I see it all the time – lens jockeys hacking off pixels and tossing them out like they were last week’s kitty litter. It pains me to witness such rampant cropping with so little regard for the consequences – especially since I know how potentially devastating it is to a photo.
What really makes me cringe is watching people accept a distant subject’s diminutive size in the viewfinder when I know…
First, let’s get one thing out in the open – I’m not a fan of cropping and I normally tend to avoid it as much as possible. So please don’t take the remainder of this article as some kind of an endorsement for reckless pixel pruning, it’s really not.
Don’t get me wrong, I hack away at pixels like I’m the villain in a horror movie when necessary, but for …
It’s finally here – my Nikon 500 PF review and full field report! And let me tell you, it’s a doozy!
In fact, I may have to apologize for the length. This review is really detailed and goes on for a bit longer than I wanted. I’ve had so many questions about this lens and there are so many different facets to it that it was difficult to keep it …
Question – What happens when you have multiple heads that you want to use with multiple support methods?
Maybe you have a gimbal head and want to use it on a tripod, then later want to use a ball head on that same set of legs. Or perhaps you want to use your gimbal head on both your tripod and monopod. For that matter, you may have other swaps you want to …
So…
A few months ago I released a video where I discussed my various tripods, heads, and how I use them. It generated a lot of comments and a few really stuck in my mind – they were about using a gimbal head with a monopod.
At first, I sort of dismissed the idea. I mean, why would you want to place a giant gimbal head on a monopod when …
“Wow! That’s a big bear,” I exclaimed as I pulled the truck off the road.
As I brought the pickup to a halt, my wife was quickly scanning the nearby woods, “Where?”
I pointed at the 2 o’clock position from the windshield, “Down there, on the ground.”
As I opened my door and climbed out of the truck, I heard her make an excited religious reference – something about a …
So, there you are, face to face with a once-in-a-lifetime shot, but your AF seems less than confident. As you attempt to focus, it tries, misses, tries again, and finally, reluctantly, latches on. However, as you study the image in the viewfinder, the “sharpness” of the subject leads you to suspect that maybe the solid green focus confirmation dot is overly optimistic. You pop off a few shots, and a …
“Hey! You’re doing it wrong!”
That’s what I want to shout pretty much every time I’m out and spot other wildlife photographers with gimbal heads. It seems that well over half of them believe they have their gimbal properly balanced when they really don’t. It’s a shame too – a properly balanced gimbal head is so much nicer to work with than one that’s only half way there.
In the …
(NOTE – when I refer to “fast glass” in this article, I’m referring to the maximum opening, not AF speed.)
Do we really need fast glass anymore?
After all, with all that fantastic high ISO performance we find in modern cameras, should we all just agree to relegate fast glass to the Jurassic section of the Camera History Museum? Is it time to stop spending crazy amounts of money on …
