Belly Dancers

raid

Dad Photographer
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dadsm3 said:
Nothing here...but thanks for this. Second from last, middle.....

ahem... technical information on this image: Bessa T with CV 25mm/4.

Raid
 
I meant that purely artistically of course, she's giving you a very alluring look. Well caught.
What did you think I meant?
 
Marvellous work, Raid. And I agree ... :angel:

dadsm3 said:
Nothing here...but thanks for this. Second from last, middle.....

William
 
Very nice, but just to add some nitpicky technical content to the thread... DOF seems surprisingly limited considering you were outdoors in good light. It's a bit disconcerting in the first and fourth images, where the performers' faces are well outside the plane of best focus. Was that a deliberate decision? Am I being too conventional in expecting the face to be at least one of the sharper areas in a people picture?
 
Whoa. All of those were taken with a 25 mm? You must have been standing very, very close...

Nice work!
 
No. Only the last two images were taken with the CV 25mm/4. The rest were taken with a Canon T90 with a 80-200/4L lens. I was trying to take "abstract" photos, and that's why I did not focus on the eyes all the time.

Raid
 
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raid said:
No. Only the last two images were taken with the CV 25mm/4. The rest were taken with a Canon T90 with a 80-200/4L lens. I was trying to take "abstract"photos, and that's why I did not focus on the eyes all the time.

Raid

That L lens is supposed to be one very sweet piece of glass. With the T90 I'd guess you could get the shutter speed way up to open up the lens?

Seriously, I do like the 1st & 2nd images a great deal. I also try to play a bit with expections when I can - this one for example: http://www.rangefinderforum.com/photopost/showphoto.php?photo=42251

Thank you for sharing these, Raid.
 
raid said:
No. Only the last two images were taken with the CV 25mm/4. The rest were taken with a Canon T90 with a 80-200/4L lens. I was trying to take "abstract"photos, and that's why I did not focus on the eyes all the time.

Raid

The interesting thing is that with SLR's, the VF image is always at max aperture. The only thing you can clearly see in the VF is what you are looking at as you watch the scene, and obviously this is where the focus will be since you cannot focus on anything else. In this case, it appears to be about a foot south of her eyes. That part of her body also figures prominently in the composition in both photos.

Or, it may just be coincidence and you may have just been trying to take abstract photos.
 
Hi Raid,
Great shots. The fifth one, a portrait, catches one of those magical moments making my heart melt.

Good Luck,
Ruben
 
Guys guys ... this was one day before my birthday, and I took it as a present to enjoy the day. As for the lenses, it is interesting how each lens captures a different perspective. Isolating parts of a body is the thing that a 80-200 lets me do, whereas the 25mm lens allowed me "street photography" incognito style. Believe it or not, but quite often I had to guess focus since the dancers were jumping around non stop. If the lens focused where it focused then this was "destiny" ...

Using a RF besides an SLR see med to have worked well for me. I first used the 25mm/4 to get a shot, and then when seeing no objection, I used the zoom lens on the SLR. I used the Program mode in the T90 so that I could "focus" on composition.


Raid
 
Bingley said:
Even so, the last two photos taken w/ the 25 make me re-think the perspective of this lens. Impressive!

Bingley:
I also was quite impressed with the CV 35mm/4 at close focusing range. The resulting images look quite undistorted and natural to me. This lens is a winner.

Raid
 
ruben said:
Hi Raid,
Great shots. The fifth one, a portrait, catches one of those magical moments making my heart melt.

Good Luck,
Ruben

Hello Ruben,

When I took that photo, I knew that it would be a good one. I have three similar shots. The light was perfect. Her Hispanic background [I guess]makes her look like an Arab woman. On the other hand, the other woman with tattoos looked out of place for a belly dancer. That was the main reason for my close ups. I have never seen oriental dancers with tattoos.

Raid
 
wlewisiii said:
That L lens is supposed to be one very sweet piece of glass. With the T90 I'd guess you could get the shutter speed way up to open up the lens?

Seriously, I do like the 1st & 2nd images a great deal. I also try to play a bit with expections when I can - this one for example: http://www.rangefinderforum.com/photopost/showphoto.php?photo=42251

Thank you for sharing these, Raid.


This lens is one of my sharpest lenses. I bought it after seeing a lens test in which it came out better than my prized Angeneiux 70-210/3.5. The dancers were moving non-stop, and I needed fast shutter speed and some depth of field, and that's what mafe me pick the Program mode.

Raid
 
jlw said:
Very nice, but just to add some nitpicky technical content to the thread... DOF seems surprisingly limited considering you were outdoors in good light. It's a bit disconcerting in the first and fourth images, where the performers' faces are well outside the plane of best focus. Was that a deliberate decision? Am I being too conventional in expecting the face to be at least one of the sharper areas in a people picture?


jlw: When the face was most important, I focused on the face for a portrait. When motion was interesting, I let things go wherever they seemed to go. Sometimes it is OK to break the rules in photography. This was an informal setting where the quality of the resulting photos is not very important. I had the liberty to experiment a little.

Raid
 
Very nice shots, Raid! And I too was startled to see the extensive tattoos on that one gal, never seen tattoos on a belly dancer either. My wife used to be part of a local group of belly dancers, and I enjoyed seeing how much the ladies enjoyed themselves. :)
 
Doug: This also is a group of belly dancers that attend gatherings. They are very nice women and have pleasant personalities. The tattoos gave me the idea to get some close ups for the graphical effect. Anyways, I had a good time taking photos of people other than my family.

Raid
 
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