About Paul Monaghan

Creative photographer based in Scotland, Sigma UK Ambassador.

The tiny light that can; an INSSTRO C1 RGB LED review

February 9, 2020 by Paul Monaghan 3 Comments

Light – the most important thing in photography. Without it, we have nothing but darkness. Some of us like to capture and bend the natural light to our needs. While others love to craft a scene with artificial lights.

If you love adding in your own light then its a nice time to be a photographer. Lights are getting smaller, more complex and often include their own power. Freeing us from wires and bringing more creative freedom.

My second RGB capable LED was the INSSTRO C1, and this is what I’ll talk about today.

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This is how you use filters on wide angle lenses; Haida M15 filter holder review

January 30, 2020 by Paul Monaghan 2 Comments

If there is one thing I have grown to love about photography, it is the ability to capture, control, and manipulate time. Photography is giving us the option to see things in ways that are impossible to achieve with our naked eyes. This opens up a whole new world of creative options.

While cameras do offer us a fair amount of control using ISO, shutter, and aperture, we sometimes need to look at other options to get extremely long exposures. This is particularly true where there is a lot of light around. Add that to the wide shots you can get with a Sigma 14-24mm weird construction, and you soon realize the need for something like the Haida M15 filter holder system.

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Are graduated neutral-density filters really useful?

January 19, 2020 by Paul Monaghan 14 Comments

For a few years now I have been using various different filters. I mostly use them to reduce the overall light coming into the camera or to help control reflections. It seems though I always overlooked one type of filter: the graduated neutral-density filters (ND Grad for short)

I honestly thought that graduated neutral-density filters wouldn’t work very well in the real world. While they offer a reduction of light on selective parts of your image, they do so in horizontal lines. Sure, I can use this to cut the light out in the sky, but what about buildings, trees or other landscape elements that go “across the line” like the tree in the image above?

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Keeping it small, using rear filters for the Sigma 14-24 f2.8 Art DG DN

January 9, 2020 by Paul Monaghan 4 Comments

A while ago Sigma joined the L mount alliance along with Panasonic and Leica. Although it wasn’t really till recently that we started to see the true results of this collaboration when Sigma released their new fp camera. They also released several “designed for mirrorless” lenses like the 14-24 f2.8 Art DG DN. Those lenses are both smaller and lighter than their DSLR counterparts.

One of the new features of the 14-24f2.8 Art DG DN lens is the built-in rear filter holder. It allows you to lock in a gel filter, which you can cut using the template provided with the lens.

This is a relatively inexpensive way to reduce the amount of light coming into the camera. I used to cut ND gels to fit into my MC-11 adaptor and while they worked, the gels could easily scratch, bend and crease, while also reducing image quality a little. I don’t know, maybe it was the particular ND gel I used.

What if you wanted something that is more durable with better optical performance, but without needing a huge 150mm filter system to attach onto the front of the lens?

Introducing the Kase rear filter set designed exclusively for the Sigma 14-24 f2.8 Art DG DN.

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