Getting a lens for the ones you love makes a lot of sense at the time of the year just past (Christmas just passed in case you are reading this later) or any time of the year, really.
But, getting a lens because of the ones you love is another great idea.
I have never heard anyone say that they had too many pictures of their kids.
If your kids are still at home, photograph them like crazy.
Time flies – they will not be with you for long.
If your kids are coming home, be ready to do the same.
Visiting with your parents? Getting together with friends and other family members? The same advice applies.
The chances are that even those who claim to hate having their picture taken will be glad you pressured them into it.
Few lenses are as well-suited for photographing people as the Canon EF 85mm f/1.4L IS USM Lens, especially because the 85mm focal length provides an ideal perspective at normal portrait working distances.
The image stabilization feature in this lens makes it even more capable in that role, especially when the light goes dim.
Your skills aided by this lens are sure to make even the most difficult subjects look their best, including under very challenging lighting.
Performing well the first time usually means the second time is more likely to happen.
That photographing people is one of the easiest paid photography jobs to find is certainly an attraction for this lens.
Portraits of specific individuals cannot be found in stock libraries and, in the marketplace, unavailability adds value.
Of course, earning money helps to justify the purchase in the first place.
Get this lens for your family and friends, for capturing treasured memories of them.
Get this lens for gaining clients and for keeping them happy.
Get the Canon EF 85mm f/1.4L IS Lens for you.
While I expect that you would love the 85 f/1.4L IS, even if you don't get this lens, I still strongly encourage you to photograph those you love with the lens you have.
That you will not regret.
The Canon EF 85mm f/1.4L IS USM Lens has been hard to find in stock since it first hit the streets, but it has just arrived in stock at B&H, Amazon and the Canon Store. It is coming soon to Adorama and WEX.
Not convinced that this lens is for you? Or, want to spend only a short time enjoying it? Schedule some quality time via Lensrentals.com.
A larger version of this image is available on Flickr.
From Skylum:
Luminar 2018 1.1.1 version for Windows:
Luminar 2018 version 1.1.1 for MAC:
The update is completely free to all Luminar 2018 users, and here is the instruction how to get it:
On Mac: Please, launch Luminar 2018, on the Top Menu Bar choose Luminar 2018 > Check for updates.
On Windows: Please, launch Luminar 2018, on the Top Toolbar choose Help > Check for updates.
Purchase Link: Luminar 2018
From Canon USA:
Changes for Digital Photo Professional 4.7.21:
Download: Canon Digital Photo Professional 4.7.21
According to the South Korean Yonhap News Agency, Reuters photographers have been banned from covering the opening ceremony of the 2018 Winter Olympics after they published several unauthorized photos of the rehearsal.
From the Yonhap News Agency:
The London-based media company transmitted several photo items showing the Olympic cauldron being lit up with fire during a rehearsal conducted late Sunday at the Olympic Main Stadium in PyeongChang. The company later pulled the items following protests from the International Olympic Committee (IOC) and the PyeongChang organizing committee.Read he entire article on the Yonhap News Agency website.As penalty, the IOC "disapproved the issuing of passes towards Reuters in reporting and photographing the opening ceremony," the organizing committee of the PyeongChang Winter Olympics said in a statement. The IOC also revoked the media accreditation of the photographer representing Reuters.
Canon has released their finanicial results for the Full Year 2017. See below for more information. As usual, we suggest checking out the Presentation Material for getting a concise view of the highlights.
Related Article
Facebook is making some changes and if you want to continue seeing TDP's posts in your Facebook news feed, it is important that you select the "See First" option under the "Following" button as shown. So, head over to the Facebook page right now and select that option before you forget!
Not following us on Facebook? Now is a good time to start: The-Digital-Picture.com Facebook page
For those of you who purchased a Solar ND filter to photograph the total solar eclipse we enjoyed in August of last year, you may be looking for more opportunities to use the highly specialized gear before the next total solar eclipse graces North America in April 2024. Thankfully, there's a large articificial satellite orbiting overhead which begs to be photographed as it crosses paths with the sun.
Of course, I'm talking about the International Space Station (ISS), a 239 x 356 x 66 ft (72.8 x 108.5 x 20 m) platform in low Earth orbit that circles the earth about 15.5 times per day. The frequency of the ISS's orbits means that there's a decent chance that its path will fall between you and the sun in the not-so-distant future. When exactly will the next ISS transit occur in your area? There's a website designed to answer that very question.
Simply enter your coordinates on the ISS TRANSIT FINDER website (or give it permission to auto-detect your location), enter a start date and an end date (up to 30 days in the future), and a travel range from your location (up to 149 mi / 240 km), and the website will show you the dates and times of all solar (and lunar) ISS transits available for viewing from nearby locations. If you never purchased a solar filter, you can still take advantage of the lunar transits occurring in your area or you can simply pick up a solar ND filter to take advantage of all available transits.
WARNING: Use only ND filters certified for solar photography. Do not look directly at the sun. Do not frame the sun using your camera's optical viewfinder while using telephoto lenses. Use Live View for framing your composition and focusing.
Most of the tips shared for capturing the solar eclipse apply to photographing an ISS solar transit, with the main difference being the duration of the events. When positioned in the middle of a total solar eclipse, the entire event may take several hours (with totality ranging from seconds to 7.5 minutes). However, an ISS transit of the sun or moon will last no longer than about 1.75 seconds (with typical transit times being significantly shorter). That means that you'll want to have an accurate clock available (down to the seconds), with a wired (or radio remote) trigger in your hand and your camera set to high speed continuous burst mode.
Mikayla wanted to go riding and I wanted to give the Sony FE 100-400mm f/4.5-5.6 GM OSS Lens a workout.
Those "wants" fit together perfectly.
For this session, we headed to the top of a nearby small mountain.
With an unobstructed view and a low camera position, a very attractive, non-distracting background often becomes available in these "top" locations and that enables the primary subject to become prominent in the frame.
The sky usually makes a good background and distant landscape also works well in that regard.
The 100-400mm focal length range is a great one for chasing the kids with.
In this case, when the horse was standing as seen here, I could move in close and zoom out to make the horse and rider appear large in their environment.
When the horse was moving at a fast speed, I could zoom in to catch more-distant (safer) action and zoom out as the pair approached.
The FE 100-400mm f/4.5-5.6 GM OSS Lens is a great and much-needed part of Sony's lineup.
Those with Sony-based kits should seriously consider acquiring this high-grade option (if it is not already there).
This lens has the perfect combination of excellent performance and extreme usefulness.
A larger version of this image is available on Flickr.
by Sean Setters
While casually looking through the Play store yesterday, Google suggested I take a look at an app called ASCII Art. As Google seems to know me fairly well (we've spent a lot of time together), I thought I'd give the app a shot. After about 20 minutes of throwing various images at the app to see its results displayed in glorious monospaced text, the point about Google knowing me very well was reiterated once again.
From Wikipedia:
ASCII – Abbreviated from American Standard Code for Information Interchange, is a character encoding standard for electronic communication. ASCII codes represent text in computers, telecommunications equipment, and other devices. Most modern character-encoding schemes are based on ASCII, although they support many additional characters.From the viewpoint of a photographer who's always looking at high resolution, 14-bit, as-sharp-as-I-can-get images, there's something very fun and novel about seeing one's images displayed in a fixed size font. You can even choose to have your image converted using colored text for a slightly less archaic look.
After conversion, the file can be saved or shared as a .PNG, .TXT or HTML document (you'll need to change the file name extension from ".txt" to ".html" after saving). Click here to see the full resolution ASCII image from above.
I haven't done extensive testing, but my guess is that simpler images with a strong subject will work better than more complex ones. If you download and try out the app, share your favorite ASCII-converted (G-rated) image below.
From the Adobe Photoshop Lightroom YouTube Channel:
Lightroom tips and tricks in 60 seconds or less from longtime Lightroom team member Benjamin Warde.
B&H carries Adobe Photography Plan subscriptions.
Learn about fluorite, aspherical ED and phase fresnel lens elements along with nano crystal/fluorine coatings, vibration reduction and more.
B&H carries Nikon NIKKOR lenses.
I love images featuring patterns and textures and thought I would share one today.
One way to find patterns is to look for large numbers of a similar subjects (practically anything qualifies) that are close together or can be moved close together.
Subjects for pattern and texture images can be found anywhere, including in:
What are your favorite texture and pattern subjects? Let us know in the comments!
A larger version of this image is available on Flickr.
From Cascable:
Industry-leading photography automation tools and a modern camera SDK, available now
STOCKHOLM — January 18th, 2018 — Cascable AB is happy to announce the release of two new products that will revolutionise the automation of complex photography tasks, from building custom time-lapse routines to building entire custom photography applications.
Shutter Robot Recipes is the most powerful photography automation tool available on mobile platforms, providing complete freedom and creativity when building that perfect time-lapse, exposure bracket sequence, or any other series of shots you can think of. Alongside a powerful and intuitive recipe editor, Cascable provides tools to ensure your recipe works exactly as intended, including a built-in camera simulator—perfect for checking your multi-hour time-lapse recipe before you hike up that mountain!
CascableCore is a Software Development Kit (SDK) for iOS and macOS that provides the power and flexibility of Cascable’s industry-leading camera connectivity to your public or internal applications. Using one set of unified and modern APIs, the CascableCore SDK allows you to concentrate on building great applications while we handle interfacing with well over 100 supported cameras.
CascableCore is available with a 30-day evaluation for products and companies that meet our partnership criteria, with pricing depending on the application. Please visit http://developer.cascable.se for more information on CascableCore.
Download: Cascable
From LibRaw:
In order to streamline the workflow with the raw shots taken in the new Pixel Shift Multi Shooting mode offered by the new Sony A7R-III camera, and provide a way to use popular RAW converters (Adobe Camera Raw/Lightroom, Capture One, and some others) for processing these shots, we’ve developed the SonyPixelShift2DNG application, which converts Sony A7R-III shots taken in Pixel Shift mode to DNG, supported by most (but not all) programs that process RAW files.
SonyPixelShift2DNG performs the two following tasks:
The resulting DNG files can later be processed in familiar applications like Adobe Lightroom and Camera Raw, CaptureOne, Iridient Developer, Luminar, and others.
This is time-limited beta version. It will expire on May 01, 2018
Mac OS X/macOS 10.6 - 10.13, 64-bit: SonyPixelShift2DNG-0.8.0.29.dmg
Windows 7-10/64 bit: SonyPixelShift2DNG-0.8.0.29-x64-Setup.exe
System Requirements
* There is no 32-bit version right now: to work, the program needs 700+MB of free RAM, which is unlikely on a 32-bit system.
In the video above, the first line the narrorator says is, "Manfrotto's created the XUME system, a revolutionary way of attaching filters to lenses." The only problem is, the way I see it, they didn't actually create the XUME system. Instead, they acquired the XUME brand in September 2016, which had already been on the market for at least 5 years. And let me be clear, there's nothing wrong with acquiring a company's technologies so that you can market them along with your own product portfolio. However, taking credit for the invention is... a bit tacky, in my opinion.
Regardless of who created the system, the now-Manfrotto-branded XUME filter products are quite intriguing, potentially saving you some time and frustration in the field when switching between filters. [Sean]
B&H carries Manfrotto XUME products.
What are your thoughts? Would it make a difference if Manfrotto hired the inventor of the XUME system when it acquired the company? Let us know in the comments.