Mirrorless camera reviews right at your virtual doorstep!
This past Saturday saw the arrival of the third edition of LNDNWLK, an informal photo walk around the great city of London organised by ourselves and art photographers Johnny Patience and Rebecca Lily. This event was the most successful yet, with over 30 photographers in attendance from countries as far as Germany and Slovakia. You can see a summary from the past two events here and here.
[Read more…] about Welcome to LNDNWLK 3.0 – 35 photographers unite to explore London on foot
They say that Christmas is the most wonderful time of the year but I would dare to argue that there is nothing quite like the first few weeks of spring. The sounds, smells and colours assault our senses, reminding us that beauty and new life always return, even when winter seems never-ending.
One of my favourite springtime hobbies is searching for wildflowers in the fields behind our neighbourhood and photographing them. Not only is it an enjoyable and relaxing exercise for me as a photographer, but it also helps the National Plant Monitoring Scheme, an organisation that monitors changes in plant populations across the UK.
A half a world away in sunny Florida, there lives another photographer who enjoys shooting plant life and nature as much as I do. Tammy Lee Bradley has been an inspiration for us since we first began MirrorLessons, as she always manages to beautify even the simplest objects through her use of impeccable composition and light. Not only is she a great photographer but she is also a talented artist who works with a variety of mediums including pencil, watercolour and oil.
Recently she developed a set of 98 black and white and colour presets for Lightroom, which she kindly send us to try. These presets are based on the post-processing techniques she uses for her personal images, and are heavily influenced by her knowledge of the fine arts.
In the collection, you’ll find a medley of styles, from the overpowering to the extremely subtle. Not every preset will suit every image but by experimenting, it is quite easy to find one that matches the image you are trying to post-process. The image below for example would look good with any of the following four presets, as well as many others.
I thought I would end up steering clear of the presets that dramatically change an image’s original colours but I have actually found myself using them for certain photographs such as the one below. These presets are effective if there isn’t too vast an array of colours in the original image.
That said, I usually prefer subdued to punchy for my nature images, even when I post-process without the help of presets. Some of my favourite subtle styles from the TLB set include Amazing Preset, Colour II and Colour XI to name a few.
The images you see here were taken with two different cameras, the Olympus OM-D E-M1 with the 60cmm macro and the Fujifilm X-T1 with the Zeiss Touit 32mm. The presets worked well with both kinds of Raw files.
Presets are an excellent starting point if you are unsure how to start post-processing your images but would like to give them a special “look”. They work to unify a series of images and help you to develop your own personal style by spring-boarding off the groundwork of someone with more experience.
If you are interested in trying out Tammy’s Lightroom presets, you can order them here for $24.99.
A few days ago, we received a number of Fujifilm products for testing including the two pro zoom lenses. Luckily for us, on Sunday there was the perfect event to put them through their paces: a bicycle race divided into three different paths with the longest one being 104 miles. The Gran Fondo Conwy is a non-competitive cycling race that takes place in North Wales. It starts and finishes at the promenade near Conwy Castle. The cyclists travel through some of the most stunning scenery in the Conwy and Denbighshire counties.
One of the basic rules of landscape photography is to use slow apertures to create a deep depth of field and ensure sharpness. If you use a fast aperture like f/4 or f/2.8, it can result in a blurry foreground or background depending on your focus distance and your camera’s sensor size. If you use a wide angle lens, the blurring effect may be less noticeable at first but is more perceivable if you view the image on a large screen or in print.
[Read more…] about Shallow depth of field in landscape photography – A Leica M 240 gallery
The weather forecast looked promising. Following nearly two weeks of persistent rain and wind, the skies had opened just in time for the Easter long weekend, beckoning work-weary holidaymakers from all corners of the UK to the coast of Wales to enjoy some sand and sun.
Mathieu and I love sand and sun just as much as the next person but it was the words “morning fog” that caught our eye yesterday evening as we checked the forecast. Since we had both the FE 16-35mm f/4 (on the Sony A7 II) and Zeiss Touit 12mm f/2.8 (on the Fujifilm X-T1) in for testing, we decided to get up nice and early to chase the fog and put these two wide angle lenses through their paces.