Category Archives: Photography Techniques

Importance of Shutter Speed

The importance of shutter speed is something that we can sometimes undervalue by attempting to use ISO values that are too low when creating photographs. We may read articles or view videos that are adamant that we should always shoot at low ISO values. While this can be appropriate in specific situations, using a low ISO and sacrificing shutter speed as a trade-off, can be problematic.

Continue reading Importance of Shutter Speed

Handheld Moon Photography Test

This article shares a handheld moon photography test image that I created yesterday evening using my E-M1X’s Digital Teleconverter and M.Zuiko MC-14 teleconverter. I’ve never been very interested in astral photography, and as regular readers know, I hate using a tripod. The combination of those two factors has resulted in me pretty much ignoring moon photography.

Continue reading Handheld Moon Photography Test

Spoiled by Technology

Lately, I’ve been wondering more and more if photographers have become spoiled by the technology found in their camera equipment. Over time, we’ve been treated so well by camera manufacturers that many of us fail to really appreciate the incredible image making power of the gear we hold in our hands every day. There really is no such thing as a ‘bad’ camera system today.

Continue reading Spoiled by Technology

Dragonflies Landing

This article shares a selection photographs of dragonflies landing and discusses technique, including the use of Pro Capture H to create these images. All of the photographs in this article were captured handheld during a short 90 minute visit to the Royal Botanical Gardens (RBG).

Continue reading Dragonflies Landing

Insect Kit Field Test

This article shares some recent insect kit field test images and discusses the rationale behind this particular equipment set-up. I suppose when many people think of insect photography the first gear that comes to mind is a macro lens. While I do use a macro lens for insect photography quite often, there are occasions when a macro lens is not a particularly effective piece of kit.

Continue reading Insect Kit Field Test

Blossoms From a Distance

It can sometimes be a challenge to photograph blossoms such as water lilies… from a distance… and still get the entire flower in focus. Often we don’t have the physical access needed to get close to subject flowers. As a result we can be forced to use a longer focal length telephoto zoom lens for our compositions. This can create depth-of-field challenges.

Continue reading Blossoms From a Distance

Slow Shutter HHFS

This article discusses using slow shutter speeds with handheld focus stacking (HHFS), and shares some new macro snake images captured with shutter speeds from 1/20 to 1/4 of a second.

Yesterday I visited a special frog display at the Royal Botanical Gardens… which also happened to have a trio of water snakes in one of the exhibits. The event gave me the opportunity to get some practice time in doing handheld in-camera macro focus stacking. Continue reading Slow Shutter HHFS

Getting to Infinity

Often when it comes to landscape photography, one of our primary concerns is finding the best way of getting to infinity in terms of depth-of-field. In our quest to getting to infinity, we also need to think about the required shutter speed given any movement caused by wind, as well as our ISO value. As we all know, the higher the ISO value used, the less dynamic range we will have available for our photographs.

Continue reading Getting to Infinity