Category Archives: Reviews

Publications, Reviews

Exposure for Outdoor Photography, by Michael Frye

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Exposure for Outdoor Photography by Michael Frye

Craft and Vision has just released Michael Frye’s new ebook, Exposure for Outdoor Photography. The book seems to be directed at the many folks who own DSLRs or non-DSLR cameras and are striving to advance beyond the point and shoot approach to their photography. The book takes a straightforward approach to some of the most important topics related to exposure. It begins with a basic description of, well, the basics of exposure – shutter speed, aperture, and ISO and some of the important terminology and concepts related to these factors. Michael keeps the level of detail to a minimum, but the basics are all there, including an explanation of the how and why of using the histogram display – which is probably just about exactly the right approach for his intended audience.

After getting the basics out of the way, the book moves to a series of ten “cases studies,” each of which uses one of his photographs to explore a particular aspect of exposure. The subjects of the case studies include using the histogram, dealing with both large and small depth of field, freezing motion or controlling motion blur, the tradeoffs of moving to higher ISO, recovering highlights in bright scenes, how to handle extremely bright highlights such as direct sun, and a nod to the zone system (in very simplified form) and HDR and exposure blending concepts. Rather than presenting the concepts in theoretical form, he uses his one photographs to provide practical examples for the case studies.

There are a number of things I appreciate about the book, and I think many readers may also agree:

  1. Rather than presenting rules that you must follow, Michael presents the concepts and explains/demonstrates the effects of some of the choice under discussion. He is careful to point out that there usually is no “perfect” exposure, and that there are different ways to get the result you have in mind. (Near the end of the book he even provides some examples of photographs that intentionally “violate” the exposure rules.)
  2. He strikes a good balance between too little and too much detail. He avoids the pitfalls of trying to make things so simple that they end up being simple-minded and of trying to cover all possibilities to the extent that many readers simply end up confused. This is probably an ideal balance for photographers who are taking first steps towards fuller understanding and control of exposure in their photographs.
  3. The case study photographs effectively illustrate the concepts that he covers. In addition, many of them are just plain fine photographs. (Two of my favorites are the Tuolumne Meadows photograph and one of geese in beautiful morning light.)

The ebook concept seems to be catching on quickly and there are plenty of good reasons for this. The visual quality of the text and illustrations is excellent. The books can be read on a laptop or a tablet. They are easy to purchase, and the cost is very low.

The book is now available from site affiliate Craft And Vision, and I understand that there may be a discount price during the first few days of availability.

G Dan Mitchell is a California photographer whose subjects include the Pacific coast, redwood forests, central California oak/grasslands, the Sierra Nevada, California deserts, urban landscapes, night photography, and more.
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Text, photographs, and other media are © Copyright G Dan Mitchell (or others when indicated) and are not in the public domain and may not be used on websites, blogs, or in other media without advance permission from G Dan Mitchell.

Commentary, Deals and Sales, Equipment, Reviews

Updated Lens Reviews: Canon EF 17-40mm f/4 L, 24-105mm f/4 L IS, 70-200mm f/4 L IS

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I’ve been posting to this blog in one form or another for over a half-dozen years now. One side effect of this is that certain articles that made sense when posted years ago end up looking pretty dated today! I found several of those while doing some maintenance on the site today. A couple mentioned my then-current 8MP cropped sensor camera and so forth – gear I haven’t used for years.

With that in mind, I have updated the following posts:

All three are lenses that are core elements of my own kit. (They are also included in the current Canon ‘Instant Rebate” promotion that runs for about another week!)

G Dan Mitchell is a California photographer whose subjects include the Pacific coast, redwood forests, central California oak/grasslands, the Sierra Nevada, California deserts, urban landscapes, night photography, and more.
Blog | About | Flickr | Twitter | Facebook | Google+ | 500px.com | LinkedIn | Email

Text, photographs, and other media are © Copyright G Dan Mitchell (or others when indicated) and are not in the public domain and may not be used on websites, blogs, or in other media without advance permission from G Dan Mitchell.

Ideas, Reviews, Technique

Review: “Light & Land” by Michael Frye

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Over the past few weeks I have had the chance to go through Michael Frye’s new ebook, “Light and Land: Landscapes in the Digital Darkroom.” Many are no doubt already aware of Michael’s reputation from his photography, his workshops, and his other publications including his “Photographer’s Guide to Yosemite” and “Digital Landscape Photography: In The Footsteps of Ansel Adams and the Masters.” I have the .pdf version of “Light and Land”, and I understand that an iPad app version may also be available.

Light and Land - Michael Frye
Light and Land - Michael Frye

It is typical for photographic “how to” books to focus on specific techniques, and to be organized around a presentation of these techniques – perhaps with a section on curves, a section on black and white conversion, and so forth. This approach has its place, especially for certain types of learners and at certain points in the learning process. It is important to understand the basic techniques and operations that are available in the “digital darkroom” of such programs as Photoshop, Lightroom and so forth. That said, the bigger and more important issue is how to call upon these techniques creatively and effectively and appropriately in order to make photographs. Not all “how to” books do an effective job of illustrating this.

Michael’s “Light & Land” takes a different approach, and one that more accurately and realistically reflects the thought process of a photographer who is calling upon this arsenal of techniques in the service of creating beautiful photographs.  He writes:

“The digital darkroom gives us tremendous control over our images. We can make them lighter, darker, add contrast, change the color balance, increase saturation, turn a color photograph into black and white, remove telephone poles, blend exposures with HDR, combine ten images to capture infinite depth of field, or put a winged elephant in the sky.

But what do we do with these choices?” Continue reading Review: “Light & Land” by Michael Frye →

Equipment, Reviews, Tests

Canon EF 24-105mm f/4 IS L Lens

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(Updated December 28, 2011.)

I have owned the Canon EF 24-105mm f/4 IS L lens since 2006. I originally picked this lens for several reasons:

  • On my full-frame cameras,  this lens covers a very useful range from fairly wide to slightly long, making it a very flexible and versatile lens.
  • The lens is quite sharp and has good contrast throughout its focal length range.
  • For its focal length range the lens is relatively compact. This is important to me since I frequently hike or backpack with photo gear.
  • The f/4 maximum aperture is generally sufficient for the kinds of photography I do.
  • The image stabilization (IS) feature is helpful for handheld photography and somewhat compensates for the f/4 maximum aperture.

Like most lenses, this one has a “personality” that gives it particular strengths and weaknesses relative to the individual photographer’s work and working methods. My extensive experience with the lens convinces me of the following:

  • Resolution is very good when the lens is used with care. Sharpness is excellent throughout the focal length range, being best in the middle portion as expected. Sharpness can diminish a bit at the long end compared to, say, 50mm – but this is usually not a reason to switch to another lens except in those cases where I have plenty of time to do so.
  • Vignetting (corner light falloff) is certainly noticeable at f/4 and especially so at the shortest focal lengths. For most of my photography this is not an issue since I most often shoot at smaller apertures. However, I do shoot the lens at f/4 and wide angle focal lengths. In these cases a) the vignetting is actually a nice effect with some subjects, b) it can be corrected easily and pretty much automatically in post when necessary.
  • Barrel/pincushion distortion is mostly not an issue, though the lens does produce noticeable barrel distortion at 24mm. Here the situation is somewhat similar to that with vignetting. In most cases, I don’t even notice the barrel distortion in actual photographs. I do notice it in photographs that have lines parallel to and close to the edges of the frame. When necessary, I let my raw conversion software (ACR) apply an automatic correction and the image lines up nicely and still has very good resolution.
  • There is a false notion that this lens is not sharp at 24mm. This is incorrect. I think that this rumor -which is what it is – got started on internet discussion boards where people morphed the descriptions of the vignetting and barrel distortion into “poor performance at 24mm” and then further to “must not be sharp.” This is simply wrong. Sharpness is fine at 24mm.
  • Handling is great. Compared to the lens sometimes cited as an alternative, the 24-70mm f/2.8 L, this lens is more compact and a bit lighter. The lens is solidly built and the controls are accessible and easy to use.
  • Over time any lens can go out of adjustment and require service. If you use your lenses a lot, you will eventually discover this truth. In my experience, two particular issues might eventually come up with this lens. First, I notice and others have described the development of “zoom creep” after a time. The tension on the zoom mechanism seems to loosen and if you point the lens straight down it may “zoom out.” Second, although I have only my own experience to go on here, I have a slight suspicion that the lens may be a bit more susceptible to going out of adjustment with rough treatment compared to some other Canon zooms. After a few years of being banged around on the trail, mine had to go in for adjustment of a focus issue on one side of the image. After adjustment it came back working great.
  • While a f/4 zoom is generally not going to be a super bokeh lens (though there are exceptions), this lens does OK. It can produce slightly “busy” bokeh at some middle apertures. Surprisingly, it produces very nice bokeh when used with an extension tube for macro work. (In fact, for hand held photography of things like wildflowers, extension tubes attached to this lens with its IS feature can work very well.)

The dimensions of the lens are similar to, but slightly larger than, my 17-40mm lens. However, the 24-105 is noticably heavier, though not enough so to compromise its use as a walk-around lens. Speaking of which, it is regarded by many as a nearly perfect lens for this role on full-frame bodies. In fact, I’ve had great success using it for street photography!

On a 1.6 crop factor body it is less useful as a single lens solution than it is on a full frame body, since 24mm is not all that wide on this camera. (It is roughly equivalent to a 38mm lens of a full frame body which is only moderately wide.) I did use it on a cropped sensor body for about a year when I first purchased it. In practice, I found that I tended to switch back and forth between the 24-105 a wider zoom a lot. Unless you are not fond of wide angle shooting or you like to switch lenses a lot, there can be better solutions for use on cropped sensor bodies. The following are a couple of other lenses to consider if you shoot a cropped sensor body: Canon EF-S 15-85mm f/3.5-5.6 IS USM Lens or
Canon EF-S 17-55mm f/2.8 IS USM Zoom Lens. (The links go to site sponsor B&H Photo.)

My article on backpacking photography discusses how I combine the 24-105 with other lenses to produce a very viable and reasonably light backpacking kit.  In a few cases I have gotten along quite nicely on pack trips with just the 24-105 , though in most cases I combine it with the Canon 17-40mm f/4 L and/or the Canon EF 70-200mm f/4 L for more flexibility.

Bottom line: I’m quite happy with the EF 24-105 f/4 IS L lens. Color and contrast are great and it is very sharp for a zoom. The zoom range is excellent on a full frame body and might be useful for some shooters even on a 1.6 crop factor camera.

Related:

This lens is available from site sponsor B&H Photo, and your purchase though links at this site help support the blog. If this information was useful to you in making your decision, please consider purchase through the following link: Canon 24-105mm f/4L IS at B&H

Other gear mentioned in this article, with links to B&H:

G Dan Mitchell Photography
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Text, photographs, and other media are © Copyright G Dan Mitchell (or others when indicated) and are not in the public domain and may not be used on websites, blogs, or in other media without advance permission from G Dan Mitchell.

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