I recently picked up a new Nikon AF-S NIKKOR 24-70mm f/2.8E ED VR. As I have previously stated, I have the older version, which does not have VR. This lens is slightly sharper than the older version, but you will never notice it in real-life photography. The only reason to get this lens is if you want VR, and in my case, this comes in handy for me since I like to shoot handheld in low light.
For my friend’s shoot with her pets and boyfriend, I set my iso at 200, and I used 1/125 for my shutter and set the f- stop at f/7.1. I used my SB-700 flash and bounced the flash off of the ceiling. I set the exposure compensation to plus .7 and shot in manual mode. I always up my flash compensation when bouncing the flash off the ceiling since the pictures will come out underexposed. I shot both JPEG and RAW when I was shooting these pictures. I only used the RAW photos for this shoot since some pictures were under-exposed by as many as two stops.
For some pictures, I used PortraitPro for skin smoothing. This program cost $54.95 and is well worth the price. It is not as powerful as Photoshop, but it can do many things faster than you can in Photoshop.
Below are some pictures I took. The dogs were pretty hard to pose, had quite a bit of energy, and moved around a lot. I took approximately 48 photographs and probably got about ten good photos.
