Innholdsfortegnelse for October 2014 i Outdoor Photographer

Photographer: Sean Bagshaw Location: Columbia River Gorge, Oregon Equipment: Canon EOS 5D Mark II, Canon EF 16-35mm ƒ/2.8L USM Situation: The autumn color in Vermont and New Hampshire is so famous, the locals have a name for the tourists who travel to witness the spectacle every year. Leaf-peepers descend on the quaint towns, marveling at the sugar maples and other trees as their verdant summer hues explode into yellow, orange and deep red. The green foliage and gray granite that make up the landscape are briefly transformed into a sea of fiery color. Sean Bagshaw is a member of Photo Cascadia, the group of leading nature photographers who worked with OP to put together an article on a lesser known and certainly lesser traveled area for fall color, the Pacific…

CANON EF 16-35mm F/4L IS USM Canon recently announced the EF 16-35mm ƒ/4L IS USM wide-angle zoom for use with full-frame EOS cameras. Seemingly designed for landscape photographers, it’s particularly useful for low-light situations, with an Optical Image Stabilizer with shake correction up to four shutter speeds and an intelligent CPU, which can discern between panning and unwanted handheld movement. With a 9-blade circular aperture, it includes three GMo (Glass-Moulded) aspheric lens elements, correcting for aberrations, and two UD lens elements, reducing chromatic aberrations edge to edge. An enhanced fluorine coating on both front and rear repel dust, ensure color balance and minimize ghosting. Full-time manual-focus adjustment is an AF mode. Look for a full review at outdoorphotographer.com. List Price: $1,199. Contact: Canon, www.usa.canon.com. SONY AS20 ACTION CAM Sony has…

If Africa is on your ultimate destination list, you’ll want to give some thought to the timing of your safari, and I’m not simply referring to the month or the season. The sad reality is that wildlife in Africa is facing tremendous pressures and is experiencing a startling decline. Anyone with an urge to see African wildlife in a diversity and abundance that we associate with “wild Africa” ought to do so sooner rather than later. Lions, for example, are 95% gone. Numbering in the hundreds of thousands in the early 20th century, over the last century they have been decimated—as few as 15,000 may still remain in only 14 of the 49 African nations that were once their home. The fundamental cause of this crisis is the rapid growth…

Bring your previsualized images to life with the PhotoPills app. Utilizing tools such as 3D Augmented Reality, sun and moon calendars, and star trail simulators, the app provides valued scouting information with calculated times and angles to capture your composition. It also offers technical shooting information for time-lapse intervals, depth-of-field calculations and exposures for different types of light. Save each of your plans with images and send to your friends. List Price: $9.99. Contact: Photo Pills, S.L., www.photopills.com. Create slow-motion or high-speed video sequences on your smartphone or tablet with the Frame Rate Pro app by MEA Mobile . Choose a 4 fps to 120 fps input frame rate and 4 fps to 56 fps output frame rate. The app also provides adjustable video quality and easy export features for…

When First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt laid eyes on Iguazu Falls in the 1940s, she was overheard to exclaim, “Poor Niagara!” It’s easy to understand her remark when you stand at the amphitheater of Iguazu, where dozens of spectacular waterfalls plunge down to form one awesome spectacle—equally powerful whether viewed from the Argentinian or Brazilian side of the falls. Iguazu Falls (known as Iguaçu in Brazil) straddles the border of the two countries, both of which have protected the falls with contiguous national parks that draw millions of visitors. The boardwalks and viewing platforms offer stunning views, but they’re often so crowded that it can make photography challenging, especially if you want to deploy a tripod. I had done my homework and decided to avoid the months with the lowest water…

One of my most important photographic mentors, Galen Rowell, grew accustomed to being told how lucky he was to capture the stunning natural events that he photographed. He would chuckle politely and respond that he tried to be prepared to receive luck. In other words, he went to great lengths to be in the right place at the right time, well practiced with his tools and technique, familiar with his subjects and surroundings, and able to anticipate and account for as many variables and technical challenges as he could. Galen knew that if he stacked the deck in his favor, making pictures would be easy. Each year, tens of thousands go on safari in Africa, hoping to bring home wildlife photos that capture the drama and beauty they have seen…

Columbia River Gorge, Oregon  Sean Bagshaw made this spectacular fall image in the Columbia River Gorge National Scenic Area. Describing the area for fall color, he says, “The waterfalls of the Columbia River Gorge are a well-known spring photography destination. In autumn, they’re quite different, but equally beautiful, and not photographed as much. The nearly monotone green of the forest changes, becoming a patchwork of yellow and orange mixed with the green conifers. Various viewpoints offer up the grand landscape take on the area sprinkled with yellow along the river and hillsides. Fall color in the Columbia Gorge and Hood River Valley is usually best in late October and early November.” Denali National Park & Preserve, Alaska  For those who can make the trek to Alaska in the fall, Denali…

Classic Tech Tips Those of us who have reached a “mature” age often gather at the Old Photographers’ Home and talk about how dramatically the field has changed in the last two decades. While some might say it all began with digital imaging, I’d place the pivotal moment earlier, at the time auto exposure and autofocus were introduced in the mid-’80s. Just for fun, we recently spent some time leafing through Volume I of Outdoor Photographer, which premiered with the May/June issue in 1985. Yes, “Tech Tips” was there from the very first, and we found it interesting that the questions you asked then are very similar to the questions you ask now. But the answers are so, so different. Here’s a sampling: Go With The Flow Q I’ve admired…

A funny thing happened to me on the way to an assignment in Bali last month: I had only one carry-on bag. Yes, after 30 years of carrying on both a bag full of cameras and lenses, and either a bag full of film (in the old days) or one with my computer, chargers and assorted necessary electronics, I got it down to one, albeit slightly heavy, compact camera day-pack. One contributing factor was switching from a 13-inch MacBook Pro to a fully loaded 11-inch MacBook Air. That move undoubtedly saved considerable weight and space. But the even bigger (or, more properly, “smaller”) factor was the switch to mirrorless cameras. For the last year or so, I’ve been hitting the road sans DSLR. This is a move that coincides with…

Canon, Nikon, Olympus—they’re all great, but I use the Canon EOS-1D X and 5D Mark III. I only own two camera bodies. One of the best lenses that I bought to complete this project was the Canon EF 200-400mm ƒ/4L IS USM Extender 1.4X supertelephoto zoom. I love that lens. It has been brilliant for me. I love wide-angles, and I use the Canon 16-35mm and 24-105mm extensively. I have far less equipment than the average doctor who has become a photographer. Our feet are good zooms, and we can get closer or move back. It’s about economy of scale and travel. I have to be judicious with what I buy. That 200-400mm is a great, great purchase. But when I bought it, I sold my 500mm immediately, and the…

Large-format view cameras have been a mainstay of high-end landscape photography for a century. Photographers like Edward Weston, Ansel Adams, Eliot Porter and others used large-format view and field cameras, in part, for the image quality their large-format films delivered, and, in part, for their movements, which could correct converging lines, increase depth of field and add emphasis to foreground elements by slightly distorting them. Today’s ultimate image quality in digital terms comes via medium-format digital cameras and backs. Just as the larger “full-frame” image sensors can yield better image quality than APS-C and smaller formats, medium-format cameras surpass full-frame with their even larger sensors and greater resolutions. The trade-offs, besides cost, have been that medium-format cameras are much slower than DSLRs and their CCD sensors don’t do high ISO…

The arrangements for photography in your safari vehicle significantly influence the quality of a photo safari experience. A safari operator who understands the needs of serious photographers will limit the number of photographers per vehicle to provide plenty of space for you to maneuver with a big telephoto and work unobstructed. The bar has recently been raised, however, in the form of state-of-the-art safari vehicles (both 4WD land vehicles and boats) with a small number of customized swiveling photographer’s chairs positioned along the centerline for maximum visibility and stability. Each incorporates an integral 360º revolving camera mount that’s height-adjustable with a gas-assist lift, and mounted with a Wimberley head to balance a long telephoto for effortless handling for hours on end. This setup delivers smooth and stable panning of fast-moving…

While the action cams considered here are designed for quick and simple on-the-go operation, the Blackmagic Pocket Cinema Camera is a more serious video machine, but still very compact at 5.0x2.6x1.5 inches and 12.5 ounces. It doesn’t do stills, but it does 1920x1080p video at 30, 29.97, 25, 24 and 23.98 fps, in 12-bit losslessly compressed CinemaDNG RAW or 10-bit Apple ProRes 422 (HQ). It features a 12.48x7.02mm Super 16 image sensor, with a 13-stop dynamic range, and a Micro Four Thirds mount, so it can accept the full range of MFT lenses, plus (via adapter) high-end cinema lenses (and pretty much any lens for which an adapter is available). The readily available Nikon EN-EL20 battery provides about an hour of shooting per charge. A 3.5-inch, 800x480-pixel LCD monitor with…

Giddy Waves Kevin Schafer was rolling the dice when he set up to photograph this scene in the Olympic Peninsula in Washington State. “Shooting slow time exposures with moving objects, whether it’s wind, waves or animals on the move, is always a gamble, requiring experimentation and, frankly, a lot of blind luck,” says Schafer. “I probably took over a hundred shots of this scene, clicking the cable release every time the waves rolled in; some were taken too soon, others too late. Every frame was very different and, in the end, this one was the only one where the foam danced over the shoreline. Could I have planned that? Never.” See more of Kevin Schafer’s work at kevinschafer.com . Nikon D800, AF-S NIKKOR…