Questions and Answers!

Every time I do a gear post I end up getting questions and this time a dear friend, sent me a handful, but it may be something you’ve wondered about too!  You may even want to chime in, inf act wish you would!  Here goes:

1.  Do  you have a recommendation regarding polarizers?  I really love Singh Ray filters and their polarizers. For a number of reasons they are neutral and that is a big deal, no color casts, they’re plano parallel, which means they will not adverse;y affect sharpness.  they re also not cheap, but as my grandfather always said, “you get what you pay for!”  Are their other ones you can recommend?  Though I would rather have a Singh Ray, Nikon, and the better B&W are both pretty good too.  But if you spent money on a  great lens, I would buy a Singh  Ray.

2.  Do you use UV filters to protect lenses?  No, well wait a minute, only sometimes.  If I am working around blowing sand, I will use a filter to protect the front element of the lens.  I spend good money on great lenses so I am just careful and use a lens cap and protect it without a filter.

3.  Do you always use a lens hood, and do you use the one provided with the lens?  I think lens hoods are vital, but sometimes if you’re using a polarizer unless you have a screw in hood, you have to work without one.  I often buy lens hoods off Amazon that are the right filter thread size and that do not vignette!  How do you know they won’t vignette?  Buy it and find out, if it doesn’t, Amazon has a great return policy, or do as I do, have a box of hoods that didn’t work once but might later on for something else!

4.  How do you clean lenses?  When I worked for Nikon I got a chance to  hang out with a number of great technicians and they taught me a lot.  First don’t over clean your lenses, if it is just a little dusty, blow it off with a good blower bulb, I love the Rocket blowers.  If it needs a little more after the blower, use a good clean micro fiber cloth to wipe it, without any pressure.  if smudges are still there I use the Zeiss alcohol impregnated glass cleaner from Walmart’s eye glass department.

5.  Do you use flash or LED lighting?  Both, but mostly LED lights.  After all, after teaching with Joe McNally I couldn’t respect, myself if I looked at my own flash work!!!  The LED lights works great and you can see what you’re doing as you shoot.  Lots of good one are out there but the ones that  let you dial in some color temperature variation are very handy.  Mine is fro a company called Ledgo, model LG-B160C.

6.  How about collapsible reflectors?  I use a diffuser on sunny days to tame the light and I have one and Manfroto that is great for portraits and kicking some warm light back in on subjects, I even have some really small ones for close-up work.

Come up with some more shoot me an email or post here!

In Him, Blessings,

the pilgrim