Category Archives: Technique

Commentary, Equipment, Technique

Thoughts About the Canon EF 100-400mm f/4.5-5.6L IS Lens

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(This is another post based on something I wrote elsewhere as a response to a question about this lens – I’m re-sharing it here with minor editing.)

I’ve used the Canon 100-400mm f/4.5-5.6L IS lens  a lot – for things as varied as handheld shooting of bicycle races and tripod-based landscape photography. Over time I’ve developed a few thoughts about the performance of this lens and some of the comments that I frequently hear and read about it.

First, especially from my tripod-based work, I have found that the lens is capable of very good performance in terms of image quality – e.g. “resolution.” This is true at all focal lengths, but more so perhaps at some than at others. To give one example, I also own the f/4 IS 70-200mm lens. At one point I tended to always switch to the shorter lens when shooting in the range up to 200mm, concerned about a potential sharpness hit with the 100-400. Over time I figured out that while the 70-200 is probably a very tiny bit sharper here, in most cases the difference in many kinds of shooting is insignificant and invisible in real-world output – and in many cases where I would have switched lenses I now leave the 100-400 on the camera. Continue reading Thoughts About the Canon EF 100-400mm f/4.5-5.6L IS Lens →

Community, Technique

Backpacking Photography Season Once Again!

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Backpackers, Near Milestone Basin
Backpackers, Near Milestone Basin

Backpackers, Near Milestone Basin. © Copyright 2012 G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

It seems like a good time to once again share my Backpacking Photography Equipment post, since summer is nearly upon us, and many of you will soon be joining me to head into the back-country to make photographs. Some of you  are trying to figure out the best balances of gear, weight, bulk, and complexity for doing photography on the trail using the trial and error (trail and error? trail of terror?) approach. Few years back I thought it might be helpful to share “my own backpacking equipment” list along with some ideas about how to select and use it.

The article is here: My Backpacking Photographing Equipment.

Enjoy! And see you on the trail!

A little more about the photograph included in this post… The two backpackers are my long-time “trail buddies,” Owen and Caroline, with whom I’ve spent many weeks on the trail in the High Sierra. On this trip we visited a lonely and less-visited area in the Upper Kern River drainage. The night before we had camped in a place where it was almost possible to convince oneself that no one else had been there before – a truly rare and cherished Sierra experience. The next morning we descended a drainage that passed through beautiful rock-garden meadows filled with tumbling streams. As the two of them crossed this meadow I quickly dropped my pack and made a couple of handheld shots.

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, Equipment, Ideas, Technique

Thoughts About ‘Backup Cameras’

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Recently I read a post in a photography forum in which a poster asked for advice concerning selection of a back-up camera body. If you do a lot of photography, eventually you will have gear fail on you. The last time this happened to me, my EOS 5D developed a shutter problem with no prior warning. In the middle of a night photography shoot the camera simply stopped working. I had no backup camera at that point, so my shoot was over – after driving nearly two hours to the location and making two exposures I packed up and drove two hours back home. If you shoot in remote locations, as I often do, or if you find yourself in other situations in which being unable to shoot isn’t an option, you need a backup camera strategy. (You might also want to consider how you would deal with a lens failure, too, though there are more ways to work around that possibility if you usually carry more than one lens.)

Rather than re-writing the whole thing, what follows is the text of my reply to that forum poster – with just a few contextual edits here and there. Note that I refer to Canon products, since that is what I use, but that equivalents from other manufacturers could replace those I mention.
(The original poster’s message/question is not included here, but he was essentially musing about whether to use an existing camera as a “backup” body, buy a second copy of one of his current cameras, or use some other strategy.)

I wrote, more or less…

This gets at what I regard as the primary question here: “What is the role of the back-up camera in the [your] shooting?”

The term “backup camera” can mean different things to different people. Continue reading Thoughts About ‘Backup Cameras’ →

Equipment, Technique

My Backpacking Photography Article

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Since someone recently asked about the subject, I thought I’d post a link to my article on backpacking photography – equipment, how to carry it, some techniques, and so forth.

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.