lens Archives

Outdoor Photography Beyond the Golden Hour

Landscape photographers love shooting during the golden hour of the day. They love the warm mushy light that tend to hug and wrap around everything, changing everything that they touch into gold. It’s the Midas touch of sorts, so far as lighting is concerned. Landscape photographers make it a point to be where they wish to shoot from at this time of the day. Once they have the shots that they need they pack their gear and leave. Read more...

Even with a wide angle lens you need to realize that there is no way that you can shoot a wide panorama without photo-stitching. So, evidently you will need to make several shots and then stich them together in Photoshop or other photo editing software for the right effect. Read more...

About focal length and background distortion

You may have heard professionals talking about the right focal length and how choosing anything less than the ideal length can adversely affect the background of your photos. Now, why does the wrong focal length affect your background? To understand this we need to first have an understanding of what each of the focal lengths tend to do. Read more...

A Guide to Choosing the Right Camera Lens for the Job

Digital interchangeable lens cameras are the preferred choice for shooting professional quality images. Five years ago and I would have used the term Digital Single Lens Reflex camera. But things have changed in the last few years or so. Mirrorless cameras have come on to the market in a big way and that has changed the perspective of camera buyers. Read more...

The optical piece of equipment that sits in front of your camera is the single most important piece of gear that you own. It’s actually more important than the one that it attaches to – the camera. Ask 10 professional photographers what to do with the extra bit of cash that you have, after buying a camera and a kit lens and 9 out of them would suggest you to get a better piece of glass. The tenth one will suggest you sell off the kit lens to get a better lens! Read more...

The five questions you shouldn’t ask when buying your camera

Call it our ignorance or plain laziness, we hardly make the research to find out more about a camera before actually buying it. We hardly ask someone knowledgeable before making a decision either. The result is that we end up with a camera that we hate after a while, either because it has too many features than we ever need or has too few. To make it worse, we sometimes are guilty of asking all sorts of wrong questions to the salesman at the store. Hopefully, after having read the following paragraphs, you will not ask these meaningless questions when buying your camera. Read more...

Even if it’s not your chosen specialty, sports photography is something every photographer faces at one point or another (and another and another...). We photograph our kids’ soccer games for posterity, professional sporting events for the interest, and other fast-moving subjects because they’re right in front of us and we have a camera in our hands. Many of us even shoot children’s and amateur sporting events as an opportunity to sell our photos to proud parents. Whether it’s kids or professional athletes running down the field, knowing how to photograph fast-moving subjects is key to getting great action photos that can be shared and enjoyed. Below are ten useful tips for photographing sports that are sure to increase the quality of your action photos. Read more...

Image Stabilization: Why It Matters, Types and How to Use

In the overall history of camera technology image stabilization is a rather recent development. Image stabilized lenses did not appear up until 1995 when Canon introduced the EF 75-300mm f/4 – 5.6 IS - the first image stabilized lens. IS or Image Stabilization is the acronym that Canon uses to refer to this technology. The technology was actually first seen on a previous lens, also made by Canon, the EF 300mm f/2.8L IS USM. This lens however did not reach the market up until 1999 which made the 75-300mm the first commercially produced image stabilized lens the world has seen.

Nikon calls this technology VR or Vibration Reduction. Other manufacturers use different other acronyms to label this technology. However, at the end of the day, they all mean the exact same thing. Though, in this case it is fair to say that all technologies are not the same. In fact all lenses are not optically stabilized either. There are some manufacturers who prefer to stabilize the sensor inside the camera rather than the lens! This happened because when image stabilization was developed digital sensors were not around and it would have meant either moving the physical film or the sensor. Canon and Nikon devised it was much easier to move the focusing elements inside the lens than moving the actual film.

Okay. Now we need to have a deeper understanding of how image stabilization works and why most professional and serious enthusiasts prefer to pay more for image stabilized lenses. Read more...