Last week I discussed my Uncle Wes’ Canon FTb, a gift to me from his daughter, my Cousin Lori. In the same box she gave me was a much older, odder camera, the Canon II. This camera came out of the post-war period of the twentieth century when camera names were pretty straightforward, unlike today’s…
Continue reading →I was attracted to photography since I was a young kid. The first camera that I owned myself (meaning not my family’s shared camera) was a Yashica GSN Electro 35. A lot of us had this camera in the 1970s because it was cheap, and made great images if you knew what you were doing….
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Spring is about to spring forth, and with it, color. Photographers across the northern hemisphere will pull their cameras out, charge their batteries, format their storage media, and generally “suit up” for the coming weeks. It’s a time of brown grass turning green, flowers and trees blooming, outdoor gatherings that include Easter and Ada’s excellent…
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My readers know that one of my favorite things about photography is lenses. One of my favorite lenses, which I have talked about before, is the 85mm focal length. I love it for any number of different situations. For some of the now-ending basketball season, I shot basketball action with it. I love it for…
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In my current class at Pontotoc Technology Center, my students all have new Canon mirrorless cameras. The mirrorless scene is an interesting and exciting evolution in photography, one made possible by the fusion of digital imaging sensors and the instant read-and-feed technology that lives in our smart phones. Because mirrorless cameras don’t have mirrors, the…
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I think cameras are better that smartphone cameras. I know, I know. Smartphone cameras are great, and I admit I use my smartphone for work almost every day. But here’s why I think cameras are better than smartphone: the experience. I’ve been using a smartphone for my news and sports work for as long as…
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I have bought and sold a few lenses in my day. Many of my favorite lenses, like the beautiful manual-focus Nikkor 105mm f/1.8 and Nikkor 24mm f/2.0, simply wore out, a testament to the fact that they were so great, so I used them all the time. Other lenses were not as great, some were…
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Photographers can be a little obsessive. They worry and fret about lighting, content, image quality, location, time of day, access, lenses, cameras, and much more. It is hard for us to switch off the inner photographer and just relax and enjoy the moment. Even when we are not the photographer, like when a close friend…
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With a few days off during the Christmas break, and with the weather being absolutely beautiful, I decided to take a long walk with a camera and make some monochrome (black-and-white) images. The camera I chose for my walk was the Canon SX700HS, a higher-end point and shoot model from 2015. A friend of mine…
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Over the years, a topic that I have raised over and over is the use of lenses with large maximum apertures. Just last week, I talked about the Christmas season as being one of the best for those lenses, like the famous 50mm. Most of us have at least one of these in our bags,…
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The Christmas season has officially started with the annual Santa Stroll in Ada’s Wintersmith Park. With it starts to Christmas photography season. At recent events I’ve covered, I saw a lot of smartphone photography, and that works for a lot of us. Smartphones have amazing cameras, and I fold smartphone photography into my work all…
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In photography news this week was the announcement that Leica introduced their most recent camera, the Q3 “Monochrom,” a black-and-white only digital camera. Leica is the most prestigious camera brand in the world, and although I never used one, I know several people who have, including at least one photographer who had a Monochrom (Leica’s…
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In the span of my career, a lot has changed. On the day I started work here at your Ada News, then known as The Ada Evening News, I owned three 35mm SLR cameras, the Nikon FM, the Nikon FM2, and the Nikon FE2. I bought them in college, one at a time, along with…
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For most of the history of photojournalism, photographers and their editors have used slang, jargon that doesn’t mean much or sounds made-up to outsiders. We use words like dummy, presser, scoop, wire, embargo, cuts, nutgraf, advertorial, tab, -30-, breakout, stringer, and a couple of favorites at my newspaper for a long time, “three-murder Saturday,” and…
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Updated, September 2025 Life is full of foolish myths, ideas that get planted into our brains by rumor or gossip or misperception, and seem to endure. One of those myths in photography is that sensor size affects depth of field. I hear it all the time in class, in the field, and, of course, on…
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