Hey everyone!  Today's topic is about camping in your backyard.  Yes, your backyard.  I know a lot of you haven't slept in the backyard since you were a kid.  But it can be fun and a good time to try out new equipment and work out all of the bugs that camping can bring.  This weekend had fantastic weather with highs in the 70's on Saturday and 80's on Sunday. The stay-at-home order is still in effect, and the state and national parks are closed for camping.  I've been itching to get out and do some camping and exploring, so I got in my truck and drove to the exotic place of my backyard.  Not too far so I saved on gas! LOL  I started to do some work on my teardrop camper (install a new battery), and I had to wire a separate light to my truck camper and go through the things that I really need in my camper and the things I don't. Then it was time to set up camp.  A hammock is my preferred way to sleep when I'm camping.  It's so comfortable, and I don't have to get on the ground to go to bed.  I'm getting older, and getting into a tent after a long day of hiking is harder to do than when I was younger.  So I got my car-camping hammock.  I have many hammocks. The one for backpacking that I made has a built-in, zippered bug net.  My other hammocks have bug nets that just drape over for protection from those pesky flying pests in the summer time.  For rain and sun protection, I placed a tarp over my hammock.  Again, I have many tarps:  two that can be used for summer use and two for winter with doors attached to keep out the wind and rain.  The one that I decided to use for my car camping is one of my winter tarps.  I can fold the doors out of the way to let the breeze blow through in the summer time, and if I need some privacy or to protection from the weather, I can use the doors.  I've got camp all set up!  Now the fun stuff starts.

My wife and I had planned to have a fire in our little fire pit, so I had to get some wood together and get our grill together for the first grill of the warm weather.  So now that all of the camp chores and setup are done, it's time for the fun stuff.  Well, there is nothing better than taking it easy in a hammock in the summertime under a shade tree with a slight breeze blowing.  You talk about good sleep!  It's awesome!  I had just dozed off when something startled me, a tap on my shoulder from underneath my hammock.  Forrest!  He wanted some attention and wanted to get in with me.  So I picked him up and got him in the hammock, and we both took a nap until some squirrels started chasing each other in the tree above us.  Of course Forrest freaked out and I let him out of the hammock.  Later, we grilled some burgers on the grill and they were great!  I don't know what it is about burgers on the grill that make them so good, but the grill does really make them taste great!  After cleanup, it was time to start the fire.  To tell you the truth, I'm not really good at doing fires, and when I go camping I rarely start a fire if I have to do it myself.  There is just a lot of work to do with fire wood collection, starting the fire, and feeding the fire through the night.  But this night it was my turn to tend to the fire. Starting the fire is the hard part.  I got some small twigs and stuff and tried to start the fire with some crunched-up paper, but no luck.  I remembered my Boy Scout training and got some cotton balls and some Vaseline and soaked the cotton balls in it.  I lit the balls and they burned for about 10 minutes, plenty of time to get the fire started.  Then it was just feeding the fire.  It turned out great and we had a good time sitting around the camp fire.  Finally it was bed time.  I haven't slept in the truck camper since I built it.  So tonight was the night.  Forrest and I went to bed in the back of the truck.  And it went okay.  I would have been more comfortable in my hammock, but I did get some sleep.  We woke up early like always and had breakfast.  

We had a good time camping out in the backyard.  The weather was great and a fun time was had by all.  So get out in nature and have some fun!  Keep shooting!

Hey Everyone! Today I'm going to talk about using prime lenses and my favorite ones.  Now this is not an original topic.  As a matter of fact, I was listening to one of my favorite podcasts, "The Digital Story" by Derrick Story, and his topic was Prime Time.  Here's the link Digital Story "Break out the Fast Glass"  And I kind  of just piggybacked off of it.  Fantastic podcast by the way if you're looking for some interesting camera topics.  

Prime lenses.  Well, I mostly shoot zooms for what I do with all the focal lengths in one neat package, but sometimes I just love a prime.  A long time ago, in the film days when you got an SLR camera, it always came with a 50mm prime lens on it and it was a good lens.  Prime lenses have many advantages to them. They have very sharp focusing, they usually have a wider aperture than zoom lenses do, and they are less expensive.  What's not to like?  Well, they are a little old school and not as convenient as zooms as you have to use your feet to fill up the frame by getting closer.  But I think zooms are fantastic.  And if you're in a stay-at-home situation, what better time to pull out those old primes and see things through new eyes.  Here is a list of my favorite prime lenses I have from shortest focal length to longest.  Now I have a crop sensor camera, so I will give the equivalent full frame focal distance also.

Rokinon 12mm f2.0 lens.  This little lens is a fantastic lens with very sharp results. This is the lens that I use mainly for astro photography and some wide-angle shots.  Its full frame equivalent would be 18mm.  This is a manual focus lens with manual aperture ring on lens.  Its action when focusing is very smooth and a dream to work with.  And to boot it is an inexpensive lens coming in at between $250 and $300.

Rokinon 24mm f2.8 lens.  This is another Rokinon lens made in Korea.  This is one of the lenses that I use for street photography with a full frame equivalent of 35mm.  This is a good lens for close quarters with a decent aperture. This lens is very light and the construction is good, but it does have a plastic feel to it.  This inexpensive lens is sharp, auto focusing and aperture is okay, and it comes in at $300.

Sony 35 f1.8 lens.  This is one of my favorite lenses and travels with me often along side my zooms as a lone prime in the bag.  This lens is super sharp and quick focusing, and auto aperture makes it great for street photography and general photography.  The build quality of this lens is great with a metal construction, but it's still lightweight.  It is a full frame equivalent of a 50mm.  Maybe that's why I like it, because the film cameras used to come with 50s on them.  This is a nifty 50 and comes in at $475.

The MetroCommuters waiting for the Metro in Washington DC. Sony 50mm 1.8.  This is probably one of my least used lenses, but it's great for portraits with a full frame equivalent of 75mm.  This lens has auto focusing and auto aperture and is sharp.  Its construction has more of a plastic feel to it, but for what I use it for it does great.  Coming in at $250, it's one of the cheapest lenses on the list.

Nikon 60mm f2.8D AF Micro Lens.  This is my macro lens.  This is a fantastic old lens that I've had for a while.  It's a full frame equivalent of 90mm, which makes it great for my crop sensor camera.  I have to use a Nikon to Sony Adapter and lose all of my auto focus and aperture.  It focuses smoothly with the focusing ring, and it has an aperture ring where I can dial in the aperture from 2.8 to 32.  You can still buy these new in the box for a little over $500, but I got mine used when I shot Nikon and just can't get rid of it. Kiwi

Notible Mentions- I do have a couple of lenses that I have used in the past that I want to give a quick shout out to, some from the film days and some from my Nikon days. 

Nikon 105mm 2.8 Macro lens. If you have Nikon cameras, you must have this lens for your macro work.  Just a stunning lens and sharp and built like a tank.

Nikon 75mm 1.8 Lens.  Super sharp and inexpensive.  I have shot some great shots with this lens, and when I sold it the person that bought it fell in love with it.  

Pentax 50mm 1.4 lens.  I got this lens on a Pentax MX 35mm film camera, and it's a great lens.  I still use it when I shoot film with my Pentax, and I have shot it with my Sony with an adapter. 

Chinion 135mm 2.8 lens.  This was the first lens I ever used besides the 50mm that came on my camera.  I got it from a friend and never got rid of it.  It's so old that it has a screw mount on it, and I have to use an adapter to make it into Pentax and then an adapter to put on a Sony.  I've only used it once or twice on digital cameras but truly loved  the quality I got out of it, and it was built like a tank.

So those are some of my favorite prime lenses, and I hope you can get excited about primes like I can and put one on and get out and shoot.

Hi Everyone!  This is a review of Luminar 4 and the editing possibilities that it brings.  As you know, I have been a true believer of Luminar from Skylum software for quite a while. I used Luminar 3 a lot for the AI (Artificial Intelligence) features and as sort of a mix between Lightroom and Photoshop.  With Luminar 4 even more AI is available with Sky Replacement and AI augmentation where you can insert objects like the moon or mountains or an airplane.  All of these adjustments can be done very easily with the click of a button and moving a slider to make adjustments.  I'm mainly a landscape photographer, but the portrait photographer uses lots of AI features also.  I use Luminar 4 instead of Photoshop mainly because of the ease of use.  I'm basically lazy, and Photoshop is a very powerful and complicated program.  You can do all of the things you can do in Luminar in Photoshop, but it's very complicated, very hard to do, and time consuming.  So I use Luminar.  Let me go over some features of Luminar 4.

Basic Editing-  Luminar 4 can do all of the basic editing that Luminar 3 can do from crop to basic light adjustments, all done with sliders.  There are also AI sliders that will analyze your photo and correct mistakes such as contrast, exposure, etc.  Presets are also available to help edit your photographs.  With the touch of a button, you can add the preset to your photo, and if you don't like it you can make adjustments to the preset to make it stronger or weaker.  Landscape enhancer - you can enhance the color of foliage and really make them pop.  All of these adjustments can be made under the Essentials tab that is on the right of the editing panel.

Creative Tab- This tab is where most of the landscape editing is done. This is where the AI Sky Replacement is done.  This is a fantastic feature!  You can take a ho-hum photo with a blank sky and replace it with a more interesting sky.  Luminar 4 has some to choose from, and you can use your own and make custom skies.  Luminar does a good job of replacing the skies and masking out all the other things that are not skies. Also, AI Augmentation is under this tab.  You can insert objects into the photograph with this feature -- clouds, birds, airplanes, mountains, or almost anything.  Of course Luminar has some ready for you to use, but you can use your own objects also.  This is a very cool feature.  You can be very creative, and it usually just takes a click and a swipe of the slider and you're golden.

Portrait- This tab has lots of editing tools to help the portrait photographer.  First, there is the AI Skin Cecille Head Shot 2 Enhancer where you can smooth out skin, and only the skin, but not take away the texture of the skin so it doesn't look like plastic or fake.  Under the AI Portrait Enhancer you can lighten the face to make it stand out, use red eye removal, eye whitening, eye enhancer, dark circles remover, slim face, enlarge eyes, improve eyebrows, teeth whitening, and lip enhancements.  All of these can be done with the click of a button and the swipe of a slider to make them the way that you want them to look.  I haven't used these too much, but I did use them on some older portraits and they worked great!  I was very impressed and am looking forward to taking some more portraits.

Professional Tab- In the Professional Tab you can use Advance Contrast to enhance the highlights, mid-tones, and shadow contrast separately.  You can use the Adjustable Gradient like you would in Lightroom.  With the Dodge and Burn you can use a brush and paint to dodge and burn.  Color Enhancer can make the photo warmer or cooler.  I haven't used this tab too much, but it looks like it will work very well.

You can start in Lightroom, export a copy of your photos with Lightroom adjustments to Luminar 4, and when you're done you can apply all of your changes and they will show up in Lightroom beside the original photograph.  Then you can export to whatever program or Facebook just like you usually do from Lightroom.  I really do like this program, and it makes some very interesting images.  So check it out.  It's a one-time buy just like Luminar 3, and it's under $100.  This is great software with lots of value and bang for your buck.  If you like creating, Luminar 4 is a great choice for photo editing.  So get out and shoot and have some fun!