I always find the work of great photographers very inspiring, both creatively and technically. I think studying the work of masters of the craft helps us to hone our own skills and our own eyes. To that end, I think it’s awesome that DPS (digital-photography-school.com) has posted a list of links to 99 incredible photographers and their portfolios. These are some really talented folks, some of the best and brightest contemporary photographers.
Definitely worth a look
So in preparation for my upcoming trip to St. Johns, (which will include much shooting!) I’ve been thinking long and hard about my travel kit. I tend to be torn between the two extremes of taking everything but the kitchen sink (2 bodies, wide zoom, normal zoon, telezoom, fast normal prime, fast portriait prime, macro lens, flashes etc…) and ultra minimalist (1 body, 21mm prime +50-200 zoom)
Both have worked for me in the past, and have their own pros and cons. However now I’m trying to find a middle ground. basically I’m trying to break it down into 2 categories: camera gear and lighting gear. I love the compact/lightweight pentax primes, but shooting on the beach etc… I’d like to avoid lens switches as much as possible. Luckily the new DA* 16-50/2.8 should give me acceptable quality (*almost* as good as the primes, but not quite 
while staying on my camera 99% of the time.
I’m also debating whether to take the 35/2 or live with 2.8 as my fastest lens. On the one hand I love the 35/2 but on the other hand its one more piece to carry! I do 99% of my shooting at 50mm or less, so really the 16-50 should serve for 99% of everything. Then it comes down to either the 50-200 for the few times I want reach, or ditching the telezoom entirely and relying on my G9 when I need >50mm. I know it sounds crazy, but I kind of like the idea of just running the k10d w/16-50 and G9. That covers me from 24-210mm equiv. I’ll be missing Fast+long, but I really never find myself needing that anyway. plus no need to change lenses on the k10d.
so here’s my tenative list:
K10d
DA* 16-50/2.8
(maybe) 50-200
(maybe) 35/2
Canon G9
Lighting: (for beach portraits/shots)
Pentax 540FGZ
Vivitar 285hv
2x Bogen compact stands
2x westcot 43″ folding brollys (1 white, 1 silver)
40″ collapsible 5-in-1 reflector
(and of course the various batteries, memory cards, filters etc…)
So what is all of y’alls travel kit?
“City Hall, Deconstructed”
a different view of Philly’s city hall – reflected in the PNC building. (click the thumbnail for larger)
I am always refining my Photographic workflow. I tend to be a compulsive “organizer” and keep tweaking/changing/updating how I organize/store/process my photos
I’ve found it interesting when reading about other photographer’s workflows that they tend to be divided into 2 main camps – the “Savers” and the “Cullers”
For all you lightroom users –
Adobe just released 1.3, which adds leopard support among other fixes (readme)
(notable for me at least is full support for the G9′s raw files – with 1.2 there was a weird issue where the AWB would come out horrendously wrong for some shots in raw (but not all – strange)
another very cool feature, that I had been hoping for is the release of a developer’s “export” SDK. Hopefully with this out, we should start seeing some export hook-ins like the flickr and various stock site exports that aperture has.
After drooling over this lens since it’s announcement, I finally got my grubby little mitts on the DA* 16-50/2.8. In my opinion, despite the moaning on the various web forums (*cough*dpreview*cough*) this lens is well deserving of Pentax’s “star (*)” moniker.
Build quality is top-notch, definitely “solid”, what I’d expect in a pro-grade lens. SDM focus is fast and accurate. Image quality is excellent – maybe not quite up to the level of the limited primes, but pretty close – easily as good as the comparable canon/nikon offerings (the 17-55/2.8s) especially when you consider that this lens goes to 16 instead of 17(don’t underestimate the difficulty of engineering that 1mm!) all in all an excellent offering. So without further ado, here are some of the first shots taken with it on the k10d. All were shot raw, minimal post processing in lightroom (just some exposure +/-) (click the thumbnails for larger) Nothing special, just some “walking around” snapshots.
Quite a foggy morning this morning, swallowing up the skyscrapers downtown:
Some fall foliage around Penn’s campus:
As I mentioned in my previous article, I see the canon G9 as a excellent camera for “street photography” (at the risk of offending the leica-philes!). However, it still poses the same problem as any other digicam for street photography and that is LAG.
Luckily, the G9′s lag is not all that bad to begin with, and can be minimized a bit further. First off- the shutter lag is not bad at all, the predominant problem is the focus lag in low light (especially on the street where the AF assist lamp is not much use). Luckily this is one case where a small sensor actually *helps* us… since the small digicam sensor has such a large depth of field, it facilitates setting the hyperfocal distance (the focal point at which the DOF is from 1/2 the H.D. to infinity – eg if the hyperfocal distance is 10ft, then everything from 5ft to infinity will be in focus)
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I first checked out flock when it was in it’s early stages… it was an interesting concept, but not nearly mature enough for prime time. My, how things change. I downloaded the 1.0 RC1 the other week, and I am frankly blown away.
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Paul Indigo’s over at Beyond The Obvious this morning got me thinking about photo sharing (seem my earlier article on the subject!), and yet another endangered species in our little art world…
The critique.
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…but…
I’m talking about the new Eye-Fi SD card. Normally I don’t get particularly excited over a memory card, but this one has wi-fi transmission built in – cool huh?
Now of couse, as soon as I saw this the gears started spinning. Ignoring the touted “auto-upload to flickr” type features, I began thinking…
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