After a recent play of photography at the airshow, I witnessed some photographers using a 2X teleconverter (TC) on their gear. Naturally, feeling a bit jealous that I couldn’t zoom in  as close with my 300mm I started looking at using the teleconverter, and while this discussion will continue again a few things to note:

• using a TC uses up light so you need to have a fast lens in place. For example a 2X Nikkor will work with a AF-S lens and maintain AF capability if the lens is a f2.8 so for those using a f4/5.4 70-300VR (a quite popular purchase) you are sadly stuck in manual focus land (which has issues).
• using a TC on an already long focal lens may actually be degrading to the image so ask around or test them yourself. You may need to pair a TC an long prime lens.
• a good TC isn’t cheap, and not all are compatible with your camera’s AF and metering, so do your research.

Thanks to my friend Greg, here’s a helpful PDF for you Nikon owners.

As many of us from the film camera days have found out, moving to the DSLR has brought many enahancements but also a big bane.. focusing aids for manual focus. I miss the old split prism focusing aid on an old Canon film camera I used to have, it just seems now with the DSLR’s even using AF assist in manual mode getting a great focus is hard to get.

Doing some searching I came across a couple of useful bits of information. First an article why manual focus isn’t easy, and also a company that makes split prism filters for your camera!

One of best planning tools you can use is a storyboard to roughly time out shots or plan camera views. A few resources for storyboard templates:

Animation Meat, Xinsight, or there are options for pre-printed stock.

In the future we will delve into storyboards in more detail. Enjoy the templates.

I do have two articles in the draft that are coming, but in the interim I had to pass this along. My good friend Andy (Phrenzy84) is blogging the progress of modeling and simulating a bee (fur and all, and I suspect it will be done in Houdini). Check this out, and be sure to hit up his blog.

Evolution of the Bee from Andrew on Vimeo.