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Photography Life provides various digital photography news, reviews, articles, tips, tutorials and guides to photographers of all levels

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Nikon D850 Review

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By 167 Comments

Perhaps one of the most anticipated camera releases of 2017 has been the D810 successor, the Nikon D850. Nikon’s high resolution camera body shook up the industry once again, this time with a strong punch, making the Nikon D850 the most versatile DSLR on the market. Thanks to its 45.7 MP sensor with a native ISO sensitivity range of 64-25,600, upgraded 153-point autofocus system, advanced 181,000-pixel RGB metering system, 7 fps continuous shooting speed that can be bumped up to 9 fps with a battery grip, a fully weather sealed construction and a bunch of other hardware and software upgrades, Nikon managed to pull out a camera that can satisfy every photography need – from landscapes and architecture, to sports and wildlife. In this review, I will be assessing the camera from many different angles and comparing to its predecessor, as well as its primary competition.

Note: This is an ongoing review that will be going through a lot of changes and additions over the period of the next few weeks. I decided to consolidate all the information related to the camera into a single review, rather than piecemeal it to many different articles. Expect to see a lot more content – every time I publish new information, I will be bumping up the review to the front page of the site. Also, I am currently working on uploading a few images for the review. More images will be posted very soon!

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FLM Ballhead Review (CB-58 FTR, CB-48 FTR and CB-32 F)

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By 63 Comments

As a landscape and travel photographer, I heavily rely on tripods. After making a number of wrong purchasing decisions early on in my photography career, I realized that a solid tripod and tripod head are very important – sometimes even more important than choosing a camera or a lens. A poor tripod setup can create many headaches and really mess up images, and tripod heads play a big part of that. Many cheap tripod heads sag even after they are tightened. Some can barely hold gear and shake like crazy in wind or when they are touched. Others have poor plates and attachments, making them very frustrating to use in the field. Unfortunately, many of us go through a number of bad tripod heads before realizing that we should have gotten something solid to begin with. For the past seven years, I have been very happy with the Really Right Stuff BH-55 ballhead. In fact, after using the BH-55 for a few years, I ended up buying a few more ballheads from RRS for other needs such as travel. However, after attending a few trade shows and seeing other options from other companies, I wanted to see if there was something even better than the RRS ballheads that I have come to trust and love. I bumped into FLM at Photo Plus New York last year and after talking to the company, I decided to give their ballheads a try and see how they compare to RRS. Thanks to FLM Canada, I was able to obtain three ballheads to test, the CB-58 FTR, CB-48 FTR and CB-32 F. In this review, I will go over these three ballheads in detail and discuss their pros and cons.

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Why Hyperfocal Distance Charts Are Wrong

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One of the most misunderstood parts about landscape photography is the correct way to fit your entire scene within a photo’s depth of field. Where do you focus? What aperture should you use? You might think that these questions are easy to answer with a hyperfocal distance chart, where you provide your focal length and aperture, and the chart tells you exactly where to focus. There’s only one hiccup — if you want the sharpest possible results, these charts are spectacularly wrong. For most landscape and architectural photographers, that’s a big deal. This article explains everything about hyperfocal distance charts: what they are, why they fail, and where to focus instead.

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Photographing Alaska Part 1: Planes, Train and Automobile

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Who hasn’t dreamt of a trip to Alaska? It may not seem such a big deal for residents of west coast or NW USA, but for the rest of us it seems as far away as the moon. Even so, wherever we traveled we’d run into someone who waxed lyrical about their Alaskan cruise. Finally, the opportunity of snapping those images of bears catching leaping salmon was too much to resist.

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The Camera Hype

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I have been debating for quite some time to write this article. On one hand, I feel like I have an overwhelming responsibility to tell our readers the truth about the camera industry and the economics of running a website, and on the other hand, I know that such a provocative article would probably earn me plenty of hate from the publishing industry. But after seeing a few of the past events related to the launching of a few cameras, the same thoughts kept on creeping up and I finally decided to do it. I decided to write on a topic that nobody wants to talk about – how camera companies and everyone else involved in the camera industry are banking on people, AKA the consumers. I wrote this article primarily because of the sense of guilt I have had for years now and also because I do not want our readers to fall into the traps of consumerism. Grab a cup of coffee, sit back and get ready for some entertainment – I assure you that it is coming!

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Adobe Makes It Difficult to Get Lightroom 6

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A friend of mine texted me with a question on how he can upgrade from his Lightroom 5 copy to Lightroom 6 this weekend. He told me that he was frustrated with his online Adobe experience, since he could not find the standalone version – every search lead him to the Creative Cloud (CC) subscription model, which he did not want to buy. I immediately thought that he was simply overlooking something, so I decided to give it a quick go on my mobile phone. I typed “Adobe Lightroom 6 Upgrade” in Google, which took me to all kinds of places, none of which offered an upgrade option to Lightroom 6, only CC offers.

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Nikon DSLR Buffer Capacity Comparison

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In this article, we gathered and compiled the available information on buffer capacity of all current Nikon DSLRs. The below table outlines many of the current and discontinued Nikon DSLR models, along with such information as sensor resolution, continuous shooting speed (fps) and RAW / JPEG buffer capacities. While most of the RAW buffer information is included, we decided not to bother with smaller JPEG sizes, since most cameras presented below can accommodate 100 or more of smaller JPEG images in their buffers.

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How to Focus in Macro Photography

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If you’re trying to photograph the small world of plants and bugs, you’ll face plenty of challenges along the way. Macro photography is a difficult genre — you’re pushing up against the physical limits of depth of field, diffraction, and motion blur. Naturally, focusing in macro photography isn’t an easy task, but it’s a crucial one. How do you optimize your focusing technique for capturing small subjects? The answer depends upon exactly what you’re photographing.

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Best Monitor for Photography

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One of the most frequently asked questions from our readers and friends is related to picking a good monitor for photography needs. It seems like the market is over-saturated with all kinds of choices, whether you visit a local store or browse through an online catalog. There are so many monitors for different budgets, and some models might leave you wondering why they are so expensive compared to others. Since there is no simple answer to this question, I decided to write a detailed article with my personal recommendations.

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