It won’t come as a surprise to anyone that, as a photographer, I have always been interested in any technology that allows us to see more, see better, and even see things that we can’t really see with our own eyes. I love telescopes. What we saw with the Hubble Space Telescope was nothing short…

From the start of my career, the photography press recommended using a filter on the front of all my lenses, and my peers always used a filter on the front of all their lenses. This filter was usually an ultra-violet (UV) blocking filter, but once in a while, especially early in my career, a “skylight”…

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…

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…

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,…

Spring and summer are green and colorful in southeastern Oklahoma where I live. You can frequently find me walking my dogs or cutting the grass, and many evenings in the middle of that, I will see things I want to photograph in the golden evening light. I keep cameras just inside, for just this reason….

Most photographers would agree: a 50mm lens is a great addition to your lens collection. The 50mm focal length has always been popular, and 50mm lenses tend to be cheap, lightweight and small. There are a couple of odd exceptions. Many lens makers use this focal length to create what are called “halo” products: large,…

My readers know that among my favorite things in the world, not just in my photography, are lenses. I like old and new, heavy and light, complex and simple, and on and on. There are almost no lenses that don’t intrigue me. One class of lenses I find the most satisfying to work with are…

I sometimes miss the days of Internet past, when a search yielded an interesting web page that had links in it to other links, which might have still more links. I loved clicking around to see everything from dancing hamsters to moon landing hoaxes. Now, I say with a heavy sign, the Internet seems to…

I’ve said on more than a few occasions that I love the 50mm focal length. There are quite a few reasons to love your 50mm, but at the top of the list is that in human scale terms, it fits just right into the efficiency quotient of manufacturing, shipping, cost, weight, and, of course, making…