Brian Thedell Photography

Did you know you can bleach the black backing off the “negative” from Fuji instant peel apart film? I didn’t…

…until today, of course. The result:

I scanned this from the instant film negative

Window light plus reflector only—no photons were harmed in the making of this image…

I got a beauty dish! Yay!

So a model had to cancel on me for a shoot that was supposed to happen last weekend; the model was going to travel to San Diego, but those plans fell through at the last moment.

Bummer. I had a whole lighting scheme setup and everything. So the SO got drafted to at least try out the lighting. Here’s a result:

Softbox on one side, reflector on another...

…or was it underwear modeling? Well, some of it was implied nude…

Judge for yourself.

While I feel the whole shoot went well, there was one picture that stood out for me:

It's a very Roman pose, I know...

Special for the shoot, I rented a Zeiss lens that was supposed to be all that. The manual focusing wasn’t as bad as I worried it might have been, but frankly the lens didn’t perform for me commensurate to its price premium. In some lighting situations, in a direct test comparison, the color, contrast, etc. were only subtly better than my kit zoom lens. I think where most of the money goes is in the low distortion: the Zeiss barely needed any correction in Lightroom, while the kit lens had a lot to un-distort, er… you know what I mean.

So, am I discounting the value of high-end glass altogether? Hardly. I don’t think I could have done the pose above with quite the same “bite” of color and detail without a higher-end lens, like the Zeiss (the test did prove subtle advantages). And, renting the lens convinced me that I needed a wide-angle lens for full-body shots, fashion, etc. So, I took a deep gulp of air after my “Pepsi Challenge” and decided to go for a humble Canon “L” lens rather than a fancy-pants Zeiss*. I think I will try the Zeiss again when/if I get a full-frame camera. But for my crop-sensor 60D, I just don’t think the extra “quality”—elusive as it seems to be—over the “L” zoom will be all that noticeable, frankly.

*Take note, dear reader. This may indeed be the very first time on the Internet someone referred to an “L” lens from Canon as “humble,” at least without sarcasm…