Astrophotography is a discipline dedicated to photographing the night sky in all its splendor. For this exercise to be successful, there are a series of environmental conditions, equipment demands and photographic operational- plus post-production techniques that we will explore in broad lines in in this arti more »

Many a telescope owner, after gazing at the sky for a while, wants more; wants to share what she or he is seeing. There are several ways to achieve this. The most obvious is shooting through the telescope eyepiece with a small camera or cell phone.… more »

Fill-in flash is useful in many situations, even if we only have the built-in flash at hand. Even though an external flash offers a wide range of additional options and is recommended to achieve more professional results, the built-in flash is useful in many situations and can be slightly more versatile if we either make or buy an accessory called flash diffuser, which has the objective to “soften” the light. more »

On November 25 last, Tamron announced the launch of the successor of its very respectable 200-500mm f/5-6.3 ultra tele-zoom, the Di SP 150-600mm F/5-6.3 VC USD, the first afficionado super tle at under $1500   On November 25 last, Tamron announced the launch of the succesor of it's very respectable 200-500mm f/5-6.3 ultra tele-zoom (test here), the Di SP 150-600mm F/5-6.3 VC USD. What does that letter-soup stand for, you wonder? Di means “Digi… more »

If you want to quickly assert if your lenses are focusing properly, my friend Carsten recommends the “Newspaper Test”. This works very well, he says, because we are so used to letters that we can judge “readability” much better than a certain degree of blur. It is also the method of choice to test longer lenses at different distances, because for that both the ruler and the domino test are a bit tricky; it may be quite difficult to judge the results at a focusing distance of – say – ten meters. If you want to quick assert more »

Now that even the most modest Nikons feature 24 Mp. sensors, optical quality and lens performance are increasingly coming under pressure. It is no coincidence that many of the latest Nikon mid-range and top-of-the line cameras include a feature called “AF Fine Tuning” which allows users to adjust the auto focus of their sample of a particular lens to their particular camera.   Now that even the most modest Nikons feature 24 Mp. sensors, optical quality and lens performance are increasingly coming under pressure. It is no coincidence that many of the latest Nikon mid-range and top-of-the line cameras include a… more »

Adobe recently announced that they will not continue the development of their Creative Suite (CS) “perpetual license model” software as we know it, and - instead - pursue a new, cloud-based licensing model, called CC: Creative Cloud, which is - in short - a creative criminal client fuck... more »