The World Wide Web provides an international showcase for your images. Would I have ever seen the stunning work of Russian photographer Evgeniy Shaman (www.photo.gothic.ru/shamanix/index_e.htm) without the Internet? Nyet! If...
“April Fool. The March fool with another month added to his folly.”—Ambrose Bierce
The best thing photographers can do to showcase their work is build a website, especially one that features their own name as a domain. Oh sure, Flickr and its clones are OK to get started, but when you get serious about your photography you need to get serious about marketing, too. There...
If there is in any theme to Web Profiles during 2005 it's that there are lots of ways to create an Internet homepage. Unlike other technologies used in web design, CSS (Cascading Style Sheets) wasn't adapted from the print world and was developed specifically to enhance the HTML (HyperText Markup Language) code that's the basic building block off the World Wide...
It’s called “continuous lighting” because it’s on continuously, much like a light bulb or the sun for that matter, enabling you to use your in-camera meter to measure the light falling on your subject. Continuous lighting lets you see how all of the light—shadows and highlights—is falling on your subject, but continuous sources sometimes use quartz or photoflood bulbs that can be hot, even dangerously so, leading to the use of the term “hot lights” to describe them. An increasing number of continuous lighting tools are now being made using other kinds of light sources, even LED, producing cool “hot” lights. And that brings us to the subject of this review—the Calumet (www.calumetphoto.com) Pro Series LED Panel Light.
If you're a location photographer who needs a lighting kit that's lightweight, rugged, and can handle whatever kind of assignment that gets thrown at it, Calumet's Travelite 750 One-Head Umbrella Kit may be just what you need. With a price tag under $550...
The classic definition of macro photography is that the image projected onto the digital sensor (or film plane) should be the same size as the subject. With a 1:1 ratio, a DSLR with a full-frame chip should be able to produce life-size magnification and focus on an area as small as 24x36mm.
Canon offers five different 70-300mm zoom lenses in its product lineup. Why so many? They obviously think this is a popular and practical focal length range and I happen to agree. I even own one of them myself—the EF 70-300mm f/4-5.6 IS USM—but the EF 70-300mm f/4-5.6L IS USM tested is the mac daddy of ’em all. Part of the reason for its high price tag ($1599) is that it’s the only one of the five lenses that is resplendent in white paint (the better for TV cameras to see), making it part of the “L” series. (See “Just For The ‘L’ Of It.”) Canon’s L lenses typically have wide apertures fixed throughout the zoom range but in this case all five lenses in this focal length range have identical f/4-5.6 apertures.
The new Canon EF 70-300mm f/4-5.6L IS USM telephoto zoom lens features two Ultra Low Dispersion (UD) elements for improved image quality and reduced chromatic aberration. It incorporates a floating focusing mechanism for sharpness from close-up (3.9 feet) to infinity plus an Image Stabilization (IS) system that Canon claims increases usability by approximately four stops. The IS system includes a function that allows it to continue to operate even when the camera or the lens, the latter being a better idea, is mounted on a tripod. There’s an optional ($189.95) Canon Tripod Mount C for mounting on a tripod or monopod but I was unable to get one for testing. The lens is dust- and water-resistant and features a Fluorine coating that resists smears and fingerprints and significantly eases lens cleaning, but that doesn’t make me suggest less vigorous lens protection. More later.