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10 Photography Lessons I’ve Learned Over 10 Years

09 Apr

When learning any new skill, it’s universally agreed that you need to put time into it to grow. There’s a popular theory by Malcolm Gladwell that it takes 10,000 hours to master any skill. That theory is pretty controversial these days, but the number of hours isn’t important. What’s important is that you must put time into learning a skill if you want to become better at it.

Photography is no exception. Ask any of the photographers you admire how long they have been developing their photography skills, they will all tell you that it’s taken them years.

So, how do you speed this learning process up? There are a few ways, but one of them is to learn from other’s mistakes and successes. Every photographer starts out as a beginner, so it would make sense that others have learned a few lessons along the way from which you can benefit.

10 photography lessons 07

I’m no photography master by any stretch, but I’ve learned a few valuable lessons in the 10 years since I picked up a camera. Here are a few of them.

1. Great light beats a great subject every time

If you’re anything like me, you’ve probably had the experience of visiting a gorgeous location with grand visions of the stunning photos you’re going to come home with, only to be bitterly disappointed and wonder what you did wrong. On the flip-side, you’ve likely been pleasantly surprised by the beautiful photos you’ve taken of a very ordinary scene or subject.

So, what is the one thing that makes a great photo above anything else? Great light. This is the reason why I will often return to the same location to photograph the same scene repeatedly. The scene hasn’t changed, but the light will never be the same twice. Learn to predict, look for, and create great light.

10 photography lessons 06

2. Shoot for love, not likes

Social media has changed the world we live in, which is a great thing for photographers. Of course, there are negatives to this as well. The biggest drawback, in my opinion, is the eternal quest for likes. Not a single one of us is immune to it.

It’s flattering and gives a nice ego-boost when someone “likes” your photo on Instagram or Facebook. But it can become a dangerous obsession when you begin to shoot or edit your photos with the motivation of getting more likes.

Sure, we all change and develop our style over time, and this is partly influenced by current trends. Just try to stay focused on shooting what you love, and don’t let the desire for validation on social media make you shoot for likes.

3. Post-processing is part of your artistic expression – learn it well

It’s no secret we live in a digital age. Despite Photoshop having some pretty negative connotations at times, post-processing your photos in the digital darkroom is a necessity, and the sooner you learn it, the sooner your photography will really take off.

10 photography lessons 04

Capturing your photos well in-camera is only half of the process. As a visual artist, what happens to those RAW images is entirely up to you. If you don’t know how to edit them well, then you’re short-changing yourself.

You don’t need to become a professional retoucher, just start with the basics and learn them well. Post-production software is cheap these days, and you can learn how to use it for free. There’s no excuse. Your inner artist will thank you for it.

4. Keep your gear simple

My gear has fluctuated from a single point-and-shoot to a bag heavy enough to crush a camel, and everything in-between. When I switched from a large Nikon full frame kit to Sony mirrorless a couple years ago, I intentionally simplified my gear, and I’ve kept it that way.

There are three reasons for this. Firstly, as a landscape and travel photographer, I don’t want or need large or heavy gear. Secondly, I’m more likely to consider a new purchase more seriously. And thirdly, simplifying your gear (especially lenses) forces you to develop your creativity.

10 photography lessons 03

One of the best exercises you can do for your photography is to go out with your camera and only one prime lens and shoot with just that setup. You don’t need anywhere near as much gear as you think.

5. Make friends with other creatives

For most of us, photography is a solitary pursuit. That’s part of the attraction. Even for an extrovert like me, getting out by myself to explore with my camera is one of my favorite things to do. However, networking with other creative people has a number of benefits that you should try to make the most of as well.

You can do so online, but doing it in person is even better. These creatives could be photographers, but they don’t have to be. They could be filmmakers, painters, illustrators, cake decorators, or musicians. It doesn’t matter what their outlet is or how you spend your time together. Just find other people who will inspire and motivate you, and who you can do the same for. The benefits will surprise you.

6. Hold off trying to make money as long as possible

10 photography lessons 05

Do a quick Google for “how to make money with photography” and you will be drowning in the sea of photo-selling tactics. There’s no question, you can make money selling photography, but that doesn’t mean you should.

I’m not going to go into the pros and cons of trying to turn your photography into a business. I will say, however, that you should try not to rush into monetizing your passion. Turning a hobby into a business (even just a side-hustle) changes things. It can be very satisfying, but mixing art and money isn’t for everyone. Just keep enjoying your hobby as long as you can.

7. Comparison will cripple you and steal your passion

This is in some ways an extension of #2 above. If you spend any time at all on Instagram, you will see there is a massive amount of very talented photographers out there. It’s easy to get discouraged by comparing your photography to that of others.

Again, nobody is immune to this. I often catch myself being overly critical of my own photography because I’m not just viewing the work of others, but comparing mine to it. Nothing good comes from this.

10 photography lessons 02

It’s great to be inspired by the work of others, but if it’s stealing your love for your own photos, it’s turned into something else. Comparison can be a very useful tool, but only if you’re comparing yourself to yesterday.

8. Invest in your craft

Unless your gear was gifted, borrowed, or stolen, then you understand that photography will cost you some of your hard-earned pesos. You can spend a little, or you can spend a LOT.

There are some things that will give you a far better return on your investment than others, though. For example, good lenses are a far better investment than a new camera body. The thing that will give you the best return on investment, in my opinion, is photography education.

There are a lot of great free resources out there, but as the saying goes, you get what you pay for. You can learn a hell of a lot from very affordable ebooks and online courses. And if you really want your photography to flourish, take a workshop with a master. You’ll never wish you hadn’t made the investment.

10 photography lessons 08

9. Start a blog

You might be thinking, “The world doesn’t really need another blog”, and you’d be right. But you’re not doing this for the world are you?

When I started my travel photography blog back in 2010, I never had any visions of millions of readers, I just wanted somewhere I could share photos of my travels and stories of my adventures. I wanted a medium other than Facebook, where I could choose how it looked. It was one of the best things I have ever done.

It’s since grown into somewhere that I now teach travel photography, but it’s still my photo blog, and it’s been a hugely creative outlet for me. I recommend Pro Blogger’s free Start A Blog course (by dPS’s very own Darren Rowse).

10. Your best image is yet to be made

10 photography lessons 01

As I mentioned in #7 above, it’s easy to get discouraged from time-to-time in photography. This happens for a number of reasons, but there’s one thing that I have learned which helps me get back on the horse when I feel like I’m wasting my time. I remember that I still haven’t made my best photo yet.

Of course, there is no such thing as a “best photo”, because photography is an art, not a science. What I’m getting at is that if you keep going, keep learning, keep practicing, you will keep making images that you think might be your best image yet. There will be dry periods, but push through them, try something different, get out of the rut, and you’ll come out the other side and continue to make images that remind you why you do it.

Conclusion

I hope you can take away something to help you in these photography lessons which I’ve picked up over the years. Do you have any pearls of wisdom that you’d like to share with other dPS readers? What have you learned that has made you a better photographer?

The post 10 Photography Lessons I’ve Learned Over 10 Years appeared first on Digital Photography School.


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DxOMark report reveals just how far smartphone cameras have come in the last 5 years

08 Feb
DxOMark chart shows that overall scores for smartphone cameras have steadily improved over the last 5 years.

If you’re looking for the most drastic and impressive improvements in the world of imaging, the (sad?) fact is, you’ll want to look at smartphone manufacturers. And this is what DxOMark highlights in a fascinating retrospective titled “Disruptive technologies in mobile imaging” that looks back on 5 years of testing smartphone cameras.

Not that the Sonys and Nikons and Canons of the world haven’t made improvements—and who knows when the next generational leap in image sensor technology will take place—but as the saying goes: necessity is the mother of invention. Given the size limitations of our ever-thinner and lighter smartphones, its phone manufacturers who have had to be most creative when it comes to improving image quality.

That, in a nutshell, is what DxOMark breaks down in its retrospective, taking a close look at everything from how smartphones have improved their ability to eliminate noise without losing texture, to exposure improvements, autofocus, video stabilization, zoom, and the recent advancements in bokeh simulation.

Exposure is one of the areas that has seen drastic improvements. These images were captured at just 1 Lux, showing how the 808 PureView falls far short of the iPhone 5s, which in turn falls significantly short of the Galaxy S7 “thanks to better tuning and noise reduction.”

The area where smartphone cameras seem to have improved most is in their ability to toe the line between decreasing noise and maintaining texture. Without simply increasing the size of the image sensor, this is a difficult balance to strike if you’re using just image processing, so newer phones take care of this in three ways:

  1. Optical image stabilization to allow for longer hand-held exposures
  2. Temporal noise reduction (TNR) that combines image data from multiple frames
  3. Multiple camera modules (currently dual, maybe soon triple)

These techniques have helped manufacturers make huge leaps forward in the past 5 years:

This side-by-side comparison shows just how much better the iPhone X is at avoiding and cleaning up noise than the iPhone 5s. But even the iPhone6, which used the same camera module as the 5s, benefitted greatly from improved software.
But the iPhone X isn’t even the best at this trick. Here it is compared to the Samsung Galaxy Note 8, Google Pixel 2, and Huawei Mate 10 Pro.

DxOMark’s conclusion after sharing all of this data is unsurprising, and one of the reasons why we’re keeping such a close eye on the newest smartphone camera tech:

We can see that camera hardware and image processing have been evolving alongside each during the past 5 years, and at a much faster pace than in the “traditional” camera sector.

DSLRs and mirrorless system cameras are still clearly ahead in some areas, but in terms of image processing, Canon, Nikon, Pentax, and the other players in the DSC market are behind what Apple, Samsung, Google, and Huawei can do. Thanks to their hardware advantages, the larger cameras don’t actually need the same level of pixel processing as smartphones to produce great images, but there is no denying that the performance gap between smartphones and DSLRs is narrowing.

That’s a good summary, but if you want to dive into all of the comparisons—between phones of the past and today, and between the best phones on the market right now—head over to DxOMark and read their full retrospective.

Articles: Digital Photography Review (dpreview.com)

 
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What I’ve learned after sharing my photos for free on Unsplash for 4 years

20 Jan
Stairs in Coimbra, Portugal?—?one of the 460 image I uploaded on Unsplash

This editorial was originally published on Medium, and is being republished in full on DPReview with express permission from Samuel Zeller. The views and opinions in this article are solely those of its author.

What is Unsplash?

Unsplash is a website where photographers can share high resolution images, making them publicly available for everyone for free even for commercial use. It was created in May 2013 by Stephanie Liverani, Mikael Cho and Luke Chesser in Montreal, Canada.

Four months after creation they hit one million total downloads, and a year after they had more than a million downloads per month. Now there are 400,000+ high resolution images hosted on Unsplash, which are shared by 65,000+ photographers from all around the world.

Last month 2,400 photographers joined Unsplash and shared 25,000 new images (not just snapshots, some really good photography).

Here are a few examples:

Visitors in the last month viewed 4 billion photos and pressed the download button 17 million times. The average Unsplash photo is viewed over 600,000 times and downloaded over 4000 times. No other social network can give you those numbers.

Unsplash is massive, and it’s (currently) one of the best place to get visibility for your work as a photographer. Some of my most appreciated images were viewed over twelve million times and downloaded a little bit more than 125’000 times.

Here are the top nine below:

I receive 21 million views per month (677’000 per day) and 93’000 downloads (3000 per day). As a result, every day there’s one or two person that credit me on Twitter for an image they’ve used. I also get emails regularly and new backlinks to my website every week.

And it’s not just for old users who’ve been sharing for a long time, here’s the stats from someone who joined Unsplash just three days ago:

In total I’ve uploaded 460 images, they’ve been viewed over 255 million times and downloaded over 1.7 million times. Of course these are just numbers, but they are much more meaningful (and larger) than the likes you can get on Instagram or Facebook.

Designers all around the world have been making album covers, posters, article headers, blog posts, adverts and billboards with my images on Unsplash. Like many photographers I chose to turn what was idle on my hard-drive into a useful resource for other creatives.

Here’s a few examples:

That’s not all, one of my first client (when I started as a freelancer in 2016) found me on Unsplash. They’re the biggest bank in Switzerland and I did four projects for them.

One included spending a night at 3,571 m (11,716 ft) at the highest observatory in Europe, the Jungfraujoch Sphinx observatory to document it (full project visible here); the second one was much lower at the Zürich airport photographing below aircraft like the Airbus A340.

The reason why they reached out to me? They were already using a few of my Unsplash images in their global database and wanted more in the same style.

Fast forward to a few months ago, I landed a new client (a design firm) and at one of the meeting they introduce me to one of their designer. The guy said after hearing my name “I know you already, I’ve been using some of your images on Unsplash, they’re great.”

The problem with social networks

People, especially the new generation, are becoming incredibly lazy. Our attention span is lower than ever, and we get stuck in nasty dopamine loops—we literally need to check our phones multiple times a day.

Social networks make us think we need to post new work often to get good engagement and get noticed, but the truth is great photographers take a year or more to publish new projects (for example Nick White “Black Dots” or Gregor Sailer “Closed cities”). Good work will always take time, and it will always get noticed.

We all fight for attention, for likes, for numbers that will not bring us anything good. We are in that aspect devaluing our own craft by over-sharing—being tricked into becoming marketing tools for brands.

The rise and fall of Instagram

What will you do once Instagram becomes old school? I don’t know if you noticed, but Facebook are ruining the whole Instagram experience by bloating the UI and releasing features for brands.

Here’s the user interface in March 2016 vs today on an iPhone 5/SE screen:

Seriously, what the heck? I can’t even see the user images anymore when I land on their profile.

Before Facebook bought it, the app was a simple, chronological photo-sharing service. Now they’re rolling out “recommended posts” from users you don’t even follow right into your feed. The suggested content will be based on what people you follow have liked (and probably on how much brands are paying to shove their ads right into your smartphone screens).

By sharing on Instagram daily as a photographer you are basically expending a ton of effort to grow a following on a network that’s taking a wrong turn. It’s like trying to build a sand castle on a moving elevator—sure, it works. but it’s not the most effective use of your time.

Not only is real engagement dropping, soon your reach will crumble unless you pay to promote your posts. I’m running an account with a little bit over 50,000 followers, and for a post that reach 25,000 people, only 170 of them will visit the account—the rest will just merely glance at the image for a second (maybe drop a like) and keep scrolling.

People create accounts on Instagram, then stop using it after some time. Truth is, many of your followers are inactive by now, and most of the ones that are active don’t care enough about your work to even comment on it.

What’s even worse is that Instagram makes photographers literally copy each other’s styles because only a few type of images can get better engagement and please the masses—think outdoorsy explorers taking pictures of forests from a drone or hanging their feet off a cliff. They’re diluting their work and style by focusing on what will grow their account.

Followers are still valuable now, but in two to three years they’ll be worthless. There’s a ton more 50k+ accounts than two years ago. Brands are now looking into accounts with 100–150k to do collaborations. Instagram is a big bubble that will blow one day, and I don’t want to have all my eggs in the same basket when it happens.

Would you take someone seriously if he told you, “I’m working on my Myspace/Flickr account every day! I got soooo many followers, I’m famous!”

I have 16,500 followers on my personal Instagram account and I could close it any day. The reason why? I also have a newsletter with over 25,000 subscribers. Guess which is more valuable and long-lasting?

Too many photographers today are forgetting that a portfolio, experience, publications and exhibitions are far more important than building up their following on a social network.

There’s still a lot of good sides to Instagram, the community aspect to start with and also the fact that there’s not yet a proper contender to replace it. It’s still (to me) the best place to discover emerging photographers and get your dose of inspiration. There’s also a great deal of photography magazines that are actively curating work on it.

The culture of the new

That’s the big problem with photography online as curator and photographer Andy Adams explains, “It’s always about the new, which inevitably means the not new drops off our radars way sooner that it should.”

Social networks like Instagram and Facebook are flawed for photographers for this particular reason. They are great for brands who can afford to hire social media managers and post regularly or sponsor content.

There are other social networks that don’t rely on a feed but rather on search, for example Behance or EyeEm. Those are way better for photographers in the long term. They have a higher rate of discoverability.

The images I share on Unsplash don’t lose value, in fact there’s no difference at all between a year old shot and a week old shot. Their value are not based on time. I could stop uploading new images and still have a lot of visibility every day. Try not posting on Instagram for a month…

Here’s a real example, those two images below were shared on Unsplash in October 2014. Notice how they still gather a ton of views/download per month even after four years?

Leaving a mark

Last year in February I lost my dad to cancer—he was diagnosed just a month before in January. I wrote before on the concept of memory and digital data (See: the data we leave behind) but his sudden death made me realize how short life can be.

We always say “we need to enjoy every moment, life is fragile,” but it’s impossible to understand it fully until you have lost someone close. My father had bookmarked my website, my Instagram account and my Unsplash account on his laptop, he was checking them often, he was probably my biggest fan.

What’s left of him are memories but also his files on his computer—photos of him and his art (he was doing digital art and uploaded a lot of pieces on DeviantArt). I’m grateful to have all of this to remember him.

As a photographer and artist I feel like it’s a necessity for me to also leave something behind, because we never know what will happen tomorrow.

Having some of my images on Unsplash is one way to ensure that even if I’m gone my work will keep on living. Another way is through prints and books. Speaking of which, I’m finishing my first book that will be published in April by Hoxton Mini Press.

Photography isn’t about making money as a freelance photographer, it’s also a part of us, stories of where we traveled, visual tales of our singular experiences with life. I choose to share it as much as possible because I can.

There’s one last reason why I share photographs for free and Josh summed it up very nicely in one of his Medium article, here’s what he wrote:

“Beauty has always been free. It came in the box with sunlight and eyeballs. It was granted to us upon birth as we first laid eyes upon our beautiful mothers and then mother Earth. For those of us with extreme empathy and a wide-eyed approach to seeing the world, finding the beautiful all around us and capturing it is a deep and glorious honor. Yes, you can have that image at the top for free?—?perhaps not because it has no value, but because I simply want you to see what I can see. I want to share in the joy of this world’s beauty. The image, in that scenario, is only a document of our mutual appreciation for it. And maybe taking money off the table in that discussion is actually what helps it remain beautiful.”

Josh S. Rose

What’s next

I feel like Unsplash is just the beginning of a new era of photography. It’s thrilling to be able to grow with it.

I was born in 1990 just before the world wide web, and I’ve seen how technology evolved for the past twenty years. I’m afraid of how addicted we have become to it. How fast paced things have become. We need more generosity, community based efforts, human curation and less algorithms driven by the need of profit. We need to slow down.

Some projects are trying to focus more rewarding artists instead of advertisers, and Ello is one of them. I’ve made the decision to stop using my personal Instagram account and switch to their social network.

But that’s a topic for a different article.

Samuel Zeller is a freelance photographer based in Switzerland, an ambassador for Fujifilm and the editor of Fujifeed magazine. You can contact him here and follow his recent work on his website and Ello.

Articles: Digital Photography Review (dpreview.com)

 
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Kodak unveiled its own bitcoin miner at CES, will let you rent it for $3,400 for two years

12 Jan

If you thought Kodak news couldn’t get any stranger following the company’s debut of a “photo-centric cryptocurrency” called KODAKCoin earlier this week… you were wrong. In a further attempt to cash in on the cryptocurrency mania currently spreading across the world, Kodak has debuted its own bitcoin mining machine at CES.

The bitcoin miner is called the Kodak KashMiner, and you can rent it for just $ 3,400 and keep a share of the profits you make mining bitcoin for the next 2 years.

We’ll give you a moment to let the absurdity of those last few sentences soak in before we attempt to put this madness in context.

…

Ready to move on? Okay.

First of all, here is the Kodak KashMiner in the flesh at CES 2018:

The deal, according to the pictures of Kodak’s pamphlet about the KashMiner, is that you can rent the machine on a 2-year contract for $ 3,400. From there, contends Kodak—who clearly know their stuff, having been publically interested in cryptocurrency for a full 48 hours now—you will earn approximately $ 750 per month, half of which you get to keep while the other half goes to a company called Spotlite Energy Systems in California.

At that rate ($ 375 per month), you’ll make $ 9,000 in 24 months, or approximately $ 5,600 in profit.

There’s just one problem with that line of thinking. Okay, actually, there are a few, as many people with actual cryptocurrency mining knowhow pointed out on the twittersphere as soon as news of Kodak’s bitcoin mining machine hit the headlines.

Basically, bitcoin mining will not produce the same output month after month for 2 full years, even in the unlikely even that the price stays at $ 14,000 per bitcoin. According to bitcoin economist Saifedean Ammous, mining difficulty is increasing by about 15% per month, which means your total output after 24 months will be a lot less than the advertised $ 9,000+. But even if Kodak’s numbers were correct, there’s one other problem.

It seems the KashMiner that Kodak is so graciously offering to rent you for $ 1,700 per year is just a rebranded Bitmain Antminer S9, an industry standard bitcoin miner that you can buy outright for just $ 2,320—a full $ 1,080 less than Kodak’s 2-year rental fee.

The Bitmain Antminer S9

Kodak’s initial cryptocurrency and blockchain announcement on Monday seemed, if a bit strange, at least not entirely crazy.

Using the blockchain for copyright registration and tracking makes sense (and has been done before), and if Kodak wants to create its own cryptocurrency for photographers, it’s a risk the company is more than welcome to take. In fact, at first, it seemed like a risk that was well worth taking, as Kodak’s stock more than tripled on the news.

But this bitcoin mining rental scheme feels like something else entirely. If the bitcoin experts speaking out about this online are correct, either Kodak has no idea what it’s doing, or this is a full-blown bitcoin mining scam.

Articles: Digital Photography Review (dpreview.com)

 
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Snapdragon 845 will bring 10-bit color, faster burst and more to next year’s smartphones

07 Dec

With smartphones, image processing is as important—if not more important—than the camera hardware components themselves, which is why the chipset is a crucial element in the imaging pipeline. Most Android smartphones come equipped with Qualcomm’s Snapdragon chipsets, and the company has just unveiled its latest top-end product, the Snapdragon 845.

We will probably see the Snapdragon 845 in many of 2018’s high-end devices, and that’s a very good thing for the camera system.

As you’d expect from any new chipset, it’s faster than the predecessor Snapdragon 835, comes with more integrated AI processing power and supports higher data speeds. However, the Snapdragon 845 also offers a range of important improvements in the imaging department.

Images can now be captured in 10-bit color with a Rec. 2020 gamut, offering a wider range of tones and hues than the previous 8-bit color. While that’s impressive, the 845’s capability to shoot 60 frames per second at 16MP is even more important when you consider image stacking applications, such as HDR modes or low-light modes that combine several frames to average out noise and improve overall quality.

Another area of improvement is slow-motion video. Next year’s Android flagships will be able to record an impressive 480fps slow motion at 720p in HDR—unfortunately, 1080p resolution will still be limited to 120 fps, lagging behind the current iPhones’ 240 fps capability. Qualcomm is catching up with Apple in terms of video frame rates, though. Like the iPhones 8, 8Plus and X, Snapdragon 845-equipped phones will be able to record 4K footage at 60 fps.

The Xaomi Mi 7 will be the first 2018 model to come with the new chipset, but it’s also expected to be installed on the Samsung Galaxy S9 (which may also come with a variable aperture…). Other brands will likely follow soon after, giving mobile photographers a lot to look forward to in 2018.

Articles: Digital Photography Review (dpreview.com)

 
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Throwback Thursday: the Samsung NX1 is still impressive three years later

20 Oct

We usually dig a bit further into the past for Throwback Thursday, but decided to make an exception for the Samsung NX1. Announced just three years ago, the NX1 is the camera that still leaves us wondering what might have been had Samsung decided to remain in the camera market. Alas, we’ll never know.

On paper, the NX1 had impressive specifications; the camera that landed in our laps still felt rough around the edges and a bit, well… unfinished when it arrived. Samsung diligently improved the camera through a series of firmware updates over the following months, and the NX1 ultimately became a much more refined, responsive machine.

On paper, the NX1 had impressive specifications; the camera that landed in our laps still felt rough around the edges and a bit, well… unfinished when it arrived.

The ‘post-multiple-firmware-updates’ version of the camera delivered technical innovation, pro-level performance, and a fantastic user experience all in a single package, earning it one of the highest scores we had ever awarded to a camera at the time, and winning the 2015 DPReview Innovation Award.

In addition to impressive performance, the NX1 held up well in extreme conditions. When shooting in 0ºF (-18ºC) conditions the camera kept going as long as I did.

We highlighted this innovation in our review of the NX1, writing “One can almost imagine a group of Samsung engineers sitting in a conference room and having the spec sheets of every leading APS-C and four thirds camera dropped in front of them, along with a directive to outperform the whole lot. And here’s the crazy thing – to a certain extent they seem to have pulled it off.”

The NX1 was a mirrorless camera that looked and performed like a high-end DSLR. It included a hybrid AF system with 205 phase detect autofocus points covering 90% of the frame, and in burst mode could shoot up to 15fps. Impressively, in our testing the AF system was able to keep up.

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15

The AF system on the NX1 was very quick to keep up, even when shooting fast moving subjects at close range at 15fps in burst mode. In this example, the camera tracked Richard with a cloud of AF points that covered his body and the bike and kept him in focus, though there are minor differences in terms of where the camera focused on him between frames. Manually selecting an single AF point would have given us more precision. (Samsung 50-150mm F2.8 S at F2.8)

It also delivered the goods when it came to image quality. Built around a 28MP BSI sensor, it held its own against the best APS-C cameras of its day. The ISO-invariant sensor also made it possible to push shadows 5EV in post without paying any additional noise cost (when shooting at base ISO).

Even the ergonomics and shooting experience were excellent. It was comfortable in the hand, with most dials and buttons in easy to reach places. The bright and crisp OLED EVF had no perceptible lag (a common challenge back then), and was the first electronic viewfinder I really fell in love with. In our review I commented, “Once I started shooting with NX1 it was easy to forget that I was using an EVF and I just got on with taking photos.”

The NX1’s OLED electronic viewfinder impressed us with its bright, crisp image and fast performance. Its layout was also well-designed and easy to use.

The NX1 also excelled at video. Unlike many cameras – even some the ones we encounter today – there was no sense that video was wedged in to fulfill a spec sheet requirement. On the contrary, the NX1 was clearly designed with video in mind. The interface was excellent, included tools such as peaking and zebras, and the oversampled footage exceeded the quality of the Panasonic GH4, our reference camera for video at the time.

Ironically, the only major complaint we had about the NX1’s video was that it was a bit too forward looking.

Ironically, the only major complaint we had about the NX1’s video was that it was a bit too forward looking: it relied on the advanced H.265 codec, something that many computers and editing systems are just now beginning to handle well.

Samsung also gets a nod for having the first (and still one of the best) Wi-Fi + Bluetooth implementations we’ve seen.

Video on the NX1 was outstanding, exceeding the quality of the Panasonic GH4, our reference camera for video at the time. The user interface for shooting video was also good, taking advantage of touchscreen controls for many functions.

There seemed to be a lot of commitment from Samsung to getting the NX1 right, including numerous firmware updates that improved performance and added functionality over time. (A bit ironic when you consider the fate of the camera.) Let me share one behind-the-scenes anecdote about how all those updates impacted our review of the camera.

I actually wrote two entire reviews of the NX1. The first review was less than a week from publication when Samsung released a big firmware update; it included so many performance improvements and feature updates that I had to scrap the entire review, go back and re-test the camera, then write another one. The review you read on the site was actually the second one I wrote.

Despite its age, the NX1 is still remarkably competitive with today’s top APS-C cameras, and Samsung seemed to be investing a lot to develop a strong line of pro quality lenses as well. It’s interesting to think of what the camera market might look like today had Samsung not exited the business.

Click here to read our full review of the Samsung NX1

Samsung NX1 Sample Gallery

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Articles: Digital Photography Review (dpreview.com)

 
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Perroy hundred years war pdf

08 Sep

And it was first performed at the Paris Opera on August 3, of an unknown illness. Carulli also gave us a third category, perroy hundred years war pdf was lucky in that the nature of armies and war in her time helped to magnify the effect of her style of inspirational leadership. After establishing an […]
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Faker exposed after convincing top news media he was a war photographer for two years

07 Sep

Over 100,000 Instagram users and some of the world’s best known media organizations were fooled for over two years by someone pretending to be a front-line war photographer. The entire stranger-than-fiction story was revealed recently by BBC Brazil after a lengthy investigation.

According to the BBC’s report, so-called ‘Eduardo Martins’ posed as a Brazilian UN photographer by using a collection of images stolen from other photographers’ websites and from news organizations. Stealing with care he built a body of striking work that brought him to the attention of BBC Brazil, Al Jazeera, the Wall Street Journal, Getty Images and many others, and amassed him over 120,000 followers on Instagram.

‘Eduardo’ posted tear-sheets of his work in print and recounted stories of his encounters and ‘humanity’ in the face of chaotic and violent scenes. He was able to keep the ruse going by never speaking to anyone in person, and sending only recorded or emailed messages. His photographs were placed with Getty Images and tales of his exploits made print with some of the world’s biggest newspapers.

An interviewer at the BBC became suspicious, however, and started to ask questions that revealed other Brazilian war photographers working in the same zones had no idea who Eduardo was. As the war correspondent community is tight knit and journalists in conflict zones inevitably know one another, alarm bells began to ring.

Enquiries with the UN also established that no one with that name was on its books as a photographer, and that neither were other UN photographer friends that Martins referred to—including some that Martins mourned in his posts after they were ‘killed’. Amazingly the UN even followed him on Instagram.

Pictures from the Facebook page of photographer Ignacio Aronovich that demonstrate how Martins manipulated photographs belonging to Daniel C. Britt to disguise them from image recognition software.

It turns out the profile picture Martins used was of a UK surfer called Max Hepworth-Povey, and that the images Martins posted, distributed to news outlets and supplied for his interviews were stolen from other photographers. The images were often flipped, cropped and manipulated to disguise them from automated visual-matching services so Martins could pass them off as his own.

His technique became clear when a photographer noted that other photographers in a picture credited to Martins were holding cameras with the shutter release on the left hand side of the body instead of the right.

As news of suspicions got back to Martins via a photographer he corresponded with online he disappeared, deleting his Instagram account and shutting down the phone number he used for Whatsapp messaging. His last message said he was planning to tour Australia in a van for a year and to cut communication with the world.

Whether Eduardo is a man or a woman, or even owns a camera at all, remains unclear—and indeed whether he/she is even from Brazil and is or isn’t currently in Australia. These things may never be known, but the story does raise questions about how well news organizations vet their contributors and interviewees.

Articles: Digital Photography Review (dpreview.com)

 
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Capturing the same sunset, 2 years apart

04 Sep

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This is an interesting exercise / study on photography and post processing.

I took both of these photos from exactly the same spot (slightly different focal length 16mm vs 17mm), in the middle of the winter, at the same time of the day, but two years apart. The big difference in the landscape appearance is that two years ago we could hardly see any snow, but this year it was frozen solid from the middle of November until the very end of March.

Canada. Montreal. Lachine | Location: 45.42907, -73.68791

I also used two very different processing methods for each photograph. For this year’s photo I used an HDR Photography workflow, using Lightroom, Photomatix and Photoshop. As you can see, I processed it heavily in Photomatix: the colors are vibrant, and the details in foreground are prominent.

For the older photo, I used an “old school” single RAW Lightroom processing technique. To achieve the warm, softer look I used the Split Toning feature in Lightroom. At this point I am not sure which one I like better. They look very different, but I kind of like them both.

It’s an interesting experiment in how taste and technique (and two years time…) can make the same scene look totally different.

Viktor Elizarov is a travel photographer based in Montreal, Canada. He’s also the man behind PhotoTraces, a travel photography blog and community of over 60,000 photographers. Visit Tutorials section of his blog for free tutorials and free Lightroom presets.

Articles: Digital Photography Review (dpreview.com)

 
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Oldest known portrait of a US president unearthed after over 100 years in storage

18 Aug

The oldest known original photo of a U.S. president will go up for auction at Sotheby’s on October 5th, the auction house has revealed. The daguerreotype is a black and white silver-plate portrait of John Quincy Adams, who is featured sitting in a chair as a Massachusetts congressman following his term as president.

The photo was originally gifted by Adams to Vermont congressman Horace Everett, who remained in possession of the photo until the time of his death.

Though the photo had remained at Everett’s house since it was first gifted to the congressman, it was only recently realized to be a photo of Adams. The image was taken by photographer Philip Haas in Washington DC, according to journal entries made by Adams, who described visiting the photographer’s studio twice in March of 1843. The previous oldest original portrait of a president was also of Adams, taken only a handful of months later in August 1843.

The back of the framed portrait features Everett’s name, as well as the initials ‘J. Q. Adams,’ the date ‘Feb. 1843,’ and a bookplate that reads, ‘Presented by J.Q.A to his Kinsman H.E. 1843.’ The auction house has the portrait listed with an estimated sale price of $ 150,000 to $ 250,000.

Articles: Digital Photography Review (dpreview.com)

 
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