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About David Williams

Dave is a travel photographer and writer, and photography and Photoshop instructor, from the UK. Find Dave at idavewilliams.com or @idavewilliams on all platforms.

First hands-on with the Canon EOS R3

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I had the opportunity to get my hands on the recently announced Canon EOS R3 at The Photography Show. Let me tell you how that went for me.

Canon teased the EOS R3 and the world waited in anticipation following news of Covid-stricken production facilities. This addition to their squad of pro-mirrorless cameras is, so far, very well received by most people. I walked up to the Canon stand this afternoon to see huge crowds. The majority of the people there were gathered around the R3 and, after waiting patiently for it to be my turn, I got hold of one for real.

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The Photography Show is underway despite COVID-19

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The absence of live events owing to COVID seems to have filled the global collective recent memory. This is now being broken and life is returning to normal. Here at the National Exhibition Centre in Birmingham, UK, The Photography Show has begun day one and it all looks to be going very well.

The Photography Show is the biggest photography show in Europe and usually attracts every industry name you can think of. Something I’ve noticed this year is that there are a few absent companies and brands, as well as brands amalgamating their interests and sharing stands, such as here in the image above of the Wex Photo Video. This doesn’t seem to have any negative effect across the show floor and everyone’s favourite brands can still be found here somewhere.

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I am leaving my home to photo-travel in a Mercedes van I built myself

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I’m Dave Williams, a writer here at DIYP and a travel photographer, writer, and educator from the UK. For many years, just like a lot of other photographers, I worked a full-time job and shot on the side as a way to fund new gear. I progressed from funding gear to fund my life, with clients and partners forming throughout my journey. That hit a bit of a roadblock during the COVID pandemic and my travels ground to a halt – I suddenly went from around 20 trips a year to zero. That’s when I decided to make my daydreams a reality.

In March I took a hard-earned £5,000 and invested in a used Mercedes Sprinter 170 313 CDi. I spent four months converting it and making it exactly the way I need it to be and now it’s my full-time accommodation and off-grid, on-road office. The conversion wasn’t easy – I spent a night soaking wet during torrential rain with a leaking roof, I changed my mind on batteries and water tanks mid-build – but now it’s ready to roll.

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Image theft should be a thing of the past – a personal story

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We’re used to seeing images shared on social media, especially on feature accounts where this is considered normal. Photographers put a lot of time and effort into creating great images and once in a while we see our work stolen. This happened to me recently and I’d like to share the story with you.

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Dear Nikon, your mirrorless lens swap is a joke

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I’ve had a Nikon Z6 mirrorless camera for a while now, and I’m less than impressed. We photographers are a funny breed. We obsess over detail. It goes without saying that dust removal is not something like to retouch. We have enough work as it is. Back in the day (and by “the day” I mean ‘last year’) we had cameras with mirrors. Those mirrors, along with a shutter curtain, protected our delicate sensors from all manner of dust and grime. In the transition to mirrorless, it appears Nikon have overlooked this. Take a look.

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Astrophotographers can capture the Comet NEOWISE right now

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Astrophotographers have the opportunity to spot a rare object in the sky this month. A newly discovered comet, NEOWISE, is flying through the inner solar system for the first time in 6,800 years. (6,800 FRIGGIN YEARS!!!). This comet has been getting brighter and brighter in the early-morning sky and, in the coming days, it will make an appearance in the evening after sunset. It is now brighter than Halley’s Comet appeared when it whizzed through the inner solar system in 1986.

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Artists are number one on the list of non-essential workers

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The Singapore Sunday Times conducted a survey to determine the jobs that people perceive to be essential. As an interesting side effect they got a list of non-essential jobs. Surprisingly(?), artists topped the list with 71% of non-essentialness. Heck, according to the article, artists are even less essential than telemarketers. Ironically,  it was a  graphic artist who created the infographic to represent the results. An insult to the artist, but funny nonetheless.

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How and why to “quaranclean” your your camera gear during the coronavirus pandemic

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I made a silly video a few days ago about cleaning your camera for Covid-19. It really was silly – I washed a camera in a sink full of soapy water. It went down well, but there’s a serious message behind it.

We’ve been given the advice to wash our hands for twenty seconds with warm, soapy water, and to not touch our face. What we need to remember as photographers, is that we bring our camera to our face all the time. It’s imperative that we keep our camera clean to prevent the transmission of this disease.
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This is how to capture a rocket photo like Erik ‘the rocketman’ Kuna

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Erik Kuna is a Floridian photographer shooting for SuperCluster, a creative agency sharing the story of space to everyone, and instructor at KelbyOne. Kuna has taken revolutionary steps in rocket photography, employing techniques never used before to create amazing cinemagraphs and images. Those are more than merely documentary, they’re art. We’ve asked Erik to share the story behind one of his pictures with us, and it’s seriously cool.

Erik had the idea to incorporate his daughter into a shot, and what a shot it is. Taken in some dunes not far from Cape Canaveral, it depicts his daughter as an astronaut. Behind her, the $1.5 billion project soars across the night sky. The trajectory of this rocket, headed to the Sun, is a perfect arc. It all came from precision planning, and Erik has some hot tips to share with anyone planning to shoot rocket launches.

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Galaxy S20 Ultra suffers from “serious focusing” issues; Samsung pledges a fix, but no timeline

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Three weeks ago, we told you about the Samsung Galaxy S20 launch. Not all is bright in S20land though. Over those three weeks, quite a few users have been reporting on issues with the S20’s camera. The issues seem to mostly affect the high-end model, the Galaxy S20 Ultra.

The S20 Ultra boasts a 108-Megapixel sensor on the main camera, and a 48-Megapixels sensor on the 100x zoom camera. This phone, and the tech inside it, reecived some great hype. On paper, they are indeed extremely impressive, but twitter seems to be disappointed with the real-life results.

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