Photography Life

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

Nikon 300mm f/4E PF ED VR Review

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It has been 15 years since Nikon produced the last iteration of its budget 300mm lens, so the new Nikkor 300mm f/4E PF ED VR was something many enthusiasts and professionals have been patiently waiting for. Although the previous generation Nikkor 300mm f/4D AF-S is an excellent lens optically, it lacks image stabilization, new generation coating and other new technologies that Nikon has been integrating into modern lenses. I have personally been a huge fan of the 300mm f/4D AF-S lens and have owned it for many years, loving the lens for its superb optical performance, fast autofocus, light weight and compact size, making it my ultimate travel lens for wildlife photography – a perfect companion for hand-held shooting. Because it was so good with the 1.4x teleconverter, I practically always kept the teleconverter attached to the lens, making it a very nice 420mm f/5.6 combination. When Nikon finally announced the new 300mm f/4E VR lens, I got very excited, because Nikon completely redesigned the lens. In fact, with close to a 50% reduction in weight and a 30% reduction in physical size, we are not dealing with another redesign or update – this is a completely different lens.

UPDATE: The review has been updated – missing Imatest charts and lens comparisons have been added based on two additional lens samples.

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Dissecting My Favorite Photos from 2015 – Part I

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Every January, I spend couple of days reviewing the photos I made the past year. My first step is to narrow those down to about 45 – 50 favorite images and then eventually to top 12 (the latter reduction often aided by a Facebook poll). I find this exercise rewarding and a very effective way of improving my photography skills. I thought of sharing these final 10 – 12 photos from 2015 with the Photography Life community including the preparation that went behind creating each image, the thought process that led to the final composition, post processing technique etc. After a quick email back and forth with Nasim, I decided to take a stab at it and here is my first write up of this 12 part series.

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Introduction to MIOPS Smart Trigger

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During our trip to Turkey, Lola and I had a chance to briefly meet with my Turkish friends from MIOPS.com, the talent behind MIOPS Smart Trigger and Nero Trigger (see our detailed review of Nero Trigger). MIOPS is a small business that operates out of Turkey, with an exceptionally knowledgeable team of software and hardware engineers. I first met the MIOPS team at the Photo Plus Expo in New York back in 2013 and since then we have become good friends. So when they found out that Lola and I were flying out to Istanbul, they invited both of us to their corporate office for a tour of their production facilities. Since I had a couple of cameras with me during the trip, I requested to record an interview with the team in order to introduce both the product and the talented team behind the product to our readers. In this article, I would like to share the recorded interview with our readers and provide some information on the MIOPS Smart Trigger. If you have never heard of this little device, I would definitely encourage you to read on, since this little gadget might get your creative juices flowing with all kinds of new photography ideas.

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Is The Orton Effect Taking Over Landscape Photography?

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Have you heard of the Orton Effect? This post-processing technique has been around since the 1980s, if not earlier, but the trend has exploded tremendously in the past few years. If you haven’t heard of it, you aren’t alone – it only recently began to gain mainstream popularity. And yet, in some ways, the Orton Effect is swallowing the modern world of landscape photography. This is barely an exaggeration; after seeing the Orton Effect in practice, you should be able to spot it in at least a third of the trending 500px landscape photos, as well as many winning photo contest entries. This article covers all the basics of the Orton Effect, including a tutorial on how to implement it in your own images – and a discussion on why you may not want to do so.

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The Generation of the Self-Obsessed

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Sometimes it is quite amusing to observe the impact of the social media world on our youth. With the likes of Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, Vine and Tumblr dominating the daily lives of people today, it seems like the younger generation is only concerned about getting more likes on their next “duck-face” photo, their thigh gaps, or a selfie in front of a major landmark. They know more about what the Kardashians wore for the Met Gala event than what the Pythagorean Theorem represents. We see them every day, everywhere; visit any popular hot spot and you will surely be surrounded by a herd of selfographers. And each time you revisit, it seems like their numbers multiply in geometric progression, spreading faster than plague. It is the generation of the self-obsessed. What’s worse, the selfie culture has become such a norm in our society, that it has already begun to spread to the older generation as well.

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The Importance of Simplicity in Photography

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At the heart of photography is the idea that you are conveying a message to your viewers. Perhaps you want to show the beauty of a waterfall or the drama of an incredible sunrise. Or, you may hope to depict the dark intensity of a jagged mountain peak. A photograph with a clear message can be as effective as possible; its composition, colors, subject matter, and lighting all add to the impression that you are trying to convey. And, more than any other element of composition, the concept of simplicity helps you achieve this goal. In this article, I will cover the ways in which simplicity plays a role in successful photography, including how to implement it to improve your own photographs.

This article is adapted from the upcoming eBook that Nasim and I are writing: “Creative Landscape Photography: Light, Vision, and Composition.” 

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How Was This Picture Made #9: The Answer

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We had quite a few of our readers engage in our last “How Was This Picture Made #9” article for the image of the Sokullu Mehmet Pasa Mosque that I posted from my trip to Istanbul, Turkey. While some of the readers did a great job at giving a description of my shooting environment and even correctly guessed the location, the camera and the lens I used for the shot, none of the readers correctly identified the specific challenges I faced when photographing the scene. And to be honest, it would have been nearly impossible to identify those challenges by just looking at the photo, since it is the final, processed version. Let’s go through all the steps that will reveal everything I did to capture and process this image.

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How to Photograph the Mercury Transit

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Every so often, the planet Mercury lines up perfectly between the Earth and the Sun. When it does, astronomers and photographers have a relatively rare chance to see and photograph the planet Mercury transiting across the Sun. Next Monday (May 9) is one of those opportunities. In this article, I will cover some tips and techniques for photographing this year’s Mercury transit.

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