Light, shapes, lines, forms — the foundations of photography. No matter what subjects you shoot, you'll end up working with these features for every photo that you take. Architectural photography, though, takes it to another level, with its perfect geometrical lines and shapes that are hard to find anywhere else in the...
New Zealand Marine Birds and Mammals
My apologies for being silent here at Photography Life for over a month! I've been away on an extended holiday/field trip in New Zealand with my wife, and our busy schedule didn't allow time to prepare any new articles for Photography Life. While the vast majority of our New Zealand photography focused...
Choosing a Creative Exposure – A Beginner’s Guide
There are many combinations of aperture, shutter speed, and ISO that will correctly expose an image. With all those combinations, which one is the right one? If you leave your camera in full program mode, your camera will pick a combination for you. However, letting your camera have complete control...
Nikon 85mm f/1.4G Review
This is an in-depth review of the Nikon 85mm f/1.4G AF-S lens that was announced with three other lenses in August of 2010. Ever since the manual focus AI-s version of the Nikon 85mm f/1.4 lens was introduced back in 1981, the Nikon 85mm f/1.4 lenses have been used as...
When in Doubt, Bracket!
On any photographic forum, it doesn't take much effort to find old or new discussions on how to set the "proper" exposure while shooting, and even what exactly "proper exposure" is. The question of setting exposure was and is one of the most commonly-discussed topics on forums and blogs. Newbies...
Nikon 24-120mm f/4G VR Review
This is an in-depth review of the Nikon 24-120mm f/4G ED VR lens that was released in August of 2010. The constant maximum aperture, mid-range Nikon 24-120mm f/4 VR zoom lens was a major update to the Nikon 24-120mm f/3.5-5.6G VR, which had been known at the time for being...
Nikon 24-70mm f/2.8E VR Review
It took Nikon nine years to finally release an update to its popular workhorse standard zoom lens in the form of the Nikon 24-70mm f/2.8E ED VR, which gained a few new features compared to its predecessor, including the much-desired image stabilization. Nikon engineers have always put extra effort and...
The Exposure Triangle – A Beginner’s Guide
For many starting out in photography, the relationship between aperture, shutter speed, and ISO can be confusing. To further muddy the water, the terms 'stop' and 'f-stop' are often used interchangeably but refer to different things. In this article, I would like to take some of the mystery out of these...
Nikon 24-70mm f/2.8G Review
This is an in-depth review of the Nikon 24-70mm f/2.8G ED lens that was released back in August of 2007 together with the 14-24mm f/2.8G ED lens. I have owned a number of different copies of the Nikon 24-70mm for many years, pretty much from the day the lens was...
Recommended Canon 5D Mark IV Settings
The Canon 5D Mark IV is a highly sophisticated camera, and that means it has a very complex menu system with numerous options. Even advanced photographers may find it tricky to set the Canon 5D IV correctly at first, so we decided to share our recommended camera settings to give...