For a number of years, Grays of Westminster has presented and hosted a number of comprehensive photographic seminars, workshops, tutorials and events covering a wide variety of subject matter including wildlife and natural history, flash, general photographic technique, portrait, macro and many more.
We are delighted to announce a very special flash seminar to be held in central London, at Fitzroy House, 37 Fitzroy Street, London W1T 6DX on Saturday 16th January, 2010.
The seminar will be presented by Simon Stafford, technical director of Nikon Owner magazine and respected author of many Nikon books, and will take place on Saturday January 16th from 2.00 p.m. until 5.30 p.m. It will be limited to 15 delegates in order that each attendee will be able to benefit more fully from the tuition. The cost of the session will be £135 with a special price of £95 if you are a current Nikon Owner subscriber.
To book, please call between 2.00 p.m. and 5.30 p.m. Monday to Friday on 020 7828 4925 or for International calls telephone + 44 (0)20 7828 4925, and ask to speak to me, Gillian Greenwood; alternatively send an email with your full name, daytime landline and mobile telephone number to:info@graysofwestminster.co.uk
Agenda for the session:
Part One: Flash basics
- Introduction to Nikon Speedlights and the Nikon Creative Lighting System
- Understanding light, sync speeds, flash modes, and flash sync modes
- Shooting with one Speedlight on your camera
- Modifying light, its colour, quality, and direction
- Taking the flash off camera, using a cable
- The Advanced Wireless Lighting system
Part Two: Digging deeper
- Advanced Creative Lighting System features: FV Lock and Auto High-speed Sync
- Shooting with multiple Speedlights using wireless control
- Controlling light: get creative with filters and light modifiers
- Practical considerations for location shooting
Part Three: Shooting with one light
- A practical demonstration of setting up and shooting a portrait photograph, using a single Nikon Speedlight and the few simple lighting accessories
Please note: there will be ample opportunity to ask questions throughout the event.
About Simon Stafford
Simon Stafford is considered by many to be one of the foremost technical Nikon experts in the UK. With over twenty-five years of experience using the Nikon system, he brings his considerable expertise to bear both as technical editor for Nikon Owner, and as author of a number of comprehensive books on the Nikon system, including his best-seller series of Magic Lantern Guides on the Nikon D70s/D70, the Nikon D80, the Nikon D40, D40X, D50, D60, D200, D300, D700, D90, D3. The series includes a Magic Lantern Guide on the Nikon AF Speedlights & Creative Lighting System, and he is currently working on a fully updated, second edition to include the latest Nikon SB-900.
Special Nikon Owner discount off the price of the course:
Enrolling on this course as a current Nikon Owner subscriber will allow you the benefit of a discount of £40 off the normal price of £135 for the session.
About Nikon Owner
Nikon Owner is a worldwide users’ group initially founded with the purpose of assisting Nikon owners to make full use of the Nikon equipment they own, to give advice on a wide spectrum of photographic queries and problems, and at the same time to offer ideas to bring about an increase in photographic skills. As a subscriber to this group, you will receive an array of offers and assistance, which includes:
- Nikon Owner Magazine
- Three-year warranty
A three-year warranty is available to Nikon Owner subscribers only for any new Nikon purchases made at Grays of Westminster. An eighteen-month warranty has just now also been made available for Nikon Owner subscribers purchasing second-hand kit from Grays of Westminster’s superb second-hand department.
- Technical Helpline
Full use of our Technical Helpline, which is run expertly by Simon Stafford. There is an encyclopaedic list of Q&A’s on the Nikon Owner website, or subscribers can email him directly with any photographic queries, no matter how small or large.
- Interactive website
Interactive subscribers’ only website: subscribers’ message board, subscribers’ gallery (post your own images), press releases, technical equipment reviews, subscriber events, etc, etc.
- Discounts off courses
Subscription to Nikon Owner also provides discounts off a range of other photographic courses, including the annual Heather Angel Wildlife and Natural History Workshop, and 10% off all courses at Nikon UK.
- Discounts off Think Tank photographic bags
Nikon Owner subscribers also receive a 10% discount off Think Tank photographic bags if purchased at Grays of Westminster.
- Events
Special events are regularly organized for Nikon Owner subscribers.
Please email info@graysofwestminster.co.uk with your name, daytime landline and mobile telephone number if you are interested in enrolling in Nikon Owner or call me after 2.00 p.m. Monday to Friday on 020 7828 4925 or for International calls, telephone + 44 (0)20 7828 4925. The cost of an annual subscription to Nikon Owner is £59.
With best wishes,
Gillian (Greenwood)
Features Editor, Events’ Coordinator
I was one of the first to download the full-featured Nikon NX sorwfate on a trial basis in July 2006. I was immediately hooked. This is a very innovative sorwfate program that most photographers who shoot in NIKON RAW format will want. For those not familiar with RAW format, essentially a RAW format photo file enables the photographer to make post-shot changes to a photo to a much greater extent than is possible when shooting conventional JPEG file shots. So, for example, if one wishes to adjust the exposure on a RAW photo, you can do so and the effect is essentially the same, within the range of a couple of F/stops, as though you had shot the picture that way in the first place (there are exceptions to this beyond the scope of this review). The same is true for many other settings, such as Color Mode (SRGB versus Adobe, for example), White Balance, Sharpening, etc. You can modify some of these to some extent on JPEGs, but when you do there is always a loss of data while there is no such loss when modifying RAW files. The bottom line is that if you botch a setting shooting RAW files you are much more likely to be able to salvage the photo if you shot RAW, as compared to if you shot JPEG. If you are shooting a wedding or some other critical event where failure is not an option, only a VERY competent expert would not opt to shoot RAW, in my opinion at least. Capture NX enables the photographer to make very significant enhancements or adjustments to RAW, or to some extent JPEG or TIFF images. The centerpiece of the program is what Nikon calls Control Points. The program enables one to place control points at various locations on a photograph, and thereby control or modify the color of selected portions of the image. What is even more amazing is that the program also enables the user to make very fine selective adjustments to other effects, such as sharpening or D-lighting, such that only selective parts of an image will be sharpened, for example. Other programs have offered the ability to do what Nikon Capture NX can do, but in my opinion I have seen no other program that is so intuitive, and so easy for the photographer to learn. Many photographers, especially non-pros like me, want to spend more time taking photographs and less time behind the computer in the digital darkroom modifying them. Capture NX is designed for precisely that it really is very intuitive and easy to learn. I found the NX user interface to be better than that of Capture 4.4, which NX replaces. Others have differed on this point, but I very quickly became comfortable with the more orderly layout on Capture NX. There are a few areas in which version 1.0 can stand some improvements in future upgrades. Certain menu options stubbornly return to default settings rather than remain at the user’s last (and usually preferred) setting. Despite the good user interface, there are a few areas that will stand some tweaks in future upgrades. In short, NX V1.0 has a few rough edges as first-release versions of sorwfate usually do. Nonetheless, in most respects this is a polished product that certainly is ready for prime time, in my opinion at least. Like Capture 4.4 before it, Nikon NX want a LOT of memory. A fast CPU and at least 1 GB of RAM is recommended. Overall, this is a remarkable product that I highly recommend to any photographer who shoots in Nikon’s RAW format.