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Two years ago I was lent the enormous SIRUI R-5241XL tripod to use in Namibia and subsequently review. I admitted in the conclusion that I had fallen in love with what I had dubbed “The Beast”. If there was one problem with the R-5241XL it was the sheer physical size of it. Every other aspect of the tripod was essentially an upgraded and improved version of the other carbon fibre tripods that are made by SIRUI. Now SIRUI have brought out the significantly smaller R-2214X tripod, which in theory takes all of the goodness that is the R-5214XL and squeezes it into a smaller and lighter package. In terms of competitors it is theoretically most similar to, as Hougaard Malan from landscapegear.co.za claims, compete directly with the more expensive and perennially popular Gitzo GT3543LS.
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As part of any landscape photographers kit, numerous filters are used to create different effects. The most popular of these filters is a circular polariser (used to cut out reflective light), but one filter every landscape photographer should have in their kit is a 10-stop ND Filter. A 10-stop ND helps slow everything down, increasing your exposure by 10 stops. For example, if you have a starting shutter speed of 1 second, adding a 10-stop filter will increase the shutter speed to 16 minutes. This opportunity to slow the world down increases the creative potential for the photographer in-field, adding another dimension to your arsenal.
Emil von Maltitz was one of the first people to take the dive on Laowa’s 12mm Wide Angle lens when they first launched on Kickstarter. We only started distributing Laowa in South Africa recently – his review is thus entirely objective. For the past year and a half he has used the lens all over Africa for a variety of genres including industrial, agricultural and landscape work and has put it through it’s paces. What makes this lens unique is that it is the widest rectilinear f/2.8 lens and also the only full-frame lens wider than 16mm that accepts a 100mm filter system. Not only that, but it’s priced at a fraction of the Nikon and Canon counterparts, yet beats them in almost every image quality criteria.
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Every adventure photographer living in South Africa dreams of going to remote locations where few people have ever been, in the search for something special, something to tick off the personal bucket list that you will forever remember. In November 2017 I was asked to join a group of veteran landscape photographers on a trip of a lifetime, a trip that might just be one of those legendary trips I dreamed of. We set out to plan a week long hiking and camping expedition to arguably the most impressive mountain range in Africa, the Drakensberg.
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Entries have closed for our NISI Filters Beauty of Water photography competition. Judging is under way and we have been able to select a top 39 images from all the received entries. We’re not quite sure how we ended at 39, but that seems to be where the cut off was for the final selection.
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