Home / Nasim Mansurov

Monitor Purchase Guide is now ready

Jun
4
2012
June 4, 2012
By 8 Comments

As you know, I have been working on various purchase guides for our readers. Previously, I posted the DSLR Camera Purchase Guide and today I am happy to announce that I have just posted the Monitor Purchase Guide. The guide is accessible on the top of the page, under our “Gear Guide“. Each and every purchase guide that I complete is an interactive system based on your preferences, budget, currently owned systems, etc. Here is a screenshot of a 24″ Dell monitor, based on size preference:

Monitor Purchase Guide

So if you have been looking for a good monitor for your photography, check out this guide. Also, don’t forget that I have an article on Best Monitors for Photography, which I highly recommend to read before you start looking at the various options. I will be working on other interactive purchase guides soon, so stay tuned!

Filed Under: Accessories Tagged With: ,

Nikon D3200 Giveaway Winner

Jun
3
2012
June 3, 2012
By 25 Comments

Today we are announcing the lucky winner of the Nikon D3200 Giveaway that we hosted all of last month. We had an incredible number of entries – a whopping 1648 candidates, but unfortunately, only one of them gets to win the camera. I use a random number generator by random.org for these kinds of giveaways, so it picks one number for me between 1 and the total number of entries (1648 in this case).

Mansurovs and B&H Nikon D3200 Giveaway

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Filed Under: Miscellaneous Tagged With: , ,

Are You Afraid to Ask?

Jun
2
2012
June 2, 2012
By 15 Comments

We rarely get to see extraordinary people in our everyday lives. Have you had one of those moments when you saw a stranger that you really wanted to take a picture of? I am sure you have. So what did you do? Did you just photograph the person from afar without them knowing, try to talk that person into being your 30 second model or perhaps you might have tried to sneak up and take a picture? Or even worse, maybe you did not take a picture at all? I guess it has to do with our personality. If you are of shy type with a low confidence level (often a photography rookie), you might be even afraid to ask. That dreaded “No” can be quite discouraging to say the least and many of us don’t even bother to ask for that very reason.

I once asked a big tattooed guy to take his picture, because he had a very colorful outfit that looked very interesting with his tattoos. With plenty of anger on his face, his response was that he would break my camera if I even tried. Oh well, not everyone is approachable for sure! It certainly sounded very discouraging, but did it make me give up on asking? Of course not. I have asked many people since then. And I have photographed many of them, some of which later became my clients.

While doing a short photo walk with the Canon 5D Mark III in Disney Downtown, I came across an Italian guy, who danced away to tunes played by local artists. His dancing was not very good (meaning, he is not a professional dancer or anything), but the way he was dressed and he moved attracted a lot of people:

Street Dancer (1)

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Filed Under: Photography Techniques Tagged With: , , ,

Lightroom 4.1 and Camera RAW 7.1 Update

May
30
2012
May 30, 2012
By 15 Comments

Great news for those of us that use Lightroom or Photoshop – Adobe has just released the final versions of Lightroom 4.1 and Camera RAW 7.1 that finally add Fuji X-Pro1 support! It took a long time for the X-Pro1 support to become available and I am happy that I can now go back and replace all JPEG images from my Lightroom catalog with RAW files. I am also planning to update my Fuji X-Pro1 Review with some RAW samples sometime this week.

Lightroom 4

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Filed Under: Post Processing Tagged With: , ,

The Future of Digital Cameras

May
24
2012
May 24, 2012
By 87 Comments

Ever since I got a taste of some of the latest compact cameras from Fuji, Sony and Nikon, I have been thinking more and more about where we are headed in terms of cameras and lenses. What is the future of digital cameras and where will we be in 5 or even 10 years? This question came up in my conversation with a fellow photographer, so after discussing this topic for a little while, I decided to put some of my thoughts together and come up with what I think the future of digital cameras will be like.

Mirrorless vs DSLR

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Filed Under: Cameras and Lenses Tagged With: , , ,

Is Nikon D600 on the Horizon?

May
23
2012
May 23, 2012
By 173 Comments

So far this year has been pretty hectic for Nikon. With three excellent DSLR camera bodies (Nikon D4, Nikon D800 and Nikon D3200), two superb lenses (Nikon 85mm f/1.8G and Nikon 28mm f/1.8G) and some accessories announced, it is hard to imagine that Nikon might introduce more DSLR cameras in 2012. While Nikon D5100, D7000 and D300s are all due for an update, our friends at Nikon Rumors are already receiving some early rumors about the possibility of a new budget full-frame (FX) DSLR from Nikon that will be supposedly announced later this year with the new “Nikon D600″ name.

Nikon D600

The key word here is budget – the Nikon D600 will apparently be marketed as a low-end FX camera at a very low price point. Currently, the cheapest DSLR from Nikon is the Nikon D700, which has a price tag of $2,199 USD (MSRP) and the new D800 sells for $2,999 USD (MSRP). The rumored Nikon D600 will have a very low price point, maybe as low as $1,500. Interestingly, this all goes back to some early rumors about the Nikon D400 (D300s replacement) being a full-frame camera. Could it be that Nikon will discontinue the professional DX line completely and replace it with FX? It is hard to tell at this time, but judging on Nikon’s history of replacing the D90 with a more advanced D7000, I would not exclude that possibility. So far I have been projecting that Nikon would continue the development of its pro DX line with a D400 DX, but if a budget FX camera comes out at the same or lower price point as the D300s, then forget about the D400 DX.

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Filed Under: Cameras and Lenses Tagged With: , , ,

How to Photograph a Solar Eclipse

May
20
2012
May 20, 2012
By 17 Comments

I intentionally waited on posting this article on how to photograph a solar eclipse until it actually took place on 05/20/2012, because I wanted to document my experience and provide information on what challenges I had during the process of photographing this rare, but stunningly beautiful phenomenon. This was my first time trying to photograph a solar eclipse; in fact, it was my first time seeing one take place. Yes, there have been solar eclipses before, but I have been missing them all for some reason. This time, after I heard it on the news a week ago, I decided to watch it with my family and document the event with some photographs. While we in Denver were not as lucky as some folks in US southwest, Japan and a few other places to see the total solar eclipse, the partial eclipse still looked beautiful. Unfortunately, clouds moved in and blocked most of it for us here, but I still was able to capture a few shots when the clouds cleared up a little. I will be sharing those photos with you in this short tutorial. Hopefully when a solar eclipse takes place next time, you will have some useful information on how to photograph it with your camera.

Solar Eclipse

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Filed Under: Photography Tutorials Tagged With: , , ,

Sharing Lightroom Catalog with Multiple Computers

May
11
2012
May 11, 2012
By 18 Comments
Lightroom Icon

If you have more than one computer at your home to work on your photos with Lightroom, you might be wondering if there is a way to share your Lightroom catalog, so that you can work on the same images with the same catalog on multiple computers at once. Unfortunately, the database system that Lightroom runs on (SQLite) limits the catalog to be used on a single computer, on a locally attached drive. Hence, simultaneously accessing a single catalog with multiple machines is not supported and will not work. On top of that, Adobe strictly forbids placing catalogs on network volumes, because it can result in all kinds of Lightroom database corruption issues (placing photographs on a network share is supported). In short, Lightroom is a “single-user” application with no support for multi-user access. While some people have been requesting a “multi-user” edition of Lightroom, Adobe currently has no plans to make such Lightroom version due to potential complexities of such software. True multi-user applications require a server and client infrastructure, which can be too complex for most photographers to set up and use.

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Filed Under: Post Processing Tagged With: , , ,

Fuji X-Pro1 Image Samples

May
8
2012
May 8, 2012
By 36 Comments

I am currently working on the Fuji X-Pro1 review, although I will be honest that I have been delaying the review for quite a while now, since I am still waiting for Adobe to release a version of Camera RAW / Lightroom 4 that will support X-Pro1 RAW files. While the JPEG images produced by the X-Pro1 are superb, I know that I can get much more from each image if I use a good RAW image processor. The RAW converter that Fuji has for the X-Pro1 is definitely not my thing…

Here are some sample images from the camera that I will be using in my upcoming review, all taken in England. As always, EXIF data is embedded to each image with exposure, lens and other information.

Fuji X-Pro1 Sample (20)

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Filed Under: Cameras and Lenses Tagged With: , ,

Canon 5D Mark III Light Leak Issue Fix

May
2
2012
May 2, 2012
By 38 Comments

As you may already know, the very first batches of the Canon 5D Mark III had a manufacturing defect, where light would leak through the top LCD panel as shown in this and this videos. After a thorough investigation, Canon confirmed that the camera indeed had a problem, so it issued an official statement that it would fix the issue if you send the camera to Canon (free of charge).

Original 5D Mark III

Folks at LensRentals.com had a chance to disassemble both an original and a “fixed” Canon 5D Mark III and they discovered that Canon used a black tape over the camera components, which essentially takes care of the problem completely. Here is a picture of the black tape covering the components:

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Filed Under: Cameras and Lenses Tagged With: ,