Just a warning about this post: it's not safe for viewing at work. It contains nudity.
On Tuesday evening, I did something I haven't done since mid-May: I picked up a camera.
No, not my camera on my phone, or the action camera that I take with me when I go kayaking. I mean one of my Nikon D-SLRs.
It's hard to believe but I haven't taken a photo with one of these cameras since I was in Peru. That was two months ago. And I'm retired. I have all the time in the world to go out and take photos.
But even looking at the photos on my smartphone, I haven't even used this pocket device to take many photos in the past couple of months. I've taken one or two shots whilst kayaking, the photos to be used for a thumbnail for an accompanying YouTube video.
I took a few shots a couple of weeks ago, on the evening of DW's and my wedding anniversary, as we strolled Lowertown and visited the new Kiweki Point for sunset. But that's pretty much it.
And after taking the shots, there were so many that I didn't look at again, afterward. They sat on my phone, virtually ignored. Here's one (on the right) that I only looked at to share in this post, as an example. It's unedited, shown exactly as I shot it.
There are quite a few more, which I may share next week, for Wordless Wednesday, just so that I can say that I did something with them.
Even when I took photos of our old kayaks, to list them for sale on Kijiji, I put little effort into the shots. I took a couple of snaps and that was it. I included an old YouTube video of the kayaks in action, in the ad, and hoped it would provide a good example of what the kayaks looked like and how they performed.
(They're still on the market, if anyone is interested.)
So, on Tuesday afternoon, when my phone gave me a reminder for an upcoming photo shoot, I had to make sure that my camera batteries were fully charged.
This photo shoot was held in a studio at the RA Centre, near Billings Bridge. I had never attended a shoot at this site before. Several years ago, I went to a meet-and-greet with my photography club, and the RA Centre was looking to get new memberships for its photo club, to which several of my photo club belonged.
I decided not to join because the annual fees were ridiculous, on top of which you had to pay if you wanted to book the studio. And, of course, any models would be extra.
The studio is in a former racquetball court, which is perfect for a photo studio because of the high ceilings and plenty of room for backdrops. The theme of this photo meetup was Figures and Fabrics, and featured New Zealand model, Lucy, who I had already been following on Bluesky for a few months.
It was nice to meet her in person.
Lucy would be posing, nude, while working with various pieces of fabric—wrapping it around herself, surrounding herself with it, or throwing it in the air. We also had some rectangular and square shapes, on which she would climb and pose.
She was great to work with.
As an added challenge, for myself, I chose to work with one fixed lens. I usually bring a couple of lenses to a photo shoot and almost always bring my 24–70mm f/2.8 zoom. But for this shoot, I'd only have my 50mm f/1.8 lens.
But I also decided to further challenge myself.
During these photo shoots, there are typically four or five photographers and we each take turns working with the model, rotating every two or three minutes. When it's your turn, you have the only active light trigger on your camera: everyone else must switch theirs off or remove it from the hot shoe.
But you're still allowed to photograph the model using the ambient light, so long as you don't get in the way of the photographer whose turn it is, and you don't try to direct the model.
All of the other photographers would continue to use their D-SLRs, without the triggers, and would change their exposure settings to suit the ambient-light conditions. But my further challenge had me set down my Nikon, and pull out my smartphone.
The camera in the Samsung Galaxy S24 is pretty good. And I wanted to put it in the Pro setting and see if I could capture Lucy with my phone as well as I could with my $2,600 D-SLR setup.
Admittedly, some shots didn't work out. In the low light, if Lucy was moving, there would be obvious blurs. Subtle movements of her face, hands, and hair would make an image unusable.
But some shots turned out rather well.
The following shots were captured with my Galaxy S24 and my Nikon D750. Can you tell which camera took which shot? (Don't let the proportions of the photo fool you. I expanded the empty space in most of these photos, during post-processing.)
Leave your guess in the Comments section.
One of the photographers in our group saw the results that I was getting from my phone and commented that she could never get images like that on her iPhone 13S. As evidence, she tried taking shots but I think she was shooting in fully automatic mode.
Not to fault her but no wonder she couldn't get the images she wanted. And, admittedly, a lot of shots that I took with my Galaxy S24 weren't very good. I shot hundreds of photos with my phone while I waited for my turn with my Nikon and there are still hundreds that I'll have to cull.
But some of them weren't bad at all, if I do say so, myself.
Seeing the quality of photos that I'm getting with my smartphone, I may use it again in future photo shoots. But it will never replace my D-SLRs, which can do so much more.
Though, when the technology in a smartphone allows it to sync with studio flashes, that might be a game-changer.
Happy Friday!