We also discuss the new Flickr, and why we think now is the perfect time to reinvigorate the Disney photography community on Flickr.

Nothing all that exciting for show notes this time, but if you have any questions, please post them in the comments!

We also go off on a variety of tangents having absolutely nothing to do with photography. Surprise, surprise.

The gang is joined by the world famous “Mearn” of the Duffyngton Post to discuss the inspirational and legendary Mater Topiary, and what you should expect when photographing this year’s Flower & Garden Festival.

We start out by covering the essential gear for nighttime photography, which is basically a remote and a tripod. For remotes, we use cheap wired remotes from Hong Kong–not the ridiculously overpriced first party ones. If the one at that link isn’t compatible with your camera, keep searching Amazon; you should be able to find one for <$15. You’ll want a wired remote for bulb mode shooting so you can “ghost” people out of your images.

For travel tripods, both Tom and Cory highly recommend the Luxi L Tripod. It used to go by the name Luxi F (only difference is color) and might now go by a totally different name. Basically, you want the one that’s ~63 inches tall.

We also discuss some other techniques, including manual focus and natural starbursts as a result of your aperture.

Then the show starts really getting awesome, as we discuss our favorite TV shows, alternate locations for Mater Topiary, and our Oscar picks.

At some point, Tom discusses editing in Adobe Camera Raw and Photoshop with Smart Objects. Here’s a great tutorial to supplement that.

Very little on Disney in this episode, although we do discuss how the various software might work well for Disney photos.

At the end of the episode, Tom goes on a tangent about murder-kittens. You can read more about this in the Washington Post, or in this hilarious cartoon.

Tom starts rambling on about how he uses presets in Adobe Camera Raw. Nothing important here. Cory mentions Matt Kloskowski, who has a lot of Lightroom presets.

Cory then asks about editing night images. Ryan discusses editing photos together to adjust white balance and saving photos as TIFFs before bringing them into Photoshop or Photomatix.

From there, we warned against taming highlights too much, increasing clarity too much, and increasing saturation instead of vibrance.

We concluded the episode by teasing next week’s episode, which will be a salute to the Nik software! Tom touched upon The HDR Book that he recently read.

We primarily focused on the Rokinon 8mm fisheye lens, which is highly recommended by all. Tom reviewed that lens here. We also discussed a full frame alternative to this lens, the Zenitar 16mm f/2.8 fisheye, although Tom remarked that the Rokinon 8mm will still work on full frame–you’ll just have to crop.

Corey mentioned the Rokinon 14mm f/2.8 manual focus lens, saying that it’s a great budget full frame wide angle lens. This lens generally gets high marks for sharpness and isn’t too difficult to focus.

Other lenses mentioned briefly include the Rokinon 35mm f/1.4 and the Rokinon 85mm f/1.4. Be warned, these lenses are more difficult to focus.

We also hit upon the newly-announced Rokinon Tilt/Shift lens. We’re all pretty excited about this one.

Thanks to Corey Dorsey for joining us on this episode. Check out his photos here.

This episode was brought to you by the former Soviet Union…and the new Walt Disney World and Disneyland Photo-a-Day apps!