Monday, August 3, 2009
Friday, July 17, 2009
The Best Lens for Portrait Photography
There are not many aspects of photography that have a specific focal length you should try to shoot with, but luckily portrait photography is one of them.Most pros shoot portraits with a short zoom lens, and one of their favorite focal lengths is the 85 to 100mm range. In fact, telephoto lenses in the 85 to100mm range are often called Portrait lenses because they let you shoot from a good working distance (10 to 12 feet from your subject, giving you and your subject some breathing room, while letting you still fill the frame with your subject), but more importantly, shooting with focal lengths between 85mm and 100mm eliminates the unflattering facial distortion wide-angle lenses are notorious for, while avoiding the compression long telephoto lenses give.
Some portrait pros swear that the 85mm focal length is the portrait 'sweet spot', and others swear by 100mm, but that's the kind of thing pros debate in online forums all day long (and you can try both with your zoom lens and choose the one you like best, because they both give a pleasing perspective for portraits), so I won't take up that battle here. (Note: Both Nikon and Canon make 28 to 105mm zooms that are ideal for portraits because you can choose 85mm, 100mm, or anything between the two.) Another reason these short zoom lenses are ideal is because you won't have to pick up your tripod and move it (or your model), each time you need to slightly recompose the shot. So, get yourself a zoom lens that covers the 85 to100mm range, and you're good to go. By the way, the lens shown here is a 24 to120mm zoom, so this lens would do the trick because with it you can choose any zoom focal length between 85mm and 100mm (the sweet spots for portraits).
Sunday, June 21, 2009
Alan Rossiter Photography
Alan Rossiter Photography
Surfing the net I can across Alan's work and thought it was awesome and decided to share.
Some great stuff here
Cheers
Delme
Surfing the net I can across Alan's work and thought it was awesome and decided to share.
Some great stuff here
Cheers
Delme
Thursday, May 21, 2009
Don’t Delete Your Digital Photography Mistakes Too Quickly
A few years ago while on a tour in Morocco with a group of others I sat next to a fellow traveler on a tour bus. He was quickly scrolling through the shots he’d taken on his camera - deleting picture after picture.
I asked him what he was doing and he told me that he was ‘culling’ shots to make more room on his memory card. As I watched him I wondered how much he could tell about the shots he was deleting from his camera’s little 2 inch LCD.
While I understand the feeling of getting to the end of a memory cards capacity when you want to take more shots - if you do have the space on your memory card I would recommend that you don’t delete too many shots while you’re out and about and wait until you get back to your computer to do so.
The reason I suggest waiting is that quite often some of the ‘mistake’ shots can actually end up being some of your best (sometimes in quite an abstract sort of way).
When you look at images on your camera’s LCD the photo is obviously quite compressed and you can sometimes not see details that you would when you view it on your computer. There may actually be something quite useful tucked away in the details that you’ll never know about if you delete too quickly.
For example - the picture on this post was taken on the streets in Morocco on that same trip. It was taken on my first little point and shoot digital camera (A Canon Powershot A60). It was actually a complete accident that I took the shot (I thought I was turning the camera off when I was actually pressing the shutter). At first glance it is an out of focus and poorly framed shot (actually it’s that on a second look too) but there’s something about this shot that keeps drawing me back to it.
It won’t win any awards but it is a shot that means something quite powerful to me and which is something that evokes a lot of memories for me.
I’m glad I didn’t join my fellow travellor in his picture cull that day because I’d probably have deleted this one.
I asked him what he was doing and he told me that he was ‘culling’ shots to make more room on his memory card. As I watched him I wondered how much he could tell about the shots he was deleting from his camera’s little 2 inch LCD.
While I understand the feeling of getting to the end of a memory cards capacity when you want to take more shots - if you do have the space on your memory card I would recommend that you don’t delete too many shots while you’re out and about and wait until you get back to your computer to do so.
The reason I suggest waiting is that quite often some of the ‘mistake’ shots can actually end up being some of your best (sometimes in quite an abstract sort of way).
When you look at images on your camera’s LCD the photo is obviously quite compressed and you can sometimes not see details that you would when you view it on your computer. There may actually be something quite useful tucked away in the details that you’ll never know about if you delete too quickly.
For example - the picture on this post was taken on the streets in Morocco on that same trip. It was taken on my first little point and shoot digital camera (A Canon Powershot A60). It was actually a complete accident that I took the shot (I thought I was turning the camera off when I was actually pressing the shutter). At first glance it is an out of focus and poorly framed shot (actually it’s that on a second look too) but there’s something about this shot that keeps drawing me back to it.
It won’t win any awards but it is a shot that means something quite powerful to me and which is something that evokes a lot of memories for me.
I’m glad I didn’t join my fellow travellor in his picture cull that day because I’d probably have deleted this one.
Monday, May 18, 2009
Rand Airshow
I went to the Rand Airshow today, as I have never been to an airshow before. I had some preconceived ideas of some of the shots that I expected to get. Armed with my 500mm lens off we went. Well I never expected the event to be so popular and after trying to get parking and fighting the rest of Joburg to get in, out came the camera and lens. I attempted to use my monopod, what a mistake. Those planes fly so fast, it was hard enough keeping up with them never mind focusing and getting the shot. So here is one of my attempts. It is not as easy as one would think, Didn't get any of my preplanned shhots. Until next time
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