Back in the not-so-long-ago days when using Nikon cameras was akin to entering skateboards in a motorised go-cart race, I managed to pick up a real bargain in the form of a Nikkor 16mm 2.8 AIS fisheye lens. At the time I still had quite a few skateboards, errr, film Nikon bodies in my possession and I really loved putting that lens onto my FM2n and pointing it around the room, imagining what it would be like to use it on a full frame DSLR. Sometimes I even put film in the FM2n and exposed entire rolls of it using just the 16mm fisheye.

Of course at the time there was no such thing as Nikon FX and on a DX sensor like the D200 I was packing, it just looked like a really poorly performing 24mm lens. But I kept it anyway, even in the midst of my ever-shrinking film camera collection, because I had faith that Nikon would somehow deliver a full frame DSLR at some point in the not-too-distant future. Which they did with the D3. Unfortunately the price tag of the D3 left me decidedly unwell and coupled with some really tough personal economics I had no option but to sell the 16mm to a fellow photographer. I did sell it for almost double what I had paid for it though. But then came the D700 and that changed everything for me…

Since that time I have been on the hunt for another fisheye, but they are not easy to find used in my country and importing a new Nikon 16mm F/2.8D AF Fisheye Nikkor Lens for nearly $1,000 isn’t really all that attractive to me. So I was quite happy to discover that Sigma makes a similar fisheye lens for FX cameras, namely the Sigma 15mm f/2.8 EX DG Diagonal Fisheye and that it is widely available right here in South Africa too, at a retail price of R7,200 as opposed to the R10,700 being asked for its Nikkor counterpart (price reference: SA Camera).

My good friends at Tudor Photographic, who are the official agents for the Sigma brand here in South Africa, kindly sent me a brand new one to evaluate for Nikongear.com. Here’s what I found out…

This lens is a LOT of fun!

If you are looking to put something unique in your camera bag, you can’t really do much better than a full frame fisheye lens. The 180 degree field of view from one corner to the diagonally opposite corner of your frame opens up a tremendous amount of creative possibility. Photographing the interiors of buildings like cathedrals and getting every aspect of them into the frame is quite possible. Put it high, put it low, the results are bound to be visually striking, especially if there is an interesting subject close in the foreground with an equally interesting background. If you put it really close up to somebody’s face you’ll get a truly comical amount of distortion.

During the time I had with the lens I most enjoyed using it outdoors. I’d have loved to be at one of the FIFA 2010 World Cup games with the lens, especially inside the Moses Mabhida Stadium with its dramatic arch, but alas I couldn’t stand the vuvuzelas, so I had to content myself with occasional walks along the beachfront here in Durban, trying to force myself to think creatively about a place who’s sights I have absorbed my entire life. Not all that easy!

Lens Handling

The Sigma 15mm 2.8 Diagonal Fisheye comes with a built-in petal shaped lens hood and a snug lens cap that fits right over the hood. The front of the main lens cap also pops off and has a filter thread on it, but if you plan on shooting it like that you are going to have a picture that looks almost like a circular fisheye image, but without the same field of view. Not recommended.

It took me a while to get used to the fact that when you shoot in AF mode with this lens, its focus ring moves too, so you have to hold it in a way that doesn’t obstruct that movement, otherwise you are going to put a strain on the AF motor of your camera. That’s right, it doesn’t have a built in HSM motor - it’s relying on the old school method.

I did find the AF to be very snappy and accurate on the D700. It never hunted, even when shooting in low light. I suppose this is because the optics don’t really have to travel a lot inside the lens to achieve focus.

Build Quality & Finish

It’s a very compact little lens and appears to be fairly solid, which is typical of the Sigma EX range of professional optics. Again it has the metallic matt paint that I really don’t care much for, however, I will concede that on this lens it didn’t seem to loose its lustre the way that the 150-500mm lens I reviewed a while ago did.

As you can see from the product photo I took above, there is no distance scale window on the lens (no light leaks! Yay!), but distance information is printed on the lens barrel. And would you look at that… there’s even hyper-focus scale markings printed on there too! Now there’s something you don’t see too often on modern auto-focus lenses.

Optical Ability

I’m not much of a pixel peeper. I don’t think I have ever intentionally shot at a brick wall for purposes other than making it part of a photograph I was taking for aesthetic reasons. I tend to look at the ability of photographic equipment in terms of how much of a “Wow!” factor I get once I have the pics in Photoshop or Capture NX. I look at things like “is the subject sharp?” and if it isn’t, can I put that down to the lens or my own inability to hold it steady when taking the picture? Am I getting the detail I want and how does the lens react to the sun being in the frame or on the front element? If it’s soft in the corners or it bleeds purple along the edges, I’ll find out with my own eyes and pictures soon enough if it makes the grade. I’ll leave the resolution charts and brick walls to other reviewers to contemplate.

I’m happy to report that this lens is sharp enough to keep me interested in it as a serious tool for making fun pictures. Just below you’ll see a shot taken at f/11 on a D700 at ISO 800 (don’t ask me why I was using such a high ISO in broad daylight), shooting towards the sun. I have included 100% crops of sections to show the sharpness you can expect. This is a straight conversion from NEF to JPG using NX2.

As you can see, apart from my goof with the ISO, there’s fairly good sharpness at all three points, no lack of contrast and apparently no flare.

So, what if you mess around with your images in some editing programs to see what you can get? Here’s a shot taken from the pier at Umhlanga Rocks, looking North into the morning sun. It’s made up of 5 frames, each shot a stop apart. This was hand held so there are some non-aligned elements in the deeper sections of the image, but they’re not all that evident when looking at a web sized image.

The editing here is as follows:

1. Convert to JPG from NEF in NX2.
2. Import JPG’s into Lightroom 1.1.
3. Run the Enfuse plug-in for Lightroom to blend the exposures (I wish they would make this plug-in for Photoshop because I find LR really horrible to work with).
4. Open in PS CS3 and run Alien Skin’s Exposure 2 plugin with Velvia 50 as the option.

Rear Gel Filters

Inside the box that the lens comes with you will find a small square plate with a little hole in it. I couldn’t figure out what this was for, but then after reading the information sheet supplied with the lens I saw that it is a template for cutting gels to insert at the back of the lens for colour effects. There is a clip like holder at the rear into which you can slip your gels. I don’t know how useful this may be, but I suppose there’s a photographer or two somewhere who like to still like to work with filters.

Verdict

I highly recommend getting one of these lenses if you fancy a little imaginative spice with your photography. I found the lens was sharp enough for doing landscape type photography, had immense depth of field at smaller apertures like f/11 and f/16, yet also produced a pleasing bokeh when shot wide open (see the picture of my mouse). The big selling point for me is the substantial savings over the Nikon equivalent lens.

I took a whole bunch of photos with the lens over the period I had it and these ones will give you an idea of the sort of shots you can get. You are really only limited by your imagination when it comes to using a lens like this and the main consideration should be having fun.

Go and get it!

Read what other Nikongear.com members think of this lens on our Experiences Board

Greetings Gearniks!

Here in South Africa World Cup soccer has gripped the nation with a feverish vengeance. On every street corner there are vendors selling flags, hats, sunglasses and flag “socks” for your car’s side mirrors. They must be making a killing because just about every car you see on the road is wearing them. Some motorists have the mirror socks and at least two flags sticking out of their windows. FIFA must be doing a slow boil because they don’t get anything from it, which pleases me no end, given their propensity to screw around with just about every aspect of our lives over the past few months. Road closures, construction everywhere, bans on vending, closed airspace, etc. Personally I am looking for a Jolly Roger flag to fly from my car, but I am not having any luck in that regard. Well, on the upside it will all be over in just over a month’s time and then the economic hangover will begin.

One thing I would like to have been a part of during the tournament is the press photography. Apparently the two big companies, Nikon & Canon, try to out do each other on the service front by offering the press photogs access to all the latest gear, free services, body loans, etc. A friend of mine was describing his experiences at the 2006 WC and he said it was like a gearhead’s most erotic dream. They literally bring containers full of every conceivable lens and body to each event, all in a bid to win the minds of professional photographers around the world. Interesting marketing tactic.

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We need another Safarian!

Our October safari is inching closer and closer and I am really looking forward to it. In case you are new to the Nikongear.com community and haven’t already heard about what we’re doing in October, we have booked out the entire 5 Star Little Bush Camp at Sabi Sabi Private Game Reserve, which is adjacent to the Kruger Park. Take a look at the link and see where we will be staying and what we will be doing for our week there.

Sabi Sabi is widely acknowledged as the premier Safari destination in Africa. You will experience really up close encounters with a wide variety of African wildlife, including lion, leopard, cheetah, wildebeest, rhino, elephant, buffalo and a myriad of other species that our Shangaan trackers and park rangers will show us.

On this safari we will have access to two purpose built safari Land Rovers, each with three rows of three seats behind the driver. Each suite holder has exclusive use of a row of seats and can opt to come on the safari alone, or pay a little bit extra and bring a partner or a friend to share the luxury suite and your row of seats on the vehicle. It’s an opportunity of a lifetime to get the best wildlife sightings for photography on two game drives each day (sunrise and sunset) as well as experience everything that the African bush has to offer, without over crowded camps and vehicles at various sighting spots.

Little Bush Camp has only 6 suites, each of which is capable of accommodating up to 2 people. Our suites for the October trip have all been booked and deposits have been taken, but unfortuately one of our prospective Safarians is not going to be able to join us anymore, so we are looking for somebody to take over his place. If you are interested in joining us on this fantastic trip (which happens between 24-31 October) please get in touch with me soonest.

For full details of the safari and the optional extensions please click here.

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Experiences Threads

The original concept behind Nikongear.com was to collect as much information on camera bodies, accessories and various lenses that can be used on Nikon cameras as possible.

Our “Experiences” boards are a very big part of that concept. What we have done is create indexes of cameras, flashes and lenses from a variety of manufacturers, each of which links to a topic related to that item on the Experiences board in the forum. The screenshots below show you exactly where to click to get to each index and the threads for them.

The arrow shows the drop down for the Equipment Menu

This arrow shows the link to the thread on the TC-14E II Teleconverter

There is a specific type of post we are looking for on each item in this section of the forum and you will find the guidelines here. We are now quite strict on following these guidelines and Chris Lilley and I will either remove or split out any posts that don’t follow them. Split posts will be those that have merit, but don’t conform to the guidelines. They will be placed in the discussion areas of the forum. Deleted posts will be those where the poster asks questions about the item or makes a comment about a previous post. We don’t like to delete member’s posts here, but we feel that this is warranted if we are to achieve our aims of providing a clean, well organised body of information on everything Nikon related.

If you would like to contribute to the project we’d really appreciate it if you follow the guidelines. Whenever we have spare time we will go over older threads and clean them up too. We realise that not all lenses and bodies are covered in the indexes, so if you have a suggestion on adding something, please send either myself or Chris a PM and we will try to add it ASAP.

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Official Merchandise

The recent batch of black silk-screened T-shirts sold pretty well and I only have 4 left in XL size (two of each for styles 1 & 3). There has been quite a bit of interest in getting another batch going and I have pre-orders from four folks for a total of 7 shirts thus far. If I can get pre-orders for at least 25 shirts I will order another batch of 50 and keep them in stock.

FEELER: Below is a picture from my supplier of a cap I would like to offer for sale to members. It will have our logo embroidered on the front, just above the peak. I have opted for this type of cap because it will be the easiest to send in the mail as it can be flat packed, whereas a baseball cap will stand proud and cause the postage cost to escalate beyond feasibility. I don’t have a price for the finished cap yet, but I am fairly confident that it won’t be much different from the cost of the T shirts (between $20 and $30 including international postage).

If you would like to put your name on the list to get one first, just pop me an email and let me know what colour you’d like. I can get these in khaki (pictured), black, red, yellow, royal blue, navy blue, beige, olive green and camoflauge.

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Anonymous Photo Critique

Would you like to see what happens when pictures are submitted anonymously for critique? Would you like your own image critiques but don’t want to attach your name to it? Have a look at this thread to see images of all the pictures submitted already, links to the individual discussions threads and the details of how to submit your own image for critique. Our critique moderator will post your image in the appropriate forum and moderate the discussion as needed.

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Have you read these threads?

What do you say if you don’t like a photo? by JohnR

Who inspired/s you? by fbleagh

Commenting Photos Edition 1.1 by annedi

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An Appeal

If you have your own web site or domain name why not consider hosting it with us? We could really use the support as our server is quite dramatically under-utilised at the moment. Our packages can all be ordered onine from here. As soon as an order is placed and paid for it is set up on the server and you can begin using it immediately.

As an incentive to get members to use this service I am also assuring every person who signs up for a Club 1000 membership a Life membership to Nikongear.com. So even if you decide not to renew your hosting with us, you’ll never lose your life membership to the site.

Your support in this regard would be MOST appreciated.

Well, that’s all I have to say (for now). I’m sure I’ll be interacting with many of you on the forum in the days ahead, so I look forward to that.

Take care

Dallas

At some point in our photography journey we all feel the need to buy a long telephoto lens. The reasons for this sometimes irrational compulsion are not always the same, but whatever they may be, we should consider our options carefully when deciding what lens to buy. In the realm of telephoto lenses things get very expensive, very quickly. Take a look at the list prices for OEM super telephoto lenses that go above 300mm and be sure to have the defibrillator handy. Small used cars are often cheaper.

There are less expensive options to consider however, and Sigma Corporation have been making fairly decent super telephoto lenses (including zoom lenses) for quite some time, one of which is the subject of this review, namely the 150-500mm f/5-6.3 APO DG OS HSM.

This lens replaced the older 170-500mm Sigma which enjoyed a lot of success amongst amateur photographers. The new lens brings a couple of new features which improve the overall package substantially.

OPTICAL STABILISER
Optical stabilising is in my opinion an essential feature for any telephoto lens above 200mm. If you don’t have it in your lens you are going to have to combat lens blur by employing an alternative means of stabilising, usually in the form of a really good tripod and head. In many instances a tripod might not be feasible, especially if you are going on a long hike and want to keep weight to a minimum, so having a built-in stabiliser in your lens is a big plus, particularly one where you are able to gain 3-4 stops of shutter speed.

The performance of the OS in this Sigma lens is outstanding. I’ll be honest, I never imagined being able to hand hold a fairly big lens at 500mm at night and being able to get an image even remotely sharp, yet there I was, casually taking pictures of the city lights at night with my D700’s ISO set to 3,200 and my exposure compensation dialled down 2.5 stops. The result, once fiddled with a little in processing, is something you could actually use.

I did find that the lens made a fairly audible click whenever the OS is activated and de-activated, which is something I haven’t heard on either Canon or Nikon equivalents.

HYPER-SONIC MOTOR
The HSM in this lens works pretty well. It’s so quiet that you won’t hear the lens focussing at all. I found it relatively snappy to find autofocus in daylight, but bear in mind this is a consumer level lens, so you’re not going to experience anything like the AF performance of an OEM prime if you’re wanting to track birds in flight. For daylight sports like soccer and other forms of football you’ll be OK.

The lens tracks AF pretty well on a D700, but I suspect that this might be compromised on bodies that don’t have quite the same AF abilities. Having said that, Sigma have played a smart move by making this lens an HSM because it means you can use it on every Nikon DSLR, including the little D3000. Big market of potential users there.

BUILD QUALITY & FINISH
I must admit, I am not a big fan of Sigma finishes. I have two other Sigma lenses (15-30mm & 24-60mm) and whilst they are good optically, the paint finish on them is rubbish. The 150-500mm has the same dark grey, matt, metallic paint job on it as my other lenses and after only a couple of days in my bag it began to lose its lustre. The edges seem to get lighter and I wager it won’t take very long for the paint to begin peeling off, just like it has done on my 24-60mm lens.

The build quality is OK. I found the zoom ring to be nice and fluid. My biggest issue with it was that it zoomed the opposite way to Nikon’s lenses, which is curious because not all Sigmas seem to follow that convention. My two zoom in opposite directions to one another. Weird.

There is a lock button you can use to stop the zoom from creeping out while at 150mm. I didn’t really experience zoom creep with the “out-the-box” copy I was loaned though, so I have no comment on the usefulness of that feature.

Something I did notice about the lens is that it is a lot lighter than you’d expect it to be. OK, so it does weigh almost 2 kilos, but if you think about what you’re getting in terms of zoom range, it’s not very heavy at all. It fit nicely into my Lowepro Mini-trekker bag with the hood reversed.

TRIPOD MOUNT
The removable tripod mount is pretty big and is designed much the same as the handle-type mount you’d expect to find on a big pro tele. I only used the lens on a monopod as I don’t have a big enough plate for it to fit on my Kirk tripod head, so no comment on the effectiveness of the mount. I will say though that because the OS works so well, the only real need for a tripod would be to relieve your arms from hand holding.

OTHER FEATURES
As with all the other Sigmas I have tried and owned, you will get a nice nylon carry case for the lens. I don’t have much use for these, but I suppose that if you are keeping the lens in storage it doesn’t hurt to protect it in a case designed to fit its form. You’ll also find a spare strap for the lens itself inside the box, so when you are carrying the lens you can shoulder its own strap as opposed to the strap on your camera.

FILTERS
Forget about using C-PL (or any other) filters with this lens! The front element is a massive 86mm and if you have the hood in place getting to the filter ring is not possible unless you have really long, rubber like fingers. There is no drop in filter slot either. Personally I don’t think that most amateur photographers who are considering buying this lens will be particularly devastated by this.

OPTICAL PERFORMANCE
What do you hope to get out of a lens like this? Would you be happy with decent sharpness, good contrast, acceptable bokeh and publishable images? If so, I think you’ll be a happy owner. I found myself using it mostly at the maximum zoom range of 500mm and was pleasantly surprised by the sharpness found there. Contrast was OK, but you may have to work a little in post processing to eke out a little more.

Most of the time I had the lens set to f/8 or f/11 and the images are perky at that aperture. Shooting wide open at f/6.3 you will definitely notice a drop in sharpness and contrast, so rather sacrifice the ISO and shoot with it at smaller apertures.

Here are some photos I made with the lens on my D700 (click to enlarge):

shot at 500mm f/8 ISO 400	100% crop
shot at 150mm f/11 ISO 1600	shot at 500mm f/11 ISO 1600
shot at 380mm f/16 ISO 800	100% crop

CONCLUSION

At $1,000 it’s not a ‘cheap” lens, by any account, but it’s also not anywhere near the kind of money being asked for the rather ancient Nikon 80-400mm VR ($1,650). Given the choice between the two I’d definitely opt for the Sigma. You’re getting the latest in optical stabiliser technology, an HSM auto focus motor and an extra 100mm on the long end. This lens will prove very useful for photographers who are confident in their abilities and are looking to add a bit of reach for when they need it. If I was to buy it I could see myself using it for many things, including sports, birding and even safaris.

Many thanks to Tudor Photographic, Cape Town for supplying the sample lens. I must add that the lens I received was brand new, sealed in the box, so it was a random sample.

If you have used this lens yourself you can add your comments in our official Experiences thread for it.

Introduction

David Birdsong recently made a post here on Nikongear.com about how he used his iPhone to capture a self-portrait from his Nikon D90 using a live preview of what the camera was seeing… on the iPhone screen.

Naturally I was very curious, because ever since getting into the realm of iPhone/iPod apps I have felt a little bit like Harry Potter every time I wave around my iPod Touch - it’s a truly magical device. My entire family think I have gone bonkers and to a certain degree I suppose I am slightly obsessed with the things you can do using an iPod touch. Investigating the ability to use it as a remote controller for my D700 was too great a temptation, so I bought the onOne Remote DSLR Pro Edition from the iTunes store for $19.99 and set about exploring how it works and where I could actually find it useful.

Getting it working

To use this program you will need:

a) a laptop with wi-fi capability
b) a DSLR
c) an iPhone or iPod touch (I’ll refer to them collectively as an iDevice for the rest of the article)
d) a tripod and
e) something safe to rest your laptop on

As with any Apple iDevice application you buy it from the iTunes store and sync it to the iDevice. You also have to download the DSLR Remote server software directly from onOne’s website and install that the usual way on your laptop. Once you have it running your iDevice will find it when you run the DSLR remote application, and provided you have the camera turned on everything is golden. It really couldn’t be any simpler to get it working.

What can it control?

I can control my D700 quite a bit using the Pro Edition, including all the exposure variables. For instance, if I am in A mode, I can select the aperture that I want to shoot at, or if I am in M mode I can change both aperture and shutter speed by simply tapping on their values on my iDevice. I can also change the white balance, exposure compensation, ISO and size/quality of the recorded image. I can’t, however, change the AE mode that the camera is in (P,A,S,M), or any of the autofocus settings (AF-C, AF-S). Those have to be done on the camera itself.

Here’s a true Harry Potter feature: if I tap the Settings icon on my iPod for this application I see an option to switch on Live View. Once it’s switched on it feeds the video signal coming through the lens, onto the sensor and across the wi-fi network directly onto my iDevice screen! Sacre bleu! Tres amazing! So, if you’re prepared to leave your laptop and DSLR somewhere unattended, you could effectively use it as a surveillance camera. I think I’ll stick to using it in my studio…

Usability

Tethered shooting is usually useful in situations where your camera is stationary and where you need to get an immediate review of the picture you just took on a bigger screen than the one on the back of the camera. onOne DSLR remote offers you not only the ability to see the shot you just took on the computer screen, but as mentioned it also gives you a live view on the iDevice, so for product & still life photography it’s pretty useful to frame with Live View and then review immediately on the laptop using whatever program you usually use for that. The server software doesn’t come with a built-in image browser - it would be really cool if it did.

If you’re shooting macro or find yourself in a position where looking into the viewfinder is nearly impossible you’re going to be rather pleased with onOne’s DSLR Remote, especially as it offers you a Live View of whatever the camera is seeing. It’s also very useful in the creation of self portraits, or in studio shooting situations where you don’t have a model and are trying to set up lighting using yourself as the subject.

Auto Focus Issues

One of the things I found particularly irritating is trying to use Tripod mode in Live View. Now this is not a short-coming of the software, it’s a short-coming of the camera’s actual hardware. Unless you have a particularly brightly lit subject the tripod method of AF in Live View (contrast detection) is really useless. Forget about using it in low light - you’ll go batty. I suggest using the hand-held live view AF instead (phase detection). The difference is huge. It’s much faster and far more accurate. All you do is tap the screen and the camera flips down the mirror, achieves focus and then flips it back up to restore your Live View. Press Fire and your camera takes a picture immediately. You can switch between the two LV modes from the iDevice instead of having to dig into the Nikon custom function menu system to find it on the camera.

A short-coming of the software is that it doesn’t allow you to select an AF point on your iDevice. That would have been a really cool feature. I suppose that if it were possible to select an AF point when you are in Tripod mode with LV it would also make using phase detection AF a lot better as you’d be able to select any part of the view as a focus point, even outside of the 51 points found on the D3/700 series.

In Practise

Here’s a shot I have just taken showing the iPod’s Live View and the laptop’s previous image preview (I’m using View NX, but this could just as easily be something like Bridge or Irfan View). This illustrates perfectly the need to be able to select your AF point from the remote. If I had this feature I could have tapped the image of my hand and made that the subject of the image, rather than the laptop. Under the current system I would have to select that AF point from the camera itself, which is not possible once you have the system up and running in remote mode. BTW, I only have the iPod plugged into my laptop because I had literally run its battery flat with a few hours of testing.

Reviewing Images

Assuming you’re not reviewing the images on the laptop you can use your iDevice for this purpose. If LV is switched off the iDevice screen shows the last image taken. You can flip through all the shots taken in a session by swiping your finger across the screen and in typical iDevice fashion you only have to turn the screen in the direction you want it to view landscape or portrait orientation shots. That’s neat.

Something I found a little bit counter intuitive to the iDevice way of doing things is zooming in and panning around on your images. If you’re reviewing on the iDevice you have to double tap the section you want to zoom into in order to get a 100% view of it. You double tap again to zoom out. Panning around isn’t possible once you’re zoomed in. I’d really like it if I could zoom in at any percentage by using a two-finger stretch or pinch on the screen and then being able to pan my view from there.

If this application works on the iPad then reviewing images on the iDevice will be a lot better. For now I’ll stick to critical reviewing on the laptop since it’s never going to be that far away from where I am.

Overall Impression

I think that for the money you have an absolute bargain with onOne’s DSLR Remote Pro Ed. if you want to shoot tethered AND enjoy a few other useful features. It works with most DSLR’ s and it only costs $19.99. Compare that to the ridiculous sum of $180 being asked by Nikon for Camera Control 2 and you have to ask some serious questions of Nikon.

There are some areas of the software that could be improved, but on the whole I can recommend it without reservation. Good job onOne!

Comment on this article

I expect what I am about to say about this book goes very much against the grain, given the adulation it has received from many of Joe’s other fans. I’ll tell you why I think it is (in a “num-nuts” shell) a bit of a let down for me:

The information contained in it has been really badly organised.

Sure, Joe makes the statement right in the beginning of the book that it is NOT the manual for small flashes and should be read like a diary. Fair enough, but if we’re going to read it like a diary then we should at least have some sense of structure to the entries. This book’s only structure is that it is split into four sections: nuts & bolts (what Joe uses and why he uses it), one light, two or more lights, lots of lights.

Within each section you’re going to find a smattering of chapters, each of which deals with a lighting situation Joe has faced in his recent career. The problem with each chapter is that it reads slow and painfully. There is none of the sharply succinct cut and thrust that we had with his previous book. Instead we have to slurp down anecdote after anecdote, almost like we’re sitting in the bottom of a bottle getting sloshed around from side to side with no clear direction of what exactly we’re supposed to be learning. Nearly all the chapters have this approach and all the important information is hidden from plain sight.

There are very few lighting diagrams (unless you are able to decipher some of Joe’s hand drawn sketches) or summarised settings or off-set photos of how a shot was created. You just get page after page of the slosh. It starts with an image and then dozens and dozens of random verses relating to the photograph and how he approached lighting it. No bold type. No methodology. Just lots of type.

It dawned on me shortly after trying to swim my way through the first few chapters that there is a very good reason why this book is not as good as the last one: the editor is not Scott Kelby this time around and it shows.

If it’s not for beginners… then who’s it for?

I am no beginner, yet whenever I pick up this book I get frustrated with it because reading it is a chore. In the previous book each chapter had the story-telling bits (which are great), but it also had a “How to get this kind of shot” entry for people who like to cut to the chase and just get the salient points - like photographers who are already well versed in how to operate their equipment and just want to get a clue on what was used and how it was used. Now the stories are interwoven with the “how-to” and it just doesn’t work. We don’t want to have to read War & Peace just to learn what can easily be described with a good diagram, some tech notes and a short anecdote (like the other book).

The only kind of person I  imagine would like this book are the advanced amateur photographers who don’t actually need to make photos for a living and who can spend a lot of time reading between the lines. It’s not a book for people who make their living taking pictures. We don’t have time to read all that stuff only to find out that the magic is in a stretched bed sheet across a doorway.

Recommendation

There is no doubting that Joe McNally has all the makings of a great teacher, but if you are looking for an easily understandable insight into the way he executes lighting a photo you’re not going to find it in this book unless you like things like Chinese water torture, double history lessons on a Friday afternoon, or… soap operas. The Kelby touch is sorely missing here.

If you’re curious you should borrow a copy. Don’t spend good money on it.

I like Joe McNally. I really do.

He has a “can-do” attitude towards photography that I find rousing. His pictures may not appeal to everyone, but the stuff I see on his blog and in this book truly float my boat. In particular there’s a shot he took of Tony Bennett in studio that I could look at all day long - and I don’t even like the old guy’s music! The simplistic lighting and resulting image are outstanding, but more importantly, it’s Joe’s approach to the job that will be of most interest to the avid photographer.

This book is not just about how to light subjects, or what lens/settings to use. It’s not like any other book on photography I have ever read (and I’ve read lots of them!). It’s world’s away from John Hedgecoe or Lee Frost in that it teaches you about stuff you can normally only get through first hand experience. Imagine the kind of experience a freelancer who has worked for The Daily News, Nat Geo, Life, Time, Newsweek and Sports Illustrated can bring to your own work? I kind of got the feeling that it’s almost like a freelancer’s companion, as well as an accumulation of ideas, stories and advice for anyone who ever wanted a career in editorial photography. Joe imparts his wisdom in a friendly, unassuming, unpretentious way that you just don’t find very often. It’s not hard to see why Scott Kelby so badly wanted to publish a book with all these gems contained inside.

What can you expect from this book? Well, it is split up into four main chapters, each of which presents the reader with dozens of stories behind the images Joe has taken over the years. You’ll be reading not only about the “hows & whys”, but also you’ll get to hear a bit of Joe’s photography philosophy on nearly every page. He writes with humour, wit and most of all honesty. For me the real gems in the book are at the end in a section called “The Bar Is Open” where the true raconteur in McNally comes out from behind the pictures and tells us a little about his life in pictures. I loved it and I’ve already ordered his second book “The Hot Shoe Diaries” (which will hopefully be here soon).

As the heading on the back cover says, this is “The first book with one foot on the coffee table and one foot in the classroom”.

Get it right now from Amazon.com