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Third Party Manufacturer

This week I wanted to write and make everyone aware of a new third party builder for photography accessories, YONGNUO. Some of you may have heard of them before and some of you may not, but YONGNUO has been around for a few years now and they started out making knock-offs of Canon and Nikon’s Speedlites. This first set of images is the Canon 580EX II Speedlite vs YONGNUO’s YN560 IV. If you are familiar with them, their first generation of Speedlites had issues with getting hot while using them or failing after short periods of time, but lately their quality …

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Focus Screens Part 2

In my last blog post I talked about the Focus Screen on your camera and what it does. This week I am writing part two of this article on how to replace or clean your Focus Screen properly so that you can always have a clear viewfinder to look through. To remove your Focus Screen for cleaning or replacement, you need a Focus Screen tool. This is a special, plastic, tweezer-like tool that can grab the Focus Screen by it’s little tab and remove it safely. If you take off your lens and lay the camera on it’s back, look …

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Focus Screens Part 1

This week’s blog post I wanted to write about a specific part of the camera system that you may or may not be familiar with, the Focus Screen. The Focus Screen is a small piece of flat, translucent material, either ground glass or a fresnel lens. It is located inside the front of your camera where the lens mounts and help you acquire focus and frame your shot through your camera’s viewfinder. This first image is a Canon Eg-A Focus Screen. There are various types of Focus Screens for most cameras and they can be either etched or non-etched. There are even …

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Another Way to Improve Post Processing Performance

This week I want to write another article on ways to improve your post processing workflow from a performance standpoint. You’ll remember I wrote a blog post about tweaks for Lightroom, well today’s post will not only speed up Lightroom, but also Photoshop and anything else you are using for Post Production. How can I be certain this will enhance EVERYTHING you say, well because for my day job, I am an I.T. Professional of 25 years. Some of you may or may not have heard of SSD’s also know as Solid State Disks or Solid State Hard Drives, but …

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Are Drones Dangerous?

As I am sure you and most everyone is aware by now, drones are becoming more and more mainstream, especially professional drones. No I am not talking about the Reapers that Uncle Sam uses to rain down Hellfire missiles on terrorists, I am talking about photography and videography drones. I personally own the DJI Phantom 3 Professional drone and love it! But many people are nervous or even scared of drones after all of the negative coverage on the news, especially on TV. They hear stories about drones falling on people or crashing into objects and wreaking havoc on innocent …

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Don’t Let Social Media Stifle Your Creativity!

Social media sites like Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, 500px.com and others can be a great way to share you work as a photographer, but they are not the end all be all. Many times photographers get discouraged with the results they find on these sites, especially if they don’t receive a large amount of “Likes” or “Shares” or “Favorites”. These responses are not an accurate gauge of your creativity or ability as a photographer, they are more the results of Social Media popularity contests. I have talked to and see so many photographers become discouraged with these platforms because they don’t …

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Street Photography

This week I want to talk about a subject that probably makes many of you nervous, Street Photography. Many new photographers cringe at the thought of shooting street, but if you are a photography student, then I am sure you have had a professor or three tell you that you need to learn to start shooting outside your comfort zone. I shot this one of a student taking a nap on the steps at Centennial Olympic Park in Downtown Atlanta. Street Photography doesn’t have to be scary and there are some tips I am going to share with you this …

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Understanding Aperture

There are three key components of the “exposure triangle”, Aperture, ISO and Shutter Speed, and today we will be talking about Aperture. An easy way to think of the Aperture of your lens is to think in terms of the human eye. Since your camera’s sensor “sees” things much as your eye does and then records those images in a physical form, we can think of Aperture the same way. Every lens is made of a a group of glass elements and also a group of Aperture blades. The blades are what limits the amount of light passing into the …

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How to Make Your Camera Battery Last Longer

Most cameras these days can take quite a few photos on a single charge, but this week I am going to share some tips for getting more life and more shots out of the camera’s battery. 1.) GPS – This is a unique feature that a lot of new cameras have these days, but unless you need to tag your location during a shoot, keep this item off. In the course of a day, GPS can drain up to 20% on your battery. 2.) WiFi – Again this is another neat feature to have on a newer model camera, but …

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Back Button Focus

This week I want to talk about a better way to use your AutoFocus on your camera. By default you already know that pressing your shutter button halfway down is how you get your AF lock. The problem is, if you release your shutter, your camera then needs to reacquire focus when you press the button down again. There is an easier way to get your focus and keep it and that method is called Back Button Focus. The button in this shot circled in white is the one I like to use for BBF on my EOS 6D. Back Button …

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