Standard

April 4, 2015 by PhotoKen

Explosive Color: Skagit Valley Tulip Festival

Took a little family trip through the Skagit Valley North of Seattle last week.

Just happened to be during the Tulip Festival 🙂

It’s an amazing explosion of color – really hard not to get some great photos. These are a few of my favorites. I won’t show you the other 235!

I was trying out some different perspectives using a Canon 5D Mark III paired with a 70-200 mm f/2.8 L lens and a 16-35mm f/2.8L lens. The first 3 were at 70 to 80mm. The 4th and 5th photo were at 200mm – I was using this focal length to ‘compress’ the perspective giving condensed bands of color. The last photo was at 16mm just holding the camera at arms length above a bed of tulips for a unique perspective.

I used different Focal Lengths and Apertures in these photos to modify the Depth of Field (how much is in focus) to give a different look to the photos. >>Click here to find out How to Isolate your Subject with Narrow Depth of Field <<

I hope this gives you some interesting angles to try out in your flower photography.

Standard

December 19, 2014 by PhotoKen

What is a Wide Angle Lens?

You may have wondered “What is a Wide Angle Lens?

OR “Why are Wide Angle Lenses so expensive”

In the Video above I talk about what a Wide Angle Lens is as well as:

Why they can be expensive but not as much as Telephoto Lenses
The BEST use of Wide Angle Lenses (you definitely want to watch that part if you were thinking about using them for Portraits).

This video is the *missing Photo Snack #2* for those who saw the earlier posts EASYDSLR Photo Snack #1Canon vs Nikon and Photo Snack #3 Are Bigger Pixels Better?

If you are looking at getting a Good Quality Wide Angle Zoom for a crop sensor Camera (like Canon T5i or Nikon D5300) then I would seriously consider getting a Pro Lens in the range of around 16 – 35mm like:

These are top Quality Lenses and are not cheap but are much more affordable than their f/2.8 “bigger brothers”.

The reality is that most wide angle photos you are likely to be taking will need a lot in focus – meaning a large Depth of Field. This means you will be using narrower Apertures in the range of f/11 to f/22. So the extra cost for f/2.8 will not be justified.

On a Full Frame sensor camera the above lenses will be VERY Wide and I find I use a lens in the 24 – 70mm range more often (24mm on a Full Frame Sensor is fairly WIDE – I explain all this in my Composition Video in my EasyDSLR Course)

So for Full Frame Cameras these are my BEST recommendations (I use the 24-70mm on my Canon 5D Mark III around 60-80% of the time).

You may be interested in doing Video with your DSLR and want that super Narrow Depth of Field but may not be able to afford either of the f/2.8 lenses above – in the next article I will give you a great option for affordable Video lenses that will do the trick and not break the bank.

Standard

October 10, 2014 by PhotoKen

Are Bigger Pixels Better for Digital Photography?

In this EASYDSLR Photo Snack #3 I look at Are Bigger Pixels Better?

*if you were paying attention you may have noticed Photo Snack#2 was missing – I’ll post that later 🙂 *

Bigger Pixels on a digital camera sensor means more photons (light particles) per pixel.

The pixels are the single Photo sites that make up the sensor (the total count gives you the MegaPixel rating of your camera).

More photons per pixel means better sampling and less sampling errors between pixels – resulting in:

Less Luminance (light level) noise
Less Chroma noise (color variation from sampling errors)

Overall this gives better Image Quality (IQ) of your images.

A larger sensor camera (like a Full Frame PRO level DSLR) has larger pixels and resulting better Image Quality than smaller sensor cameras. It’s one of the reason you are paying a lot more for the Pro level cameras – or put another way – why it’s worth paying more.

So Pixel size DOES MATTER!

note: this is assuming you are dealing with similar sensor technology.

Standard

May 5, 2014 by PhotoKen

Canon vs Nikon – What’s the Difference?

In this EASYDSLR Photo Snack #1 I look at Canon vs Nikon DSLR Cameras.

Which one is better?

Canon and Nikon both produce state of the art DSLR cameras. There are so many features to compare. I usually recommend get the camera you can afford and if you have already invested in good lenses stick with the brand of the lenses. I have a lot of good Canon lenses – L Series Professional ones – so when a decided to upgrade to a higher end full frame DSLR I went with the Canon 5D Mark III (awesome camera BTW). If you haven’t built up a good lens collection then it’s going to be a choice based on features and personal preference.

I personally prefer the menu and controls layout on the Canon DSLR cameras – even though I own both.

As I mention in the video above, the differences between brands is less than the difference between low end to high end cameras within a brand.

For example: There is much more difference between the low-end cameras (like the Canon T3) and high-end cameras (like the Canon 5D Mark III) than there is between Nikon and Canon at similar levels.

Looking at buying a DSLR? Get my Free Guide HERE!