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It Takes More Than Skill
My last few articles have been about equipment and scientific photography, and I’ve been feeling the urge to talk about what I love (and hate), taking pictures. So bear with me, I’m going to have to do one of those psuedophilosophical articles again. It started when someone asked me if I considered…
Have You Seen My Acutance?
## Have you seen my acutance? A few words about sharpness and MTF charts Many of you know one of my pet peeves is strident internet arguments between photographers who are splitting hairs or misinformed. One major cause of these arguments is terminology: people use a nonspecific term which means…
Choosing a Ballhead
My last blog was about choosing tripod legs, now we’ll move on to choosing a ballhead to complete the package. One thing to get out of the way first: I’m not going to consider pan-tilt heads (the ones with handles that stick out that you twist and rotate, often seen offered in eBay ‘package…
Choosing a Tripod
Unlike lenses, there’s no Tripod Review Site—it’s pretty hard to measure things like ‘degree of sway per given load’ or ‘time to set up’ or ‘tilt over and crash quotient’. So I thought I’d write about choosing a tripod and ballhead. It would take a couple of days, and I’ve got time I thought. One…
Reviewing the Review Sites
Here’s Roger’s Law of Online Photography forums: “those who seek anonymity need it.” My online name on every forum is either RCicala or RogerCicala. If I say something stupid on one, you can not only call me out on it there, you can send me an email here. Many people have done so over the years. On…
Lens Repair Data 3.0
## What is this? It has become our practice to publish our lens repair data every 6 months. We started it at the request of some customers who felt the large number of lenses we deal with and the harsh conditions they are subjected to provided an opportunity to get some factual data about which…
Introduction to IR Photography
This article is a simple introduction to Infrared Photography. For those of you who find it interesting I’ve placed some links to more detailed and extensive sources at the end of this. ## What is Infrared Photography? First, lets more clearly define what we’re talking about. What we refer to as…
State of the SLR Market -2009
Note: A number of people were kind enough to provide me with more information on this topic after we first published this article. I’ve revised it as of May 9, 2009 Additions are in green font or in the addendum at the end of the article. If you don’t buy a lot of camera gear, you might not have…
The More Things Change…
## A Tale of Two Photographers Yesterday I heard two things that amused me a lot. First was a full-time pro photographer who referred to one of the new multi-megapixel cameras as a “Doctor’s camera”, meaning it was a toy for rich hobbyists, not a tool for a professional like himself. He at least…
Controlling Depth of Field
Probably the better title of this article would be Depth of Field for the mathematically challenged. If you’re a moderately experienced digital photographer, you know verbally what the depth of field is: The range of distance from the camera in which objects appear acceptably sharp in a photograph.…
35mm to Video Adapters
## 35mm-to-Video Lens Adapters With the introduction of video shooting capabilities on the Nikon D90 and Canon 5DMkII cameras, we decided it was time to add video equipment to our inventory, to be able to provide both photography and videography items to anyone dabbling in both arenas. Naturally,…
The Camera vs. The Eye
I generally write useful little blurbs for these columns: how to choose the right lens, equipment comparisons, etc. This is quite different, a bit of photographic pseudophilosophy if you will. It started after I followed an online discussion about whether a 35mm or a 50mm lens on a full frame…