The LowePro SlingShot 302 AW fits a niche in the photo bag market, specifically for quick outings with essential gear. This bag is one of three in the line of SlingShot AW (All-Weather) bags and is the biggest brother in the updated line. The SlingShot concept is that, with only employing a single strap, the bag can be quickly brought around from the back to the front for easy camera and storage access. Indeed, the bag has a side zippered entry for the main camera area which, when slung forward, faces up, making camera storage and retrieval simplified.

Before using the bag for a couple of weeks, I posted a quick first impression video on my blog, listing out some of the key features. For those who enjoy video over reading, take a look. It gives a good first impression when I took the bag on its first four mile hike on the beach.

Overview

As I mentioned the SlingShot 302 AW is the biggest brother of the three newer SlingShot AW bags. This bag is intended to store a full-sized SLR and 70-200mm comparable lens attached. A battery grip can also be attached to the SLR and all will still fit nicely.

The bag has a side opening for quick access to a camera without opening the entire storage compartment. The compartment can be fully opened when laid flat on its front and has room for 4-6 more lenses, flashes or accessories. The compartments can be fully customized with LowePro’s standard velcro dividers and a second or third large lens can be stored if desired. Also inside the main compartment are two built in flash card holders as well as a microcloth for cleaning and a pouch for storing a point and shoot camera.

On the back of the bag is a zippered pouch which can hold filters, pens, cell phone and the like. Up top is a larger space which includes a strap to hold down an external storage device, a mesh pocket and a zippered pocket on the outside of the opening. On the right side of the bag is a hideaway tripod/monopod holder. There is a small pouch which tucks away when not in use which holds the footings of the tripod as well as an adjustable strap up top. This feature is meant to hold smaller, compact units and not a medium or full sized tripod. Along this side of the bag, and on the rear, are attachment points for LowePro’s SlipLock system of accessories to augment the bag’s storage.

The bag employs what LowePro calls easy-glide zippers as well as an all-weather cover with its own hideaway pocket. There is also ample padding for the main compartment on all sides.

(Click on photos for larger version)

Packing

I found the bag easy to pack with the main compartment opened fully. The upper pocket does not hold much more than a full 40oz (1200ml) water bottle , headlamp, pocket knife, and GPS, but it does fit. The upper outer pouch will hold a few snack bars and a compass. The rear pocket zips most of the way open (which is actually handy to ensure items don’t slip out the other side) but could use a bit more room or special pocket for batteries. Otherwise, I was able to stuff two in the rear pouch and they usually stayed in place, but sometimes got loose.

In Use

In all I used the bag for three hikes totaling 15 miles (24.1km) as well as around town with many quick trips in a car. I found the bag easy to put on but I was not as graceful when removing the bag, until I figured out the shoulder strap unclips at the lower bag attachment. This made things smoother.

During the hikes, one that included rain, hail and snow, my main point of slight discomfort was the top of the shoulder strap. While the strap is well padded (and takes a while to dry out) it can use just a bit of contouring at the top. What I mean is, the padding on the strap did not lay perfectly flat against my chest and shoulder. Instead, the inside edge made more contact than the outside. This meant more weight was placed on the inside. I never experienced any rubbing or soreness and my longest hike was 8 miles (12.8km). It seems slightly reworking the angle of the strap would help someone of my size.

The hipbelt is a what makes this bag work so well. Why did the shoulder strap not bug me much at all? Because the weight was held firmly by the hipbelt as it should be. My initial worry was the single shoulder strap would cause an inbalance and soreness. This was never the case when the bag was weighted on my hips first. It truly felt like a normal two strap backpack when on the trail thanks to the generous padding and ample size of the hipbelt. The belt also contains enough extra strapping material to fit a wide range of hips (with convenient loops to hold unused material).

Swinging the bag into action is as easy as unclipping the hipbelt and giving a push to the opposite side. The bag feels secure and well placed when slung to the front and is out of the way enough to still allow shooting. The two clips near the side of the bag help ensure the side flap is not opened too far, causing stored lenses and flashes to fall out. As the sides of the convertible interior dividers extend all the way to the top, there is little danger in equipment falling out of the side opening is left open while the bag is slung to the back (I did this a number of times while trying to get a quick shot and was happy to see my equipment still in place, while noting small items, like a filter, can make their way out if the bag is jarred too much).

The bag is constructed from quality ripstop nylon and while I have only used it a few weeks, my experience with the same type of material on LowePro bags has shown them to be longlasting. LowePro also backs the bag with a limited lifetime warranty to the original owner. The zippers are, indeed, easy-glide and make the bag a breeze to utilize, even when I got sand caked on the outside from sliding down a hill.

The all-weather cover is stowed nicely on the wearable side. A quick pull of the velcro opening and the cover envelops the entire bag, as long as no tripod is attached. With a quickdraw cord at the top, fitting is a cinch. My only complaint with having the cover sewn into the bag is drying time. I’d prefer to be able to remove the cover once it is wet and lay it out, without the bag, to dry.

Lastly, if the main compartment is not fully loaded on the bottom end, the bag loses a bit of rigidity when placed standing up on the ground. With a lens or two in place, the bag sits well on the ground and doesn’t feel as if it might tip over.

Conclusion

This bag is a breeze to use and fits its place in the market well. The construction is up to LowePro’s typically solid standards. I do have some minor complaints, such as the one rear clip, meant to keep the main compartment from opening all the way, often gets in the way of the top zipper (dropping down into the main compartment) and it would be nice if the nice all-weather cover was removable for drying. These are minor things which will not keep me from using the bag, though.

This bag makes for a great around town tool that will pack all you need for a day of shooting on the trail or in the city. It is also a perfect size for a carry-on bag and stows easily under a seat on an airplane, with space in the upper compartment for important documents and a couple of books.

Who Will Like This Bag

My feeling is you like this bag if you:

• Want fast access to your camera.
• Are comfortable with a single strap.
• Typically don’t carry a lot of extra gear.
• Have a smaller sized tripod.
• Want a smaller, quick grab bag that can handle a change in weather.

Who Will Not Like This Bag

On the flip side, you might not like this bag if you:

• Dislike a hipbelt to carry most of the weight.
• Want to pack more than a large snack for a day’s outing.
• Have a large number of filters or accessories to carry.
• Can’t stand a bag that flips around to the front when the hipbelt is not used, when bending over.
• Require a full size tripod everywhere you go and expect this bag to carry it.

Buy the Lowepro SlingShot 302 on Amazon – where it is currently 45% off retail.

Post from: Digital Photography School's Photography Tips. Check out our resources on Portrait Photography Tips, Travel Photography Tips and Understanding Digital Cameras.

LowePro SlingShot 302 AW Camera Bag – Review

My latest post to the Outdoor Photography blog, Top Five Ways to Get Creative with Shutter Speed, discusses tips and techniques for long exposure photography. One of the images used to illustrate the post is the one below, which may be familiar to many of my readers. This is the image that started the whole “Dreamscape” thing, an artistic philosophy that has come to guide my photographic style.

"Dreamscape" - Great Smoky Mountains

This image was taken in Great Smoky Mountains National Park from atop Clingmans Dome, the highest point in the Smokies. The valleys below were filled with fog. I waited until the edge of twilight to make ths image. The portion of the sky just above where the sun had set continued to glow for almost an hour, as the rest of the sky transitioned from blue to black. It was so dark when I made this image I couldn’t see my camera settings and focus scale on my lens. I simply set my lens to infinity, bumped my ISO up to 400, and started a 30 second exposure. The fast moving fog blurred like water in a stream during the long exposure. By keeping my white balance on the cool side (I don’t remember the exact setting but it was less than the Daylight preset), I was able to capture the rich blue tones created by light from the dark sky above reflecting into the shadowed clouds. I always look for opportunities to juxtapose warm and cool tones for creative effect.

Technical details: Canon 5D Mark II camera, 90mm lens, ISO 400, f/11, 30 seconds.

Related posts:

1. Foggy sunset, Great Smoky Mountains
2. Use weather for creative effect
3. Top 5 Tips for Winter Photography

If you’re ever given a travel assignment by a magazine – or hope to get one – you need to learn how to tell the story of a location. Flip through the pages of any of your favorite travel magazines and you’ll see exactly what I’m talking about. It’s all the elements that come together to show what tourists want to see – the places, people, food and culture of a location.

Sometimes you’ll be given a very narrow assignment to stick within – a local restaurant or district – and other times you have to capture the essence of an entire city in maybe only 4-10 frames. Here are a few tips from a recent stay in Rome on what to look for to get the most story telling power out of your images.

Monuments/Sights

Chances are wherever you might be going has a famous monument/landmark/sight (or a few) that has been photographed left and right, up and down and every sideways angle in between. Keeping it fresh in these types of locations can be very difficult because chances are someone has shot just what you’re thinking before. But do your best to take a different perspective.

In this photo of the Coliseum, instead of running up to the top and taking the big overall photo that virtually every tourist has, I picked out this spot that had many intersecting frames and waited patiently for the right moment. After a few minutes, an opening cleared and then a young couple stopped in just the right spot, map and audio tour guides in hand. It’s a familiar location in a slightly less photographed framing – something new for the editorial’s readers.

People

People are an important part of any travel story. Whether it’s a smiling waiter, a museum curator, a street performer, other tourists or just a local on the move – people define the culture of an area. Look to find friendly faces if you can. Remember the story you’re helping tell is generally meant to encourage someone to travel and visit an area. Also look for people in specific professions or occupations that typify a location. For instance you’d be amiss to travel to Venice without at least one image of a gondolier. In this photo, this street performer with his accordion may not be smiling but his sheepish expression is oddly fitting and representative of the thousands of others like him you’ll find throughout the city.

Restaurants and Food

A good travel story would be remiss without some deliciously prepared food and the restaurants/people making it. Good travel engages all five senses, and you’d be missing at least one if not two or three of those without food. It can be artfully prepared and styled dishes, a coffee on a checkered placemat or down and dirty local food. Whatever the food is, just make sure it coordinates with the overall feel of the story. You wouldn’t want to be shooting an editorial on a luxurious hotel and then splash in photos from a cart food vendor somewhere else around town.

Make sure while you’re photographing that great meal you just had to get either the people preparing it, the staff serving it or the place it’s coming from. Menus in foreign languages, table tops, chefs, patrons and exteriors all make great subjects. It all depends on what access you have and your interpretation.

The Feel

Capturing the “feel” of a location is incredibly important in telling a story. It’s the image that helps you discover a part of what life is like in a certain location. It’s what every photo editor is looking for. The great part is, there are an infinite number of ways to capture the feel of a location – it’s up to you as the photographer to find one from your own unique perspective.

After all, that’s what a photo editor is often going to hire you for. It’s not only your technical skills; it’s your vision of a location. Whether you interpret that as a grand vista, a shop front, a specific food, a monument, activity, emotion or combination of a few it needs to capture the spirit of a place. This image in the Piazza Venezia really says Rome to me – a constant intersection and hustle of people, vespas, cars and buses all on the move.

Activities, Accommodations, Arts and More

Activities, accommodations and the arts all make great subjects for travel photography. Where you’re going to stay, what you’re going to do and any culturally significant artworks are all things readers want to know and see. Luxurious rooms and hotels show the finer parts of hospitality, while roughing it on horseback through the Outback or diving through reefs in the Caribbean may be activities that interest visitors.

There are a million and one ways to tell the story of a location. Sometimes you’ll be dictated by an editorial what you have to cover and other times you’ll have free range to shoot as you please. Remember though that if you are shooting for assignment or want to some day, to find at least one story to tell and flush it out fully through your images. You’ll come away with a collection of images that really bring you back and others along on your travels.

Post from: Digital Photography School's Photography Tips. Check out our resources on Portrait Photography Tips, Travel Photography Tips and Understanding Digital Cameras.

Editorial Travel Photography – Telling the Story of a Location

Pop Quiz: What is the color temperature of the light hitting your monitor right now?

Followup Question: Do you know why it matters?

Many people do not give much thought to the light hitting their monitor while editing photos. Yet it is critically important if color accuracy is important in the least.  Let me show you the importance with a few shots. See if you can guess the color temperature of the light hitting the each screen. Know that my office is a small 5′ x 8′ room, off-white walls and a skylight overhead. (Exposure of each shot was balanced in post production with only the exposure setting itself increased to match other shots.)

Ready for the answers?

• Indirect Daylight off to the side, from above (4650K)
• Cloudy light from above (5450K)
• Direct Daylight (5001K)
• Direct Daylight with a white fabric placed over the skylight opening (4100K)
• Indirect Daylight with a white fabric placed over the skylight opening (4300K)
• Direct Incandescent/Tungsten light bulb at night (2750K)

Each photo is clickable for a larger 1200 pixel wide shot. I balanced the shots according to a white card test of the light (shot separately) except the last image which was left at the camera chosen 5250K, otherwise the 2700K renders far too blue.

Our brain takes the light coming in and, in essence, auto corrects it. If viewed in a complete black environment, a screen can be color calibrated and show colors as true. This is fine and should be done. How our brain perceives colors coming from the screen will also be influenced by the color temperature of the light available at the time. Most manufacturers suggest calibrating your screen with the anticipated ambient light sources available (and the best calibration tools are able to balance for this light).

For the first image, I was going to use the shot without my reflection as a more pure example. But I thought it important to leave in because most of us don’t realize what effect we have our images. If light is coming from behind you (in this case, there was direct sunlight on the wall to the side of the iMac, which was reflected off the rear wall as well) then your shadow can make a large difference. I could have done the same for the last shot, where the bulb is clearly visible in the corner.

Some suggestions to help make sure colors stay true:

• Calibrate your screen in, ideally, a black environment. If your calibration tool of choice does not measure ambient light, just ensure there is not an over abundance of one light source or another. If it does measure ambient light, use the source you anticipate being available while editing (or make multiple profiles for each light source).
• Edit your photos in the likely light source they will be viewed under when printed.
• Be aware of the color of your walls.
• Only have one light source hitting your screen at a time while editing.
• Use indirect light when possible and do not place your light source behind you.
• Realize light reflected off items viewable from the screen’s reflection will influence results.

The second item can be very important. If your screen is calibrated correctly and you edit photos with a tungsten light source, your brain is adjusting for that source. In that case you make white look as you percieve white to be in that instance. Now, when you print that image (let’s assume the printer is properly calibrated and you used an ICC profile to soft proof) and present it in indirect day light, the colors will not match what you saw on your screen. Likewise if you took it into direct sunlight. But it will come closer when viewed at night with a tungsten source.

It’s important to edit, on a calibrated screen, with a light source as anticipated when the print itself is viewed. Baring a known source, Indirect Daylight is the best bet.

If you need information on calibrating your monitor, DPS has a post for that here.

Post from: Digital Photography School's Photography Tips. Check out our resources on Portrait Photography Tips, Travel Photography Tips and Understanding Digital Cameras.

Be Aware Of The Light Source Hitting Your Screen

There’s a great Jamaican proverb, a favorite of mine ever since I heard it on a radio interview a few months ago: “play fool to catch wise.” It’s one of those expressions that just seems to luxuriously roll off the tongue, with enough whimsy to catch your attention, and enough abstruseness to hint at a greater truth. Frankly, I’m not sure what it means. Some proffer that the expression, which originates from the slave days, is a cautionary note about keeping your thoughts to yourself, and never letting on to others that there might be cunning cogitations behind the naive facade. I get that from the “play fool” part, but I suspect that the “catch wise” part offers a deeper and more profound lesson.

My guess is that playing fool is more than simply obscuring your thoughts as a defense from the prejudices of others. It is also, I believe, an aspiration. If you think you have all the answers, then you will never learn. A fool has only questions, and is not afraid to attempt what others think is impossible. By opening oneself to foolish possibilities, one may catch wise in the process.

The lesson for the photographer is to always strive to try new things and to constantly push boundaries and the “conventional wisdom.” You may look foolish crawling through the mud, shooting in the rain, or taking photos in the dark. Others may wonder what you are doing, and a few may even scoff or laugh derisively. Just grin like an idiot when this happens, and keep on playing the fool. Deep down inside, you know what is really going on.

There are plenty of people out there with all the answers, constantly seeking to impress others with the righteousness and certainty of their brilliance. If those who play fool catch wise, I wonder what is caught by those who play wise?

"Moody Blues" - Lake Superior, Minnesota

About the image: I guess I kind of felt like an idiot taking a photo of this spot in the faint light of twilight, a favorite of mine in Tettegouche State Park along the north shore of Lake Superior in Minnesota. The light was flat, cold, and fading fast as the sun continued to drop deeper and deeper below the horizon. There was no color to the scene, and the clouds weren’t moving in the right direction. But I decided I’d give it a chance anyway, and proceeded to start a series of two-minute exposures. In terms of composition, I used the crack in the wet rocks as a leading line, taking the eye to the sharp spiked rock along the shore. The distant cliffs act as a counterpoint, adding balance to the scene. I was surprisingly pleased with the results. By keeping my white balance set to Daylight, I was able to capture the rich blue tones of twilight, which our brains filter to look more neutral in color, but that film or a digital sensor can record in a way our eyes do not see. I don’t know if I have “caught wise” with this photo, but I certainly caught something that I am pleased with, and something that is different from many other photos I have made.

Technical details: Canon 5D Mark II camera, 24-105mm lens (@24mm), 3-stop neutral density filter, 2-stop graduated neutral density filter, polarizer filter, ISO 100, f/16, 2 minutes.

Related posts:

1. Apostle Islands, Lake Superior

Develop Presets are powerful Lightroom tools. You can use them to quick start your editing in Lightroom and to apply creative fixes to your images. You can create your own presets and you can download them from the web. Here are my top five tips for harnessing the power of Develop Presets.

1. Create Disconnected Presets

Instead of creating a preset which, for example, applies a split toning effect as well as a vignette to an image, split this into two separate presets. Then you can use the split toning effect as well as the vignette if you want to do so but you also have the ability to apply one and not the other. If both effects are applied with one preset, you’ll have some work ahead of you to undo one of the effects. In addition when they are separate presets the vignette, for example, could be used on images where you would not consider also using the split toning effect.

2. Create Undo Presets

When you create a preset that adds, for example, grain or a vignette to your image, consider at the same time creating a preset that removes that effect. If you call the two presets the same name such as Grain_heavy and the delete preset Grain_heavy_del they will appear side by side in the list and it will be obvious that the second preset cancels out the effect of the first. Then, when you apply the preset and subsequently make other changes to the image you can easily remove the effect of the preset without having to wind back all the changes you’ve made.

3. Choose the Right Tools

I recently downloaded a great preset which applied a cool effect as well as a vignette. Unfortunately the designer applied the vignette using the Lens Vignetting tool in the Lens Correction panel. This isn’t a post crop vignette so, while the preset worked fine on some images it failed spectacularly on images which had been cropped. When you want to add a vignette, do this using the Effects panel’s Post Crop Vignetting options so your preset will work on any image cropped or not. Testing your presets with a range of images will tell you if they have problems that using a different solution may avoid.

4. Organizing Presets

If you’re creating a lot of presets or downloading a lot of presets from the web, it will help to organize them neatly. For this purpose, I like to create separate folders for preset sets that I download from the web. This allows me to open or close a folder of presets to display all its contents or shrink the list to show just the folder title. Be aware that the folder hierarchy for presets is very flat and you cannot create folders inside folders for example.

If you have a lot of your own presets consider grouping them in folders too – so you might have a folder of editing presets and then a second folder of more creative presets. You can drag and drop presets from one folder into another in the Develop module.

If you download or create presets and you know you will never use them, right click the preset and choose Delete to remove it from Lightroom and from your disk.

5. Apply them on Import

Here’s a good reason for ignoring Tip #1 (at least for now) and for creating a Develop Preset that applies all the changes you typically apply to your images. So, if you typically apply some extra Brightness, Clarity and Vibrance and some noise reduction to your images, make all these changes to an image and save them as a preset. Now, in the Import dialog’s Apply During Import panel you can choose this preset and have it applied automatically to all images as you import them.

Post from: Digital Photography School's Photography Tips. Check out our resources on Portrait Photography Tips, Travel Photography Tips and Understanding Digital Cameras.

5 Top Tips for Lightroom Develop Presets

I approached this book with a little scepticism: it looked like another coffee table book, large format, stacked with beautifully rendered photographs of exotic landscapes and little else.

But then I skimmed David Noton’s introduction and gathered that he feels digital cameras have opened a whole new world of photographic opportunities “that would not have been possible in the film era.” He then proceeds to offer information on his working methods and philosophy.

He finds colour in Morocco’s towns with a shot of a yellow-orange clad washer woman against a vibrant indigo. No filters. No post work. One frame. Just as it is.

In Bali he recounts that with a film camera he would bang off a run of frames in the quest of the winning shot, bracketting exposure and re-framing … thinking “one is bound to be good.” These days he shoots fewer frames in digital, with packed memory cards and the vision of weeks spent trawling through the mountain of files. With digital he can also replicate the film trick of bracketting exposures. As he says, he would much prefer to snare one perfect shot than a pile of average ones.

He explains that he always uses evaluative or matrix metering with his Canon EOS1Ds MkIII: by checking the display he can ascertain any areas of extreme under or over-exposure, then apply compensation. He always shoots RAW, acknowledging they record “robust shadows but fragile highlights.”

He finds wildlife photography to be a challenge: as a landscape photographer his approach is different, with a need to involve the animals in their environment — but he does admit that if he finished his career by not shooting a leopard with a long lens he’d feel he’d missed something. Except for three shots in the book taken with wide angle zooms, the remainder were captured with a 500mm tele. If in Rome…

We then get to trek through Laos, parts of France, Italy, Canada, the UK and Bolivia.

Much of the book includes personal notes on how to gear up for a shoot and how to overcome lassitude when things don’t go to plan. In Morocco he declares that he is frustrated by petty officialdom. In Bali it rained continuously for days and he shot virtually nothing at first. In Wales he sits morosely in the pub, again staring at the rain-drenched windows. His response most of the time is to stay positive, make location searches and hope that the clouds will part.

An unusual book, eighty per cent pleasure with twenty per cent encouragement, it’s the sort of work that you could enjoy while the rain pours and you wait to go outdoors.

Author: D Noton.
Publisher: David & Charles.
Length: 191 pages.
ISBN: 978 1 0 7153 3615 1.
Price: Get a Price on Photography Essentials Full Frame at Amazon

Post from: Digital Photography School's Photography Tips. Check out our resources on Portrait Photography Tips, Travel Photography Tips and Understanding Digital Cameras.

Photography Essentials Full Frame [Book Review]

Shift lenses allow the skewing of perspective as the camera sees it and are often accompanied with a tilt feature, as seen in the popular tilt-sift lenses. Shift helps with how lines converge or diverge in a scene by moving the lens elements to one side of camera body opening (as most shift lenses can rotate 180 degrees, this shift can be up, down, left, right and several areas in between). Shift lenses are helpful in architectural photography because they allow lines to be kept straight when they tend to want to converge or diverge with distance or the angle of the camera to the subject.

Another use for a shift lens is an aid to stitched or panoramic photos. Shifting a lens in this sense will help reduce the amount of curve normally seen in stitched images taken at wide angle. While a computer can adjust for this curve, I want to show the advantage of not having to ‘fix things in post’, even though it can be done quite well by some.

Let me show you an example of a building in downtown Bellevue, Washington. The first two images are taken with a Canon 7D and a Canon TS-E 24mm F3.5 L II (courtesy of BorrowLenses.com) and are each composed of five images stitched together with PhotoMerge in Photoshop CS5. I am including the full image initially so you may see the difference in coverage area. The name of the building has been smudged at request of the property owner (as well as license plates), otherwise the photo is unedited. Click on the photos for a full sized download if you like (Warning: they are 11MB).

Images shot with no shift.

Image shot with a shift up.

Now to take things a bit further and show how shifting perspective in the computer affects the image. The next two images have been cropped to show the same area in the center of the frame and then, using the Perspective adjustment in Photoshop CS5, adjusted so the building lines are straight.

The image with no shift.

And the cropped image shifted up.

Glancing at the smaller 600 pixel high images, can you spot a difference? Let me give you a zoom on the Jeep to the right. (Click on image for an 1800 pixel wide version, not so large)

The Jeep in the non-shifted image.

And the Jeep in the shifted version.

In the version without the shift moved up to help correct perspective, the result is a squishing of objects near the bottom of the frame while compensating for the top in post production. This can be adjusted also with the Transform tool by skewing the image down, thus elongating the image, bringing the cars back to normal size. Yet all of this transforming, while possible, moves further and further away from the original content of the image (in the matter of quality). You may also notice a slight warp to the pillars in the non-shifted version due to perspective change.

The upside of using a shift lens for this type of work is there will be less work later in the computer. Certainly a Photoshop expert can take my photos and manipulate them to near perfection, but that is beside the point. As with most things in life, the best way to proceed to is to get it right the first time if at all possible. Using a shift lens helps remove computer work later on.

The downside to using a tilt-shift lens for this type of work? The price tag. The Canon TS-E 24mm F3.5 L II I used is regularly $2100USD on Amazon.com although, as previously noted, renting such a lens from the likes of BorrowLenses.com (here is that lens listed on their site), or another rental company, can save a bundle if you have a single project or two to complete in a short time frame.

Post from: Digital Photography School's Photography Tips. Check out our resources on Portrait Photography Tips, Travel Photography Tips and Understanding Digital Cameras.

How A Shift Lens Can Help Your Stitched Images