Reed Hoffmann’s Photography Blog
Little Camera, Big Lens
One thing I love about digital photography is how our opportunities to be creative have grown. For instance, there’s a fairly new category of cameras now, called either CSC (compact system cameras) or ILC (interchangeable lens compacts). They have larger sensors than point-and-shoot cameras (meaning better image quality) and interchangeable lenses (meaning better optics). So […]
I’ve never been a Facebook user. My wife’s been on it for several years, and it’s been a great way for her to stay in touch with all of our friends. But I haven’t wanted the make the commitment. These days I’m singing a different tune, though, because I found a way to use Facebook […]
Nikon D800
I’ve had a D800 for about a month now, and I’ve got to say, I’m loving it. As a lifelong Nikon shooter, I expected the camera to be good. But I also figured that with such high resolution (36MP) it would be slow to shoot, not good at high ISOs, have to work on a […]
New Favorite Lens
I recently started using a different type of lens, which meant a number of good things for my photography. But first a little history… Since the early days of digital (late 90s for me), I’ve been a big fan of zoom lenses. My first SLR digital camera had only 1.3 megapixels. Capturing so little information, […]
Controlling Autofocus
Recently I went to one of my nephew’s track meets to shoot some photos of him competing in pole vault. Not only did that give me a chance to get some nice photos of Jeffrey, but it let me work on some good/bad examples of different photo techniques. And that, of course, led me to […]
When Things Go Wrong
Most of what I do these days is teach photography. Which means I often find myself in front of a bunch of people, doing a demo where I hope everything goes right. Occasionally, though, things go wrong, and that’s when life gets interesting. A few weeks ago I was doing a lighting demonstration on stage. […]
Senior Portrait
Last week I shot some high school senior portraits for a friend’s daughter. As always, the three words “Subject, Light, Background” ruled what I did during the shoot. I already had my subject, so I needed to find good backgrounds and think about how I would use the light. We met at a nearby park […]
Cloud Storage
As internet connections have gotten faster, I’ve started relying more and more on the cloud to store and synchronize data. Dropbox has been my main tool for that, but thanks to a great offer from Box, I’m starting to use them too. Most people are using the cloud (storage on the internet that someone else […]
The Year of the Ultraportable
There’s a lot of talk about 2012 being the year of the ultraportable computer, and that’s good news for us photographers. Two years ago I had an assignment to follow a group of disabled vets climbing Mt. Kilimanjaro in Africa. I needed to be able to download, check my images and back-up the photos shot […]
Subject, Light, Background
Every workshop I teach, I preach “Subject, Light, Background.” Remembering those three simple words – thinking about them – will almost always improve your pictures. And they often help each other, so working on one can usually improve the others. Recently I was teaching a class in Philadelphia and had a chance to do a […]