 bodies and compared it to a set of shots of a similar setup by the D7000.  For stills, I feel comfortable pushing the D7000 to about ISO 1250.  If I had to, I'd probably push the video to ISO 3200 if I absolutely had to.  Overall, it's great for a prosumer camera but I don't plan on replacing my D3 bodies with this. 

Here are a couple of side by side comparisons in Lightroom of similarly shot images:

Check out my photo gallery of D7000 sample photos and videos.  I hope to get some wedding footage with it in the next couple of weeks.

E-Session : Cat + Ryan

It's been quite a while since I've updated my photography blog and I thought I'd start off with an awesome engagement photo session with Cat and Ryan in the West Loop.

wedding : Jessica + Brad

What an awesome way to kick off the 2010 wedding season! Jess and Brad had a beautiful day complete with dreamy blue skies and warm weather (well, warm for January in Chicago). Brad really wowed Jess with his bride's gift early on in the day. En route to Union Station in Joliet for location shots, the limo bus got caught by raised bridge. Not skipping a beat, we ran outside to snap a few shots of the couple before the bridge started to lower. The evening's festivities kicked into high gear after dinner with the Pete Fleming Orchestra and Boothshoot photo booth.

Ceremony : First Presbyterian Church
Reception : Arrowhead Golf Club
2nd Photo Location : Joliet Union Station
Photography : Daniel Gin Photography
Videography : Modern Image
Band : Pete Fleming Orchestra
Photo Booth : Boothshoot Photo Booths

Review : HyperDrive Album Portable Photo Storage Device

Without a doubt, one of the biggest challenges that wedding and event photographers face is backing up their images when out in the field.  It can be a tall order to make sure that thousands of images are backed up and available redundantly in the event that something catastrophic were to happen to the original memory cards.  Being a worry wort about my images, I've been using Sanho's COLORSPACE O portable photo storage device for the past couple of years with a high degree of success.  It's really portable, has a substantial amount of storage, the battery life is fantastic, and it's fast.  Compared to some of the other devices out there (Wolverine, Epson P-series, etc.), the COLORSPACE O was superior in just about every way.  I didn't think that Sanho could top the HyperDrive O but I was wrong.  They announced their newest model, the HyperDrive Album, in late February and I knew I had to get one..

First off, it's larger than the models leading up it.  With a new 4.8" LCD, it's noticeably larger than the HyperDrive O that I have.  The screen is brilliant though; the display is crisp and clear.  I purchased the standalone unit and outfitted it with a Seagate 250GB 2.5" SATA drive that I had laying around.  (Yes, I have a stack of hard drives just laying around.)

 

Size aside, the other really noticeable difference over the previous models is the performance.  I averaged downloads between 10-14MBPS with the COLORSPACE O on my UDMA compact flash cards.  When using the HyperDrive Album I saw downloads yielded a staggering 18-27MBPS; nearly double the speed! 

The HyperDrive Album can be charged either by the included AC adapter or USB/5Vcar adapter; which is super convenient.  Long term battery life has yet to be determined as I haven't ran a full field test of the HyperDrive Album yet; but my preliminary estimates put it to at least 100GB of backups.  One noteworthy item about the HyperDrive Album that is also different from previous models; the battery is no longer user-serviceable/replaceable.  After talking to Sanho support, I found out that it can only be replaced by the manufacturer.  Bearing that in mind, it may be worthwhile for some to purchase the extended warranty.

The HyperDrive Album's image viewer has support for camera RAW files current to the release and is upgradeable via firmware updates.  Histogram and EXIF data for stored images can also be displayed in the viewer.  It also has a built-in slideshow feature that can come in handy with previewing images to clients.

Pros:

• Super fast portable photo storage device
• Fantastic display
• Hard drive capacities vary and can be changed by user
• Backs up compact flash and SD/SDHC cards
• Reasonably priced compared to Epson P-series photo storage devices
• Convenient USB charging
• RAW viewer support
• Firmware can be updated

Cons:

• Battery is not user replaceable
• More expensive than previous HyperDrive COLORSPACE models
• No built-in support for other types of memory cards including the up and coming SDXC cards

Its speed alone makes it a worthwhile investment for shooters looking piece of mind when out in the field.  I highly recommend it.  Someone want to buy my COLORSPACE O now?  :)

wedding : Kara and David

What an honor it was to be selected by this amazing couple who chose to have an international wedding centered here in Chicago.  Kara, originally from Chicago, and David, originally from Mexico, currently live in near London in the UK.  They chose to bring all of their closest friends and family together here in Chicago in late last year for their wedding celebration.  The ceremony and reception took place in the evening at Cité.  Situated high atop Lake Point Tower, it treated all of the guests to truly breathtaking 360 degree views of the Chicago's night time skyline.  

February 2010 Chicago SmugMug User Group

This month, the Chicago SMUG is taking a field trip to the Chicago Photography Center! Globe trekker/photographer/instructor, Krystal Meisel, will discuss ethics and copyright as it pertains to photography. Krystal's adventures have taken her from the Artic Circle to the banks of the Tiber River. She's taught at the Museum of contemporary Art, the Museum of Science and Industry, and currently at the Chicago Photography Center.

The Chicago Photography Center is located at 3301 N. Lincoln Avenue, Chicago, IL 60657 This month's SMUG will start promptly at 7:30 PM and run till about 9:00 PM. See you there!

January 2010 SmugMug User Group

Get your SmugMug questions answered at this month's SMUG! Nick, our resident SmugMug support hero will be taking your questions, going over some of the latest SmugMug enhancements, and showcasing some of the large print offerings. If you haven't seen some of the larger custom prints that SmugMug offers, be sure not to miss this SMUG!

01/19/2010 @ 7:00PM
1000 W. Monroe
Chicago, IL 606071