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Android (top), DSLR (middle), and iPhone (bottom) cameras varying shutter speeds. Shutter speed, aperture, and ISO are the three core parameters controlling light.  Traditional cameras have a means to vary all three of those parameters while cell phones can only alter two.  Apertures are fixed in most cell phone cameras, usually around f/2 give or take a bit.  This poses a rather large problem when it comes to controlling shutter speed. Since traditional cameras have the ability to control aperture, they can vary shutter speeds by a wide margin.  In the center images above, I photographed a scene using a DSLR camera with a wide open aperture (left) and a small aperture (right).  This resulted in shutter speeds of 1/80th and o.4 seconds respectively.  The blurring effect that a slow shutter speed has on moving water is often striking, no less so in this case.  It is a technique I often use when photographing fast-moving water. Reproducing this effect is...

  While preparing to attend a friend's wedding, we drove by a field of sunflowers near Agassiz.  It turns out the farm was hosting the area's sunflower festival.  Intrigued, we stopped in to have a look and hopefully get some photos.  Unfortunately, access to the event came with a $20 charge per person, and I wasn't about to entertain spending $40 to get some photos of sunflowers.   Instead, we pulled off to the side of the road in front of the helianthus crop, and I got out of my truck.  Instead of shooting from the roadside, I stood on top of the truck rack above the box.  That put my camera about 11 feet off the ground.  I shot a panorama of the image which I later stitched together using Photoshop (above image).  It produced a whopping file comprised of over 100 million pixels.  A cropped section of the original image shows the amount of detail present (bottom image). So, other than risking life and limb by climbing on my truck'...

Crackling forest grasshopper taken with a 70-300 mm zoom and extension tube. Kit lenses are not known for their great versatility, especially when it comes to their macro function.  They are designed with the idea of being general-purpose lenses that are relatively inexpensive.  They typically have only a mild zoom range of 3 to 4 times.  Common kit lenses include the 18-55 and the 70-300 zooms.   If you have a camera system comprised of one or two of these lenses, consider adding an extension tube set to the mix.  Extension tubes are just that - tubes that contain no glass elements that you place between the lens and the camera, extending the lens away from the body.  A set usually comes with three tubes that can be used independently or stacked in any combination.   The upside of an extension tube is that it allows a lens to focus on a subject at much closer distances than would otherwise be possible.  I photographed the above image of...

While visiting my daughter at Sardis Park near Chilliwack, BC, I came across a blackberry bush that was equally flush with both fruit and bugs.  I used my cellphone camera (macro mode) to capture an image of the insect and loaded it onto my computer later.  It looked similar to the marmorated stink bug I had heard about but had some notable differences.  It turns out that it was the insect's 5th instar; it was one moult away from becoming an adult. Marmorated stink bugs are from Asia.  They didn't show up in North America until 2001 but have been breeding their way across the continent rapidly.  They showed up in Kelowna, where I live, a few years ago.  I was amazed by how many there were infesting the blackberry bush I was examining.  I can understand that such large populations could quickly overcome an otherwise healthy plant. According to the BC pest alert page (click here ), the insect feeds on a wide range of plants (over 100 listed) and has caus...