For those who shoot in RAW mode, you will want to utilize a program such as Lightroom or Apple Aperture to ensure that you can catalog your images. There are other amazing apps out there like Bridge, Capture One and or Photo Mechanic to name a few but the global favorite is Lightroom. Any program that enables cataloging and, more importantly utilize the “meta tag” feature is okay in my book. You know the saying, “different strokes for different folks”.

Meta tags essentially add text data to each of your images. Say you took a trip to Alaska. You can batch tag all the images from that trip using special keywords from which you can search upon later. Typical keywords I would use would be : Alaska, Vacation, Landscape, and so on. If I took pictures of moose, bear or waterfalls then I would tag those appropriately. You may think that this is a very cumbersome process but there is a handy “batch” feature that enables you to type something once and then it applies to all your selected images; A VERY handy feature.

Now I do a lot of speaking engagements and workshops so I need to have all my images at my finger tips. If I am doing a speech or article on off-camera lighting for example then I can do a quick search and all images that I tagged as such and they will all show up for me. That really makes it easy for me to compile some favorite images that I can use for my workshop. For those who focus more on shooting, I cannot imagine having a lifetime of work that gets lost on a hard drive. For that reason alone, I cannot think of any better way than to catalog your work so that you can access your images when needed.
If you would like to see all your vacation photos then all you have to do is type “vacation” and they will appear. To be more specific you can type “Alaska” Now this only really works if you have one uber-catalog and then a bunch of sub-folders containing each day’s shoot.

For those who have a photography business, I would also suggest tagging your client’s names and photo shoot date as well. This makes things really handy if you ever need to access them.
Another awesome feature that these apps have is rating your images. You can flag images as well as give them a star rating (typically 0 to 5 stars). In my case, I tend to flag images that are my oh la la shots and are ones that I will most likely find myself displaying on my blog, website and so on. If I have client images from a portrait session or wedding then I give the images a star rating. My rating is really based upon keepers or tossers so all I need to do is give my images zero or one star. Now It isn’t uncommon for me to shoot over 15gb of images during a wedding so those zero star images that will NEVER get used are just taking up space on my hard drive. These crappy images can add up over a year or more so I make sure to delete these images after a 6 month grace period. To do this, all I do is search a particular sub-folder in my main catalog and do a global delete to the images that have zero stars and “poof” all gone.

That about does it for today’s tip. Enjoy and be inLIGHTin’ed.

As photographers, there is a lot that goes into making an image look good in post-processing and The Internet is a great way to showcase these images. Unfortunately, many photographers end up posting their stunning images on the web only for them to look like garbage. Here are some helpful tips on how you can keep the “wow” factor of your images alive so the world can see what you are seeing.

1.) CHANGE YOUR COLORSPACE: Many forums tell you that you should set your camera up to shoot in AdobeRGB so your camera can capture a wider gamut of color which is 110% true. I tend to shoot in AdobeRGB myself and send my images over from Lightroom into Photoshop as 16bit ProPhoto RGB files for even more colors. However, when I save my image to the web, I always make sure that I drop my file down to 8 bits (in Photoshop: Image > Mode > 8 bits/channel) and convert my colorspace to sRGB (in Photoshop: Edit > Convert to Profile… > sRGB). The reason for dropping down to 8 bits is that you don’t need that extra overhead in your files when showing them online. Remember, the internet is a fast paced world so no one wants to take forever and a day to sit and wait for an image to load your website. The reason for converting over to sRGB is a much more essential thing to do. See, just like anything, the internet has standards. However, that doesn’t mean that every web browser follows them exactly. For example, Mozilla Firefox looks at each image file and checks the colorspace and it can read either AdobeRGB or sRGB. Internet Explorer is special in the fact that it just assumes that all files are in sRGB and if they are not, then IE displays them as such…

This means that when you look at your AdobeRGB image in IE then you will see the colors are off kilter and the image looks yucky. Saving in sRGB just ensures that everyone can play nicely no matter what web browser a viewer is using.

2.) RESIZE THE IMAGE: A lot of people who know HTML tend to upload the full sized image to their website or blog and then use their HTML programming skills to shrink the image to fit. An example of how this may be done is:

< .img src="fileLocation.jpg" width="33.33%" height="33.33%" .>

However, the browser still has to load that large file and then it has to resize the file in the web site to 33.33% of the original. Not all browsers may handle this properly so you may end up with a real long and thin image or a short and stumpy one that is skewed. By actually saving a new file that is re-sized to fit your content window, you will notice smaller file sizes and will not have to worry about how the browser may mess with your image.

3.) SHARPEN FOR THE WEB: This is a real biggie to get your files to pop. Sharpening is something that can easily be overdone but it is something that must be done at various image sizes. Therefore, when you shrink your huge 12 or 21mp image down to 700px or so, you will need to then re-sharpen. Remember, a little goes a long way. What you are looking for is a point where you start to see a black rim around your subject and then back it off a pinch to where the edge is not as pronounced.

4.) SAVE FOR THE WEB: In Photoshop, select File > Save For Web & Devices. A new pop up window shows up and gives you the ability to optimize and tweak your image for a proper balance between image quality and file size. This can be done by moving the Quality Slider until you see a file size that is manageable. In this age of high speed internet, a 150-200kb are nothing to load.

I came across an amazing video that I just have to share with you all.

It really hits home in the grand scheme of things and is a MUST SEE, especially for everyone who has a camera in their hands.

Here is another one that is equally as motivational! I am at a loss for words.

WOW! Thanks to Zack Arias for putting this piece together and sharing it with the photography community.

Here is a quick little video that I put together showing you how to assign your favorite Photoshop actions to Function keyboard keys.

The faster you can get your images to do what you want them to, the better! When you have less clicking and moving around then you are optimizing your time to the fullest.

Thanks for watching and enjoy!

Hello fellow inLIGHTin’ed Ones!

Long time no see. How has everyone been lately?

Anyone who knows me, knows that I am always thinking and brainstorming… For example, I should be editing a wedding right now. Instead, I have finally came up with where I want to direct my inLIGHTin Workshops. Before I get going, these are all good things! I am in no way, shape or form stopping these workshops so you can let out that sigh of relief now haha ;P

Now in my head I always seen a ‘loop-hole’ in my workshops so to speak… I basically held up a sign that said, “come to me if you want to know anything and everything about photography…” That was ideally what my one-on-one workshops did. You came to me with what you wanted to learn and I taught it. However, in my 5 year plan, I planned on doing more speaking engagements, group workshops and team learning (both locally and on a national level)… How can I get to that point when I only affect one photographer at a time? Also, do I want to be known as the guy who is like the Bob Villa of photography or do I want to be known for being an expert in my strengths and passions? Why give you an overall general knowledge base of things when I can hone into the nitty gritty and provide you with more concentrated content. These are the questions that I have been racking my brain on and here is my answer!

I have a new direction for the inLIGHTin Workshops which will be effective immediately:
All future inLIGHTin Workshops will be conducted in a group environment and the topics of these workshops are now divided into four categories: Lighting, Post-Processing/Workflow, Photography 101 and Nature/Landscape Photography. These are the disciplines that I am most passionate about and love to teach. My lighting workshops cater to my passion for portrait photography. The nature/landscape workshops combine my love for traveling, sight seeing and fine art landscapes. Post-processing and workflow lets out the inner geek in myself and the photography 101 courses will be my way of giving back to the industry. We all started off somewhere so these Photography 101 workshops will get my students more comfortable with their cameras and hopefully help them to acquire a new found love and passion for photography.

Take a look at the following link for more information on what these workshops entail: http://www.inlightinworkshop.com/about/

I will most definitely still offer one-on-one workshops but they will come at a premium and on a more limited basis. Please contact me at Mike(at)inLIGHTinWorkshop dot com for more information.

I also hope to start taping these workshops and am looking to partner up with a videographer to help this vision become a reality. If you miss the workshop then you can always have access to it via these videos.

All in all, I have big, big plans for The inLIGHTin Workshop and I thank you for being on-board! If you are interested in hosting an inLIGHTin Workshop in your neck of the woods then please email me at Mike(at)inLIGHTinWorkshop dot com .

These workshops have always and will still be 110% about YOU. Therefore, I would love to hear your thoughts and comments so please comment on the blog below and let me know your feedback.

Thanks for reading and for all your support!
Michael

Hello everyone. Today I want to talk about Aperture Priority (Av for short) Mode on your cameras. I think this setting will really help you to get the images you want without fiddling too much with your camera settings.

Please refer to your camera’s manual to see how to change your camera’s shooting modes. Every camera is different so the four different modes (M, Av, Tv, P) could appear on a knob that turns, it could require your to hold down a button and move a command dial or none of the above. While you have that user’s manual open, it might be helpful to give it a read…

So let’s do a quick review of the camera modes before we go any further.
Manual Mode (M): Enabling this requires that you the photographer has to set the shutter speed, aperture and ISO. Basically, you have full control over the camera in order to have the most creative control over your exposure.
Aperture Priority Mode (Av): This setting is a lot like Manual Mode, BUT you only have to set the Aperture and ISO. The camera takes those two settings and then goes ahead and computes the proper Shutter Speed for an average exposure. But what happens when we want the CORRECT exposure? We’ll dive into that a little later.
Shutter Priority Mode (Tv): This setting is the opposite of Aperture Priority mode. We set the Shutter Speed and ISO while the camera figures out the proper Aperture. The camera also computes an average exposure for you that sometimes needs to be overridden. The Tv in the abbreviation there stands for Time by the way. I can safely say that I have NEVER used this setting EVER!
Program Mode (P): This setting is used by many people when they first get their cameras and are still learning. Program Mode is the “safe” setting. It figures out the Shutter Speed and Aperture for you all the time to once again to compute a “safe” setting so your photo comes out fairly decent. All you have to worry about is the ISO… If you don’t even want to mess with the ISO then there is a full auto mode. On Canon camera’s, it is represented as a green square. Basically, that is the mode you set it to when you give it to your grandmother so she can take a picture for you. haha.

Now, I posed a question earlier about the Av, Tv and P camera modes and how the camera decides upon a middle of the road setting for Shutter Speed and Aperture. More often than not, the setting the camera chooses is not correct. For example, if you are photographing something that is mostly white, then the image will be kinda gray and under-exposed and vice versa for black. There you have a black subject but it will over-expose the image so it appears gray. Don’t worry there are ways to get around this… Want to know how? Glad you asked.

There is a little something called EXPOSURE COMPENSATION and the button looks like this:

Exposure Compensation works for Av, Tv and P modes. You can set it in Manual mode but it will not affect the image. It will however, affect your flash if in TTL (At least Nikon works this way). So Exposure Compensation is the tool we need to tell the camera that it is giving us the wrong exposures (thus images are too light or too dark) and that we want more (by setting a + number) or less (by setting a – number) light to enter the camera. See the camera is nothing but a computer. All it knows is ones and zeros. Therefore, it doesn’t know that you are photographing a landscape at sunset or sparklers on the Fourth of July. All it does is take a light meter reading and gives us a safe set of settings. The camera can, and more often than not, gets fooled. All we have to do is hold down that exposure compensation button and use our command dial to set it to a plus or minus value. In this digital age, we can simply take a photo and physically see how the exposure looks. We have Highlight Warning to tell if we blew out our highlight, we have our Histogram to tell where all the pixels in our image are falling within the limits or not and we have the actual image for us to critique with our own eyes. So take a test picture and make your adjustments as needed. It is always important to adjust the Exposure Compensation and then check every once in a while to make sure your lighting didn’t change!

Also, make sure to zero out your Exposure Compensation settings before you are done shooting. You may have had a +2 for a backlit condition but when you pick up the camera again you may not remember that you had it set to that high of a value. Zeroing it out gives you one less possible thing to troubleshoot.

Now, I use Av mode a ton during weddings. The wedding is a fast paced event at times so I need a setting that will keep up. I also use Av sometimes for portraits, when outside and under varying lighting. I love being able to adjust my aperture and control my depth of field and then have the camera set the shutter speed for me. Of course I know how to set my Shutter Speed, but sometimes I miss “the moment” because I am moving my camera to the proper Shutter Speed. In Av mode, the camera sets the Shutter Speed to what I would have set it to, just faster!

Thanks for reading and I will talk to you again real soon!

I wanted to go over my recent inLIGHTin Workshop for today’s Friday Night Lights segment.

I gave an inLIGHTin Workshop to about a dozen photographers over at the iPrintFromHome.com Headquarters over on Niagara Falls Blvd. For those local to Buffalo… did you know that we have an awesome photo lab right in our backyard?

So we started at 6pm and went a little over three hours! This workshop was all about lighting. We talked about everything from free and available light, to continuous light, speedlights (on and off camera) and ended up on studio strobes… There was A LOT of content and could have easily spent an entire day talking about things…

I had a great time and wanted to thank everyone for attending. I hope to see you at other workshops of mine and as always, call or email whenever if you have any questions guys!

Here are some pics from the workshop that my assistant, Martha, shot during the workshop:

Thanks to the George and Sarah over at the iPrintFromHome.com family for letting us use their space.

What better time to review the Nikon AF-S 70-200mm f/2.8 VR when a new one has been announced right?

Basically, I just wanted to let you know that this lens is still going to be used by myself and I do not have immediate plans to upgrade to the new 70-200mm with VRII…

Here are the differences real quick between the old model and the new one:
1.) Price! I paid around $1,800 last year from my 70-200mm while the new one appears that it will be going for around $2,400.
2.)VR vs. VR II: You basically get an extra stop of light with this newer version VR. The old one states that you can handhold the lens and get an additional three stops out of it while the new one is rated for four stops.
3.) Lens Coating & Design: The new VRII lens has the nano-crystal coating and sports a new design to boot.
4.) Minimum focusing distance has been dropped from 5 feet to 4.5 feet or so.
5.) The VRII lens is about a quarter inch shorter than its predecessor. However, it is approx. 2.5 oz. heavier.
6.) Sharpness: The new VRII is supposed to have better edge to edge sharpness on the new VRII lens.
7.) AF: Faster focusing with the A/M, M/A and M options.

So if you think that the extra $600 will help out your photography then put an order in for one of the new VRII versions… Otherwise, wait it out and continue to rock it’s predecessor.

I personally love my current lens. The important things are that it is fast to acquire focus, it is sharp (even at f/2.8) and it is comfortable in the hands. Need I say more? This lens has some amazing bokeh (that is the term given to the aesthetic quality of the blurred out background in your image when using a shallow depth of field)

I chose to do this review actually because I have been using this lens for more and more of my work as the days go on. My full frame D700 rocks with this lens. I did find that DX crop cameras give me a little too much zoom (approx. 105-300mm focal lengths after considering the crop factor) for my wedding and portrait needs. This lens coupled with a 2x teleconverter on my D300 DX camera gives me an effective 600mm f/5.6 (you lose a stop of light with each x in the teleconverter so my f/2.8 bumps up to f/5.6) Not too shabby! So all in all, I can use this lens with either a DX or FX body and for various photography assignments.

The image quality of this lens really excels when shooting wide open. Here are some sample pics from a job that I just did where the 70-200mm was used at f/2.8:

 

This lens is a staple for Nikon shooters. There are a couple other “necessary” lenses in Nikon’s lineup that you should have with you. The 24-70mm f/2.8, 50mm f/1.4 would have to be the other two that I can come up with. Enjoy and check back tomorrow for some awesome workflow techniques!

Thanks for stopping by.

I have been a photographer for over 12 years now. To some, that’s how long they have been shooting film alone! However, even though I am only 26 years old, I’ve made my way through the ranks and have been blessed to actually have shot with film, developed it in the darkroom and even wound my own film! With that being said, I’ve used and acquired a lot of camera equipment. And by a lot, I mean A LOT!

Technology is changing so fast that it can be easy to get caught in this “age of obsolescence” where new tech comes out every month. Combine that with forums and internet chatter about the new gear just in case you weren’t enticed enough to get it already. In all honesty, itt is like “keeping up with the Jonses” except on a national level.

So where am I going with this? Photography is expensive… But good news! Today’s cameras are allowing your money to go further. How so? Easy…

Way back in 2001, I had a Nikon D100. This camera was a workhorse. BUT, it sucked at low light. AF acquisition was okay and good luck with noise after ISO 800… Nothing like today’s cameras. So way back in 2001, that D100 ran me a good $1600 or so. I paired that up with a Nikkor 28-105mm f/3.5-4.5 variable aperture zoom lens and that was my setup for quite some time… As you can imagine, I needed a speedlight for a lot of my work in order to have enough light since the lens was definitely not the fastest in Nikon’s fleet.

I managed but it was tough! All in all, that was my gear for 2-3 years. A Nikon D100, SB-800 Speedlight and a 28-105mm zoom lens. All that totaled about $3000 back in 2001. So what can we get for $3000 today?

The money is the same but the features and equipment of today far surpasses what I had to use back then!

Basically all D-SLRs allow you to take control of the following: Shutter speed, aperture and ISO controls. These three items are the basis for photography. The shutter speed and aperture hasn’t changed. However, recent ISO improvements in the current array of cameras have been huge for photographers! My Nikon D700 (D3 too) can get me to ISO 26,500!!! That is madness. Remember me complaining about files coming out of my D100 that were taken at ISO 800? I can now handhold my camera in darker conditions, without a flash I might add, and get superior images than before. What does this mean for today’s photographers? First off, we can save a boat load of money by choosing those slower, variable aperture lenses!

Here are two lenses:
The first is my Nikkor 24-70mm f/2.8 and the other is my old Nikkor 28-105mm f/3.5-4.5.

Images courtesy of www.KenRockwell.com

So that 28-105mm f/3.5-4.5 ran me around $350 back in the day. What is the price of the 24-70mm f/2.8?? About $1800! That is quite the difference in price… What could you do with that $1500 in savings?

Now let me first start off this comparison by saying that the 24-70mm is one of my favorite lenses. It is sharp at every aperture and could be my one and only lens. I love it! If you have the money to pick one up then I would highly suggest making it your first lens purchase! This article is written for those just starting out or who may be wanting to take the jump to digital so keep that in mind as you are reading this!

So the main difference in specs is the fast fixed f/2.8 vs. the slower, variable aperture f/3.5-f/4.5 lens.

f/2.8 to f/4 is a reduction of 1 stop of light… This is a fact. The difference between the two lenses is a loss of 1.3 stops of light. Long story shot… Big friggen’ deal! 1.3 stops of light is nothing in this day and age. Another big perk is that a lot of these cheaper “kit lenses” as they are also called is the fact that they are now coming with VR built in. Canon calls this IS and others have their own unique name. VR stands for Vibration Reduction. Essentially, there is a floating element inside the lens that moves when enabled and helps correct for camera shake at slower shutter speeds. VR lenses essentially can give you three to four extra stops of light by being able to shoot at slower shutter speeds. Pretty cool huh? Just make a mental note that VR capabilities fix camera shake that is caused on the photographer’s end. It helps correct shake from hand holding the camera and shaking or a wobbly tripod. If you are shooting at 1/25″ second then don’t expect your moving SUBJECT to be still… The camera will still pick up blur from your subjects moving so keep that in mind!

Now the 28-105mm lens seems to be extinct but there are other amazing lenses out there that are ripe for the taking. Many of these newer lenses have the VR option too which is pretty sweet. As a matter of fact, I wrote this article and it encouraged me to pick up the Nikkor 80-400mm f/4-5.6D VR lens. But more on that later…

So here are some Nikon lenses that are in the $300 price range and rock.
Nikon 50mm f/1.8D Prime Lens: $130 (Look maw, f/1.8! Wow. This really means hello low light photography!)
Nikon 55-200mm f/4-5.6 IF AF-S DX VR: $219
Nikon 18-105mm f/3.5-5.6 AF-S DX VR ED: $360
Nikon 55-200mm f/4-5.6 ED AF-S DX: $170

What do all those letters mean in the lens name?
ED = Extra-low Dispersion. This came about around 1960-1975′ish and it is a better quality glass that is used for the lens elements. It is harder and helps correct for chromatic aberration (green and magenta color fringes around the edges of your subject).
IF = Internal Focusing. This means that when the auto-focus is activated, the glass elements move inside the lens. This means that the lenses have a shorter focusing distance and can help the lens focus quicker.
DX = the short hand name for the sensor in crop cameras like the D40, D90 and D300 DSLRs (to name a few). When a lens has this in it’s name that means that it is optimized for crop cameras. This is because the lenses have smaller image circles to pair up with the smaller sensors. If you were to put a DX lens on an FX body then the result would be a big loss in resolution. Don’t get me wrong, FX camera bodies would work with these lenses. It is just that my 12mp full frame D700 would end up giving me 6mp images and would basically do the DX cropping for me.
FX = the short hand name for full frame sensors like the ones found in the D700, D3 and D3x DSLRs. Lenses do not have this in their name. It is more of a camera abbreviation.
PC = Perspective Control. This is another name for tilt-shift lenses. These are specialty lenses designed primarily for architectural photography.
Older lenses may have the abbreviations: NIC, SIC or RF to them. I wouldn’t get too caught up with these. If you are buying new equipment, then stick with the newer tech.

So we covered lenses, now it’s time to dive into camera bodies. I would suggest a Nikon D300 ($1500) or the newly announced D300s ($1800). Typically, camera’s that have an ‘X’ appended to their name (i.e. the Nikon D40 vs. the D40x and the Nikon D3 vs the D3x) means that there is a resolution improvement. The D40 was around 6mp while the D40x was in the 10mp range and the D3 is a 12mp camera while the D3x is a whopping 24mp! When you see an ‘S’ appended to the model then that more or less means that the camera has feature upgrades. (i.e. the Nikon D2X vs. D2Xs and the Nikon D300 vs. the D300s)This includes, adding more menu options, video mode, screen size and other various bells and whistles of the like. When a camera has a DX format sensor, that means that it is not the same size as 35mm film. Instead, the sensor is smaller. It is cheaper to make (due to less silicon) and has something called a crop factor (aka lens multiplier) to it. Think about it… If you drew a picture on a large piece of paper and then put smaller tracking paper over it and copied whatever you could then you would only be able to trace a portion of the drawing. The tracing would appear to be A ZOOMED IN version of your original drawing. So if you have a 50mm lens on both a DX and FX camera… The image coming out of the DX camera would appear to be zoomed in. Nikon and other camera companies do the conversion math for you and came up with like 1.3, 1.5 or 1.6x crop factors. All you need to know is that when you throw a lens on your DX camera, just multiply whatever your current focal length is by the crop factor. Let’s do one for an example: I have my D300 with a 1.5x crop factor and mount a Nikkor 70-200mm lens on it. What zoom range do I REALLY have?

70mm X 1.5x = 105mm
200mm X 1.5x = 300mm

So I get more zoom out of that lens with my D300 than I would with my full frame D700. Got it? Good. Back to the topic at hand now…

The D300 has the ability to shoot at ISO 6400… If you wanted to spend more money and drop $2500 on a D700, not only will you get a full frame sensor, but the ability to shoot up to ISO 25,600! If you think back to my D100 which got up to ISO 1600 (without looking like complete garbage) then the D300 will give you an extra 2 stops of light (while the low noise in the image still looking good) or up to 4 stops of light with the D700. Worse case scenario, throw your image into a software plug-in like Neat Image or Noise Ninja to fix the noise in the pics.

In conclusion, you don’t have to drop $30k on slew of camera equipment. You can if you want but you can still have fun and take great pics with a $3,000 setup. Can you purchase cameras that are cheaper? Sure… There are DSLRs in the $500 price range. In my experience though, I found that if you spend that little bit extra and get yourself into the $1500 price range then you will have yourself a very nice camera that won’t be missing an important feature or two and will last you a lot longer. I found that people who start off with the $500 camera’s end up moving up to the $1500 cameras and then take a loss when trying to sell their old one… Just spend the extra money because it will come back and bite you in the butt later on. Lenses; You can get away with a $300-$500 lens no sweat.

So this article was really inspiring to me. Inspiring to cost me money at least. I recently purchased the Nikon D300 (non S version) and paired it up with that 80-400mm VR lens I mentioned earlier. This combo is just killer and can do a lot of damage (in a good way)! This camera/lens combo ran me about $3,000. The perfectionist/snob in me required myself to pick up a MB-10 battery grip for the D300 and RRS (Really Right Stuff) brackets and mounts for the camera and lens. For me, I like having the battery pack and the RRS stuff makes tripod shooting super steady and tight and gives me the sharpest images possible.

This article hit me when I had the Nikon 600mm f/4 lens arrive at my doorstep. I am a NPS member and had one shipped to me as a loaner. It was heavy, bulky and costs upwards of $10,000!!! Sure it was sharper than sharp and was extremely cool to use but good luck taking it with you on an airplane or for hikes. Heck anywhere outside of your house for that matter

I have been eyeing up a crop camera for some time. The D300 is a staple and is a very nice camera so I went with that. I was toying with the 80-400mm f/4-5.6 lens and the 200-400mm f/4 lens (about a $5,000 price difference) when it hit me… GET THE D300 AND 80-400mm LENS AND SAVE $2,000!!!

With the D300 and the 80-400mm, my effective focal lengths are 120-600mm f/4-5.6! Not too shabby. The VR will help with camera shake at those effective focal lengths which is a huge help. I saved myself (and my back) probably 20lbs of camera gear and I have the same focal length… Sure I can’t use teleconverters and I lose a stop of light being at f/5.6 and all but who thought there wouldn’t be a catch somewhere in this?

I knew that going into the purchase. For me, $3,000 is worth the expense for how often I go out shooting birds and wildlife while not taking a huge $10,000 hit for a lens that will REALLY see no use…

I am not dogging the 600mm lens in any way. I am just being realistic with my shooting and weighing in the pros and cons to both. I would say that the 200-40mm f/4 lens is probably the best option for travel, quality and price over the 600mm lens.

Hopefully this article will at least open your eyes up and maybe even save you a few dollars in the process.
Thanks for reading and check out my new articles next week!

I have a video talking about the benefits of Lightroom’s Develop Presets. They are helpful to anyone’s workflow whether you use mine or even just make your own. Check it out:

You can pick them up over at the inLIGHTin’ed Storefront: HERE

Or you can try a couple out in the Freebies section: HERE