Green Heron

I’ve had luck in the past with birds at the Fullerton Arboretum so I took the gargantuan 500mm lens out for another test run. A quick run through of the ponds revealed nothing more than common ducks and American coots until I was about to leave when two green herons flew from out of nowhere [...]

Wood Duck

In preparation for my upcoming travel, I rented a Canon 500 f4 lens to see what it would be like to lug that monster around. I took it to the Los Angeles County Arboretum and headed straight to the lagoon where I knew there would be some colorful wood ducks. I found it cumbersome to [...]

Oops!… I Did It Again

This was taken on Wednesday night after another day of rain on Tuesday. I can’t keep talking about the same thing over and over again so I’ll talk equipment this time… My first few attempts at this scene were taken with a Canon 70-200mm lens on the full-frame 5D Mark II but it wasn’t enough [...]

New York Photo Store Scams (Buy From a Reputable Dealer)

One look in the advertising section in the back of every photo magazine and you will probably notice a number of retailers with a wide range of pricing on photography equipment. Of course the store with the lowest prices will sound the most enticing. Unfortunately like the saying goes, some things are too good to [...]

Canon 35mm f2.0 Lens

The Canon 35mm f2.0 lens is going to be my new walk-around lens for travel and photojournalism photo shoots on the 5D MKII. The 24-70mm has fantastic image quality but it is so bulky that it isn’t fun to use unless I’m doing nature photography on a tripod. Plus, when you shoot candid photography, you [...]

Nature Photography Multimedia Video

Nature Photography Multimedia Video
Since giving the nature photography lecture at the Sierra Club in March, I had been looking for ways to get parts of my presentation online. It wasn’t until I picked up the Canon 5D Mark II recently that I was able to figure out how to put all of the pieces [...]

Canon 5D Mark II Wide Angle Lens Test

Most camera and lens tests you see on the internet or in magazines are set up indoor shots in controlled conditions. While nice, it really has little relevance with “real world” photography so that is why I decided to publish this Canon 5D Mark II wide angle lens test between the highly-regarded but expensive and [...]

San Clemente Surfer

I am really impressed with how sharp the Canon 70-200mm f4 lens is. Almost as impressive is the autofocus capabilities. I have only used the auto focus on the Canon system a few times before because I’ve never had a lens that was good at it but with this lens I’ve been using the AF [...]

Mixing Flash with Ambient Light

I’ve been asked several times in the past about how to use flash in a natural-looking manner so I figured this would be a good opportunity to finally post this entry that I started writing last year.
Young People Dancing the Night Away, Venice Beach, California
Aside from the fact that the above image was photographed [...]

New Camera and Lens

My first stop in the morning was the Palm Springs Air Museum. My card was full so I clean off the memory card as usual. Well my “full charge” of camera battery all of the sudden went down to one cell. Two photos later it was dead. No problem. I figured I’d go back to [...]

When you’re at the mercy of your camera gear.

If you recall my “Surf City USA” post, I mentioned that my camera went for a swim in the Pacific Ocean two weeks ago. Well it had started to fully function again last week so on Saturday I took it for a test run at none other than Huntington Beach Pier! Two weeks ago I [...]

Surf City USA: Not Sponsored by Canon

Yesterday I went to Huntington Beach to see the Red Bull Illume Image Quest Action Photography Exhibit that is located next the Pier. I went to the Bolsa Chica Wetlands Reserve first because with gas prices the way they are nowadays I don’t have the resources to waste by waiting to shoot one location only [...]

Birder’s World

In the past few days I have gone to the Los Angeles County Arboretum several times to photograph the Indian Blue Peacocks Pavo crisatus. Their courtship ritual is unlike anything else I have ever seen. The males (peacock) have the colorful feathers and raise them to try wooing the females (peahen). They get a bit [...]

The High Cost of Sin

My brother and I just got back from a great three day trip to Sin City aka. Las Vegas, Nevada last night and I was going to post some photos and write a little about the trip but my portable hard drive crashed last night as I was attempting to upload the photos onto my [...]

$450 Admission to Macro World.

In last week’s post, I mentioned that I was impressed with the Canon 60mm macro lens when i tried it at Powell Camera in Covina and that it was out of my budget. Well a week has gone by and today I decided not to deprive myself of another spring of creative flower photography opportunities. [...]

Macro World

I’ve been thinking of getting a macro lens for a while so I could be more creative with my flower pictures so I was at Powell Camera yesterday in Covina trying out the Tamron 90mm, Canon 60mm, and 100mm macro lenses. I’d tried to Sigma 100, and 150 at Samy’s in Pasadena last month but [...]

Rainout 1-2-06

Last year was the first time I’d been to a Tournament of Roses Parade. Rain was predicted but it nearly missed. It hadn’t rained on the parade in 51 years so my family was optimistic the weather would hold up for this year’s parade. That was not to be.

My mother gets very good seats near [...]

My First Week With the 20D.

I love almost everything about the camera though the 9 point AF system takes a while to get used to. My other cameras are of an older technology so selective AF wasn’t an option. For landscape the AF was not a problem since I manually focus a lot of landscapes and landscapes aren’t usually confusing [...]

Correcting Barrel Distortion & Inexpensive Photo Vests

I just discovered an awesome free program called PT Lens available on the net. It includes profiles for specific digital cameras to correct barrel and pin cushion distortion, chromic aberration and vignetting. I briefly tried the barrel distortion correction on a few ocean shots and the results were amazing. Images to be posted later. I [...]

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In the Field: Photo Blog by Richard Wong