Arca Swiss’s “Quick Link Set” is a duo of lightweight plates that go between your tripod and your tripod head, letting you attach and detach the head quickly. I’ve been using the Quick Link Set recently and wanted to cover my impressions in today’s review.
Post Archive By Spencer Cox - Page 22
What to Photograph When There’s Nothing to Photograph
I’m on the annual Photography Life fall colors workshop with Nasim, and our group ran into a tricky photographic situation this morning. A beautiful mountain overlook was completely blocked by clouds at sunrise, ruining any photos we had in mind. Time to pack it up and go home? Not quite.
Ultra-Large Format Cameras: When 300mm Is a Wide Lens
There’s no real upper limit to how large a camera sensor or film can be. Full frame cameras are smaller than medium format digital, which itself falls behind most medium format film – and so on. At the high end of the scale are Ultra-Large Format (ULF) film cameras.
Range Masks Explained: One of Lightroom’s Most Powerful Tools
For years, Lightroom’s tools for selective adjustments left something to be desired. The “detect edges” feature often adds noise to soft areas like clouds, whereas the standard brush and gradient tools can affect too much of the image. Range masking fixes those problems.
Canon EOS R3 Announcement
Canon just announced its highest-end mirrorless camera ever, the $6000 EOS R3 (shipping November). The R3 has a 24 megapixel stacked BSI sensor and is capable of capturing blackout-free 30 FPS with full autofocus and auto exposure. Perhaps the most exciting feature is the eye-sensing autofocus that positions the initial...
Canon RF 16mm f/2.8 and 100-400mm f/5.6-8 Announcements
Today, alongside the big EOS R3 announcement, Canon announced two new lenses for their RF mirrorless mount: a 16mm f/2.8 and a 100-400mm f/5.6-8. Both aim to be lightweight and portable (at least for their type of lens) and pretty inexpensive at $300 and $650 apiece. They ship in October.
Nikon Z 40mm f/2 Formally Announced + Pre-Order Links
A few months after announcing its development in June, today Nikon formally announced the compact Z-series 40mm f/2 lens and revealed its full specifications. The lens will go on sale “later this fall” according to Nikon, with a suggested retail price of $300.
How Much of a Gap Between Focal Lengths Is Too Much?
When you’re assembling a set of lenses, it can be tempting to try to cover all the important focal lengths without any gaps between them. A kit of 14-24mm, 24-70mm, and 70-200mm lenses is a popular one. So are sets with overlap, like a 16-35mm, 24-105mm, and 70-200mm.
Best Lenses for the Nikon Z5 / Z6 / Z6 II
I chose to have an arbitrary cutoff when making the list above: There must be at least one focal length/aperture combo at which the lens scored at least 2900 in the center, 2200 in the midframe, and 1900 in the corners in our Imatest tests. These numbers aren’t special in and of themselves except as a way to create a hard cutoff that is neither too strict nor lenient.
When and How to Upsample an Image
Upsampling is a tool in most post-processing software that allows you to increase an image’s resolution after taking it. Upsampling lets you boost, say, a 24 megapixel image to 48 megapixels, 96 megapixels, or 240 megapixels! But doing so doesn’t mean you’re actually capturing more detail.