Skagsanden beach is by far my favorite in the Lofoten Islands. Is it surrounded by photogenic mountains, but that's not the main attractionit's the composition and blending patterns of the sand in this Arctic beach which keeps me fascinated. Each time it's different, and as a photographer who enjoys changing landscapes, I'm always curious to see how it will look next. This time I visited the beach with one of my Lofoten workshop groups. The unique patterns were relatively easy to spot; I pointed them out to the participants and we started working on them. For this specific shot, I chose a specialty lens-the Canon 11-24mm-which allowed me to get very close to the patterns and emphasize their detail, while keeping the right proportion of mountains in the background. I love how the tree patterns resemble the hands of tormented souls in the inferno! :) The final image was focus stacked from four shots taken with my Canon 5D Mark IV, Canon 11-24mm F4L, and a Nisi Filters 180mm ND + GND at 11mm, 0.8 sec, F13, and ISO100. Erez Marom is a professional nature photographer, photography guide and traveler based in Israel. You can follow Erez's work on Instagram, Facebook and 500px, and subscribe to his mailing list for updates. Erez offers photo workshops worldwide.
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The Universal Fabric editorial illustrations by Sam Chivers for BBC Focus Magazine.Wilmington, United Kingdom based Illustrator Sam Chivers was commissioned to work on a set of editorial illustrations for a series of four features in BBC Focus magazine. Each month Physicist Jeff Forshaw and Professor Brian Cox would tackle the big questions in Physics today such as what the nature of time? What is everything made of? What happened before the big bang? and How will the universe end? Some images of the first set The Universal Fabric can be found below. For more of Sam Chivers's creative work, please have a look at his website or check out his portfolio on Behance. All images by Sam Chivers. The post BBC Focus Magazine Illustrations by Sam Chivers appeared first on WE AND THE COLOR. Photographer:Barbara Shea Tracy Amateur Photographer Photographic Specialties:
Biography I am a family nurse practitioner who majored in fine arts. My passion is the visual arts. I am also a wildlife photographer and am working towards certification as a wildlife rehabilitator. I frequent Cape Cod and often follow the journey of the red fox along the shores. I am an amateur and look forward to learning more and perfecting my skill. The post Photographer Profile:Barbara Shea Tracy appeared first on Outdoor Photographer. As an astronomer and science filmmaker, I have been photographing the night sky and astronomical observatories professionally for more than ten years. I have photo-documented more than thirty science research sites around the globe in remote places such as the South Pole, the Atacama desert, the South African Karoo, and a lab almost one mile underground in South Dakota. For wide-field night-sky photography my main lens has been the Nikkor 14-24mm F2.8G ED. Its wide, sharp, and rectilinear field of view (FOV) of 114 degrees makes it the ideal lens to capture as much of the sky as possible in the context of a natural landscape - or as much of an astronomical telescope as possible when shooting inside an observatory. Its wide aperture of F2.8, combined with good DSLR performance at high ISO, lets one capture features such as The Milky Way in a short amount of time, while avoiding or minimizing star trails due to the Earth's rotation. When the new Sigma 14mm F1.8 DG HSM Art was announced, it got my immediate attention because of its obvious applications in astrophotography. It's 1.3 EV faster than the Nikkor lens, which means an image that needs a 25 second exposure at F2.8 requires just 10 seconds at F1.8. I was able to test this lens on a Canon EOS 5D Mark IV earlier this month in Badlands National Park, South Dakota. Here are my first impressions of using it in the field. I'll give you my impressions of using this lens in the field, but for those who really want to see the type of images it produces, I won't make you wait. Image Brightness at F1.8First, let's see how much brighter a scene looks at F1.8 than at F2.8 in these straight-out-of-the-camera (SOOC) images (no vignetting or lens correction applied). Naturally, the increase of 1.3 EV is highly appreciated.
Next, let's take a look at another scene shot at F1.8 and stop down the lens to F2.8 in 1/3 f-stop increments while increasing the exposure times accordingly in order to keep the same EV. Vignetting and Lens FlaresAs one would expect, vignetting is stronger at wider apertures but I like how soft the vignetting gradient is. On site, it was apparent how much brighter the image at F2.8 appeared on the LCD screen compared to the one shot at F1.8. Subsequent analysis in Photoshop demonstrated that although the central portions of the images are equally bright, overall, the image at F2.8 is 27% brighter than the one at F1.8 due to the effect of vignetting. This was easily corrected in Lightroom's Lens Correction panel, albeit more aggressively than what I would normally do. You can see a lens flare caused by the off-frame Moon. Although it is small and faint, I noticed (anecdotally) that the Sigma lens was more susceptible to the Moon's glare (when located at very shallow off-frame angles) than the Nikkor lens. You can see the flares in the 100% crops below. Also, notice how much you can reduce star trails by cutting the exposure time to 10 seconds. This makes stars appear much closer to pinpoints of lights and makes other astronomical objects like the M4 globular cluster less smudged. Of course, the latter point is relevant depending upon the final size at which the image will be displayed and the distance at which the image will be seen. Comatic AberrationNow, let's take a look at the presence of coma, an optical aberration which causes point sources such as stars appear distorted and display a tail (coma) like a comet. This kind of aberration is worst at the widest apertures and, just like vignetting, can be reduced by stopping down the lens, which might go against the motivation of investing in a fast lens! Therefore, it is very important for a fast lens to exhibit very low coma. Below are 100% crops of the boardwalk scene shown above shot at F1.8 and F2.8. For such a fast lens, the amount of coma is very small. In the upper row, notice that at F1.8 coma is only apparent in the bright stars and when the lens is stopped down to F2.8 the coma disappears altogether. That is, unless the "star" is extremely bright as it is in the case of planet Jupiter in the lower row. (Click to enlarge.) The upper row shows the top-left corners of the F1.8 and F2.8 images, while the lower row shows the top-right corners. Both sets of SOOC images were exposed for 10 sec at ISO 1000.
Even at F2.8 Jupiter exhibits a significant amount of coma, but this does not concern me much since the odds of having multiple very bright stars or planets near the edge of the FOV are not high. Have in mind, the amount of coma decreases quickly as you move away from the edges of the FOV. You can see this behavior in the following full-resolution images. In these F1.8 SOOC images you can see comatic aberration performance across the entire FOV. In order to show point-like stars as much as possible I am including two 10-sec exposures (minimizing star trails), a 13-sec, and a 20-sec exposure. To show lens performance as best as possible none of the Raw images were processed or corrected in any way. In terms of coma, these images can be considered worst-case scenarios since they were all shot at the widest aperture. The results are impressive and, for those interested in seeing a full-frame star field image, I am including one below. (Click to enlarge)
Additional ThoughtsAs I mentioned earlier, I enjoy wide-field astrophotography because it lets you present the night sky in the context of beautiful and dark locations around the planet. Badlands National Park provides very dark skies over a rugged and fascinating terrain. My favorite time for doing this kind of photography is near the First and Third Quarter Moon, because you get moonlight during roughly half of the night. This lets you capture the beauty of the landscape bathed in moonlight during half of the night and the glorious starlight and The Milky Way during the other half. Of course, the beauty of the Badlands doesn't end at dawn and the combination of daylight and clouds give another dimension to the landscape. The wide FOV of this lens helps you easily capture the vast grass prairies intermingled with sharply eroded buttes and pinnacles. And when these are covered by afternoon stormy clouds you are in for a treat. You can see some examples that illustrate these things in the gallery at the top of the article. Time-Lapse SequencesAnother advantage of photographing during the First and Quarter Moon is that you can capture the changing light of a moonset or moonrise during a time-lapse sequence. Below are three different sequences captured with the Sigma 14mm F1.8 DG HSM Art, processed in Lightroom, and edited in After Effects. ConclusionAs I mentioned, my go-to lens for wide-field astrophotography is the Nikkor 14-24mm F2.8G ED. If I needed to pick just one lens to photograph the night sky, would I trade it for the Sigma 14mm F1.8 DG HSM Art? The answer is yes. Although I often use the Nikkor lens at different focal lengths to photograph buildings and monuments (it's the perfect lens for cathedral interiors), I rarely use it to photograph the sky at focal lengths others than 14mm. When taking single shots of the night sky (something I often do while other cameras are shooting time-lapse sequences) the extra 1.3 f-stop would allow me to take shorter exposures and use that gained time to creatively experiment with different compositions and angles. When it comes to taking time-lapse sequences of the rotating night sky, you wouldn't necessarily gain much by shortening the exposure time (and acquiring more frames per minute) since you could end up oversampling the rate of motion of the sky. After all, the idea of time-lapse photography is to speed up time and show things that happen too slowly for us to appreciate. But it would let you use a lower ISO and get cleaner images - or a combination of slightly lower ISO and shorter exposure times. Now, I can see one phenomenon where the wide aperture of F1.8 would let me shorten the exposure time and increase the temporal sampling of my time-lapse sequence: the Northern Lights! When auroras quickly increase in brightness they also move faster, and the extra 1.3 f-stop will let me shorten the exposure time by a factor of 2.5 without the need to push the ISO. Or, alternatively, to shoot video of the Northern Lights. I can't wait to try this lens for aurora photography in September. Stay tuned! The Sigma 14mm F1.8 DG HSM Art lens is available in Canon, Nikon and Sigma mounts. I'm looking forward to hearing your thoughts in the comments section. Jos Francisco Salgado, PhD is an Emmy-nominated astronomer, science photographer, visual artist, and public speaker who creates multimedia works that communicate science in engaging ways. His Science & Symphony films through KV 265 have been presented in 175 concerts and lectures in 15 countries. Jos Francisco is a seasoned night sky and aurora photographer and filmmaker. If you would like to view, photograph, and learn about the Northern Lights then you can inquire about his Borealis Science & Photo Tours in Yellowknife, Canada. You can follow him on: Flickr, Instagram, 500px, Facebook, and Twitter If you're a professional, working photographer then you obviously understand the reasons for having a business related blog. I'm not talking about just having a Tumblr or something like that. Lots of photographers tend to use Instagram and say that that's their blog, but blogging has a whole lot more value than that. If you have one, you realize that already and you'll probably be able to skip over some of the content here. But if you don't have one, then you're probably a photographer that has no serious intentions with their images. And that's fine; but for the rest of us... From the clothing we wear, to the technology at our fingertips, to the food we eat, we have an insatiable curiosity about how things work and are made. In the social media era, consumers and brands have unprecedented access to each other - meaning it's easier than ever to forge relationships online. Pulling back the curtain on brands, products, and celebrities is a powerful method of bonding with consumers and building loyalty and trust. On Instagram in particular, the Stories function allows fans to see brands in a less polished form - more spontaneous, more experimental, less planned or scripted. When thoughtfully done, Instagram Stories can reveal the humanity, humor, and values behind a brand. Here are three small- to medium-sized businesses (SMBs) that are nailing the Instagram game: Third LoveThird Love is an American bra-and-underwear manufacturer that started in 2013 after its founder, Heidi Zak, grew tired of wearing ill-fitting bras. Its entire business is built upon the premise that what Third Love does - i.e. making half-cup sizes and a providing a mobile sizing app - is radically different from the undergarment industry status quo. https://www.instagram.com/p/BK1JZxvhWhP/?hl=en Third Love uses its Instagram page to make sure its customers know it stands head and shoulders above the rest. The brand often publishes multi-part Stories - sometimes upwards of 20 segments in a single Story - that take viewers behind the scenes of the design process, the manufacturing of its bras, or its photo shoots. Third Love also crafts Stories that highlight some of the individuals who work for the company, allowing it to impart a message that says we're real people with a real product meant for real women. Third Love backs up its Instagram presence with an excellent customer experience. It offers a try-before-buying program and free returns, allowing customers to try bras for free for up to 30 days before deciding whether to keep (and pay for) them. Research shows women are naturally skeptical of e-commerce's ability to satisfy or respect their expectations and needs. Third Love makes every effort to foster a sense of trust via a personalized service that puts women consumers first. On Instagram, the brand employs an earnest, lighthearted tone to help relate to its clientele. This intimate approach, along with the immersive nature of Instagram Stories, help forge and strengthen customers' emotional bonds to a brand, transforming one-time buyers into repeat shoppers. Key takeaways: Consumers are sensitive to perceived disingenuousness. Focus on identifying your core clientele and optimizing your brand's customer experience - and then use Instagram Stories to highlight the products and the people that make your brand great. IT'S-IT Ice CreamIT'S-IT is a San Francisco-based maker of ice cream sandwiches. The company has existed since 1928, when its founder George Whitney put vanilla ice cream between two oatmeal cookies and dipped the whole thing in chocolate. Now, the 89-year-old brand remains current by embracing social media.
Sigma has announced pricing and availability for its new Cine Prime lenses. The 14mm and 135mm T2 primes will be available later this month for $4999 each, or as part of two and seven-lens kits for $10,499 and $24,799 respectively. Press Release: Sigma Announces Pricing and Availability for the 14mm and 135mm T2 Cine Prime Lenses, Shipping This July Full-frame sensor compatible, high-speed prime lenses bring Sigma's esteemed Art lens technology to cinema cameras; the 14mm T2 FF and 135mm T2 FF begin shipping late July for a retail price of $4,999.00 USD each Ronkonkoma, NY July 13, 2017 Sigma Corporation of America, a leading still photo and cinema lens, camera, flash and accessory manufacturer, today announced the availability of two brand new cine lenses: the Sigma 14mm T2 FF and 135mm T2 FF, which will both begin shipping late July 2017. Compatible with full-frame image sensors, these high-speed cine prime lenses are available for EF, E and PL mounts. They are available as individual lenses for a retail price of $4,999.00 USD each, or as part of two and seven lens sets for retail prices of $10,499.00 USD and $24,799.00 USD respectively. Go fast and wide with the Sigma 14mm T2 Cine Prime Resolving power like nothing ever seen before with the Sigma 135mm T2 Cine Prime Both lenses offer the following benefits and capabilities:
The Sigma 14mm and 135mm lenses are fully compatible with full frame sensors. The addition of these lenses to the Sigma cine lineup expands the FF High Speed Prime Line to a total of seven lenses, from a super-wide 14mm to a brilliantly sharp telephoto 135mm. Individual lenses: Two lens set with case: Seven lens set with two cases: Nikon is working on a mirrorless camera system aimed at professionals that will be better than the competition, the company's CEO has said. In an interview with the Japanese website Newswitch, Nikon CEO Kazuo Ushida confirmed his company is working on a professional mirrorless camera system that will stand apart from all other competitors. Now, of course Nikon's CEO is going to say it's offering will be the best. But Ushida does say the Nikon mirrorless camera promises to be unique from other models on the market. Ushida gave no hint of a professional Nikon mirrorless camera release date. However, Nikon told us at Photokina 2016 that it was planning a full-frame mirrorless camera. The post Nikon working on pro mirrorless system that's better than competition appeared first on Camera Jabber. The total solar eclipse that's about to take place next month presents an extremely rare photo opportunity. We have some pointers (and a little bit of opinion) coming at you from an expert in the coming days, but in the meantime, the folks at Nikon have put together a useful pair of tutorial videos that will help you nail that perfect eclipse shot when the time comes. To be clear: these videos were created by the Nikon USA YouTube channel. To that end, there are a few points in the gear video specifically where the branding is laid on pretty thick; however, if you can get past the PR, the information is very useful and, in fact, brand-agnostic. Photographer Lucas Gilman knows his stuff. Nikon broke down their tutorial into two 3-minute videos: Gear & Prep and Camera Settings. If you're planning to shoot the eclipse, grab yourself a pen and pad, scroll down, and click play. Part 1: Gear and PreparationThe first stop on the gear and prep train is safety-get proper eye protection and slap a solar filter onto your lens to prevent sensor damage. Then, Gilman touches on the kind of camera and lens you should choose. For his needs, he's picked a D500 APS-C body for a bit of extra reach, and a Nikkor 200-500mm lens attached to a Nikon 1.4x teleconverter. Finally, Gilman outlines some of the accessories you'll want to bring along. Namely: a stable tripod, extra memory cards, a few fully charged batteries, and a cable release. Camera SettingsNow that you have the proper gear, it's time to set up your camera. In the second video, Gilman discusses how to determine the proper exposure for two key eclipse shots: a closeup of the sun at totality and photographing the crescent. While your settings will obviously vary depending on the conditions on the day you're out there shooting, the tips in the video above will get you most of the way there. Photos courtesy of Nikon USA |
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