Canon 5DMKII, 24mm, 800iso, f/2.0, 1/40, manual

Alyssa and I made sushi last week and it was awesome. It tasted just like anything I would usually get at a sushi restaurant. Making the rolls were pretty easy, but the surprisingly hard part was cutting the rolls. I love sushi and this is something that I definitely want to get good at. And that reminds me, I love spam masubi too…I need to get on that.

I recently picked up a 24mm f/1.4 for my 5D and had a hard time deciding between that and the 35mm. I tend to prefer a wider lens so I decided to try out the 24mm for a while. Having a prime is something I wanted because zoom lenses make me lazy and this will force me to move more and work harder for my photos. I am still trying to tell if the lens is sharp wide open at 1.4-1.8. I’m not very used to shooting with that wide of an aperture so its hard to tell if I am just missing my focus or if its the lens. What do you do if your copy is not sharp? Send it in? I need to look into that. Looks like for now I have more testing to do…I haven’t used it too much yet but I intend for it to be my smaller and lighter walk-around lens to replace my 24-70mm.

Is anybody else shooting with or used to shoot with the 24mm f/1.4? Opinions? Tips?

Also, the auto white balance on the 5D is driving me crazy. I don’t know if it was the lights inside the house but the raw files were so warm. Still getting used to this 5D too.

Enjoy some photos of our fine dining.

Canon 5DMKII, 24mm, 800iso, f/2.0, 1/60, manual

Canon 5DMKII, 24mm, 800iso, f/1.6, 1/60, manual

Canon 5DMKII, 24mm, 800iso, f/1.6, 1/100, manual

Canon 5DMKII, 24mm, 400iso, f/1.6, 1/50, manual

Canon 5DMKII, 24mm, 400iso, f/2.0, 1/50, manual

The Fuji X10 is slowly become a go-to camera when I’m out and about. I’ll usually let Alyssa handle it when I using my 5D.

Canon 5DMKII, 24mm, 400iso, f/1.6, 1/30, manual

Canon 5DMKII, 24mm, 400iso, f/1.6, 1/30, manual

This was a fun photoshoot that I did with UCI Track star Charles Jock. I went out looking for a cool location to shoot and came across the UCI boiler room for all the water that is distributed throughout the campus. I went in and told them that I wanted to use the facility for an athlete photoshoot and they said it was ok, so a few hours later I came back with all my equipment and a few assistants. It was a pretty cool location to shoot because it was industrial, unique, and there weren’t any disturbances. The place was really loud and I was pretty much shouting the whole time, but there were very few workers actually in the space and the ones that were there just worked around us like we weren’t even there.

Check out the behind the scenes video below!

Charles Jock Photoshoot (May 24, 2010) from Scott Roeder on Vimeo.

5/23/10 – Irvine, CA – UC Irvine freshman Pratik Panda gets in the right mindset as he poses for a portrait.

On the same day as the fencing photoshoot, I also had another photoshoot. Once again I wanted to shoot something unique that doesn’t usually get much recognition. I have always loved playing ping pong and for part of this past year it got pretty big in my dorm between a few of us. I have always seen photos of actual ping pong matches but had never shot one myself so I attempted to create the perfect illustration. I set up a backdrop behind the table, two lights from the sides and big soft box right above my head. After some spray on sunscreen, water, and natural sweat, we were able to get a nice glistening on the skin. This photoshoot was prompted by the 2010 UCI Photolympics.

We even tested out spraying water into the shot, which had potential but didn’t work out.

My friend and fellow photographer Lee was there to help me set up equipment and also stand in as a test subject.

5/23/10 – Irvine, CA – Jessica Enriquez keeps her eye on the ball during the ping pong photoshoot for the 2010 UCI Photolympics.

I usually like to get both a female and male subject for most of my photoshoot sometimes one might just look more natural than the other. I think Panda looked a little more natural and fierce in his photo but I still liked this one too.

Below is a shot of the kids from the dorm who came out to help.

5/23/10 -  Irvine, CA – UC Irvine Fencing team member Alex Helmintoller poses for a portrait.

When the 2010 UCI Photolympics were happening I knew that I definitely wanted to enter the max amount of photos in the portraits category. I like shooting athletes and I wanted to do something unique. Luckily Alex from my dorm was on the fencing team at UCI and was willing to help me out with my photoshoot. He brought all his gear and we headed out late one night to shoot these photos. I also wanted to get a female subject wearing the outfit just to see what it would look like, so Jaclyn Wang also accompanied us on the shoot. The photos of Alex and Jaclyn both turned out great, but I could only select one to submit so I went with the one of Alex. Below is the shot of Jaclyn, along with a shot of our crew for the night.

During fall quarter I did a shoot with two of the UCI Baseball team players, Danny Bibona and Jeff Cusick. The article was about Ants vs Eaters baseball series, which is a inter-squad series of games to get them started for the season. The photo turned out pretty good and the photo editor and the sports editor wanted to save it for a later issue so that they could print it bigger and in color.

Long story short, it finally got printed in winter quarter but ended up not getting printed bigger or in color.

Below, assistants Marlon Castillo and Pratik Panda stand in for a test shot.

Nikon D3, 105mm, 100iso, f/18, 1/250, manual

Nikon D3, 105mm, 100iso, f/18, 1/250, manual

I used my blue backdrop since it was the only one I had, and just setup a little studio in the living room of my dorm. The shots for her project were done pretty quick, but we spent hours after just taking photos for fun. The rest of the photos can be seen here.