News entries for June, 2018

 

 

Jay P. Morgan of The Slanted Lens is in Houston helping fellow photographer Melvyn McKiever build a home photo studio. Morgan immediately goes to work identifying areas of strengths and weaknesses of the room Melvyn wants to convert. If you're building your own home studio, you will want at least some of the walls...

 

 

This week's Firmware Friday roundup is a biggie, bringing news of firmware and software updates from no less than seven manufacturers in all. If you're shooting Canon, Fujifilm, Leica, Olympus, Panasonic, Ricoh or Sony gear, you'll want to read on for the full story below to find out what's new. Since there's...

 

 

Lensrentals founder Roger Cicala has been testing lenses for nearly a decade and his methodology has continually improved not only in efficiency, but more importantly, in accuracy. There are numerous ways to test lenses and there are advantages and disadvantages to different methods. More accuracy typically comes...

Click here to read our Panasonic G9 Video Features & Analysis

 

 

Though the Panasonic Lumix G9 is most certainly a stills camera first, it nevertheless offers many video features that you won't often find on more touted hybrid cameras from the likes of Sony or Canon. So while cameras like the A7 III or the 5D Mark...

 

 

When shooting interiors in particular, you will regularly face the issue of mixed lighting. When you are shooting with mixed lighting sources, all with their own particular color temperatures, how can you fix the white balance of the shot? Blake Rudis of f64 Academy has a new video covering this topic and how you...

 

 

While the title of their latest Picture This! video, "Why your photos suck," is inflammatory, Tony and Chelsea Northrup have some great tips for how to improve your photos. The focus of the video is on 10 things you might be doing that make your photos worse and how you can easily and quickly improve.

The first...

 

 

As we saw earlier this week, travel photographer and educator Thomas Heaton is running a photography workshop in Iceland. Last time we joined him along the coast and today, we're along for the ride in the Icelandic highlands.

The location is particularly interesting because it's a place Heaton visited a year ago,...

 

 

Bird photographer Tim Boyer wants to help you improve your bird photography. To this end, he has created a new video highlighting five ways you can improve your bird shots.

While the tips are presented in the context of bird photography, they do apply to other genres of photography as well. His first tip is a...

 

 

Danish photographer Mads Peter Iversen spends a lot of time in Iceland during a recent visit to the famous church, Strandarkirkja, Iversen had planned to create a minimalist image. How do you approach minimalist landscape photography and what are some of Iversen's tips and tricks?

When trying to compose a simple...

Click here to read my Sony 400mm f/2.8 GM Hands-On Preview

 

 

We knew it was coming, and now it's finally here: say hello to the Sony FE 400mm f/2.8 G Master lens. The next member of Sony's top-tier G Master full-frame mirrorless lens family, this professional-class supertelephoto is a critical optic for the Sony...

 

 

Continuing his four-part series on basic lighting, photographer Mark Wallace's latest video for Exploring Photography is about low-key lighting for portraiture. Specifically, the video is about creating a low-key portrait using a single off-camera light.

To achieve the desired effect, Wallace shows how to...

 

 

You typically shoot with your lens attached to your camera, right? What happens when you shoot through a lens detached from the camera? In the latest episode of Two Minute Tips with David Bergman, he explores the topic of "freelensing."

Using a Canon 5D Mark IV with a Canon 50mm f/1.4 lens, Bergman tries using...

 

 

There are lenses which are traditionally considered to be "portrait lenses," such as fast 50mm, 85mm and 105mm primes. There are, of course, many other lenses you can use to capture nice portraits, such as 24-70mm and 70-200mm f/2.8 zooms. Tony and Chelsea Northrup decided to do a portrait shoot with a very...

 

 

Tony Northrup is regularly asked by viewers how he is able to capture handheld shots at such slow shutter speeds. For example, it's not uncommon for him to shoot with a telephoto lens at shutter speeds as slow as 1/25 of a second.

His shutter speeds are guided by the "rule of doubles," a rule he made up to...

 

 

Travel photographer and educator Thomas Heaton has been hosting a landscape photography workshop in Iceland and in his latest video, we get to join him and his group as the photograph the Snaefellsnes peninsula in southwestern Iceland.

The group starts with some seascapes and as is often the case in Iceland, the...

 

 

We've long appreciated Fujifilm's ability to deliver the goods in the image quality department, both from models sporting their X-Trans sensor as well as from their X-A line using the more traditional Bayer filter sensors. Now they've released the X-T100, which somewhat bridges the gap between the two lines, and...

 

 

Our Firmware Friday roundup this week is mostly a tale of one company, as Canon dominates proceedings with no less than five video cameras and four reference displays either receiving new firmware in the past seven days, or slated to do so shortly. If you're not a Canon shooter, you may want to read on...

Click here to read my Canon EOS M50 Field Test

 

 

Canon's latest mirrorless camera, the Canon EOS M50, is their first M-series camera to offer 4K UHD video. That's not its only headlining feature, the camera also has a Vari-angle touchscreen, a built-in electronic viewfinder, revised Dual Pixel CMOS autofocus and...

 

 

Nature photographer Morten Hilmer warns to always expect the unexpected when out in nature and in the video below, we can see why. While stalking deer in a full camouflaged setup, an evening which began as uneventful became a very full and exciting outing.

Hilmer's kit was certainly well-suited for surprise...