Large Sensor Compacts
Somewhere between the convenience of the smartphone and image quality of a full frame DSLR is a growing category of camera called large sensor compacts. Smartphones have all but killed the compact camera due to their convenience and rapidly improving photographic abilities. But there are two things engineers just can't cram into a smartphone chassis, a large sensor and...
Zeiss Batis 18mm f2.8 – Review
I have to confess at the outset something unusual for a landscape photographer, I've never been much of a fan of ultra-wide lenses. In part this is because ultra-wide landscapes are difficult to compose, but mostly it's that I've never worked with a truly sharp lens below 24mm. I'm sure there are a few out there, just not ones that have...
Zeiss Batis 18mm f2.8 – Sample Images
As the sample images demonstrate, the Batis f2.8 18mm is remarkably sharp over most of the frame right from wide open. Only the corners suffer some softness. Note that the lower right corners of the mountainside shots are soft at wider apertures because of limited depth of field. The lens was focused on the distant mountainside and the lower right...
Pentax K-1
Enter the recently released Pentax K-1, the company's first full frame DSLR. The K-1 uses the older Sony 36MP full frame sensor, but to new effect. By exploiting the camera's in body image stabilization, Pentax has added pixel shift technology to the K-1. The technology essentially takes four consecutive exposures while moving the sensor one pixel width in a four directional grid. The four exposures are combined...
First Principles of Composition
If your photos are boring, get closer. This was sage advice from photographer from long ago. What he was saying is that the most common mistake when composing a photograph is including too much. Landscape photographers are particularly culpable in this respect, because it's often the vastness of the landscape that has us reaching for our cameras. But everything cannot be...
Megapixels
Mine's bigger than yours. Selling bragging rights is what more megapixels mean for consumer camera marketing departments. If an image never makes it to ink on paper and is confined to a virtual existence on screen, then the fewest megapixels money can buy are enough. Full HD monitors and televisions display about 2 megapixels worth of image data. Even the latest 4K Ultra High Definition screens...
Sony A7RII Field Review – Part 1
Technology In A Box - This is a field review of the Sony A7RII as a landscape camera. The focus is primarily how well the camera functions in the field, as well as image quality considerations in landscape photographs, leaving technical studio details to the many camera review sites. I've been working with the A7RII for about six months in a variety...
Sony A7RII Field Review – Part 2
Technology In The Field - Image quality is perhaps the single biggest priority for landscape photographers looking to print large. To be sure, lenses and shooting techniques are a huge component of producing high quality images. But the quality of the imaging electronics inside a camera puts an absolute ceiling on what is possible. The imaging sensor combined with...
