Sigma 50 1.4 review

I had lunch the other day with the Most Interesting Man in the World, and that's what he told me.  Hit the jump for our review.Sigma 50 1.4 on a D3I got a full frame camera mostly because I wanted more control over the depth of field.  Call me shallow.  I first used the D3 with the Tamron 28-105 2.8.  The shallow dof that I wanted was definitely there, even at 28mm.  However, I wanted an even shallower DOF at conversational...

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Lightroom 4.1 now available

Lightroom 4.1 now available for download here. Besides fixing some bugs and supporting additional cameras, LR 4.1 can process HDR TIFF files, has additional controls for correcting chromatic aberration, and can save photobooks in JPEG form...

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Chocolate Fondant

 There's this restaurant in Maadi (one of the nice places in Cairo) that has a very famous dessert, they call it "Chocolate Fondant". People go there just for this dessert, I went with my family last weekend, and we had a very swell time.  This is how it looks like, it is normally served with one scoop of vanilla ice cream, but this time I ordered an extra one. See that sponge cake in the middle? Don't let it fool you, once you dig...

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Food Photography Assignment

I was asked by one of my friends to shoot a couple of dishes for his cousin's restaurant, and since I wanted to experiment with shooting food, I readily agreed. Click through for the details.It's no secret that I never shot a paid assignment before. Although 95% of my photos are of people (mainly family and friends), I never warmed up to the idea of shooting other people for money, whether it's portraiture, weddings, etc... However, I am fine with...

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Update

Sorry for the lack of blog posts from me.  I've been busy lately because of work and because I did a prom shoot last weekend and have been editing the shots.  I will do a blog post on that at some point.  Meanwhile here are some of the reviews that I will be posting beginning next week:Sigma 50 1.4 - It's more expensive than Canon's or Nikon's 50 1.4.  Why would a cheap guy like me get one?Nikon 24-70.Tokina 11-16 - I had a Sigma 10-20 just a couple of months ago and I liked it so much... I sold it (!?) and got this ultrawide....

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Lots of Canon Updates

Canon Rumors is obviously a rumors site, and I used to never care about rumors since they might not be true, until recently when I discovered that rumors "doesn't equal" not true, it might just mean that information is not official yet, and the site owner also has lots of trusted sources. I started following the site a while back, and I found it accurate enough, and anything that reaches the [CR3] rating, is pretty much on the money, so what's new...

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Tonal Adjustments in Lightroom 4

I came across this very useful post talking about tonal adjustments in lightroom, I believe this is a must read post, I enjoyed it a lot.&nb...

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Shooting Football - 5D MarkII + 200mm f/2.8

Our company has organized a football tournament between the different departments, and I went last week to one of the games to cheer for my colleagues' team and try out my 5D's tracking along with the 200mm f/2.8. I ended up enjoying the game (my colleagues won 5-4), but the photography experience was disasterous. Click to read more.As usual I took the camera and one lens, I wanted to see how the Canon 5D's continuous focusing and 4fps fares in such...

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Workflow Tip: Sort in Reverse

Here's a simple tip for sorting through your photos during post-processing: try reviewing them in reverse. I usually take several shots of a particular subject, and I tend to get new ideas as I shoot, so my best shots tend to be my latter shots.  It also takes me time to warm up the photography neurons in my brain so that as a whole, my shots later in the day tend to be better.  By sorting in reverse, I find the better shots faster and I can go through the other shots more ruthlessly....

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5 Tips for Using Flash Outdoors

I like using bounce flash because it gives me soft and directional light when used with proper technique.  Outdoors, however, bouncing flash is not so easy, particularly when it's bright and sunny.  Those were the circumstances when I took the shot above.  What flash technique did I use here (or did I not use flash at all)?  Take a guess!  What technique would you have used here?Answer: I used direct on-camera flash with...

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