I joined a photo group

on Long Island and it really is from what I can see after two session
a great bunch of men and women. It's called Island Photo Group
http://www.islandphotogroup.com/ (IPG). What is so interesting is
that it is like they found some of the nicest and most capable people
on Long Island who are very down to earth, very sincere and without
many of the ego problems you find in most groups. They really seem to
love what they are doing.

I certainly can see the value of being involved in a group like this
that arranges field trips, has critique and question and answer
meetings and has special meetings/seminars like the one I attended
last night..it was great.

It was hosted by the IPG but presented by Nikon (which is right up the
road in Melville). Christopher Knapp did the presentation for Nikon
and he was terrific. The subjects were CLS, of which I was clueless,
and Capture NX II (By the way, Capture NX will not work on files
created by the D700 or anything after the D300 and the D3).

CLS is really so easy to use and with one or two more speedlights,
there are lots of things I can do. Obviously, the real work is in the
trial and error of deciding where to put the lights, what groups they
are in and what what power they will fire. I can certainly see where
I'd be better of with two SB600 rather than one SB900 although the
SB900 is nice to have for longer lenses. I don't need to worry about
the Commander because the D700 has the on camera flash.

I wil probably buy the trial version of Capture NX2 because there is
so much you can do with it without having to deal with the levels and
"layers" of Photoshop...which I will buy but that learning curve will
be a lot longer.

I have two more questions that I will ask in subsequent posts. But I
just wanted to say that joining the club not only helped me with the
technical opoerations of the camera but the critiques of everyone's
pictures are so surprisingly miniscule at first but it does train your
eyes to look for these little things that you never noticed before.
But it's even more than that because it essentially trains you to be a
photographer, albeit an amateur.