Good Morning Pixel Lovers Everywhere,We had another late but great day yesterday for the Kelby Training shoot. We ended up at Ault Park, one of the prettiest parks in the city for wedding photography. In fact on any given Saturday during wedding season - May through October - you can find up to five wedding parties with their photographers working around the grounds. Yes, it does get complicated sometimes. Yesterday we had the park to ourselves and got some pretty cool shots.
We have one more day of shooting today and were planning to shoot outdoors all day. The plan was to shoot in the worst of light and the best of light. Our plans may be thwarted by a few raindrops according to the weather report. Well, if we get rain, on to Plan B. What's Plan B??? Heck if I know. Anyway, let me fill you in some some cool things I've found around the net and elsewhere.
I've been a reader of PC Magazine since the late eighties - it's a good geek magazine and I fit right in to that customer profile. Anyway, about once a year, they run a listing of their best undiscovered web sites. Here is the link right here to their top 100. What was of particular interest to me were the six photo sites they selected. I took a peek at each one and they were very cool indeed. Here is the link to the six photo sites right here. My favs are the Boston Globe's Big Picture site - a great collection of wonderful images; Earth Album, which let's you click anywhere on the globe and see images from that part of the world - need a little geography lesson - you are only a mouse click away; PicApp for all the free royalty free images - a great source for blogger everywhere; and finally, Tag Galaxy which I've blogged in a previous post - it's just a great, fun rainy day time waster.
Other happening news can be found over at Luminous-Landscape. If you haven't caught Mr. Reichmann's posts on the Nikon D90 right here and his Canon 5D Mark II preview right here, you need to check them out. These reviews are not your normal camera reviews - they are reviews of the video capabilities of both cameras. Everybody knows I went "nuts-oh" over this feature in my previous post right here.
I've been a reader of PC Magazine since the late eighties - it's a good geek magazine and I fit right in to that customer profile. Anyway, about once a year, they run a listing of their best undiscovered web sites. Here is the link right here to their top 100. What was of particular interest to me were the six photo sites they selected. I took a peek at each one and they were very cool indeed. Here is the link to the six photo sites right here. My favs are the Boston Globe's Big Picture site - a great collection of wonderful images; Earth Album, which let's you click anywhere on the globe and see images from that part of the world - need a little geography lesson - you are only a mouse click away; PicApp for all the free royalty free images - a great source for blogger everywhere; and finally, Tag Galaxy which I've blogged in a previous post - it's just a great, fun rainy day time waster.
Other happening news can be found over at Luminous-Landscape. If you haven't caught Mr. Reichmann's posts on the Nikon D90 right here and his Canon 5D Mark II preview right here, you need to check them out. These reviews are not your normal camera reviews - they are reviews of the video capabilities of both cameras. Everybody knows I went "nuts-oh" over this feature in my previous post right here.The Luminous-Landscape articles call a spade a spade and don't pull any punches about the quality of the video capture with each of these cameras. If you want the rest of the story before making your buying decision, give both articles a read.
One more for the road - I'm dying to get my hands on Canon's 18-200mm super zoom lens. I just see today that DPreview just posted an in-depth review on the lens right here. It's not looking like the sharpest tack in the lens box, but that zoom range still looks good to me. Here is my quick take on their review. They talk about barrel and pin cushion distortion. To me that's like who would really care? - I'm not shooting for Architectural Digest and that type of distortion wouldn't be readily evident in my wedding images.
One more for the road - I'm dying to get my hands on Canon's 18-200mm super zoom lens. I just see today that DPreview just posted an in-depth review on the lens right here. It's not looking like the sharpest tack in the lens box, but that zoom range still looks good to me. Here is my quick take on their review. They talk about barrel and pin cushion distortion. To me that's like who would really care? - I'm not shooting for Architectural Digest and that type of distortion wouldn't be readily evident in my wedding images.They also discuss some lack of sharpness at the wide angle end - that one does concern me since I am a wide angle kind of guy. I'm curious just how soft it appears at 18mm. Is it too soft for wedding images that would go up to 8x10/11x14 inch size printed on luster paper? I'm also a little concerned about the chromatic aberration they mention. I think that might be a quick fix in Lightroom but I don't know. I'm going to see if I can get my hands on one in the not to distant future and I'll let you know.
What are the important lens features that appeal to me? 4 stop image stabilization, sharpness throughout the center portion of the lens, and 11x focal length range! Too many times people think they need the fastest, sharpest glass, but to me (this should get the comments flowing) those are not the most important decision making factors for me.
What are the important lens features that appeal to me? 4 stop image stabilization, sharpness throughout the center portion of the lens, and 11x focal length range! Too many times people think they need the fastest, sharpest glass, but to me (this should get the comments flowing) those are not the most important decision making factors for me.
For me, it's always been about the application of the optic to the job - my main job is wedding/event photography and if a lens lets me work quicker and still get the results I need, then that's the lens I want....enough said.
Hey gang, that's it for me today. Everybody lands here in just a few minutes and we have a full day ahead, weather permitting. I'll see everybody tomorrow for a not to be missed, vitally important, life changing Business day Thursday post! OK, maybe I exaggerated just a bit, but it will still be a good one. See ya' tomorrow. -David
Hey gang, that's it for me today. Everybody lands here in just a few minutes and we have a full day ahead, weather permitting. I'll see everybody tomorrow for a not to be missed, vitally important, life changing Business day Thursday post! OK, maybe I exaggerated just a bit, but it will still be a good one. See ya' tomorrow. -David
First off, love the most recent image . . . beautiful work, love the vignette!
ReplyDeleteSecond, I was perusin' the samples from the canon 18-200 at dpreview as well as a couple other sites . . . the reviews and photos showed some pretty darn noticeable softness at lower apertures. I for one am also not much of a pixel peeper and think a little bit of softness is ok, but it did seem like the softness from this lens might be pretty darn high, especially at wider focal lengths. Along those lines, I'm with you and think wide focal length sharpness is necessary, as loads of wedding shots - particularly getting ready shots and dancing shots - are wide angle intensive.