Autumn Path, Michigan. Depth of Field complements of a Hyperfocal Distance Chart
The following question came today via email. I occasionally post some of the questions that come my way, along with my answer.
Question: Does the hyperfocal distance of a prime lens remain the same when a wide angle converter is attached to the lens?
OSU-Mansfield Nature Photography Workshop
OSU Extension will be offering my nature photography workshop and field trip on the Mansfield Ohio Campus. Learn how to create beautiful nature and landscape photos. Explore the ways you can tell your camera to work its special magic. Discover the secrets of the pros that turn ordinary snapshots into dynamic images. Get real time in-the-field, hands-on help combined with informative and inspiring classroom presentations.
Jennifer Blakeley does beautiful newborn photography. Her celebrity client list includes Megan Fox and Brian Austin Green; Vanessa and Donald Trump Jr.; and Jocelyn Towne and Simon Helberg (Big Bang Theory). She is also the founder of Alphabet Photography. A highly respected and award winning Canadian photographer, she has also worked with the Canadian Olympics Gymnastic Team.
Don’t lose your digital photos to disc-rot or a hard drive crash. Choose the best archival storage options.
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Short List:
SanDisk
Lexar
Memory cards are the “film” for your digital camera. You don’t want to have a card failure and lose your photos. A reliable brand is important.
AlienBees Studio Lights
For the best combination of quality and price, it is hard to beat AlienBees studio lights. I’ve been using AlienBees in my studio (and on location) for 7 years, and like so many other photographers, I’ve been singing their praises. It would be hard to find the same quality for less money.
Umbrella, flash, and flash bracket on a tripod.
Photographers are always looking for ways to soften the light when doing portraits. The light from an accessory flash can be quite harsh so there are a wide range of modifiers to soften the light for more pleasing portraits. Here are my three favorites.
GoPro Hero 3+ Cameras
Looking for a small, mountable, “ideal for sports and action”, inexpensive, high definition video and still camera with a waterproof housing and image quality that Lucasfilm (the Star Wars people) calls “amazing”? Take a look at the amazing video footage at the end of this post (with skiing, snow boarding, surfing, cliff diving, motocross, auto racing, jet piloting, base jumping, and parasailing). This camera will go anywhere and mount just about anywhere.
Some of the Best Digital Photography Books
Some well chosen books can make a world of difference in your digital photography. Some of the best books are about the camera side of photography, some are about the digital darkroom side, and some are about both. Out of hundreds of books in my photo library, I have picked out the best.
Put a Nikon D800e camera in a sound blimp, mount it on a radio controlled toy car and send it off to meet a pride of lions. Great idea. Great photos.
Canon 5DMark III camera. Canon EF 17-40 mm f/4 lens. Really Right Stuiff L-Bracket.
It’s that time of year. The holiday season is here and I am getting the usual questions about which digital cameras I recommend. The camera lists below will point you to the highest rated models. There is also some information and advice on choosing a camera. The lists will be updated throughout the holiday season as new, highly rated cameras become available. (Originally posted Nov. 26, 2013. Updated Dec. 3, 2013.)
Just a few of the many beautiful calendars in my calendar store.
Every year I pick several landscape and nature calendars to hang on my office walls. The beautiful images are a great source of inspiration for the whole year. This is the place to be if you are looking for beautiful calendars for yourself (or for the photographer in your life). I picked an extensive selection of beautiful wall and engagement calendars for my photography store (which is powered by Amazon.com).
This is a list of 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 lost in technical information that the heart and soul of photography can get lost. The best film photography books are about light and shadow, subjects, form, texture, line and shape – all of which applies to digital photography.
Ansel Adams: Half Dome, Merced River, Winter. © Ansel Adams Publishing rights Trust
I have no idea when I was first entranced by the photos of Ansel Adams. There is a wonderful, luminous quality to his work. Small wonder he is America’s best known landscape photographer. Collections of his work would make a worthy addition to any photographer’s library. This is also the time of year that Ansel Adams calendars pop up like snowstorms.
Special Offer – Adobe Photoshop CC and Lightroom 5
If you have ever wanted to try Photoshop, it will never be cheaper than today.
It is unlikely you will ever get a better offer for Photoshop CC and Lightroom 5 combined. Today is the last day you can get them both via Adobe’s new monthly subscription plan for $9.99 per month. Prior to this special offer, Photoshop CC was offered for $19.99 per month.
Michael Fulks, the publisher of Apogee Photo Magazine, wrote at an excellent review of Digital Photography Exposure for Dummies in his magazine. The review follows.
Two essential and challenging Photoshop skills are Masking and Compositing. Fortunately for all of us out in Photoshop land, Katrin Eismann has written a masterful book on developing these skills, Photoshop Masking & Compositing.
Katrin Eismann is a world class expert on photo retouching. She is one of the best of the best. In 2005 she was inducted into the Photoshop Hall of Fame. Anything she writes should be high on your reading list if you are serious about making the most of your Photoshop skills.
Everything you need to know about Dan Margulis is in Advanced Color Correction, Part One. After you have devoured the book I recommend in that article, you will know why you need to get Photoshop LAB Color: The Canyon Conundrum and Other Adventures in the Most Powerful Colorspace.
If you want to master color in Photoshop, Dan Margulis is the best of the best. He is one of the first three persons to be named as a member of the Photoshop Hall of Fame. And the book to get is Professional Photoshop: The Classic Guide to Color Correction (5th Edition). It is well worth finding on the used market (which you can do via my photography store). What Margulis teaches you to do with color is amazing. The before and after images will make your jaw drop.
Jeff Schewe and Bruce Fraser on RAW Camera Files
A lot of the quality of your final image will be determined by what you do with your RAW files when you open them in Adobe Camera RAW (ACR) which comes with Adobe Photoshop, Adobe Photoshop Elements, and Adobe Lightroom.
If you want to master Photoshop, a complete course can be found in the books recommended below. If you are new to Photoshop it wold be best if you started with one of the books in The Best Digital Photography Books or Lightroom & Photoshop: The Essential Books before you tackle the books below.
Your photos will look their best if you optimize them with some good image editing software.
Short list:
Adobe Photoshop Elements 12 or 11
Adobe Photoshop CC or CS6
Adobe Photoshop Lightroom 5 or 4
Star Trails, Rocky Mountain National Park
Interested in getting into astrophotography? The simple stuff is simple to do (like the photo above). The hard stuff is hard and complicated to do if you want eye popping photos like you see in Astronomy and Sky and Telescope magazines. Here’s my advice.
Wildlife Location Guides
The first step to photographing wildlife is finding wildlife. In the case of common wildlife, that’s easy. If you are looking for squirrels you may not need to look any farther than your own back yard. But if you want to photograph something a little more exotic, like Chachalacas or Green Jays, you need to know where to look for them (the southern tip of Texas).
Can a world class, National Geographic photographer lose his passion? Yes! How does he get it back?
Golden Brook. Photo © Tony Sweet
I’ve been reading two excellent nature photography books by Tony Sweet. They are published by Stackpole Books. They choose first class photographers who have written an excellent and ongoing series of photography books. I’ve been giving high praise to Stackpole’s photography books for years and I now have two more to add to the list.
Is composition something that can be taught, or is it innate? Probably a bit of both. It is hard to look at photographs by Frans Lanting, Art Wolfe, Galen Rowell, and Dewitt Jones without coming to the conclusion that they were born with some kind of magic sense of composition. On the the other hand, it is clear that photographers can improve dramatically with the right kind of guidance.
I have no idea how Michael Freeman can be a well traveled, international photographer and still find time to write so many terrific photography books. But somehow he manages to do both. I suspect he never sleeps. I imagine him creating images and writing books 24 hours a day, stopping only to eat once or twice a week!!
Joel Sartore, Fundamentals of Photography. 24 lessons on 4 DVDs.
I finally found an excellent series of photography lessons on video to complement my book, Digital Photography Exposure for Dummies, and it is by Joel Sartore, a first class photographer who does a lot of work for National Geographic. He does stunning photography in amazing situations all over the world. You can see some of his work in the galleries at his web site.