Today Matthew Luttmer shares his experience of buying his first prime lens – a 50mm (sometimes known as a ‘nifty 50′).

It’s true. There is only 50mm separating you from the photos you always wanted to take. Of course it is a 50mm prime lens that is between you and your goal. All the happy owners of this wonderful lens will testify on its behalf as to how their skill where strengthened by this marvel.

I got a 50mm prime lens this summer (a Nikon 50mm 1.8D AF), wanting a lens that was sharp and cheap. Little did I know how much I would improve as a photographer for it. Excited with my purchase, I immediately rushed to try it out.

“Wow this thing is weird!”. “I have to move to compose my shot?”. Not to sure how I was going to like this new lens. I moved forward and back, side to side and “Gasp” all the way around my subject to get a composition that wasn’t going to make my eyes bleed, on viewing the LCD. Click. Wow that’s better than a stick in the eye. Lets try another. Compose, move, compose, move again. On and on this dance went until I saw that certain something that made my subject compelling. I let the shutter fall like the guillotine it is, shaving off a piece of time an tucking it away to devour later at my computer.

After firing off my 21 exposure salute to the day. I sat on a bench and began to thumb my way through the fodder I thought I was taking. Hey! Wait a minute. These aren’t my usual boilerplate shots. There is something different about them. There is more contrast, the composition could make a diamond out of coal, they look almost 3d. Just about every image was holding my attention and my eye was not falling out of the picture like I tend to fall out of bed in the morning (groaning and complain). I… took… good pictures!!!!

Well it wasn’t like I became better over night. I had taken some pretty good shots in the past with the lenses I had before. The difference was, just about all the shots I had taken that day where not just better than pedestrian, they where ahead of the curve!

I realize now why I find this lens to be so magical. Its not because Gandalf blesses them as they roll down the line at the factory. It is because it forced me to compose each and every shot by moving and recomposing. The result was better composition. Great composition is what makes great photos. You can take a photo of the most uninteresting thing and it will burn through the viewers eyes with good composition. The 50mm prime helped me get off my ass and showed me a better way to take a photo. It was not easier, in fact it was much harder. In this day of making our lives easier the camera companies have tied our hands to the chain of mediocrity. The zoom.

Leica this week announced their new Leica M9 Digital Rangefinder – a camera that many will lust after but few will afford. Priced at around $7000 USD this is not a camera that most will be realistically be putting on their Christmas wishlist but it’s certainly a camera worth us taking a moment to profile.

Leica are promoting it as the world’s first full frame digital rangefinder camera – of course there’s not a lot of competition, not many manufacturers are making rangefinders these days. It’s also the smallest full frame camera currently available.

The Leica M9 takes most Leica M lenses, has a shutter speed of 1/4000 to 32 seconds, 2.5 inch LCD, ISO of up to 2500 and has an 18 megapixel CCD sensor (developed by Kodak).

Expect this camera to be impeccably crafted – I’ve had an opportunity to ‘play’ with it’s predecessor (the M8) and it was simply beautiful. Leica does = Luxury, Craftsmanship and Refinement, but you pay for it.

Keep in mind that this is a Rangefinder not a DSLR – when lining up the shot you’re not looking through the lens itself but a separate focusing screen. The system does have some advantages (smaller and quieter – less moving parts etc) but it does taken a certain skill to use one as there’s no auto-focus, there are fewer options with telephoto lenses etc.

Rangefinders are one of those types of cameras that you either love or hate – but then most of us will simply have to admire the M9 from afar.

If you have a spare $6995 – Pre-Order the Leica M9 at Amazon.

We hope to post a review of the Leica M9 when they become available.

Looking for a great Photo Printer? James Gapinski from Just Suppositions shares some tips on how to choose one.

Introduction:

Digital photo printers are not only convenient, but they can also save you money on reproduction costs in the long-run. In the short-run, however,you’ll need to spend a couple hundred dollars to get a decent printer, and it can take months for your photo reproduction savings to add up. In order to make sure this expensive purchase is well-worth it, you need to consider several factors when buying a new photo printer.

Types of Printers:

When comparing printers, you need to keep in mind that there are two basic types. The most common type is the ink jet photo printer; this type is useful if you plan on multi-purposing the printer for document usage. Ink jet photo printers can serve as holistic home printers, letting you print Web pages, text files, and other digital media alongside your photographs.

Dye sublimation printers, on the other hand, are designed only for photography reproduction, and these printers rarely work well when repurposed for printing text documents. Dye sublimation printers produce high-quality glossy prints, ideal for professional photographers. While these printers often create the best quality photos, they are much more expensive and therefore only recommended for people who plan on doing a lot of photo printing at home. For most photographers, lower cost ink jet printers will work just fine.

Claims. Claims. Claims. This time Olympus promotes the E-620 as the “world’s smallest and lightest digital SLR to incorporate an image stabilizing mechanism.”

The camera’s Four Thirds system offers not only a small and light camera but means that extras like additional system lenses, battery holder and underwater housings are also smaller and lighter. The camera weighs just 475 grams (without battery). Light.

In the company’s current five model array the Olympus E-620 sits squarely in the middle.

I believe Canon was the first to do it: use white to identify a photographic product, especially some of its lenses. Now Pentax takes it further and splashes white onto one of its DSLR models.

The original PENTAX K2000 (also known as the K-m in some parts of the world) DSLR arrived on the scene late in 2008 — and it was black. Then many were surprised to see a limited edition, white version of the camera just a few months later. And it sure is a nice looking camera.

White, they tell us, is an ideal colour for cameras used in the hot outdoors because of its reflective capacity. But, for me, a white camera solves one of my persnickety grumbles: the visibility of external controls and their function labels. The black buttons and text IDs just leap off the snowy-white camera. Problem solved.