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See the Wildlife Photographer of the Year People’s Choice Award Winners

13 Feb

The post See the Wildlife Photographer of the Year People’s Choice Award Winners appeared first on Digital Photography School. It was authored by Jaymes Dempsey.

The Natural History Museum in London just announced their Wildlife Photographer of the Year People’s Choice Award winner plus four highly commended images, and they are stunning.

Over 55,000 votes were cast. Here is the overall favorite photo, “Bushfire,” by Robert Irwin:

Robert Irwin / Wildlife Photographer of the Year

As explained by the Natural History Museum:

“After spotting smoke billowing out of the horizon, Robert knew he had a prime opportunity. Launching his drone, he sent it straight over to the location of the fire. With only a few minutes of battery left, he knew he had to act fast. Taking it right into the thick of the smoke, he managed to frame a clear 50:50 shot, with a pristine natural conservation area on one side juxtaposed with the blackened, devastated remains on the other. Taken near the Steve Irwin Wildlife Reserve in Cape York, Queensland, the area is of high conservation value and is home to over 30 different ecosystems with many endangered species.”

Robert goes on to comment:

“I am incredibly excited to win the Wildlife Photographer of The Year People’s Choice Award. For me, nature photography is about telling a story to make a difference for the environment and our planet. I feel it is particularly special for this image to be awarded, not only as a profound personal honor but also as a reminder of our effect on the natural world and our responsibility to care for it.”

The four “Highly Commended” images are equally inspiring.

First, Ami Vitale’s heartbreaking photo, entitled “The Last Goodbye:”

Ami Vitale / Wildlife Photographer of the Year

“Joseph Wachira comforts Sudan, the last male northern white rhino left on the planet, moments before he passed away at Ol Pejeta Wildlife Conservancy in northern Kenya. Suffering from age-related complications, he died surrounded by the people who had cared for him. With every extinction we suffer more than loss of ecosystem health. When we see ourselves as part of nature, we understand that saving nature is really about saving ourselves. Ami’s hope is that Sudan’s legacy will serve as a catalyst to awaken humanity to this reality.”

Then Andy Parkinson’s gorgeous image, called “Hare Ball:”

Andy Parkinson / Wildlife Photographer of the Year

“Andy spent five weeks watching the mountain hares near Tomatin in the Scottish Highlands, waiting patiently for any movement – a stretch, a yawn or a shake – which typically came every 30 to 45 minutes. As he watched, frozen and prostrate, with 50 to 60 mph winds surging relentlessly around him, the cold started to distract and his fingers clasping the icy metal camera body and lens began to burn. Then relief came as this little female moved her body into a perfect spherical shape. A movement of sheer joy. Andy craves such moments: the isolation, the physical challenge and, most importantly, time with nature.”

Next, Guillermo Esteves’s “Close Encounter:”

Guillermo Esteves / Wildlife Photographer of the Year

“The worried-looking expression on this dog’s face speaks volumes and is a reminder that moose are large, unpredictable wild animals. Guillermo was photographing moose on the side of the road at Antelope Flats in Grand Teton National Park, Wyoming, USA, when this large bull took an interest in the furry visitor – the driver of the car unable to move it before the moose made its approach. Luckily, the moose lost interest and went on its way after a few moments.”

And finally, Neil Parkinson’s “Drey Dreaming:”

Neil Parkinson / Wildlife Photographer of the Year

“As the weather grew colder, two Eurasian red squirrels (only one is clearly visible) found comfort and warmth in a box Neil had put up in one of the pine trees near his home in the Scottish Highlands. In the colder months, it’s common for the squirrels, even when unrelated, to share dreys. After discovering the box full of nesting material and in frequent use, Neil installed a camera and LED light with a diffuser on a dimmer. The box had a lot of natural light so he slowly increased the light to highlight his subjects – and using the WiFi app on his phone he was able take stills from the ground.”

The Natural History Museum in London is currently closed. But when it reopens, you’ll be able to view the physical images – along with other Wildlife Photographer of the Year photos – in person.

Wildlife Photographer of the Year is developed and produced by the Natural History Museum, London.

The post See the Wildlife Photographer of the Year People’s Choice Award Winners appeared first on Digital Photography School. It was authored by Jaymes Dempsey.

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Gear of the Year: Carey’s choice – Sony a9 II

31 Dec

Photo: Dan Bracaglia

We were being out-paced by a semi-truck on a dirt road off an Idaho interstate in a mad gambit to skip an hour’s worth of stop-and-go traffic. As the 18-wheeler rounded a corner far ahead of us, leaving our sight, I felt a bit of humility. Mostly relief. Though if we’d wanted, we could easily have kept up with the truck in the little Subaru we were bouncing around in.

It was nice to take comfort in the certainty that every photo I would take on this trip would be reasonably exposed and perfectly focused.

But earlier, we’d been tailing the truck a bit closer and all the dirt it kicked up made us feel like we were crash-landing on the Red Planet in a Martian storm. The subsequent realization that we’d left our cell phone reception back by the highway also encouraged a little more caution.

Visitors visit parts unknown in Craters of the Moon National Monument. Processed and cropped slightly in Adobe Camera Raw.
ISO 100 | 1/500 sec | F8 | Sony FE 100-400mm F4.5-5.6 GM @ 141mm.

We were on our way back from Bozeman, Montana, from a DPReview video shoot on a farm. In normal times, road tripping to parts unknown is one of my favorite activities, and the ensuing uncertainty is honestly part of the appeal. But the additional uncertainty of the pandemic weighed on me a little bit. Every rest stop, every carefully vetted Airbnb stay was a risk, necessitating masks and buckets of hand sanitizer.

So it was nice to take a small bit of comfort in one thing – the certainty that every photo I would take on this trip would be reasonably exposed and perfectly focused. I had Sony’s a9 II with me, and free from worrying about whether or not the camera would do its job, I came away with some of my favorite photographs I was able to take this year.

Why it matters

It may not have bird detection, but the a9 II’s tracking is just solid.
ISO 100 | 1/1000 sec | F5.6 | Sony 100-400mm F4.5-5.6 GM @ 100mm

Back when I wrote our review of the a9 II, I said it had the best autofocus performance money could buy. Canon’s subsequent EOS R5 and R6 cameras have come close to closing the gap, and they have pretty awesome animal detection algorithms. But the a9 II’s tracking just works incredibly well, pretty much all the time; it’s tenaciously sticky and tracks anything I put the AF point over, and the camera can track human eyes that are absolutely tiny in the frame.

As a tool for the type of work I wanted to do, the Sony a9 II did the job.

It’s also easy to forget that there are plenty of cameras out there for which we don’t recommend using subject tracking all the time. Heck, even Sony’s a7R IV, which, on paper, features the same implementation, can struggle with fast action. (Admittedly, this could be the massive resolution, but if the AF can’t keep up, what’s the point of all those megapixels?).

The clouds roll into Mount Rainier National Park. Processed in Adobe Camera Raw.
ISO 125 | 1/160 sec | F8 | Sony FE 100-400mm F4.5-5.6 GM @ 137mm

Shooting with a camera that has the most dependable subject tracking I’ve used really freed my mind to focus on composition and capturing a variety of moments. As the camera tracked my chosen subject and kept it in critical focus, I could easily experiment with my composition with my eye to the finder and end up with an image I was happy with.

No camera is perfect, but this one is pretty darn good

I have to admit, one of the great frustrations of my job is that in over five years of living, breathing and testing cameras, there isn’t one camera that does everything exactly the way I want. Yes, I know that might be the most #firstworldproblem ever. Maybe I’m just too picky.

Great eye detection means the a9 II didn’t get tripped up at all by the foreground elements in this Montana farm photo. Processed in Adobe Camera Raw.
ISO 100 | 1/160 sec | F2.8 | Sony FE 24-70mm F2.8 GM @ 70mm

The Sony a9 II, for all its impressiveness, still has some interface lag, convoluted menus and a handful of other quirks. It’s overkill for many people, while others would value more megapixels or slightly greater dynamic range over the a9 II’s speed and AF tracking. Oh, and the touchscreen kind of stinks.

You’ll also notice that the images presented here are processed through Adobe Camera Raw (original JPEGs in the gallery below). Sony’s JPEG engine has some of the best detail retention and noise reduction on the market, but I just felt like some images needed a more personal touch to really replicate what I saw in front of me as I hit the shutter button. That would admittedly be an issue were I a full-time sports shooter on a tight deadline.

The road ahead will always be windy and more than a little uncertain. Processed in Adobe Camera Raw.
ISO 100 | 1/500 sec | F8 | Sony FE 24-70mm GM @ 24mm

But as a tool for the type of work I wanted to do, it did the job. It may not be a camera that I fully enjoy the experience of using, but the confidence it inspires is hard to overstate. And that made all the difference on an uncertain road trip in these uncertain times.

And lastly, happy new year to everyone reading (and thanks for reading this far). Here’s to hoping for some slightly more certain times ahead, and thank you for being a part of DPReview.

Read our full Sony a9 II review here

Sample gallery

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Articles: Digital Photography Review (dpreview.com)

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Gear of the Year: Dale’s choice – Fujifilm X-Pro3

20 Dec

Photo: Dan Bracaglia

I think we can all agree that 2020 has been an unpredictable year, so it seems appropriate that my gear of the year is a camera I wouldn’t have predicted a few months ago: the Fujifilm X-Pro3.

But first, a bit of context.

Some of my earliest photography was done with a hand-me-down rangefinder camera, a Kodak Retina IIc. I loved the experience of shooting it and still remember exactly how it felt in my hands. I even remember how it smelled, no doubt the result of the grease used to lubricate gears, something you don’t get from digital cameras today.

However, as much as I love rangefinders, I’ve never had a natural knack for focusing them. I can do it, but it’s not my superpower. To this day, I have tremendous respect for photographers who can quickly and accurately focus a rangefinder.

Mt. Jefferson in Oregon’s Cascade Mountains. Velvia film profile, processed in-camera.

ISO 160 | 1/250 sec | F2.0 | XF 18mm F2 R

That’s a roundabout way of explaining why I mostly shot with SLRs for so many years and never lusted after a Leica.

This is where Fujifilm comes into the story, but maybe not in the way you’d expect. You see, I was never so much a fan of the X-Pro series, which always seemed big and chunky, but rather of the fixed-lens X100. I didn’t need one, but from the day I first used an X100 in person, I wanted one. Badly. It was sexy, compact, and provided a shooting experience similar to a rangefinder, but with autofocus. Eventually, I broke down and bought the X100T, and it remains my most-used camera to this day.

With that in mind, I suppose it seems odd that I picked the X-Pro3 as my gear of the year instead of the X100V, so I should probably get around to explaining that.

Pre-pandemic family gatherings. Acros film profile, processed in-camera.

ISO 5000 | 1/80 sec | F2.8 | XF 23mm F2 R WR

It turns out the thing that made me enjoy the X-Pro3 most was the exact thing I expected to dislike about it: the inverted rear screen, which is undoubtedly the most polarizing feature of the camera. Unlike most cameras, the X-Pro3’s screen folds inward and remains hidden until deliberately folded out. There’s an extra step required to access menus or, more importantly, to chimp images.

I trained myself years ago not to ‘chimp’ images on the back of a camera when doing work for clients; I didn’t think it conveyed professionalism or confidence. When shooting for fun, however, I’m like most people. I like to see my photos right away. Because instant gratification.

With the X-Pro3, I shoot differently. Nothing actually prevents me from flipping open the screen to look at my images, but a glance at the back of the camera reminds me that that’s not what this camera is about. The thought of flipping open that screen feels like cheating, so I don’t.

Cowboy country. Astia film profile, processed in-camera.

ISO 320 | 1/170 sec | F6.4 | XF 55-200mm F3.5-4.8 R LM OIS

It’s a subtle shift in mindset, but one that I’m really enjoying. I find myself having more of those zen moments where it’s just me, the camera and my subject. By removing the temptation even to look, I’m spending more time taking in what’s around me, looking through the viewfinder, and just enjoying the journey. I can look at the photos later.

I’m starting to fully realize how the presence of a screen impacts the way I shoot a digital camera, and I’m beginning to appreciate why someone might spring for a model like the Leica M10-D, which has no screen at all.

The only area where I feel let down by the X-Pro3 is its hybrid optical viewfinder, which is a core part of the camera’s experience. Viewfinders on previous X-Pro models had a magnifier that would engage depending on the attached lens’s focal length, allowing the user to view frame lines for a pretty wide variety of lenses.

Home on the range. Astia film profile, processed in-camera.

ISO 640 | 1/3200 sec | F4.0 | XF 18mm F2 R

That’s missing on the X-Pro3. You can’t see frame lines for lenses wider than 23mm (equivalent to 35mm), which I notice when shooting Fujifilm’s 18mm F2, though fortunately, that lens’s field of view pretty closely matches the viewfinder itself. The EVF is very usable, and I’ll switch over to it at times, but it takes away some of the magic.

Many people pigeon-hole the X-Pro3 as a camera for street photography only, which is unfortunate because it’s really quite versatile. I’m definitely not a street photographer, yet to my delight, I found it to be an incredibly satisfying camera.

A lot of unexpected things happened this year, and not all of them were bad. I got to know my family better, even over FaceTime, I spent more time with my pets, and I caught up on projects that have languished for years. I also discovered a camera that brings me joy and reminds me of why I started taking pictures in the first place. That feels like a pretty good way to start 2021.

Articles: Digital Photography Review (dpreview.com)

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Slideshow: People’s Choice Award finalists for Wildlife Photographer of the Year

03 Dec

People’s Choice Award finalists for Wildlife Photographer of the Year

Natural History Museum’s Wildlife Photographer of the Year competition has selected 25 finalist photos for its People’s Choice Award. Now it’s up to the public to vote for the overall winner. Anyone can participate in the process until February 2nd at 14:00 GMT.

Over 49,000 images were submitted to this year’s Wildlife Photographer of the Year competition. 100 images were chosen as winners or finalists by the panel of judges. An additional 25 photos have been set aside for this latest shortlist. Make sure you view the gallery, read the rules, and cast a vote for your favorite image before the deadline.

The winner and top 4 highly commended images will be revealed on February 9th. An exhibit of all shortlisted images across the entire Wildlife Photographer of the Year competition will be on display through July 4th.

Shortlisted Photograph: ‘The Alpha’ by Mogens Trolle

About this Photo: Of all the different primate species Mogens has photographed, the mandrill has proved the most difficult to reach, preferring to hide in tropical forests in remote parts of Central Africa.

This made the experience of sitting next to this impressive alpha, as he observed his troop above, even more special. When a male becomes alpha, he undergoes physical changes that accompany a rise in testosterone levels, and this results in the colors on his snout becoming much brighter. With the loss of status, the colors fade. Mogens used a flash to enhance the vivid colors and textures against the dark forest background.

Shortlisted Photograph: ‘Life Saver’ by Sergio Marijuán Campuzano

About this Photo: As urban areas grow, like Jaen in Spain, threats to wildlife increase, and Iberian lynx have become a casualty of traffic accidents as they too seek to expand their own territories.

In 2019, over 34 lynx were run over, and three days before Sergio took this photo a two-year-old female lost her life not far from this spot. To combat mortality on the roads, improvements in the fencing and the construction of under-road tunnels are two proven solutions, and they are a lifeline for many other creatures as well as lynx.

Shortlisted Photograph: ‘Shut the Front Door’ by Sam Sloss

About this Photo: This coconut octopus was spotted walking around the black sand of the Lembeh Strait, Sulawesi carrying its house made of shells.

Remarkably, this small octopus constructs its own protective shelter using clam shells, coconuts, and even glass bottles! These intelligent creatures are very picky when it comes to choosing the perfect tools. They know that certain types and sizes of shell have their advantages, whether they be for shelter, camouflage, or concealing themselves from both prey and predator alike. It is safe to say that the coconut octopus is certainly one of the most scrappy, resourceful, and brainy creatures in the ocean.

Shortlisted Photograph: ‘Backstage at the Circus’ by Kirsten Luce

About this Photo: At the Saint Petersburg State Circus, bear trainer Grant Ibragimov performs his daily act with three Siberian brown bears.

The animals rehearse and then perform under the lights each evening. In order to train a bear to walk on two feet, Kirsten was told that they are chained by the neck to the wall when they are young to strengthen their leg muscles. Russia and Eastern Europe have a long history of training bears to dance or perform, and hundreds of bears continue to do so as part of the circus industry in this part of the world.

Shortlisted Photograph: ‘Drawn and Quartered’ by Laurent Ballesta

About this Photo: Scraps of grouper flesh fall from the jaws of two grey reef sharks as they tear the fish apart.

The sharks of Fakarava Atoll, French Polynesia, hunt in packs, but do not share their prey. A single shark is too clumsy to catch even a drowsy grouper. After hunting together to roust the grouper from its hiding place in the reef, the sharks encircle it, but then compete for the spoils – only a few sharks will have a part of the catch and most of them will remain unfed for several nights.

Shortlisted Photograph: ‘Coexistence’ by Pallavi Prasad Laveti

About this Photo: A cheeky Asian palm civet kitten peeps from a bag in a small remote village in India, curiosity and playfulness shining in its eyes.

This baby was orphaned and has lived its short life in the village backyard – comfortable in the company of locals, who have adopted the philosophy of ‘live and let live.’ Pallavi sees the image as one of hope, for in other parts of the world the civets are trapped for Kopi Luwak coffee production (coffee made from coffee beans that are partially digested and then pooped out by the civet) – where they are contained in tiny, unsanitary battery cages and force fed a restricted diet of coffee beans. She feels this image portrays a true essence of cohabitation.

Shortlisted Photograph: ‘Border Refuge’ by Joseph Dominic Anthony

About this Photo: Joseph formed the idea for this photograph in 2016 on a visit to Mai Po Nature Reserve in Hong Kong.

Taken within the Frontier Closed Area on the Chinese border, strictly timed access rules meant years of studying tide tables and waiting for the perfect weather. Joseph wanted to convey the story and mood of Mai Po in a single balanced photograph, combining individuals and the behavior of multiple species in the context of their wider environment, particularly to juxtapose the proximity of the ever encroaching urban development.

Shortlisted Photograph: ‘White Danger’ by Petri Pietiläinen

About this Photo: While on a photography trip to the Norwegian archipelago, Svalbard, Petri had hoped to spot polar bears.

When one was sighted in the distance on a glacier, he switched from the main ship to a smaller rubber boat to get a closer look. The bear was making its way towards a steep cliff and the birds that were nesting there. It tried and failed several routes to reach them, but perseverance, and probably hunger, paid off as it found its way to a barnacle goose nest. Panic ensued as the adults and some of the chicks jumped off the cliff, leaving the bear to feed on what remained.

Shortlisted Photograph: ‘Resting Dragon’ by Gary Meredith

About this Photo: The Great Sandy Desert in Western Australia is home to a wide variety of wildlife, which exists alongside man-made mining operations.

The wildlife found in this environment needs to adapt to the harsh, hostile living conditions. When the opportunity arises, the long-nosed dragon makes use of human structures. This individual positioned itself on a piece of wire mesh outside a workshop, waiting for the sun’s rays. The artificial light source outside the building attracts moths and insects, easy prey for a hungry lizard.

Shortlisted Photograph: ‘Close Encounter’ by Guillermo Esteves

About this Photo: The worried looking expression on this dog’s face speaks volumes and is a reminder that moose are large, unpredictable, wild animals.

Guillermo was photographing moose on the side of the road at Antelope Flats in Grand Teton National Park, Wyoming, USA, when this large bull took an interest in the furry visitor – the driver of the car unable to move it before the moose made its approach. Luckily, the moose lost interest and went on its way after a few moments.

Shortlisted Photograph: ‘Licence to Kill’ by Britta Jaschinski

About this Photo: Britta’s photographs of items seized at airports and borders across the globe are a quest to understand why some individuals continue to demand wildlife products, even if this causes suffering and, in some cases, pushes species to the brink of extinction.

This zebra head was confiscated at a border point in the USA. Most likely, the hunter was not able to show proof that the zebra was killed with a license. Britta found the use of a shopping trolley to move the confiscated item ironic, posing the question: wildlife or commodity?

Shortlisted Photograph: ‘Turtle Time Machine’ by Thomas Peschak

About this Photo: During Christopher Columbus’s Caribbean voyage of 1494, green sea turtles were said to be so numerous that his ships almost ran aground on them.

Today the species is classified as endangered. However, at locations like Little Farmer’s Cay in the Bahamas, green turtles can be observed with ease. An ecotourism project run by fishermen (some who used to hunt turtles) uses shellfish scraps to attract the turtles to the dock. Without a time machine it is impossible to see the pristine turtle population, but Thomas hopes that this image provides just a glimpse of the bounty our seas once held.

Shortlisted Photograph: ‘Bushfire’ by Robert Irwin

About this Photo: A fire line leaves a trail of destruction through woodland near the border of the Steve Irwin Wildlife Reserve in Cape York, Queensland, Australia.

The area is of high conservation significance, with over 30 different ecosystems found there, and is home to many endangered species. The fires are one of the biggest threats to this precious habitat. Although natural fires or managed burns can be quite important in an ecosystem, when they are lit deliberately and without consideration, often to flush out feral pigs to hunt, they can rage out of control and have the potential to devastate huge areas.

Articles: Digital Photography Review (dpreview.com)

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Gear of the Year: Barney’s choice (part 2) – Reflex-Nikkor 1000mm F11

30 Nov

Dan Bracaglia

In Part 1 of my Gear of the Year for 2020 I mentioned that the Fujifilm X100V has been in my hands almost all of this year. This article is about a very different piece of photographic equipment in my collection, which has also seen heavy usage this year. And an item which – while much less practical for the kind of day-to-day documentation to which the X100V is so well-suited – is no less enjoyable (in its own way) to use.

The story of how I ended up with a Reflex-Nikkor 1000mm F11 is a bit complicated, and starts with a very different kind of product: the Coolpix P950, which I reviewed earlier this year, at the height of the Washington state quarantine. Those several weeks of shooting with the P950 turned me on to the potential for a proper super-telephoto photography project, once non-essential travel restrictions were lifted.

And I knew exactly where to start – by the sea.

Re-reading WG.S Sebald’s book The Rings of Saturn this summer (yes, sorry, this is going to one of those kinds of articles), one line really resonated with me. It’s a description of fishermen on the Norfolk coast, in England. Wondering about their motivation at a time when it is ‘almost impossible to catch anything from the beach’ Sebald concludes that they ‘just want to be in a place where they have the world behind them, and before them nothing but emptiness’.

I’ve always found it calming to look out at the ocean, and amid the seemingly never-ending chaos of this year, I’ve been bolting down to the Washington coast whenever time and local regulations allow, to put the world at my back for a little while.

The long telephoto project I originally had in mind was to be centered on the fishing boats that ply up and down the Washington coast. Unfortunately, it turned out that even with its excellent image stabilization, accurate framing with the Coolpix P950 was too difficult with such distant, bobbing targets, and the 16MP resolution was too unforgiving when it came to cropping. That’s where the Reflex-Nikkor 1000mm F11 came in.

The vignetting in this shot, and the others in this article, is optical. I don’t mind it (and haven’t corrected it) in images like these, but it’s one more thing that limits the usefulness of long mirror lenses for more conventional work.

1/2000sec|F11|ISO 800

The Reflex-Nikkor 1000mm F11 is a catadioptric lens, which works by ‘folding’ the light that comes into it using mirrors. This provides a long focal length without the need for a physically long lens barrel. The light travels the same distance inside a mirror lens as it would in a conventional telephoto, it just moves in a zigzag.

The biggest downside to mirror lenses in general is manual focus (in almost all cases – more on that in a minute) and a fixed, slow aperture, usually F8 or F11. This severely reduces the range of conditions in which they can be used. Typically, mirror lenses are also less sharp than conventional lenses, as well as being an absolute pain to focus through an optical viewfinder. They have a tendency to throw off AWB too, and let’s not forget the highly distracting ‘donut’ bokeh, created by the annular mirror.

In a world of high-resolution electronic viewfinders, magnified focus modes and fully electronic shutters, mirror lenses are more practical now than they’ve ever been

For all that, mirror lenses have a dedicated fanbase (and if you’re looking for an inexpensive way to get into lunar photography, look no further). But there are a lot of good reasons why this lens costs $ 3,200 and this one can be found on the second-hand market for less than $ 500. And that’s an unusually expensive example of the type – most bog-standard 500mm F8 mirror lenses can be picked up used for around $ 100-200.

This image is a combination of two exposures taken from the same position, moments apart: one exposed for the moon, and one for the wispy clouds.

F11| ISO 1600 (multi-exposure)

Catadioptric lens technology hasn’t evolved significantly in decades (with the honorable exception of the Minolta AF Reflex 500mm F8, which remains unique among mirror lenses for offering autofocus) but camera technology over those decades has come on in leaps and bounds. And it turns out that in a world of high-resolution electronic viewfinders, magnified focus modes and fully electronic shutters, mirror lenses are more practical now than they’ve ever been. Which is why when a ‘Like New -‘ condition example of the Reflex-Nikkor 1000mm F11 popped up on KEH earlier this year I jumped on it immediately.

The British are famous for our sentimental attachment to the coast, maybe just because of its constant proximity – nowhere in the UK are you more than 70 miles from the sea. In the time it takes for me to get to Long Beach Washington from Seattle, I could drive almost the entire length of England.

1/3000sec|F11|ISO 1000

That last paragraph, by the way, was going to form the basis of an opinion article I was planning over the summer. Provisionally entitled ‘Thanks to Mirrorless Technology, There’s Still a Place For Slow Telephoto Lenses’, the air was taken out of the idea by Canon’s surprise release of the RF 600mm and 800mm F11 STM. But hey – I was right. It turns out that there is a market for lenses like that.

Earlier in this article I implied that the Reflex-Nikkor 1000mm F11 is ‘enjoyable’ to use. That needs some qualification: I enjoy using it in the same way as I enjoy hiking up really steep hills. It makes me feel good afterwards, but often, when I’m actually engaged in the task, it’s a bloody nightmare. Oh, let me count the ways…

The Reflex-Nikkor 1000mm F11 lets me get a perspective that would be impossible with any of my other lenses

First, the massive 108mm filter thread is non-standard, which means that there’s no simple replacement option for the fiddly threaded metal (!) cap, which takes ages to get on and off. Then there’s the enormously long focus ring. This is both a blessing and a curse.

On the one hand, depth of field is so shallow at 1000mm you really do need a good, positive manual focus ring with fine-grained control. On the other hand, if you nudge the barrel of the lens (or the massive integral hood, which rotates with the focusing ring) or breath on it, or look at it wrong, you’ll throw off critical focus. And because the focusing ring makes up 70% of the length of the entire barrel (even more when the hood is extended) it’s almost impossible not to nudge it when handling or repositioning the lens. Finally, although smaller than a conventional 1000mm F11 would be, it’s still a big, fat lump of glass and metal that doesn’t fit into a camera bag alongside my other gear.

Ultimately though I don’t really care about any of those issues, because the Reflex-Nikkor 1000mm F11 lets me get a perspective that would be impossible with any of my other lenses and, yes, it’s a lot of fun.

From my favorite spot near Long Beach, looking out over the Pacific, the horizon line is roughly 10-12 miles away. Twelve miles is the official limit of territorial and international waters.

1/1000sec|F11|ISO 3200

I shoot my 1000mm F11 lens adapted on a Nikon Z7, with electronic shutter and a cable release, and always clamped to a sturdy tripod with a 10lb weight slung under it. I tried mechanical shutter and electronic first-curtain, but after a lot of experimentation I found that the former can create vibration issues at such a long focal length, and the latter can lead to uneven exposures at the shortest exposures.

With the setup I just described, I can get away with shutter speeds of around 1/200sec in still conditions. If it’s breezy, I’ll increase the ISO and decrease the exposure time accordingly. If the fully-electronic shutter introduces any distortion, I can’t tell. The subject matter would render it unnoticeable anyway.

Water spouts, created by whales breaching in the Pacific close to sunset. These little puffs of water were invisibly small to my naked eye.

1/500sec|F11|ISO 4000

The project I’m currently working on with my 1000mm is a little different to the one I’d originally planned, and a lot more abstract. it’s shot mostly from a single overlook about 100 feet up over the Pacific coast near Long Beach WA, looking out roughly 10-12 miles to the clouds and patches of light which line the horizon, approximately at the boundary of International waters. Since I started working on this project I’ve added a Tamron SP 500mm F8 and a second tripod to my collection for those times when 1000mm is just slightly too long.

Maybe I’ll look back at the whole effort in a couple of years and think ‘well that was a waste of time’ (maybe you think so already – and I’m sure you’ll let me know) but if nothing else, turning my back on the world and concentrating on 1.3 degrees of distant, hazy somewhere else for a few days here and there has provided a much-needed exercise in creative meditation.

Next year’s post-vaccine project: A closeup look at crowds, all shot on a 14mm lens.

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Gear of the Year: Richard’s choice – Canon RF 800mm F11 IS STM

27 Nov

Dan Bracaglia

I wouldn’t usually consider myself a fan of long lenses, perhaps as the result of my early digital experiences coming on disappointing superzooms. Once I’d got over the novelty of being able to take pictures of something a long way away, I usually found I could take a better photo by simply getting closer. I’ve used long telephotos for sports shooting, of course, but in recent years my lenses of choice have been 35 and 85mm equivalents.

The Canon 800mm F11 seemed too interesting to not try, though. And that meant adapting my photography to suit the equipment. This may sound back-to-front: I spend much of my working life looking for cameras that require the least adaptation on the part of the photographer, the ones that just work.

But, restricting yourself to single focal lengths or shooting a mono-only camera can help provide inspiration, so you can push yourself to try something new. And I needed to find something that I could shoot with it.

My first thought was to play around with the compression effects you get from the greater shooting distances encouraged by long lenses. Shooting through the open patio doors, with me at the back of the common room and my subject on the far end of the roof deck, I was able to exaggerate the size of the Space Needle in my photo. Unfortunately, with a fixed F11 aperture, I didn’t have the option to stop down further to make it less diffuse.

What’s the big deal?

We’ve seen impressive things done with diffractive/fresnel optics before: Nikon’s 300mm F4 PF is an excellent lens, that I’m hoping will be re-created in the Z mount, but the Canon F11 pair is something a little different.

Think of it more like a modern alternative to the mirror lens: restrictive, in that it has a fixed aperture as well as a fixed focal length, but freeing in the sense that you can lift it and, to a much greater extent, afford it. And, unlike mirror lenses, the resultant images aren’t marred by strange doughnut-hole bokeh, which I personally find distracting (/revolting).

Add in the retractable design and light weight and the convenience of the package becomes clear. It’s not the most solid-feeling lens, by any means, but those weight savings are appreciated if you’re carrying it for more than a few hours. Ultimately, though, it’s the price of the 800mm that stands out most, to me. At F11 it lets in 1/4 as much light as the EF 800mm F5.6 IS L can, but its list price of $ 899 is less than 1/14th of the cost.

A (socially distanced) hike around the city suggested a better option. Our walk took us through the Union Bay Natural Area. At first it looked like a piece of low-lying scrubland overshadowed by a college football stadium: a messy adjunct to its gameday parking. But the more I stopped and looked around, the more interesting fauna I saw, and the more photographic opportunities.

So I went back, armed with the Canon 800mm F11, an EOS R5, took my time, wandered around, looking for things to shoot. I make no claims to being a nature photographer, and my first efforts were patchy, at best. But like all the best photography experiences, every half-decent shot I took convinced me that my next one could be better.

I tried to take photos of variety of subjects, but there were some kingfishers who would return to a number of vantage points, before diving for prey. Their speed made them a challenging subject, but one that would give me multiple opportunities, if I watched closely and waited long enough.

The need to get a diverse gallery of images in a short space of time is somewhat at odds with the patience required for good nature photos. Similarly, the diktat that we should keep ISO as low as possible for lens galleries probably left me skirting the line of motion blur, but even with imperfect results, I found myself wanting to go back and have another go. Which is the thing that I enjoyed most about the 800mm: finding myself able to try something new.

I’m not going to claim any of my shots were great, partly as a result of inexperience, partly due to basic moral failure. But I enjoyed myself and the 800mm had helped encourage me to do something I might not otherwise think to try.

You might well argue that the thing I enjoyed was being pushed to try something new, and I’d completely agree. But I think the Canon RF 800mm F11 puts that opportunity to try something new into more people’s hands. Hence it’s my pick for this year.

Yes, I should have got up earlier in the day, used faster shutter speeds, but it was an enjoyable experience. Thank you, Mr. Predictable Kingfisher.

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Gear of the Year: Barney’s choice (part 1) – Fujifilm X100V

24 Nov

Please note: the images in this article are downsized from the original files. A link is provided below to our full samples gallery.

What a year. I thought 2016 was bad, but then 2020 barged in, ripped a room-clearing fart, handed 2016 its beer and went bananas. Hopefully you don’t need me to list the many horrors of the last 11 months, because I would prefer not to.

It’s surreal looking back now, but in the first six weeks of 2020 I flew roughly 15,000 miles, all of which was for work. The year began with the CES show in Las Vegas, then on to a video shoot in Texas, and another in California, followed by the launch of the Fujifilm X100V, in London. And that’s where this story begins…

…I don’t know why I did the dot-dot-dot thing there, this article is only one page long.

By early February, the novel coronavirus had been a blip on the outer edge of my mental radar screen for a while. In late January our video crew and I had shared some wry jokes about ‘flying now while we still can, ha ha…’, but it was the following month, at the launch of the Fujifilm X100V in London, that I started to sense a more general concern. Speaking to Fujifilm executives at the event (and, significantly in retrospect, those unexpectedly not at the event) it was clear that the situation in China (where Fujifilm has some manufacturing) had become grave, and in addition to the tragic human cost in Asia, COVID-19 was having a profound effect on production and supply chain logistics around the world.

The Fujifilm X100V was launched in February at an event in London. I added a few days to that trip to see family – my last opportunity to do so, as it turned out, for what may still be a long time.

1/60sec|F3.2|ISO 800

I was in the UK for a week, which included a few days spent with my family in London and the north of England. On the darkened plane back to Seattle, I remember wondering when I would see the old country again. Coincidentally, that was also the last outing for my much-traveled and now-expired European Union GB passport.

By early March things were getting serious all over the world (with DPReview’s adopted home state of Washington an early hotspot). Partly to scratch the itch of my own growing panic, I spent a few days researching the impact of COVID-19 on the photo industry. Alongside many reasonable, thoughtful comments on the resulting article are several that have since aged like fine milk.

Oddfellows Cafe in Capitol Hill, Seattle, boarding up after the WA lockdown was announced in mid March. Cafes, restaurants and many other businesses that were forced to close put boards up over their windows and encouraged local artists to decorate the storefronts.

1/420sec|F5.6|ISO 160

We all know what happened next. After March 16th 2020, I didn’t so much as hug another human being for more than 70 days. Things got weird.

Where does the Fujifilm X100V tie into all of this? Beyond the fateful coincidence of the timing of its launch in early 2020, it’s the camera that’s been in my hands almost every day for the past ten months.

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It was a preproduction X100V that I took on my trip back home to the UK in February, and which I used to take the last (for who knows how long) photographs of my sister, my nephew and my parents. I subsequently bought one, and my personal X100V was with me all through quarantine. I carried it with me on my daily permitted walks and bike rides through Seattle’s deserted streets, in that strangest, sunniest of springs, where normally busy neighborhoods looked like Edward Hopper paintings and everyone remarked on the sound of birdsong.

I also took a lot of mirror selfies, although in my defense it was a difficult time.

When I finally ventured out into crowds in late May and early June following protests after the killing of George Floyd, it was with X100V. When Seattle briefly became the focus of global attention following the establishment of the short-lived CHAZ/CHOP zone (a much smaller area than you might have been lead to believe, which began a mere block away from my apartment), I visited several times with the X100V, making sure that I had a personal record of what was going on. Even when the circumference of my world had shrunk to the handful of blocks around my front door, photography helped me feel somewhat connected.

Protesters gather near Cal Anderson Park in Seattle in early June – one of many protests that followed the death of George Floyd at the hands of police in Minneapolis.

1/60sec|F8|ISO 320

Sheer anarchy! Members of the local community paint a mural on the road (now preserved) near the SPD East Precinct, later in June.

1/60sec|F5.6|ISO 800

The X100V is a near-perfect everyday camera because it’s small enough to tuck under a light jacket when I’m out walking or cycling, fast, very simple to use and delivers great pictures. The new lens in the ‘V’ with its two aspherical elements, is far superior for close work to the original version on the X100/S/T/F and it performs much better with the 28mm wide converter attached. The X100V is one of those rare cameras that does exactly what I need it to, without a lot of fuss. It’s as simple at that, really; a reliable companion in a most unsettling season.

A slightly misfocused grab-shot at a spontaneous celebration following the announcement that Donald Trump had lost Pennsylvania (and the 2020 presidential election) earlier this month. In the background to the left is Oddfellows Cafe. This may have been a technically better photo had I taken it with an ILC, but the X100V is the camera I had with me – which is the whole point.

1/60sec|F8|ISO 640

For all the documentation that I’ve done this year with the X100V, I do not describe myself as a documentary photographer. I know several photojournalists personally, and I could never do what they do, especially in the current political climate here in the US, where personal safety is of increasing concern for members of the media. The pictures I take are primarily for me, for the purposes of creative practice, memory and reflection. And while there was much that happened in 2020 that I wish I could forget (and it’s not over yet), there was certainly a lot to reflect on…

…I’m doing that dot-dot-dot thing again, which means I should probably stop before this all gets hopelessly introspective. I think we’ve all had quite enough of that this year.

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Dealer’s Choice: It’s new card time. Is that such a bad thing?

23 Aug

If you buy a new high-end camera, you’ll probably have to stock up on new memory cards. And card readers. CFexpress Type A is one of the options, but will it take off, or remain an expensive outlier?

It’s sometimes hard to recognize when life’s been treating you well until things take a turn for the worse. Like it or not, we’re not returning to the halcyon days you may have taken for granted at the time.

I’m talking, of course, about memory card formats. But you knew that, right?

For much of the last ten years, the SD card has held sway over most cameras’ card slots. Its dominance has never been absolute, Compact Flash held on in the higher end until the short-lived CFast and XQD formats usurped them, but the chances are that the camera you had ten or fifteen years ago took SD cards and the one you use now does, too. The days of xD, Memory Stick and multiple flavors of Smart Media seemed to be in the past.

An interesting side-effect of this hegemony is that many of us have forgotten what it’s like to have to buy new memory cards (and readers) every time we buy a camera. As if picking a brand (or, more sensibly, a lens system) wasn’t hard enough, the next time you upgrade you may also have to commit to a new media format, with no guarantee that the format will last beyond that next camera body.

A comparatively short life: neither XQD and CFast (the latter mostly used in pro video cameras) have shown much longevity compared to the venerable SD and CF formats.

New cameras, new formats

But change does appear to be here, with both Canon and Nikon settling on the same high-end media format (CFexpress Type B) for the first time in eight years. Meanwhile, in its latest camera, Sony has opted for the similar-sounding but physically incompatible CFexpress Type A.

There are advantages to this: CFexpress is based on a much faster interface than current SD cards, and the cards themselves are more physically durable. But, as is usual with electronics, ‘faster’ plus ‘new’ does not equal ‘cheap.’

Oddly unnecessary

What’s interesting (and I may be using that word entirely inappropriately), is that the move to CFexpress isn’t strictly necessary.

CFexpress is based around the use of PCIe 3.0 NVMe technology, an interface used for computer SSDs. But the Secure Digital Association has set out a version of SD based on the same technology. It’s even mapped out a PCIe 4.0 version which could theoretically hit 4 GB/s (the maximum currently promised by CFexpress).

However, SD Express is two generations ahead of the UHS-II cards and slots that are only now becoming common on cameras, and would only be backward compatible at UHS-I speeds. It’ll be interesting to see whether brands such as Fujifilm, Leica and Olympus will skip UHS-III entirely to adopt SD Express, or whether they too will jump aboard one of the CFexpress trains.

A little legacy support

All of the manufacturers using these cards seem keen to accommodate existing card owners: Canon by providing an SD card slot alongside CFexpress B, Nikon and Panasonic by continuing to support XQD as well as CFexpress B and Sony by designing slots that can accept either SD or CFexpress A cards. But in all instances, you need to adopt the newer format to squeeze the most out of the new cameras (in many instances, it’s video modes that require the faster card types, perhaps the one concrete example of video features adding to photographers’ costs).

No more making do

On the plus side, the move toward new card formats reduces the temptation to try to make-do with those older, slower cards you’d already bought. No more winging it to see if your particular U3 card can reliably maintain the sustained 90MB/s read/write of an actual V90 card, just because it says ‘300MB/s’ on the front. No more hiccoughing continuous bursts because you grabbed a 10-year old Class 1 ‘Extreme’ card as you left the house.

So yes, there’s every chance you’re going to have to dig a bit deeper next time you buy a fancy new camera. New cards, new card readers, perhaps at rather inflated prices if you jump in too soon. But think about it, how much have you spent during the lifetime of your camera on SD cards you’ve lost, that have become corrupted or have broken just enough that they won’t eject properly anymore?

What’s holding you back?

Look at it this way: it’s a great way of being certain your camera is able to work to its full potential, and aren’t a lot of us buying more camera than we need, to ensure it’s never the factor holding us back? And with the three biggest camera makers settling on variants of CFexpress, there’s only a slight risk that you’re investing heavily in the next xD or Memory Stick.

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DPReview Readers’ Choice Awards 2019: Product of the Year

06 Jan

Product of the Year 2019: the results

The final round of voting has closed and a winner has been chosen in our annual Readers’ Choice Awards! Starting in December, DPR readers picked their favorite cameras, zoom lenses and prime lenses released in 2019. The winners of that initial round of voting were then pitted against each other for the title of Product of the Year. Take a look and see which products came out on top.

Product of the Year: third place

The Canon RF 70-200mm F2.8L IS was a late 2019 arrival, making its debut in November. Still, that was enough time to convince a large portion of our audience that it deserves a spot in the top three products of the year. It’s not hard to see why – the lens’ compact size at 70mm is truly astonishing and its image quality is just as impressive.

Product of the Year: runner up

Coming in second is the GFX 100, Fujifilm’s 100MP medium-format body. The combination of its high resolution and in-body image stabilization make it possible to take the studio with you – if you can stomach the $ 10,000 price tag. But what’s the fun in bringing price into a discussion about the best gear of the year? Fujifilm set out to make a truly impressive camera and it seems that its mission has been accomplished.

Product of the Year: overall winner

It may have been its 60MP resolution, or its class-leading 4K video, or maybe its ability to shoot 10 fps with AF. Some combination of those features no doubt contributed to DPR readers choosing the Sony a7R IV as their Product of the Year. Beyond the headline-grabbing specifications, the a7R IV is just a darn good camera and we whole-heartedly agree that it’s worthy of recognition – not only was it the DPR community’s top product of 2019, it was ours too.

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Gear of the Year 2019 – Rishi’s choice: Sony FE 135mm F1.8 GM

23 Dec

Photo: Dan Bracaglia

I love shooting wide. No, really: I made a whole video about how I even shoot portraits with wide-angle lenses. Wide-angles provide a sense of depth, dramatic perspectives, a glimpse into the subject’s surroundings and even provide an intimacy to portraits by giving the perspective of an observer standing very close to the subject. So you may be surprised by my choice of Gear of the Year: the Sony FE 135mm F1.8 GM.

Perhaps it’s just that I needed something different. Spice up my life, venture beyond 35mm, you know, my favorite ‘telephoto’ lens. Or, maybe Sony just made an amazing lens in the 135mm GM. Perhaps it’s a bit of both.

135mm F1.8 allowed me to focus on my backlit subject, and nothing else. Look at that creamy background.

I took the Sony FE 135mm with me on a recent trip with family and friends, enjoying time together at a cabin and celebrating three years of keeping our daughter alive.

135mm really allows you to isolate your subject, and make it about nothing else, even if some of the environment is included. Rather than jumping around the frame from one point of interest to another, the viewer’s eye can just focus on one story which, below, is a simple one of one sibling looking up to another.

The ‘tunnel vision’ a long focal length paired with a fast aperture provides allows you to create simplistic images that tell just one story, like the love shared between these siblings.

That’s not to say that 135mm doesn’t allow you to portray your subject against its surroundings, it’s just that things are a bit different compared to a wide angle composition. Rather than include an expansive view of your subject’s surroundings with an enhanced sense of depth, the longer focal length allows you to compress your subject against only an isolated – and magnified – portion of its environment.

Take the image below: A wide-angle lens would have included the foliage, the sky, the ground, and other potentially distracting elements, all situated at different depths. This creates a more complex image with an enhanced sense of, well, depth. That can certainly be nice, but sometimes I like the simplicity of the subject and the background essentially appearing at just two different focal planes.

The 135mm focal length allowed me to ‘compress’ the scene, bringing the trees in the background closer to my subject(s), and allowing me to frame my subjects against the green foliage. The long focal length allowed me to magnify only a small portion of the background, allowing me to exclude distracting elements like the sky above or the ground below my subjects.

Technically, the FE 135mm GM lens is superb. Optically, the lens is literally the sharpest lens our friend Roger Cicala at LensRentals has ever tested. That’s at least in part due to the XA (extreme aspherical) element designed to minimize spherical aberration.

The Super ED and ED glass used in the elements in the front group replace traditional large and heavy negative elements commonly used to suppress longitudinal spherical aberration. The result is very little, if any, longitudinal chromatic aberration, commonly seen as purple and green fringing in front of, and behind, the focal plane, respectively.

The 135mm focal length allowed me to easily isolate my subject in this otherwise small and busy indoor space. And thanks to the excellent optics, there’s no distracting green fringing in the high contrast ‘Title’ text behind our subject, despite the fast aperture.

Sony’s 10 nanometer mold precision and other recent improvements ensure smooth aspherical surfaces, meaning that onion-ring bokeh is non-existent. An 11-blade aperture ensures circular out-of-focus highlights, and generally smoother bokeh, even when shooting stopped down. Sure, there’s some mechanical vignetting that leads to a ‘cat’s eye’ effect, but that’s to be expected of a lens of this type, and isn’t severe enough to result in swirly bokeh in the family portrait above.

Just as important as optical quality is the focus performance: especially for candid portraiture. And here the FE 135mm GM is industry leading: focus is lightning fast thanks in part to its four XD (‘extreme dynamic’) linear induction motors. These motors are far faster than the previous piezoelectric design of Sony’s ‘Direct Drive SSM’ system, and are capable of moving larger, heavier elements.

Paired with the excellent autofocus system of Sony’s recent cameras such as the a7R Mark IV, focus is fast enough that I could easily nail focus on the eyes of erratically running toddlers, even with the aperture wide open at F1.8:

This boy was running through a wading pool and momentarily smiled at the camera. Real-time tracking (with Eye AF) coupled with the extremely fast autofocus speeds of this lens allowed me to nail this moment effortlessly.

I’ll admit I’d rarely shot with 135mm primes in the past, typically sticking to a trio of primes (24, 35, and 85) for weddings, or 70-200mm F2.8 lenses for engagement and portrait shoots. I’ve found the 135mm F1.8 to be a different beast, requiring me to think and shoot differently, while often finding myself running further and further backward to get enough space in between my camera and my subject.

The results were, to me, very rewarding. The ‘tunnel vision’ effect of stepping back and using a longer focal length to isolate your subject and compress it against a small portion of its surroundings yields a unique look, particularly when paired with a fast enough aperture so that the background is pleasingly blurred and not distracting. Below, you’ll see my daughter surrounded by others in a park, but by herself in the wading pool happily marching to her own beat.

I couldn’t sum her up any better.

Marching to her own beat.

Note the exceedingly low magenta fringing (longitudinal chromatic aberration) around the water droplets splashing about in front of our subject, despite the magnifying glass the high resolution 60MP sensor of the a7R IV holds up to any lens’ optical aberrations.

Sony FE 135mm F1.8 GM sample gallery

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* Of course I kid: my wedding kit always includes an 85mm, and I happily use 200mm for compression when I want to isolate my subject amidst its surroundings.

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