Landscape Photography

Landscape photography can be considered as one of famous or popular genre for most photographers. To get a good photo, you need to follow all the rules of composition such as the Rule of the Third; place the important subject at the intersection of two lines that dividing your photo into 3 segments. Although obeying the rules is good step, to get good photo, you special lens for that purposes. For landscape, most useful focal length is from 16mm -35mm. But the focal length can fool you because the true focal length is depends on what type of sensor camera that the lens is attached to. For example, if you are using Canon lens L 16mm-35mm, when attached to a cropped sensor camera body such as Canon 60d, you need to multiply the focal length with 1.6. Therefore, your widest true focal length is 16mm*1.6 = 25.6mm, which is not so wide. So be careful when buying a lens.

Usually to differentiate what type of lens is suitable for a particular camera body, the Canon, or example mark the lens with EF-S. EF-S is the lens that is suitable for cropped sensor. For full-frame sensor, Canon will mark their lenses with EF only. Therefore, if you are using Canon 60d(cropped sensor), please look for EF-S lens. Myself, i am using 10mm-18mm EF-S lens. Therefore, my true focal length is 16mm - 28.8mm.

Another essential tool for landscape photography is the tripod. This is vital since, most of the photos will be taken in low light conditions such as during sunrise and sunset. Why sunrise and sunset??? this is because, it is the only time or period that we can get plenty of colors in the sky. Moreover, during that period, the temperature is ideal and not so hot. So the photographer can take photos with peace. The tripod must be sturdy and a brand that always associate themselves with photography is Manfrotto, from Italy. The price is quite high and if you tempting to get their carbon based tripod, the price can be up to MYR 1,500.00. Right now, i am using Manfrotto aluminum based tripod. The price is moderate around MYR 700++ and there is little choice of tripod to purchase at that time. Now, there are a lot of tripod brand that can be selected. Some of them are value for money, cheap but sturdy. These tripods are Jusino, ProFoto and Beike. Their carbon based price is also very tempting too.

The last tool, is the ND filter. This is especially the Gradual ND filter; it function is to balance the exposure so that a good exposure can be obtained. Some of photographer may disagree with me because the perfect exposure photo can be blend using computer software. The well-known filter is LEE, Singh-Ray, Haida, NiSi and others.