KENDALL CAMERA CLUB BLOG FEED

Patience is the crucial skill that separates wildlife shots you'll actually keep from the ones you delete. No lens upgrade fixes leaving a location too early.  [Read More] Original link(Originally posted by Alex Cooke)

Getting genuine, relaxed-looking images from couples at weddings has less to do with knowing the right poses than most people assume. The mental shift behind how you approach directing people is what separates stiff, uncomfortable photos from ones that look effortless.  [Read More] Original link(Originally posted by Alex Cooke)

For most of digital photography's history, medium format meant one thing: a five-figure investment, a deliberate studio pace, and a tool reserved for commercial shooters whose clients paid for the absolute ceiling of image quality. The format was the opposite of mainstream by definition. It was the thing you rented for the shoot, not the thing you owned and carried.  [Read More] Original link(Originally posted by Alex Cooke)

Buying a 50mm lens for under $100 sounds like a deal until you see what you're actually getting. The TTArtisan AF 50mm f/1.8 Neo hits that $89 price point on full frame, and the question isn't whether it's cheap. It's whether cheap is cheap enough to matter.  [Read More] Original link(Originally posted by Alex Cooke)

I am, by training and inclination, a black and white photographer. My very first exposure to black and white photography, as an artful medium, was a photograph that I saw when I was in art school many years ago that was entitled "Monolith, the Face of Half Dome." At that time I was studying to become a Board Illustrator, which would have been a bored illustrator. The moment I saw that one photograph became a transformative one for me. [Read More] Original link(Originally posted by Nathan McCreery)

Getting better wildlife photos doesn't require buying anything. The gap between forgettable shots and compelling ones almost always comes down to technique, not equipment.  [Read More] Original link(Originally posted by Alex Cooke)

Finding a fast prime with an apochromatic design under $400 is almost unheard of, and that's exactly what the Viltrox 35mm f/1.8 Evo claims to be. Apochromatic lenses correct chromatic aberration by aligning all three color wavelengths to the same focal plane, a feature you typically only find in lenses costing several times more.  [Read More] Original link(Originally posted by Alex Cooke)

Landscape photography has a bias problem. The vast majority of images flooding social media and print focus on sunsets, northern lights, and those much-visited "honeypot" locations where tripod holes wear into the ground from overuse, while whole categories of equally compelling scenes get ignored entirely.  [Read More] Original link(Originally posted by Alex Cooke)

7Artisans has built its reputation on cheap manual focus glass, so releasing autofocus lenses puts the company in direct comparison with brands that have been doing this for years. The bar for autofocus in 2024 is high, and whether a budget brand can clear it is a real question.  [Read More] Original link(Originally posted by Alex Cooke)

Landscape photography has a reputation as a gear-hungry genre, and it is easy to believe you need a closet full of equipment before you can shoot a decent mountain. You do not. The genre actually rewards a small, deliberate kit more than almost any other, because you are usually on a tripod, working slowly, with time to think. This guide walks through the categories that matter, points you toward solid current options in each, and is honest about what you can skip.    [Read More] Original link(Originally posted by Alex Cooke)

Original link(Originally posted by Alex Cooke)

As photographers, we're inundated with images all day — ads, social media, billboards. Which ones actually inform our work, and where should we be looking?   As a photographer who has worked on brand campaigns, it's sad to see mood boards composed of the same images. I'll receive inspiration images from a client and recognize they came from the same Pinterest board — pulled after someone typed "Running" into the search bar. What's the point? [Read More] Original link(Originally posted by Clark Stinson)

Choosing between a $370 lens and a $1,100 lens is easy when the cheaper one wins on almost every technical measure. The Viltrox AF 55mm f/1.8 Evo is a direct challenge to the Sony Zeiss 55mm f/1.8 ZA, and Dustin Abbott's side-by-side test on the Sony a7R VI makes that case in detail.  [Read More] Original link(Originally posted by Alex Cooke)

Shooting a rocket launch at 1:30 a.m. from Morro Bay, photographing a trip to Maui with a $35 underwater film camera, and spending a week with a Lotus Emira press car on a dry lake bed: Willem Verbeeck packed a lot into the last couple of months, and this video covers all three projects. Each one involved a genuinely different approach to photography, and seeing how the results turned out across such different conditions is worth your time.  [Read More] Original link(Originally posted by Alex Cooke)

This week on The Grid, Scott Kelby and Erik Kuna packed a ton of practical photography advice into one episode, covering everything from fireworks and flash photography to Lightroom updates and astrophotography. Scott kicked things off with tips for photographing fireworks, then showed how a few simple adjustments in Lightroom can bring those images to life. The conversation then shifted to the new Platypod Bracket & Bounce, where Scott put the compact lighting system through a real-world test to show how getting your flash off-camera can dramatically improve your portraits. The latest Lightroom and Camera Raw updates also took center stage. While everyone seems to be talking about duplicate detection, Scott made the case that the real standout feature is the...

For years, the workflow gap between Hasselblad and Capture One was one of those quietly frustrating facts of professional life. If you shot medium format on a Hasselblad but preferred to edit in Capture One, you were stuck converting your raw files first, and every conversion chipped away at the color fidelity and editing latitude that were the whole point of shooting Hasselblad in the first place. That gap is now closed.  [Read More] Original link(Originally posted by Alex Cooke)

The fastest way to make better portraits is not to buy a flash, a softbox, and three light stands. It is to learn to see and shape the light you already have. Natural light is free, it is forgiving once you understand it, and it teaches you the fundamentals that every lighting setup later builds on. This guide covers the gear, the camera settings, and the posing and light-shaping basics that get a beginner from snapshots to real portraits, all without a single strobe.  [Read More] Original link(Originally posted by Alex Cooke)

Before anything else gets misread, I want to make one thing clear. [Read More] Original link(Originally posted by Alex Coghe)

Choosing a camera is rarely just about specs. A camera can cost over $6,000, autofocus everything in front of it, shoot at 30 frames per second with pre-capture, and still leave you feeling completely disconnected from your own images.  [Read More] Original link(Originally posted by Alex Cooke)

Shooting street photography in the rain sounds miserable until you see what it actually produces. Hong Kong in a full thunderstorm gives you reflections, umbrellas, chaotic traffic, and strangers too focused on staying dry to notice a camera in their face.  [Read More] Original link(Originally posted by Alex Cooke)