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Raw files are good for a lot of reasons, and one of the most useful is allowing you to make full use of your camera’s dynamic range after you take the shot. One place where this comes in handy is when you’re on the edge of having enough light to make an image. Perhaps you don’t have a tripod and your shutter speed is creeping down into motion blur territory, or you’re shooting in the near dark and already have your ISO up as high as you want to go. Read more »

It seems appropriate that on a day when I was working on my new talk on photo composition, my friend Hy and I visited an exhibition of Garry Winogrand’s photos. Winogrand’s professed ideas about composition fly in the face of almost every piece of conventional wisdom. At least to hear him speak (in retrospect only now, as he passed away in 1984), photos did not and could not contain narrative or tell a story. For him only the grains of film within the frame mattered. Read more »

While Sigma may be best known for value-priced, often consumer-targeted, lenses, it is steadily improving its reputation for Pro glass. With its new Global series of lenses it feels it is really ready to start tackling Nikon and Canon head on. I’ve been fortunate to be able to review the first of this new line of lenses, the Sigma 35mm f/1.4 HSM Lens. At half the price of its Nikon equivalent I was skeptical it could really deliver at the same level… Read more »

I’m continuing to enjoy shooting with the new Nikon 80-400mm AF-S VR Lens.  I’ve already written about how pleased I am with its sharpness, and how effective it is for capturing sports from the sidelines. To evaluate its focus capability further, I took it down to the Baylands – our local birding hotspot – and gave it a bit of a workout. Read more »

No lens has been more eagerly awaited, or for longer, than the replacement for the aged Nikon 80-400mm zoom telephoto. After well over a decade Nikon has finally rolled out its successor – the Nikon 80-400mm AF-S VR lens, with massively improved VR and focusing speed, as well as completely redesigned optics. While it is a technical marvel, its high price and large size may mean it isn’t for you. We’ve got a review unit here in the office, and will be posting more over the next few weeks, but we wanted to get our first impressions out to those of you curious about the new lens… Read more »

When photographing people, we’re trained to focus on the face, and especially the eyes. Like any other “rule” of photography, though, it doesn’t always apply. In particular, when you’re capturing someone performing a craft or skill, the skill itself becomes a key part of the image. In the case of this woman potter who was kind enough to let us photograph her throwing a pot, her hands are what drew my attention. They moved smoothly and confidently, clearly the result of years of being a master potter – her village is famous throughout Myanmar (Burma) for its pots, which are highly-prized both there and throughout Asia. Read more »

Infrared is its own special kind of photography, and can provide plenty of really great images on its own. In addition to making great images of temples and landscapes, Infrared images can also be a tool to improve your color photographs. Currently the techniques in this article are a little advanced, and require some fairly specialized camera hardware, but if they catch on then it is only a matter of time before they are embedded in popular cameras and software solutions. In the meantime, for those willing to do some extra work, the result can be seemingly impossible photographs. Read more »