Anthony Thurston 
I had the opportunity to shoot with the beastly Nikkor 300mm 2.8G VRII lens this week. The local camera shop, Focalpoint Photography, has started a rental service and I was able to get the lens at a great dray rate of only $30. The reason I needed the 300 2.8 was that I was going to a night game for the Portland Thorns, and I was pretty sure that the 300 F4 I own was not going to cut it.
I love still life photography, it’s one of my favorite things to do when I’m bored and don’t have a person to shoot. I was recently searching for a good table for shooting my still life work, but as you can imagine the commercially available tables are rather expensive. Since my budget is rather low I decided to look into DIY alternatives, and that was when I came across this great DIY build over on DIY Photography.
The 85mm focal range is arguably one of the best lens lengths for portraits, Nikon makes two 85mm primes that most people look at when looking to but an 85. The questions of the day is which lens is right for you?
According to a post over on EOSHD the 5 year old Canon 50D is now (Thanks to Magic Lantern) a cinema camera capable of shooting RAW 1080 video. That is quite a feat considering that the 50D most people own does not even have a video mode.
A while back we did a whole rundown on budget flash triggers and we talked about the Yongnuo 622 flash trigger that at that time were only available for canon cameras. Well, the Nikon version of the YN-622 triggers are now out and available for purchase.
Everyone loves to get latest new lenses, and for good reason – they feature the latest and greatest features and improve your chances of getting a quality image. But the thing about new lenses is that they are rather expensive. In this new series Oldies but Goodies we are going to focus on older lenses that are still great quality optics and can save you quite a bit of money.
PASS is a new photo sharing service for photographers that has been garnering quite a bit of press lately. I recently got my hands on an invite to the invite-only beta and have had a chance to try it out. I will warn you though, this is not a fanboy post – I have some concerns that I think deserve some thought. So I suggest you read the post before jumping on the PASS bandwagon with all your friends.
I had the pleasure recently to interview Craig Mitchelldyer, he is a professional photographer in Portland, Oregon specializing in sports, corporate people and weddings. Craig is a great sports photographer and since that is a big area of interest for me I focused the majority of the questions around that.
Since its baseball and softball season I wanted to share this great article about shooting both sports, the similarities of the two as well as the differences.
Jen Brook, a Model, has written an open letter to new photographers in the hope of educating them on shooting with models. I found all of the points she made in her article worthwhile and important to think of. The best part is that this is not just for new photographers, there are many experienced photographers who could learn a thing or two from this open letter.
No doubt if you have been into photography for any amount of time you have heard of the Leica and the expensive price tag that the name demands. I, like most of you, have never even touched a leica but I assumed the image quality and features were top notch for such a price. That was until I saw these latest rankings courtesy of DxOMark in which the Leica M9, M9 P, and M-E Typ 220 earned really bad scores when compared to other DSLRs.
Let’s face it, we all know that Photography is en expensive hobby. No doubt one of the first things you noticed besides the obvious prices of camera bodies and lenses was the price of name brand speedlights. When you are just a hobbyist, or just starting your business out you have to be careful where you spend your limited budget on gear – That Is where Yongnuo comes in.
