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I thought I would continue writing about some interesting photography forums that I’ve found. FredMiranda.com has a nice forum.

This is a general purpose forum. It has gear discussion, photo assignments, contests, and critiques.

Not all posts seem to get responses, yet it does seem to be a very active forum with very helpful members.

The main attraction for me there is the Alternative Gear & Lenses Forum I always can find something to sink my teeth into when considering alternative gear. There’s some great stuff there including using older Pentax or Minolta lenses on newer Canon bodies and things like that.

It also has Nikon and Canon SLR forums as well as one for pro digital photography.

The site includes a store, articles and essays, and software plug-ins for sale. I have not purchased anything from them, however. I’ve only gone there to read the forums.

It’s worth checking out.

I can’t believe I haven’t posted anything about John Shaw here in the past. He was extremely influential to me in my late teens and 20s. He published Closeups in Nature, the Nature Photographer’s Complete Guide to Professional Field Techniques, and Focus on Nature.

I devoured those books and my wife and I spent all of our time hiking with my Minolta and a Bogen tripod. Those books caused me to get extension tubes, focusing rails, and really get active in nature photography and macro photography.

Anyway, here’s a video of John Shaw talking some about his digital photography, Nikon cameras and lenses, and his workflow.

Webisode #3 is up at Zacuto’s Great DSLR Shootout. This is very cool stuff. If you have any interest at all in video, the hour and a half or so to watch these to see what the big guns think is worth your time. If nothing else, look at the video shown in the last 5 minutes of the 3rd episode to see what a Canon 7D can do. It’s jaw dropping good.

This year’s lineup: Canon 7D, Canon 5D Mk II, Canon T2i, Canon 1D Mk IV, Nikon D3s, and Panasonic GH1.

To see products made by Zacuto, click here
Some examples are the Zacuto Z-Grip and the Zacuto Z-Finder