welcome...

Hi there! I'm Natt - a Sydney based wedding and portrait photographer. This space is for me to share my passion for photography, my latest work as well as bits and pieces of my life. I'd love to hear from you so please feel free to leave a comment or drop me an email. Thanks for stopping by!
nattnee twittered...

go full frame!


As you know, I bought a 5D Mark II a few days ago from a store which I won't be naming names 'cos frankly I'm annoyed at their stinginess. I mean, I've spent a LOT of money with them buying the body and a new lens and they refuse to price match a measly little (overpriced) battery for me. Also when the camera just came out, their mark up was just so ridiculous. They were really taking advantage of low stock level. Yes, it's just business and they're not doing anything wrong at all, it's just that I knew them since they were just a little tiny store in somebody's apartment and now the bigger they got the less pleasant they and my shopping experience became. Anyway, I'm not the only one with that feeling.

Usually when you want to purchase a big ticket item, you talk to the sales guy, you ask for advice, you have a look at the stuff and you ponder about it, you might negotiate price, you might even go away and come back later. This was different 'cos I knew exactly what I wanted and so when I stepped into the store and the sales guy go "Can I help you?", I had nothing to say or chitchat about, all I said was "Can I get a 5D Mark II please?". Just like that, as casual as if I was buying for a bottle of milk at a convenient store. It just felt so wrong!

The 5D Mark II is veerryyy niceee...melikey!!! I came from the cropped frame world so the full frame effect is really impressing me. I took some shots around my desk and golly I nearly fell out of my chair. The shots are a lot wider and the DOF more shallow, even my humble 50mm 1.8 looked good! I have also upgraded my 50mm to the 1.4 version and my bank account has since filed for divorce on the grounds of splurging =(

"I would never need to go full frame", I stupidly and naively said that years ago when I started getting into photography. My friend thought it was the most ridiculous statement and now I know why he laughed at me. (BTW Es, I *knew* you were going to remind me of that when I told you I bought it...your memory is annoyingly good hehe =p)

So here's how much frame real estate you really lose when using crop vs full frame. Photos taken at same distance to subject







For this one, the shot done with the 40D had to be taken further away in order to get the two photos framed roughly in the same manner. The same settings were used but the DOF is less shallow on the 40D due to the distance.





Sorry, none of this is really new info but I was just testing it all out for myself.

One of the best thing about the 5D Mark II is the screen. OH MY LORD, the screen is fricken amazing especially compared to the atrocious rectangular blueish thingy they call a screen on the 40D. Thank you Canon for the lovely lovely screen.

The high ISO is really great too. Here's a couple of quick shots (in dark condition obviously):





100% crop of the shuffle:







So yeah, love the 5D Mark II. It's hard not to when you've always used a cropped frame! Oh the downside would be the file size. I shoot RAW.

As for the 50mm 1.8 vs 1.4, the 1.4 has better build quality for sure, however, the images don't look hugely different to me but I've only done a couple of close up test shots though - definitely not a throughly tested expert opinion there =)

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Always..thought that u shooot all ur subjects with full framer...what about the video?how good is that? (22 February 2009 13:22)  

@aaron - haven't played with video yet but i'll post something when i do =) (22 February 2009 16:22)  

Didn't I give you my dealer's details? They were sooo much cheeper than everyone else. I could have sworn i did..........did I? (01 March 2009 23:36)  

fernando & chi: wedding


After the last two posts, this blog is sorely in need of something happy and what could be happier than a wedding? Especially a wedding that's full of laughter like this one which I second shot for Jenny. Here's a very small selection from the day.


























Personally, I love crazy booth for group shots. It's fun for the guests and fun for me =)









I like the diagonal formed by the light in this one.





Happy late Monday nite / Tuesday.

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Beautiful work Natt. I love the door shots, and how cute are the people on the cake! I love those :) (10 February 2009 15:51)  

I think I am biased (cos you know me and dance shots haha), but go the dance shots!! :D Thanks for your hard work that day! :D Glad you kept the processing for the photobooth similar to how I did it :) Keeps the style consistent :D (12 February 2009 01:40)  

tragedy - we can help


I had a really good sleep thanks to the weather. The temperature cooled right down today and the sky is filled with thick clouds. Sounds gloomy but that depends where you are. Here where I live, surrounded by white buildings and greenery, the overcast weather only made this place look whiter, clean and peaceful. I love today's weather.

Walking home from the gym, I breathed in and enjoyed the cool air. My eyes looked around comfortably at all this clean whiteness and then I thought about Victoria. Images of burnt cars and black ashes that was someone else's home filled my mind. What a stark contrast.

I am saddened by the tragedy that has hit Victoria - the deadly fires that claimed so many lives and homes. I can't imagine what the survivors are going through right now. I can't imagine losing everything in a blink of an eye. I can't imagine the magnitude of suffering those that died had to endure and those that live are pushing through. It's devastating. It's awful. It's horrific. It's senseless. It's undeserved. Life isn't fair is such a huge understatement.

If you are reading this, please help. We can lend a hand right here in front of our computers. Please visit the Red Cross website and make a donation to the Victorian Bushfire 2009 Appeal. It doesn't matter how big or small your donation is, every little bit goes towards helping somebody.





I wish all those people will find hope and happiness again really soon.

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Here here Natt :) It's just so senseless and horrific. I can't believe there are so many stupid, hateful people who would deliberately do this. It's up to all of us Aussies to band together to help in any way we can. (09 February 2009 23:56)  

twitter and a small request


Who isn't on Facebook these days? I do think it's a good way to keep in touch with people and while some update every bits and bobs available on there, adding all sorts of applications and playing games etc, the only frequent (and it ain't all that frequent by most people' standards) activity I'm engaged in is updating the status and reading others. One line can potentially give you an idea of the other person's state of activity and/or mind.

So 'cos I like the status thing, I thought I'd add it to my blog (see that little bird above) via twitter. It looks so simple, just a little welcome message and a box for my twitter updates but wouldn't you know it? It doesn't work properly on Internet Explorer.

IE is my pet hate. All the coding I've done for this blog and any changes I make to it always work perfectly for Firefox and Safari. The reverse is true for IE - never works the first time and there's always extra tweaking to do. Right now, after adding the little twitter message box, my blog is stuffed on IE so if it looks that way to you it means I'm still trying to fix it.

That brings me to my tiny little request. If you are using IE, please consider moving to Firefox or Safari or Chrome. Seriously, they're loads better than IE (and I'm not just biased for my own sake). Also please do drop me a mail/comment if you ever see anything that looks out of whack on this blog. Ta muchly.

P.S. There are two different Nattnee on Facebook. This is me.

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Who says it doesn't work for IE? Works absolutely perfectly fine for me |-) (04 February 2009 00:56)