Free Macro Lens Rental for the Winner of October’s contest, “Food Photography”.

We’re going to run an extra contest in October with the theme “Food Photography”, which will run from Oct 1 - Oct 15.

I’m excited to announce that the winner of this contest will receive a free lens rental and the runner up will receive a free T-Shirt from LensRentals.com (specific details and restrictions are below).

Contest Rules

Image submissions will be accepted from October 1st - 15th.  Voting will be from the 16th to the 23rd. The winner will be chosen in the normal manner like the other contests.  Each member will be able to vote on their 4 favorite images and the picture with the most votes will be declared the winner.  In case of a tie, the picture with the highest score will be declared the winner.

Prizes

I’ve been in contact with LensRentals.com and they were impressed with The Lens Flare community.  Because of this, they’ve agreed to donate a 1 week lens rental to the winner of the contest and a T-shirt to the runner up. Since this theme is centered on macro photography, the prize will be among their macro lenses. The winner will be able to choose from the Canon 100, Sony 100, Nikon 105 Macro, or the Sigma 150 2.8 Macro in either the Nikon or Canon mount. LensRentals will cover the shipping cost.

Restrictions

1.  This contest is open to US Residents only. LensRentals.com can’t ship outside of the US because of shipping costs, customs duties, etc.  Here is a quote from their FAQ page - http://www.lensrentals.com/page/faq.

   Unfortunately customs duties, shipping costs, and legal issues make this impossible, even to Canada. (In fact, especially to Canada). Some of our Canadian customers living in border cities have shipped to FedEx pick up locations in the US and then driven the lens back across the border. To date we’ve had no trouble with this.

   I checked UPS.com for the price to ship from the US to New Zealand.  A 1 pound package without insurance shipped UPS Ground was $100, so I can see why they can’t ship to other countries.

   Because of this, only the people that are in the US or can receive packages in the US can enter this contest.  I will have a second contest running concurrently with the Food contest that will be available for all members.  The 2nd contest will not have a prize associated with it though.

   Other than the US, it seems that the majority of our members live in Canada, United Kingdom, Australia, and New Zealand. If anybody from these countries knows of a photography related company that will sponsor contests, I’d love to talk to them. I’d like to eventually be able to offer prizes for all members.

2. The winner will need to have access to a Nikon, Canon, or Sony DSLR camera that is compatible with one of the lenses listed above in the Prize section. If you don’t have access to one of these cameras, please don’t enter the contest.
3. The winner will need to write a review of the lens, which will be posted on TheLensFlare.com. For the benefit of everybody, it’ll be nice to have more information about the lens on The Lens Flare.  People often read reviews before deciding to rent or purchase lenses, so having it on the site will help everybody involved. The review doesn’t have to be long, but I’d appreciate it if you could take some sample pictures at different focal lengths and different apertures so that we can include it with the review.  It’s nice to see how a lens performs at its different settings.  I’ll work with you on this so don’t worry about it too much.
4. The winner will need to leave a credit card number on file with LensRentals.com for the duration of the rental.  This is to guarantee that the lens will be returned.  I’ve rented with them and had no issues to be concerned with.
5. The winner will have to agree to LensRentals.com’s rental agreement.

I’m announcing it early so that you’ll have plenty of time to come up with a great idea for Food Photography.  If all goes well, we’re going to try and have these contests about once a month with a different theme each time.

Thanks,

Brian Broderick
TheLensFlare.com

A few weeks ago, I went on a vacation to Montana’s back country, Yellowstone, and the Grand Tetons.

Yellowstone is known for it’s diverse wildlife including bear, elk, moose, bison, and deer. It’s located mostly in Wyoming while part of it is in Montana. There is also an elk refuge area near the Tetons on the outskirts of Jackson, WY, and we were with a great guide in Montana’s back country with the goal of photographing wildlife. We weren’t disappointed.

In Montana, we ended up seeing some large bucks, a few does, a bull moose, antelope, sage hens, etc. In Yellowstone, we saw many bison, a couple of huge bull elks, a bald eagle, and others. Overall, we were very happy with the variety of animals that we were fortunate enough to see, and we were able to capture images of several of them.

I don’t own a telephoto lens and I have little experience using them, but I knew that I’d need one to have a chance at getting a decent shot. We tried Yellowstone last year with a 28-80mm lens and was sorely disappointed with the results. The animals were simply too small in the photo.

After doing some research and getting recommendations on focal lengths, it seemed that I’d need a bare minimum of a 300mm lens, and most likely, I’d want one around 500mm.  500mm after the 1.5 magnifier of my DX camera (I have a Nikon D50) is the same as a 750mm lens or about 15 times the magnification of the normal human eye.  I wanted to shoot birds as well, if any happened to be near and many people recommended at least a 500mm lens for bird photography.

Solaria, one of TLF’s members, recommended a company called LensRentals.com. I tried them out and I couldn’t be more pleased with their professional service, price, and product.

Local photography stores wanted to charge $75/day to rent their lenses.  No thanks.  I needed the lens for at least 10 days and wasn’t about to fork over $750.

LensRentals.com rented me a Sigma 50-500mm lens for my Nikon for 14 days with insurance for $99.  The lens is huge and heavy, and my tripod isn’t strong enough to support the weight.  I’ve always wanted to try out a monopod, so I rented a heavy duty monopod for $30.  Shipping is a little expensive because the lens and monopod are heavy. They ship Fed Ex 2 day, and you pay for the return shipping at the same time. Shipping for both was around $60.  Bottom line is that I got my 500mm telephoto lens for 2 weeks for $193, which wouldn’t have even been 3 days worth at the local photography store.

I could have chosen a more expensive lens and paid a little more for it, but I’m considering buying the 50-500mm Sigma, where the other lenses are way out of my price range to purchase. Stay tuned for a review of the lens after I’ve had a chance to upload a few of the pictures I took of those animals.

LensRentals.com was wonderful to work with.  I received my lens on the day I specified.  The lens looked brand new.  The monopod had been used a few times, but it was in good working condition without any dings or problems (which is exactly what I expected).  They kept me well informed of the process and let me know when the items were shipped.  When I returned it, they let me know that they had received it.  It’s always a little scary to pay for something on the Internet from a company that you’re not familiar with, but I was very pleased with how everything turned out and highly recommend them to anybody that needs to rent a lens or camera equipment.  They can only ship to US residents, so keep that in mind.

I’ll rent from them again, even if it’s just to try out a lens before I buy it. I’d much rather spend a few dollars to know if the lens is right for me before I pay $500-$5000 for it.  Sure, anybody can go to the local camera store and try the lens there, but you only get so much out of shooting a couple of pictures in the store.  Having it for real life situations for a week or more at a time is the way to go.

Congratulations Jas for winning the Single Tree contest. The image depicted is of a lake in New Zealand with a single tree growing out of it. The lake is named Lake Wanaka. This place sure seems to be a wonderful solitary spot in which to reflect and relax. Great picture, Jas!

Congratulations goes to Donwrob for winning the Night Photography contest with
his image titled, Magic Moonlight Reflection. I’ve always liked the branches of that tree in front of the moon. Great job!

I’d like to thank you all for taking the time to fill out the survey.  You’ve provided a lot of great feedback, which will help me decide on new features to add to the site, where I can improve, and what you like about the website.

Here are the averages to the first 3 questions:

Overall Rating: 4.4 out of 5
Available Features: 4.2 out of 5
Responsiveness to your questions: 4.7 out of 5

In the survey, I asked whether or not you would like to be able to sell pictures from your TLF account and whether or not you would like to store full resolution images.  In both cases, the answer was an overwhelmingly “yes”.  Therefore, I will be working on adding both of those features in the coming months.

Along with the ability to upload full resolution pictures, I’ll be adding a way to password protect them so that they won’t be stolen. Essentially, it’ll become a way to backup your great photography to prevent catastrophe if your computer crashes.

With regards to selling prints from TLF, I’m working through a few business models to see what will work out the best for everybody and I’ll be in contact with some of you for suggestions and to fine-tune the plan.

Here are a few comments of what people had to say about The Lens Flare:

Recent changes have made the site much friendlier and easier to navigate.  I very much like the larger image option. - Alfresco

I think you’re doing a fantastic job across the board. The blog is great and the ‘tips’ and articles are very useful. I found everyone to be very helpful and that’s great for people new to photography, such as myself. - Jas

Well for me it’s a great site that I have made some very good friends over the years and also take photos a lot better then I did when I first joined. It has a much more friendly feeling then some of the other photo sites do. -Shutterbug

Personal service, fast response to queries, and a willingness to take suggestions seriously. Plus the extraordinarily robust programming that hardly ever reveals any bugs, which as I’ve said before is a spectacular achievement for a one-programmer production team! -SGBrown

Of all of the online art galleries that I belong to, this one has the most features and the friendliest staff. -Zoya

The true reward for building The Lens Flare is the fact that I’ve been able to meet and become friends with many of you.  I really appreciate you and it makes my day to know that so many people come to this site to view and share wonderful art and photography.  I’m looking forward to seeing your next great image.