May 2015

Travel photography lesson 1: Learning your camera

Before you go on a trip – whether it is a family vacation, adventure travel, or one focused on photography – it is important to know how to use your camera before you go. While reading the manual is always helpful – if you can make it through the hundreds of pages – it doesn’t let you focus on the key features you’re likely to need most. We’ve picked out ten of the most important sets of skills you should try to learn before you go. Some may not apply to you, so feel free to pick and choose, but the list will at least give you a starting point:

New value-price wildlife lens champion: Tamron 150-600mm zoom field-tested

Wildlife photographers have some amazing, and amazingly expensive, lens options from Canon and Nikon, but for many the huge price tags – not to mention large size and weight -- make them impractical. Instead, they have needed to compromise image quality to meet their budget. Fortunately, modern manufacturing techniques and lens design software improvements have continued to improve the quality of third-party value-priced lenses. The first of this new breed is the that I field tested in Texas during my workshops this month...

A magic trick you can hold in your hand: Celluon PicoPro portable projector field-tested

Every once in a while I review a product that seems like a magic trick. Right now that is the Celluon Pico Pro projector.