Instagram Winners - Dark
/No colors (or colours if you're Scott) anymore, I want them to turn black, and you guys did this week with our dark challenge. From clever dark chocolate and a holocaust memorial to underwater cave snorkeling you guys didn't pull any punches this week. We had almost 200 photos to choose from making it a hard choice to pick our winners.
Winners this week were chosen by Scott and Roy.
You can find all the past challenges on the PRTV page along with next week’s challenge #prtv_motion. Time to practice your slow shutter speeds. We're looking for a bit of motion in your photos! To enter post your photos on Instagram before noon next Friday with the tags #prtv and #prtv_motion.
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And the team!Toby – Photorectoby Scott – photoscott88 Roy – RoyMcKeeIII
Scott's Winner: https://www.instagram.com/p/BIpto8xBkWd/This jumped right off my feed - a fantastic self portrait.I love the way it's composed and lit. It's crunchy and sums up the dark and moody look. Well done!Scott's Honorable Mentions:https://www.instagram.com/p/BIeRLSth_fm/Beautifully composed abstract shot - this is very pleasing to the eye - I love the way the light get blocked and reflected by different elements of the object.https://www.instagram.com/p/BInj-38g0tD/Awesome Panorama! This really pops off the screen for me, I like the light creeping over the horizon leading you up to the stars.Roy's Winner: https://www.instagram.com/p/BIgWiadjmm1/Dark clouds and mountains contrast the tiny bit of light from the city making for a great moody dark photo. I like the red sunset as it adds a nice horizon peaking through the clouds.Roy's Honorable Mentions:https://www.instagram.com/p/BIvSvf8gveW/Heather's use of playing with marbles in a blacked out background make for a great dark shot. Using blue to go with the dark background makes for a great shot.https://www.instagram.com/p/BIlW_fcBvEV/Something I had in mind for the challenge was seeing silhouettes. Denae has a great location and subject with the dark theme giving it a great look. My one issue would be the light stand which could have been removed digitally or just held in place with gaffers tape.
The #1 way to improve as a photographer is to get out and take some photos, review your photos and repeat.Sometimes you need a fresh eye, a professional photographer's eye, to help you see what could be improved upon in future photos - I am here to help!
The best budget telephoto lens! After getting your new camera and kit lens you may want to look for another lens. As lenses are the best investment one suggestion would be the Canon EF-S 55-250mm f/4-5.6 IS STM. After the 18-55 or 18-135mm kit lenses this covers the other half of your range allowing you the focal length and distance you need to get your shot. For the price and sharpness it's the best in the market, and a far better choice than the older Canon 70-300mm usm that's still packaged with camera bundles. [gallery td_select_gallery_slide="slide" ids="11917,11933,11915,11922,11920,11934,11931,11932,11929,11928,11919,11914"] 
[/himage]BracketingThe GX80 comes with several bracketing options. For focus bracketing (focus stacking) for example you can configure how many images you wish to have and the step size for the focus. This feature seems to work very well when importing into Adobe PhotoShop and using the stacking functionality. The GX80 also offers aperture bracketing and WB bracketing.Viewfinder/Touchscreen DisplayThe electronic viewfinder (EVF) is taken straight from the GX7, however on the GX80 it no longer tilts upwards. It has a diopter setting on the right hand side and is a 2764K high resolution unit with 16:9 aspect ratio and 0.7x magnification. Some people report seeing rainbow patterns due to the field-sequential LCD used in this viewfinder.The rear 3″ display is tiltable as per the GX7 – 90° looking down onto it and about 45° looking upwards. It is not fully articulated, which I personally prefer. It seems better than the one on the GX7, especially in sunlight. The GX80 has a 60 FPS refresh rate which makes LiveView look very smooth, but may come with the cost of reduced battery life.Wi-FiWi-Fi is pretty much unchanged from the GX7 implementation however, the GX80 lacks NFC capability. With Wi-Fi you can connect to your mobile phone, using the Panasonic Image App, or your computer. When using the app you can copy photographs locally to your phone or use it as a remote control for your camera. Performance is pretty good when I tested it with the iPhone 6s Plus. It is also possible to setup a share on your computer and send your photos to it. Using LightRoom it is then possible to monitor this share and emulate tethering functionality – however I found this to be incredibly slow, probably due to the USB 2.0 port on the camera.Battery/ChargingThe GX80 does not come with a charger. You have to charge the battery in camera via the supplied USB cable. If you were thinking of having an external battery pack plugged in then you will be disappointed as you cannot use the camera whilst it is being charged this way. I purchased a couple of extra third party batteries and a charging cradle for about 20€. Whilst I was shooting at this years Comic-Con in Germany I noticed that the camera body had gotten quite warm and the third party battery only lasted for about 50 shots. With the official Lumix battery it was considerably better, however after my previous experience I was being extremely careful and ensuring that I turned off the camera if I wasn´t shooting for any length of time. I also turned down the display brightness and changed its refresh rate to 30 instead of 60.ConclusionThis is a fun little camera with a micro four thirds sensor that has a few niggles, but nothing onerous. It offers really nice image quality for photos and 4K video as well as a whole host of interesting little extras for a very good price. The dual IS system is amazing, easily on par with Olympus´s system and probably a taste of things to come with the GH5. The GX8 has a few advantages over the GX80 – namely the 20MP sensor, weather sealing and a mic input. However in Europe the GX8 is still a fairly expensive camera coming in at over 1000€ body only. The GX80 is currently priced at 699€ with the 12-32mm kit lens and is far better value for money. For me the GX80 features easily make it a better choice over the GX8.
More info and Official Press release belowSony Releases Full-Frame FE 50mm F1.4 ZA Prime LensA quintessential wide-aperture 50mm “normal” lens, the new ZEISS® Planar F1.4 offers high resolution, high-contrast and overall exceptional performance SAN DIEGO, 
There is a function in Photoshop called blend modes. Typically this is how one layer effects the layers under it. In this case we need the brighter part of the photo to stay but to get rid of the darker background. This is done with lighten. Lighten takes whatever it’s layer has that is brighter than the layers under it and displays only that information. It can be found by clicking the normal blend mode in the layers panel and scrolling down.
In a bit more of a basic example here is a white, 50% grey, and black firework. When turned to lighten blending mode on 30% grey the two darker colors disappear while the white stays. What we’re doing is the same to hide the background and only show the firework. 
