Tag Archives: canon

Commentary, Deals and Sales, Equipment

B&H Holiday Closure Reminder

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A reminder that site-sponsor B&H Photo closes in a few days for Passover, and orders placed after noon EDT on Sunday, March 24th may not ship until they reopen. Here is their statement:

“Upcoming Passover Closing

“B&H will be closed from Monday, March 25th in the observance of Passover and will reopen on Wednesday, April 3rd at 9:00AM EDT. Place your order by 12:00PM Noon EDT on Sunday, March 24th in order to ship before the Holiday. Orders placed after this time will ship when we reopen. We apologize for the inconvenience and appreciate your patronage.”

You might want to consider this if you plan to order something in the next week or two or if you have been waiting to take advantage of some of the promotions and bundles that expire at the end of March, including several from companies like Canon, Nikon, Sony, Fujifilm, and more. (See the Deals page for links to some of these specials.)

© Copyright 2013 G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

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.

Deals and Sales

A B&H Update – March Deals and Promotions

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I would like to share some updates on current B&H promotions, some of which expire soon.*

Fujifilm

Fujifilm has a current promotion on mirrorless cameras and lenses this month, primarily as bundles when you purchase one or more lenses along with the X-E1 or X-Pro-1 bodies. I recently acquired the X-E1 to augment my Canon DSLR setup, along with several lenses, and I took advantage of one of the bundles. The primary “deal” bundles one of the bodies (X-E1 in black or black-and-silver) with the excellent image-stabilized 18mm-55mm zoom or with one or more of the Fujinon primes: 18mm, 35mm, and 60mm macro. There is also an excellent (though pricey!) 14mm f/2.8 prime – and I can vouch for its fine image quality based on my personal experience.

The number of combinations eligible for this promotion is quite large, so rather than linking to all of them here I have linked to a few basic versions – and you can click through from the landing pages to find the variations. This promotion ends this month.*

Sony

General

Rebates – some expire very soon*

New Arrivals, Interesting & Innovative Items

*Important Note: B&H will be closed from Monday, March 25th through April 2nd in the observance of Passover and will reopen on Wednesday, April 3rd at 9:00AM EDT. Orders placed by 12:00PM Noon EDT on Sunday, March 24th will ship before the closure. Orders placed after this time will ship when B&H reopens. Some current promotions expire at the end of March, but you’ll have to order before the closure if you plan to get them from B&H and take advantage these offers.

© Copyright 2013 G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

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.

Commentary, Equipment, Post-processing Workflow, Technique

Post-Processing: A Shadow Recovery Example

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(In another forum someone asked a question – actually, more like posed a challenge – related to how much usable detail and quality could be extracted from a raw file that contained areas of very low luminosity, as could happen with a badly underexposed image or with an image of a scene with a very large dynamic range. Since I went to the work of responding and illustrating my response, I figured that I might as well share it here, too. With minor revisions, here it is.)

First, I actually have a “real” version of this photograph in which highlights were slightly blown, but which I preferred to use since I could bring them back in post and get a bit more shadow detail to start with. (It looks a bit bright to me as an on-screen jpg, but it makes a fine print.) That photograph ended up looking like this:

Kolob Canyon, Morning - Morning light slants over the top of sandstone cliffs above early autumn foliage in Kolob Canyon, Zion National Park
Morning light slants over the top of sandstone cliffs above early autumn foliage in Kolob Canyon, Zion National Park

This photograph and the other I’ll move to below were both shot from a tripod with a Canon EOS 5D Mark II at ISO 100 using the Canon EF 24-105mm f/4L IS at f/16. While the “keeper” used for the photograph above had a 1/4 second exposure, the example I’ll use below was shot at 1/30 second.

The exposure challenge in this scene was the very large dynamic range between the bright spot of sky at the head of the canyon and the much darker colorful foliage in relatively deep shadow in the foreground. Exposing for optimal quality in the foreground would completely blow out the sky, while exposing for the sky would necessarily grossly underexpose the foreground.

I originally thought that I might like to have four bracketed exposures in case that would let me produce a better final image via layer blending, but it turned out to be unnecessary and the final image (as shown above) has a single source file with no blending. However, this means that I still happen to have one very badly underexposed (by three stops) version at 1/30 second which I’ll use here as the starting point for what I plan to illustrate in this post. Follow along with me and see what I can do with the very underexposed version of the file… Continue reading Post-Processing: A Shadow Recovery Example →

Deals and Sales

B&H: Holiday Deals Update and Last Day for Holiday Standard Shipping

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See the Deals Page for updates on the following and more:

  • Today is the last day to order from B&H with “guaranteed” holiday delivery via standard shipping. (You can still procrastinate a bit and pay more for expedited shipping if you want! ;-)
  • The special price in the Canon 5D Mark II body is still available.
  • I have added an updated listing of this weeks holiday specials at B&H – they include a wide range of camera bodies, lenses, and more from Canon, Nikon, and other manufacturers.

G Dan Mitchell is a California photographer and visual opportunist 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.