Manfrotto 7322YB with Quick Release Plate
I’ve been walking a lot around London with my tripod lately and noticed that every time I come back from a photo escapade, my shoulder hurts from carrying the tripod. I’m currently using a Manfrotto 055XPROB and I think it’s one of the best professional tripods available on the marker. However, I also think it’s a little heavy and not too comfortable to carry around even in a padded bag. Therefore, I started looking for a smaller alternative tripod I can carry around and even pack inside my backpack when travelling or flying. Obviously, you can argue that the Carbon version of 055XPROB or 190XPROB are lighter, however, they are still too big to pack them inside a backpack and they have a pretty expensive price tag on them. After a little research, I have decided try the smallest tripod from Manfrotto family, the 7322YB.
Light Painting with Zoom
Inspired by this image I have seen on Deviant Art recently, I have decided to experiment with this new technique which can be described as Light Painting with Zoom. The results can be seen below.
Correcting Fisheye images with PTLens Photoshop plug-in.
Due to the size of the sensor in DX format cameras, an 8mm fisheye lens will not produce a circular image. FX format cameras, on the other hand, have a bigger sensor and therefore will produce a fully circular image.
If you are shooting with an 8mm fisheye lens on a DX format cameras, you will always have dark corners in your picture that require adjusting in order to de-warp the image to a full frame, just as a ‘full frame fisheye’ such as 10.5mm would do. You may simply crop the image but that way you will lose a considerable amount of picture and the image will still remain distorted. Alternatively, you may use the lens correction options in Adobe Photoshop or Lightroom 3, but these offer limited control over the image.
PTLense Photoshop plug-in is a simple and powerful plug-in which also works as standalone software and you will definitely find it useful when working with your fisheye images. The plugin is available to download as a trial version (both Windows and Mac) that has complete functionality, but will only process 10 images. For $25, you can also purchase the licence via PayPal, which is a pretty good deal in my opinion.
Shutter Experiments 