I recently saw a critical comment on this blog. It was from someone named Alex who pointed out, “you miss mentioning that you’re using the 50mm ‘E’ lens.” The problem is that not only is this untrue, but why would you bother in the first place? I’ve said it so many times, in so many…
Continue reading →I hope my readers forgive me if I seem a little cynical about this topic: bokeh. This week’s big photographic news is Nikon’s introduction of a new lens called “Plena,” a 135mm f/1.8 lens that promises, according to early releases, “beautiful, well-rounded bokeh,” among other things. It is a reminder that this one word, “bokeh,”…
Continue reading →A friend of mine asked me this week about how to shoot candlelight vigils. She’d been to one, and while she got some usable images, she was not able to catch any magic with her camera. Photographing low light situations has always been a challenge, but it has gotten easier in the last few years…
Continue reading →This week Fujifilm announced their newest camera in the “medium format” digital market, the GFX100 II. I am very excited by this camera, for several reasons. Fujifilm has always been a favorite brand for me. My first single lens reflex (SLR) camera was a Fujifilm ST-605n, which I bought in the summer of 1978. Fujifilm…
Continue reading →This article was originally posted in 2015, but this update reflects the fact that I recently purchased another Reflex-Nikkor 500mm f/8 lens. In the late 1980s through the mid 1990s, I had a Reflex-Nikkor 500mm f/8 lens. The optical formula is known as a catadioptric, or mirror, lens. Astronomers know about this type of optic,…
Continue reading →Photography is both a fickle mistress and a moving target. One day pictures of models atop mountains are the big thing, then the next big thing is a picture of grass on your knees. Social trends have always been like this, but the speed of the webscape tends to amplify it. I happen to think…
Continue reading →A buddy of mine recently dropped and destroyed one of his favorite wide angle lenses, an AF-S Nikkor 35mm f/1.4G, which he called his “butter 35.” The nickname described the way this remarkable lens rendered out-of-focus areas. It got me thinking about my own wide angle lenses over the years, how I use them, why…
Continue reading →Between gifts from readers and estate sale box buys, I have a nice collection of cameras. From actual antiques to digital cameras that are almost up-to-the-minute technology, it forms a timeline of photography on my selves. Two cameras that fall in the middle of all that are the late-1980s, early-1990s Nikon N8008 and N6006. These…
Continue reading →During my freshman year in college, I sold my first two cameras, a Fujica ST-605 and a Yashica Electro 35 GSN. I liked them both, but even at the age of 18, I knew I would want and need more – much more – out of a camera system. I loved my first cameras, but…
Continue reading →As the sole news and sports photographer at my newspaper, a lot of disparate duties come my way. I shoot sports action, spot news, feature photos (to go with my stories), head shots, group photos, ribbon cutting photos, illustrations, and, in the next few weeks, a ton of what we call “media days.” They can…
Continue reading →With what seems like the wettest summer in decades, my garden is giving me a beautiful harvest of tomatoes, peppers and, cucumbers, almost every day. But because of that very wetness, I am losing as much as I am keeping because of rot. There is some kind of white fungus that appears on the lowest…
Continue reading →I ran into an old friend, Gerald, at the the park on Independence Day. Gerald’s wife Doreen took my photography class a few years back, and long before that, my wife worked for Gerald. Gerald told me that he had an old camera and a few lenses for it, and asked if I would I…
Continue reading →For years and years, Adobe has kept a wall between Lightroom Classic and Photoshop. There were a huge number of functions that could only be accessed with Photoshop, meaning if you are doing the main bulk of your editing in Lightroom Classic, you had to send that image to Photoshop to do things like selections…
Continue reading →There’s been an upsurge in existential angst in the global photography community recently, much of it centered on the release of a new smartphone application (app) called “Threads.” This app is intended, at least according to some of the press, to compete with Twitter now that Elon Musk has taken Twitter in a new direction….
Continue reading →Photographers. They are generally not positive, life-affirming, goal-encouraging people. They mostly want to tell you how much they know, and what an idiot your are. There is a lot of ego in the game, and that ego was largely bred in the fires of middle school. Example: cheerful photographer decides to try a Nikkor DX…
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