Welcome! I'm Spencer Cox, a macro and landscape photographer based in Denver. I'm posting videos on the ins and outs of photography so you can take the pictures you've always wanted.
Really looking forward to your new videos. You make incredible videos and I have recommended you to a few people especially my daughter and her friends as you have such an approachable teaching manner.
Yes! I routinely shoot at even f/22 on medium format. Depending on the exact medium format dimensions, it’s equivalent to anything from f/11 to f/16 on full frame.
@@PhotographyLifeChannel yeah I've never tried that high. I've always been around that F-14 F-16 and to be honest I don't mind the mountains way in the background. Save for a wide angle shot to be a little bit soft. That's how the human eye season I try and shoot human eye Photography not stacked HDR look, which I cannot stand
It doesn’t matter for image quality, so I recommend averaging the fully unprocessed images into a TIFF as step one, so that you don’t bake any of your edits into the TIFF file.
Great video! One of the hardest things I have tried to understand is, in my photography workflow, how do I know which aperature setting to use? I understand the concept of DOF and using the aperature to improve lighting but... why F11? Why not F13, 16, 22? This is my mystery. Dave from Virginia Beach.
Generally, the “middle” f-numbers like f/5.6-8 will have better sharpness, and the farther away you go in either direction, the more image quality you give up. But very often, you will still need to shoot at different apertures to gather more light or get more (or less) depth of field. You’ll know which one to use based on practice - for example, does this scene need so much depth of field that you have to be at f/16? Or are you safe at f/8? Take a photo both ways and see which one is sharper, then learn from it when you look at them back on your computer.
I want to start buying the equipment but worried I’ll start with the wrong gear. From what I’ve learned the camera is not the most important but the right lense is. Can you recommend some utility lenses for macro? Thank you! Subbed!
I am just a person taking a lot of memory photograph mainly of my kids and grandkids and this 20m, at least to me is not satisfactory for what I use it for. Way too much vignetting. Maybe it would be ok for landscape but the 3 times I used this lens on a nikon z8, if people were standing on the outer third of the pic, their skull and body are so distorted. I am going to try my 14-30 4f and see if the distortion is there. I plan to pack this lens and either trade or sell. For what I hoped to use this lens for, not close to being satisfactory.
Those are unfortunately features of any wide-angle lens - it’s not the lens’s fault, but rather, how close your subject is to the camera with a very wide focal length. You’ll see the same thing with any 20mm lens on the Nikon Z8. It will be worse at 14mm but better at 30mm. As for vignetting, just turn the in-camera corrections to “high” and you’ll never see it again.
I bought a used RF 800mm F/11 lens for $600 and love it hear in Montana. With my cropped sensor R7, it is effective over 120mm. Great on sunny days especially for spooky deer, elk, bears that are hunted in Montana National Forests.
I don't understand this fear of high ISO and grain. Back in the day, grain was just part of the image. You chose a high ISO grainy film for low light shooting. Some of the best, if not many of the best images ever taken were grainy as hell. It did nothing to detract from the power of the image.
Great video! You explained everything so clearly. My friend is just getting into Macro photography and I will be sure to share this with him! Keep up the great work.
The information you supplied was extremely helpful. What also impressed me even more (perhaps because I was never good at it) was how articulate you are, not one duh etc. Great job, thank you!
Thank you for such an extensive review. I was thinking of upgrading my Nikon 20mm f1.8G but decided to keep it because of the disappointing sunstars from the new lens. Looks like Nikon never pays attention to this department. The only lenses in the Z series that I found having good sunstars are the 24-120 f4Z and the 35mm f1.8Z
I’m not sure I understand what you mean, double the distance is a method to find the hyperfocal distance - aka the focusing distance that maximizes foreground and infinity sharpness.
Thank you so much. I'm just learning how to use a camera now and this was really really helpful. Most of the guides I've been reading left me confused but you broke it down extremely well. Thank you for showing us examples and putting the text on the screen. Helped a lot :). x
Hello, and my sincerest apologies for an out-of-band question. May I please request your guidance as to which lens to buy to photograph pregnancy (personal use)? I own a Nikon ZF with a 28-75 f2.8 kit lens and I've had rather soft photos. I want to capture our journey and I want to invest in a prime. I'm confused between 35, 50 or 85 f1.8 S series lens. I am from India where apartments are small and light maybe dim due to clustered homes. I tried using your lens reviews but 50 and 85 mm f1.2 s both are at a tie score :) Thank you and I'm sorry for directly asking for a recommendation. :)
i legit have never seen a more confusing application than lightroom. idk what i did, but i lost an enormous amount of pictures i really liked because of some dumb mistakes. they're nowhere to be found, and i am so distraught.
I really hate doing this, because I get some really good information from Photography Life, but that doesn't mean I should let mis-statements go unchecked. Forgive me if I'm wrong, but in the first 3 minutes you make the following statements: 1. "I recommend to addi the histogram and the blinkies option(I don't disagree), (because) they just tell you when anything in your photo is overexposed". As I'm sure you know, that isn't entirely true on several fronts. First, the histogram is a reading of the JPG file with the baked in picture profile settings (Wait, didn't you say when shooting RAW all these settings didn't matter? Ops - if you're using the histogram as a guide it sort of does). The blinking are perhaps a better guide because at least they show you where in the image the problem is occuring. That said, the overall histogram just shows the overall total luminance, not per channel in the image. 2. The other issue is that these items show regions that are over-amplified or over-exposed. If I turn up the ISO/Gain too high, yes, these areas may bet clipped, but that is not because of overexposure, but over amplification. Overexposure will have a similar effect of clipping highlights. Why would the advice from light stand folks be to never put the sandbags on the ground (because the weight of the bag is no longer effective holding the stand), and the recommendation here be the exact opposite (to place a weighted back pack on the ground in windy conditions - rather than just make the back pack heavier) - on the ground, does this really help better stabilize the tripod? I was surprised you didn't also show which way to point the legs in wind or on a hill to best stabilize the situation.
I'm currently using the subscription model of Lightroom, which I believe is v13-3. Yet in my Lightroom folder I still have older versions of Lightroom such as version 5 & 6. Can I delete the older versions?
