Indonesian Valentine's Day Party 2010 in Sacramento

Happy Valentine's Day, everyone!  And Happy New Year to all of my Asian friends who are celebrating it.  It's pretty amazing that it happens on the same day.  Pink and Red, pretty cool combination.

Anywho, we Indonesians, do celebrate this 'holiday'.  Well, at least, we like the idea of the holiday itself.  It's a great time to get together and appreciate each other.  We are having this get together at a small restaurant in Sacramento.

This year, I had the chance to set up a simple photo booth for our get together.  I am using my D700, 24-70mm for the booth, and 70-200mm for the event coverage itself.  I rented an SB900 in addition to my own.  The reason for the other SB900 is so that I can trigger both flash with the wireless iTTL.  One is set up in a Lastolite Ezybox (24 x 24) softbox, and the other in a Westcott Halo umbrella.

The Nikon CLS system works extremely well.  It works even though I have one of the flash in the Halo umbrella. The photobooth setup works fairly well.  For next time, I would definitely use a background.  I can't always assume that the venue would have a good spot for that.

Overall, I think it was a great event.  I had great shots of the event also.  For more pictures, please visit my gallery.

Alyssia's shoot at Fairytale Town

We did a photo shoot of Alyssia on Saturday, 2/13/10 at the Fairytale Town in Sacramento, CA.

The idea of the shoot was to capture her free spirited and outgoing nature. Half of the shots were of her just playing around in the park. And she did not need a lot of directions for the poses too. She's a blast to work with.

Lastolite Ezybalance

Got my gray card from Adorama today. It's a lastolite Ezybalance, 12".

What's it for, you say? Well, supposedly, it helps in the post processing to figure out what the color temperature or white balance supposed to be.

It folds up nicely in a tiny round blue bag. The construction is pretty good. We'll see after some use. The gray side has a target on it to make it easy for the AF to work.

Tried it on the kids today with a flash on the camera. The Auto White Balance from the camera picks out 5500K for this picture.

The next one I used the pre-set white balance. This setting is previously set with the Ezybalance card.
It picked out 4200K as its color temp. Not bad actually, it's very close to the actual color. I'm going to start using this if I can't figure out the white balance on my next shoots.

It also has a white surface on the other side, but I have not used it for anything yet. Good for a small reflector I think.

My 24-70 back in business

Out of the hundreds if not thousands of copies of this lens, I had to get one that has the problem. Nikon 24-70 f2.8 is apparently very prone to binding zoom ring problem. It was said that because some of the parts are made with plastic, it is not as robust as they use to make these type of lenses.

You would think that a lens that expensive wouldn't have any cheap parts in it. I guess even Nikon needs to cut back.

I brought my lens in to a local camera repair shop, which by the way is a certified Nikon repair center, about two weeks ago. Pretty cool that I don't have to ship it anywhere. At first, I had a problem with convincing the person on the front desk that it has 5 year warranty from Nikon. Long story short, they took it in, and called me the next day that it's going to Nikon Service Center. They don't have the parts apparently. 10 business day turn around they said. Yikes, I need that lens.

Well, I let them send it in anyways, nothing I can do. I didn't want to let it stay 'broken'. It still took good pictures, just annoying having the ring snags at some spots.

Guess what, I got a call yesterday morning from the shop and they have it back from Nikon already. Now, I'm just waiting to use it again this weekend after using my 50mm 1.8 for the last two weeks. Those pictures will come up soon here.

About me

Hello, my name is Bambang Kusumo. And you're reading my first blog post. Yes, it is my very first blog.

This will be a spot where I will be posting my photography life. Not very much yet, since I've just started my Kusumo Photography, but they will be coming, soon. Just watch for the posts.