Despite all the hype, Comet Leonard may not be bright enough to see with your naked eyes. Other recent comets have been more visually impressive. Most of the experts say you will need binoculars. The key is to know where to look.
Sandy Hook Elementary, Newtown Connecticut, December 14, 2012.
Sandy Hook Elementary staff members killed December 14, 2012 while trying to protect the children.
Yongnuo 600EX-RT Speedlite and Yongnuo YN-E3-RT Transmitter. Click to see a larger version.
Should you spend $499 on a Canon 600EX-RT speedlite, or $138 on Yongnuo’s nearly identical clone, the YN600EX-RT? And what about the radio transmitters? Canon’s is $299 and the Yongnuo copy is $95. So you can buy three Yongnuo speedlites plus the radio transmitter for a total of $509, just $10 dollars more than the price of one Canon speedlite. The price advantage is clear, but what about quality, reliability, and service issues? Continue reading
Perseid Meteor photographed from Rose Hill Cemetery west of Lamoni, Iowa. 4:55 am CDT, August 13, 2018. Cropped from the original image.
Tonight (Dec 13-14) is the night of the Geminid Meteor Shower. This article will tell you what you need to know to photograph what could be the best meteor shower of 2021. The meteors have their radiant (origin point) near the bright star Castor in the constellation Gemini. From there they can go in any direction across the night sky.
This is the last photo of a photo shoot that should have gone a little longer. But my camera broke. People kid about “If you take my picture it will break your camera!” so I was tempted to say to her “You broke my camera!”
Screen capture of my first post at this blog.
My first post at this photography blog was December 9, 2004, 17 years ago today. The first thing that jumps out at me is the photo could have been edited for a better color balance and exposure. But it was a start.
Granite Ledges and Otter Cliff, Acadia National Park, Maine
Your camera falls down a mountainside or off a cliff. An unexpected rogue wave drenches your valuable photo gear in salt water. Your photo backpack is stolen from your home, motel room, or trunk of your car. To add insult to injury, you learn your homeowner’s insurance will not replace the value of your damaged or stolen gear.
Some of my favorite all purpose photography books.
Out of hundreds of books in my photography library, these are my favorite all purpose photography books. This is a list of the books that were the most helpful to me when I took a serious interest in photography, and I continue to refer to them. These books were written back when film was king, but that makes them all the more valuable to today’s digital photographers. Some digital photography books get so bogged down in digital technical information that the heart and soul of photography can get lost. The best film photography books are about the heart and soul of photography. They are light and shadow, subjects, form, texture, line and shape, and visual impact – all of which applies to digital photography.
Norman Rockwell’s classic painting “Freedom from Want” was created in 1943 and was part of his Four Freedoms series. It was inspired by FDR’s annual address to Congress, January 6, 1941. That address became known as the Four Freedom’s Speech. Contemporary photographers and artists have been inspired to create contemporary versions of the Four Freedoms. This is one of them.
“Freedom from Want” (1943) by Norman Rockwell
I love Thanksgiving! When I was growing up, we spent many a Thanksgiving and Christmas at Grandpa’s house. Thanksgiving was a much anticipated and happy time. We would often leave home on Wednesday afternoon after dad got home from work. It was a long 7 hour drive to Grandpa’s house in those pre-interstate highway days, so it would be really late by the time we arrived.
RØDE VideoMicro in use at Acadia National Park.
Let’s face it. While many recent DLSRs, ILCs and smartphones can give you excellent visual quality in the videos, the sound quality of the built in microphone leaves a lot to be desired. For a modest amount of money you can bring the sound quality up to par with the visual quality. That is why video mic sales have exploded.
Square Jellyfish smart phone tripod mount with conversion plate for an Arca-Swiss compatible tripod head.
After seeing too many incidents when smart phones popped out of their tripod mounts and came crashing to the ground, I decided it was time to write this article.
iPhone photography has become a huge thing. According to Flickr, their millions of users take more pictures with an iPhone (47%) than any other camera. A lot of iPhone photographers are looking for add on lenses for their phone, and that may include you. So which lenses are the best?
The Olympus Tough (TG) Waterproof Camera System
Water, sand, and grit can wreak havoc with ordinary cameras, so unless you have a waterproof case for your camera (more about that later), your best bet is to get a rugged, waterproof camera for underwater and the beach. This is especially true if you are around salt water.
Canon EOS R5
The holiday season is here and I am getting the usual questions about which digital cameras I recommend. In every price range there are some cameras that are better designed than others. How do you find them? That is what this article is all about.
Flash adapter and umbrella for a shoe-mount electronic flash.
There are a lot of practical and inexpensive (more or less) gifts for photographers. Here is a nice list of items starting at $8. To make it easy to track them down, these items are individuality linked plus most of these items can be found in the Misc Goodies section of my photography store which has direct links to Amazon.com. Prices are current as of the date of this post, but prices do fluctuate. Some items can be temporarily unavailable. These items are not listed in order of price.
Total Lunar Eclipse, Super Blood Moon, Rocky Mountain National Park, Colorado, September 27, 2015
Don’t miss it. The Beaver Moon Eclipse happens late this Thursday night through Friday morning, November 19, 2021.This article will show you how to photograph it. Continue reading
When I read at various astronomy related web sites that it was possible to see all of the naked eye planets in one day on or around November 16, 2020. I decided to try and photograph all of them, along with the moon and sun. As an added bonus I would photograph Uranus. It is not visible to the naked eye but easy to photograph with an ordinary camera and lens with a long exposure. Neptune was also out but I thought it would be too faint to pick up in a long exposure. I was wrong. To my surprise and joy, Neptune showed up as a tiny streak of light on my images.
I was comparing the Canon PowerShot SX280 HS with other cameras with similar features (shirt pocket size, 20x zoom range) like the Panasonic Lumix ZS30. There weren’t full reviews of either camera so I went back to reviews of the Canon SX260 HS and the Panasonic ZS20, assuming the current cameras would be somewhat better than the older models and that both would have the pedigree traits of their predecessors (which is often but not always the case for a camera’s family tree).
Is it a great deal? Or is it a rip-off? You are searching online for a good price and you come across a terrific deal. Are you about to get burned? There are ways you can tell.
The first rule when choosing camera gear is to buy what you can afford. It is hard to enjoy taking pictures if you are worried about how to pay for the camera you are holding. So buy what you can afford now, and upgrade later. And the second rule? We will get to that later.
Estimated Print Life from Wilhelm Imaging Research
Would you rather have a high quality print that will last up to 50 years, or a print that will fade in 5 years? That’s not all. The print with a very short life expectancy might cost more than the better quality print. People buy short life span prints all the time. Why? Because they don’t have the right information, and they may have no idea that prints have such widely different life spans.
The lab you choose and the kind of file you send to your lab can make a huge difference in the quality of prints you get back. How do you pick a good online photo lab? How do you get the best results from your lab? What color space should you use for your digital files and how do you convert your files to the right color space? How big a print can you make from your digital files?
This collage has all 271 photographs in my book Digital Photography Exposure for Dummies. For those of you who are curious, a statistical breakdown of all of the photos by subject matter, location, film vs digital, camera model, and year can be found here.
I can’t believe it, but my “how to” photography book came out 11 years ago this month. I don’t mention my book very often on my photo blog, but this is the time of year I usually do that. Yes, this is a “crass commercial message”.
I posted the first page of my first web site 22 years ago today. You can see the original here.
This gallery contains 20 photos.
Trunk or Treat image gallery. Click on a thumbnail above the text caption to see a larger image.
A couple of weeks ago a friend of mine asked if I would get some images when the time to harvest soybeans came around. I told her the perfect image would be at sunrise or sunset with a nice sky and the combine kicking up some dust. When it was time for the harvest we had two cloudy days which would make for boring images. Finally, on the third day the clouds were breaking up in the afternoon and it looked more promising. I hopped in my car and drove to the harvest location.
