Good landscape photography requires time, patience, a good eye for spotting contrast and framing, and sometimes a fair dose of luck. If you’re dedicated to it as a hobby or profession, you could well plan your entire day around finding the right vantage point and waiting for the perfect time of day or pattern in the sky to get a priceless shot. If you’re a photography enthusiast in general and travelling to a country or area reknown for its natural beauty, you might not have the time or inclination to do this, but you can still pull off some great shots on the go by good application of equipment and technique. All the pictures accompanying this article were shot on location in Namibia in the context of travelling with minimal time at each stop.
For the amateur deciding which lens to buy, the price difference from budget to high quality should be justified by a resultant shift in picture quality. The trouble is how does one actually compare lens quality. We took all the lenses an amateur may consider buying for big field sports photography and field tested them at a local cricket match. To make it a true-to-heart comparison, we even enlisted amateurs to shoot the pics and used entry-level camera bodies - Canon 400D, Nikon D60, Sony A350. From Canon we tested the 75-300mm USM lens, the 70-300 DO IS USM lens and the 100-400mm L IS USM lens
Lens Reviews often provide the most accurate and comparable idea of how sharp lenses are since they tend to provide standardised data on lens characteristics. Specific distortion percentages, measurements on the exact EV loss due to vignetting and sharpness ‘blur’ units make it easy to get an idea of how the lens is likely to perform and how it compares to other lenses.
Many articles on sports photography will emphasize the importance of high end gear as a necessity of sports photography and to some extent that’s true. Sports photography, like wedding and event photography, has proportionally more reliance on the quality of the equipment you have than on your vision, technical knowledge and inventiveness.
As a first-time DSLR user, the various buttons and controls on the Canon 450D seemed all too daunting at first glance and the bulky build with its jutting handle was not something I was familiar with from taking pics with a compact camera.
Autofocus sensors work by measuring the difference in contrast across the sensor. A sharp point of focus will have a strong edge contrast, with the edge weakening as it becomes more blurry. This is the principle on which the autofocus processor determines that maximum sharpness has been reached.
When you’re a photographic student or a serious enthusiast you have to take a more long term view to choosing a photographic system. You may replace the camera body itself while still in your student days or even early on in your career, but your lenses and some of your accessories are assets that could well last a life-time. Unlike the casual hobbyist, you have professional aspirations or needs and you’ll want to keep as many options open, as well as the capability to pursue the depths of a professional specialisation with all the bells and whistles at hand.
