Tag: Photography Posts

Panasonic Lumix Vario 12-35mm f/2.8 Review

Product Reviews

Last year I sold my Nikon DSLR and replaced it with an Olympus OM-D M5 micro four-thirds camera. While I’ve had a few of the micro four-thirds cameras, the Olympus OM-D camera was the first one where the image quality seemed on par with my DSLR, not just for outdoor photos with tons of light, but also for low-light photography as well. As a former wedding and concert photographer, it was a bit challenging to go from my Nikon and Canon gear (where most of my lenses were f/2.8 or faster) to my micro four-thirds lenses, where most zooms are f/3.5 or slower. The lack of a built-in flash on the OM-D complicates this further, since the camera doesn’t have the ability to increase the ambient light without purchasing a flash unit. For the most part I had been using my Panasonic Lumix 20mm f/1.7 lens on all my micro […]

Micro Four-Thirds Camera Kit

Photography

I’ve been blogging about buying a new camera for quite some time now, and I’m pretty sure I have it narrowed down. Unfortunately, buying a camera at this point is a compromise for me, and I have a hard time making compromises in the technology sphere. SLR cameras and lenses are heavy. They are hard to carry, hard to pack, and a pain to take from place to place. But if you want high-end image quality, than a SLR offers you the best of the best. I love my SLR, but my Canon 40D SLR is in need of replacement at this point. I sold most of my lenses last year, so I don’t really have any professional grade equipment any more. To buy a full frame Canon camera would run me about $2,400, and a decent L-series zoom lens another $1,400. So, unless I’m willing to drop $3,800 in […]

Private Tour Of B&H Photo In New York City

PhotographyUnited States

I’ve been blogging a fair deal about my upcoming trip to New York City, and how one of the highlights for me is undoubtedly going to be visiting B&H Photo in New York City. B&H is an extremely well known photography store, and it’s been on my list of places to visit for many years now. Thanks to the power of the Internet, Hershel Waldner, Supervisor of the Online Marketing Department for B&H Photo, contacted me and asked if I’d like a private tour of the facilities while I’m there. Obviously, I said yes! So, I’ll be visiting B&H Photo while I’m in town and also getting a full tour of the behind the scenes action at B&H. I’ll be taking some photos and hopefully some video, and I’ll happily post about my experience when it’s all done. As I’ve pointed out before, I’m also going to be picking up […]

Technology To Take Along

PreparationTechnology

It would be pretty hard to call myself a Migratory Nerd if I wasn’t in fact a pretty big technology nerd. Thankfully, I have enough photography and technological gear around here that it’s pretty easy to describe myself as a nerd. In a perfect world, I’d be able to bring everything along with me. But given that I want to travel with a 40L backpack, I’m not really going to have a ton of room in there. The following is a list of the technology I’ll be bringing along on my little adventure. 13″ Macbook Pro The idea that people used to once travel the world for months at a time without really being able to contact home seems pretty foreign to me in this day and age. Even five years ago when I was on a fairly remote trip to Costa Rica there was always an internet cafe close […]

Vancouver Stock Photos

Photography

As most people know, I spent a lot of my time in Vancouver taking photos of the city. I was one of the first people in the city to dabble with high dynamic range imagery, and because I carried my wideangle lens around with me quite often, ended up with quite a few HDR images of Vancouver. While down in the Dominican, I was talking to Dale about possibly putting together a little package for media organizations during the Olympics. While in the process of putting that together over the last few weeks, I figured I might as well put everything online as well. To that end, I registered the domain VancouverStockPhotos.ca the other day, and was up until about 5am on Saturday putting it together. Most of my Vancouver shots are now up for sale, primarily as stock photography, but also a few that are available in prints. As […]

Concert and Low Light Photography

Photography

Without a doubt, shooting in low-light conditions is one of the most challenging aspects of taking photographs. I would still probably rate weddings a bit more challenging (since most weddings include some elements of low-light in addition to outdoor shots), but it’s definitely near the top of my difficulty scale. With the advent of digital cameras, most SLR bodies now have the ability to allow the user to arbitrarily increase the ISO setting on the camera in order to improve the low-light responsiveness. So obviously when a photographer encounters a low-light situation, he or she can simply increase the ISO sensitivity of the camera to compensate. I can actually handle random noise fairly well in my photographs, but there’s another type of noise that I can’t deal with, and that occurs as the ISO increases. Effectively what happens is that in high-light areas of the frame, the light ends up […]

Website Update

 Journal

It’s been about three days since I launched the new site, and I’ve had some great feedback regarding it (thanks everyone). I’ve made a few small tweaks based on some comments, so hopefully it’s a bit better. I’ve been watching my traffic, and so far I’ve consistently about double the traffic (actually, a tad bit more) since launching. I’m sure part of that is a transient contribution from launching a new site and Twittering about it, but I’m fairly certain the traffic will definitely go up, since there’s now a lot more to do here now (specifically in the photography section). I’m also tracking bounce rate, and I’m hoping that goes down significantly for the same reasons. I generally don’t care that much about traffic, but as a metric for gauging the effectiveness of a new design and/or content change, I think it’s decent enough. I’ve slowly been tinkering away […]

Facebook Photography Page

 Journal

I put together a Facebook photography page a while ago. If you use Facebook, and like some of the photos I’ve taken, then please become a fan of this page. I’m going to be redoing my personal website shortly to be more photo centric and mostly reflect my online photography as opposed to some of my writings.

Vancouver Scenic Photography Sale – Limited Time

Photography

About 18 months ago a few people encouraged me to put some of my photos online for sale. Given that my Vancouver scenery ones are the most popular photos in my portfolio, I’ve pretty much only focused on that. I’ve actually made a decent amount by selling them, probably enough to be able to afford a cheap lens, which is pretty cool. The next item on my wish list is the Canon EOS 5D Mark II camera, which is one of the most affordable full frame cameras on the market. Unfortunately, the list price of that camera is around $3200, so it’s a bit outside of my price range at this point. So, I’m going to try to come up with a few different ways to try and close the price gap. The first way I thought I’d raise a few bucks is by offering a sale on some of […]