by Reed Hoffmann | Aug 11, 2012 | Action, Beginner, Camera Gear, Exposure, Intermediate, Lenses, People
A few months ago I wrote about how much I enjoyed using a 50mm f/1.8 lens on a trip to Peru. It was fun to work with extremely shallow depth of field, and using a fixed lens, instead of a zoom as I usually do, made me shoot differently. But there are other reasons to...
by Reed Hoffmann | Jun 22, 2012 | Action, Advanced, Camera Gear, Intermediate, Lenses
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...
by Reed Hoffmann | May 15, 2012 | Advanced, Beginner, Camera Gear, Exposure, Intermediate, Lenses
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...
by Reed Hoffmann | Mar 30, 2012 | Advanced, Exposure, Intermediate, Lenses, Light, People
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...
by Reed Hoffmann | Feb 14, 2012 | Beginner, Composition, Exposure, Intermediate, Lenses, People
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...
by Reed Hoffmann | Aug 18, 2011 | Advanced, Camera Gear, Composition, Lenses
PC (Perspective Control) lenses were first developed decades ago to bring tilt/shift functionality to 35mm cameras. View cameras have always been able to do this, but since 35mm cameras didn’t have bellows, they couldn’t. I recently had a chance to spend...
