I have just published episode #89 of my Wild Nature Photography Podcast. In this episode, I review Vincent Munier’s new retrospective masterpiece ‘Munier’. In case you just want the executive summary: If you have a passing interest in wildlife photography, you must buy this book. Available online through Vincent’s store.
I am excited to announce that the Czech Republic company, Mr Jan Gear, has appointed me as one of their 2024 Global Ambassadors. Being an ambassador for this Czech company is close to home for me since my father was born in Slovakia, right next door. The company is perhaps best known for their groundbreaking floating hides that facilitate water-level photography of birds. However, they also make the incredible Boris camera backpack, which is the first I have seen that allows me to carry a 600mm lens with a body attached and still meet airline carry-on requirements. Over the years, I have used countless camera bags, backpacks, hard travel cases, etc. None of them are perfect and each is suited to a specific purpose. The Boris fits a niche for me when I am working in the field in difficult conditions and need to carry my cameras already connected to long telephoto lenses. I will have more to say on the Boris (including a full review) at a later date. I am also going to test one of their floating hide systems later this year. In addition to the floating hide system and Boris, Mr Jan Gear has a range of other bags and accessories you can check out online HERE. And you just have to love a camera accessory company that takes coffee into the equation!
I have just published Episode #88, Season 4, of my Wild Nature Photography Podcast. In this episode, I retrospectively look back at the travel and workshops from 2023 and dive into the 2024 year of travel ahead. During the year 2023, I guided twelve different workshops and expeditions around the world, as well as several private workshops and multiple print and processing workshops. Links to the 2023 Trip Reports are included below. My book pick of the year is Vincent Munier’s new masterpiece ‘Munier’ (Podcast review coming very soon) and my gear pick of the year is the Canon RF 100-500mm lens. Also included is the news of an exciting new ambassadorship appointment with Mr. Jan Gear (I will have more to say on that topic in a future blog post). Lastly, my favourite photographs from 2023 can be seen online HERE.
Back in late 2023, I did an extensive first impressions review of the BenQ SW272U 4K Adobe RGB photographic monitor. Since then, I have been using the BenQ SW272U exclusively in my photographic studio for the post-production work of all my photography, and I wanted to do a follow-up review with my thoughts on this impressive display now that I have actually lived with and used it extensively. Specifically, I want to talk about the importance of Adobe RGB for the colour space of the display and the importance this brings to tonal gradation in photographs that include snow and ice. Or, indeed, photographs that include extensive tonal gradation of any colour. This applies to sports photographers who are shooting green fields, nature photographers like myself working with large areas of the same colour, or indeed any photographer who values the tones and tonal relationships in their photographs (and that should be all of them!).
A BRIEF HISTORY OF ADOBE RGB: First, let us talk a little bit about what Adobe RGB actually is and where it came from: The Adobe RGB (1998) colour space is a colour space developed by Adobe Inc. in 1998. It was designed to encompass most of the colours achievable on CMYK colour printers, but by using RGB Primary Colours on a device such as a computer display. The Adobe RGB (1998) colour space encompasses roughly 50% of the visible colours specified by the CIELAB colour space – significantly improving upon the gamut of the SRGB colour space (the colour space of the web), primarily in cyan-green hues. It was subsequently standardized by the IEC as IEC 61966-2-5:1999. Although Adobe RGB is an older colour space by today’s modern standards, its importance has not diminished and has actually increased in recent times with the improvements in display technology.
WHY IS ADOBE RGB IMPORTANT: Put about as simply as possible, Adobe RGB offers a bigger bucket of colour than SRGB. Perhaps the best analogy is to think of Adobe RGB as a 256-piece colour crayon set, whereas SRGB only comes with 128 colour crayons. You, therefore, get more colour depth and options with Adobe RGB. And who doesn’t want more colour options? With more green colours to choose from, more tonal gradation can be visually displayed by the display device. More tonal gradation means more life-like photographs. It also means better prints!
BUT WHAT ABOUT BIT DEPTH: Although the Adobe RGB (1998) working space provides significantly more colours than SRGB, another factor to consider when choosing between colour spaces is how each space influences the distribution of the image’s bit depth. Colour spaces with larger gamuts (such as Adobe RGB) “stretch” the bits over a broader region of colours, whereas smaller gamuts concentrate these bits within a narrow region. If you need an analogy, think of ‘bits’ as salt flakes. In an SRGB colour space, you put those salt flakes on one dinner plate. In an Adobe RGB colour space, you stretch those flakes over multiple dinner plates. Thus, the more bits you have to share across the plates in the Adobe RGB colour space, the better. You can have plenty of “spare” bits if using a 16-bit image, thus negating any reduction due to the choice of working space. That is why it’s not a good idea to use an 8-bit JPEG file as your master file. Compression aside, you don’t have sufficient bits for the larger working space.
BENQ SW272U DISPLAY PERFORMANCE: Now that we have established why we want to use Adobe RGB as our colour space and why we want to use a 16-bit Tiff file or PSD (I prefer Tiffs as they are not proprietary to Adobe) as our master file, we can move onto a discussion about the performance of the BenQ SW272U Adobe RGB 4K Photographic display. Just as an aside, don’t get confused about RAW files. Until a RAW file is demosaiced, it does not have an effective colour space. The selection of Adobe RGB or SRGB on your digital camera only applies to any JPG files you take – not RAW files. The preview you see of the RAW file on your camera is a jpeg, and its colour rendition is limited to the capabilities of the individual LCD display on your camera. That is why it is a very bad idea to make colour judgements simply by looking at the image displayed on the back of your camera. You need to get the RAW file onto your computer and view the file on a high-quality Adobe RGB-capable display. Enter the BenQ SW272U Photographic Display.
With its wide colour gamut and superb luminosity, the BenQ SW272U displays smooth, accurate colour and tonal transitions. Subtle detail and shade are rendered with exquisite care by this display. When working with images that contain snow and ice, the tonal transitions are often extremely subtle and are lost by most consumer displays (especially laptop displays and tablets). Such displays just show these areas as one shade of white or grey and are incapable of displaying the subtle nuances of the photograph. If you have never worked on a high-quality display such as an SW272U, you may not even know what you are missing. You will, however, be absolutely amazed at how much information is contained in your photographs when viewed on a high-quality, properly calibrated photographic display. Such a comparison is usually a complete revelation to the photographer. I have fielded countless comments over the years from photographers who have moved from poor-quality displays to high-quality displays who are simply dazzled by the difference they make. Put simply, a high-quality photographic display such as the SW272U should be the first thing any photographer purchases after their camera. If you are new to photography and just starting out, don’t make the mistake of thinking you can ‘get by’ with your laptop or old desktop display. Whilst these may work in displaying your photographs, they will not even come close to displaying their full glory.
Over the last weeks and months, I have been making a lot of direct comparisons between calibrated laptop displays (such as my expensive Apple Laptop XDR display) and the BenQ SW272U for displaying images with extensive snow and ice. In all instances, the BenQ shows significantly more tonal transition information than the laptop display. In many cases, the laptop display fails to show any tonal variation in the snow and ice, with images appearing just solid white or grey. Side-by-side, the BenQ SW272U shows wonderful tonal transitions in the same scenes that bring all the subtleties of the scene to bear. The net result is an image that is far more life-like and that beautifully displays the soft tones in the image. If you want to see and experience the full detail of your RAW files then you absolutely need and will want a display such as the SW272U. Of course, such advantages are not limited to images with ice and snow but apply to all colour (and B&W!) photographs.
Perhaps best of all, and as I discussed in my initial review of the SW272U, the new PMU or Pallete Master Ultimate software is the easiest and most intuitive software I have yet come across for calibrating displays. BenQ is to be commended for taking what was traditionally overly complex and confusing software that was full of technical terms that baffled most users and for making it into a streamlined, simple process with a clean and easy-to-understand user interface. It may seem trivial, but the user experience during calibration plays a large role in end-user happiness and BenQ have nailed this aspect. Bravo BenQ!
CONCLUSION: The BenQ SW272U gets my highest recommendation for bang vs. buck for performance. You can spend thousands of dollars more on alternative brands that offer performance no better (and in some cases, not even as good as the SW272U. It also gets top marks for its overall performance, regardless of price. In fact, taking price completely out of the equation, I believe the BenQ SW272U to be the current best choice in the market for photographers looking for the highest levels of performance. With its wide Adobe RGB gamut, superb luminosity, and ability to render subtle tonalities with starting depth and clarity, it makes for an open-and-shut case for any photographer looking to get the best from their photographs. And that’s all of them – right?
In January of 2024, I ran an expedition to Mongolia’s far eastern Steppe region to find and photograph the stunningly beautiful, rare and enigmatic Pallas Cat. This was my third expedition to this remote region of Mongolia, and it proved no less productive than the previous two (Read the 2023 Trip Report).
The camp where we based ourselves to find and photograph Pallas Cats resides in Mongolia’s far eastern Steppe region, nearly 700 kilometres from the capital, Ulaanbaatar. We used three large 4-wheel drive vehicles to reach the camp and to search for cats in the field. In good conditions, the drive is around 8-10 hours. The drive took us nearly twelve hours this year due to heavy snowfall. This year, I am including more behind-the-scenes photographs in the trip report to help paint a better picture of the overall experience of visiting and living in this remote region.
Widely unknown by many, the Pallas cat is a small wildcat roughly the size of a domestic house cat that is found in Mongolia, parts of China, Russia and Tibet. Typically, it is an ambush hunter living off small rodents such as vols. Unlike most cats that have an elliptical pupil, what makes the Pallas cat unique and special is its round pupils. Affectionately known as the ‘Grumpy cat’ by many, Pallas cats always tend to have an annoyed look that is undoubtedly part of their charm and appeal.
For 2024, Mongolia’s far east Steppe region has been buried under heavy snow, making for absolutely ideal conditions for finding and photographing Pallas Cat. Most years, the snow coverage is sparse in this region, and it is not uncommon for there to be little or even no snow. The lack of snow makes for easy driving conditions but can be problematic for photography. This year, the reverse proved true, with outstanding conditions for winter photography and adverse driving conditions that slowed us down on more than one occasion.
Over the week-long expedition, we photographed approximately six different Pallas Cats and sighted another half dozen or so as we traversed the landscape in our 4-wheel drives. Pallas cats can be challenging to distinguish, so it is impossible to be sure of the exact number of individual cats we sighted. Our local guides again showed their eagle-vision superpower of spotting the small cats at huge distances across the landscape. Finding Pallas cats in the vast, seemingly endless Steppe region would be impossible without their skilled eyes.
During this expedition, we also had a fantastic photographic encounter with a Corsak fox. This encounter was the first time in my visits that I could get close enough to Corsak Fox to photograph them. Completely relaxed, the fox allowed us to get close enough to fill the frame with a 600mm lens and a 1.4 teleconverter. Typically, the foxes in this region of Mongolia run away before you can get out of the car. This particular fox was found quite close to a nearby small village, and I suspect it was somewhat habituated to human activity. Nevertheless, it proved an incredible encounter.
During the trip, we also saw many raptors, including the Upland Buzzard (a fantastic black morph was also sighted), Golden Eagle, Saker Falcon, and the Cinereous Vulture.
Our final encounter for the expedition provided terrific images of a Pallas cat in backlight just as the winter sun was setting. This encounter was to be our last shoot for the trip, with the following day being lost to a snowstorm with poor visibility and high winds. In these sorts of conditions, Pallas cats prefer to hunker down in the rocks or fox and marmot burrows to seek shelter from the winds.
The following day, Our return to Ulaanbaatar took far longer than usual due to the heavy snow, which slowed us down considerably. The first part of the return journey (a distance of approximately 70 kilometres) is all off-road driving through the steppe region, and thanks to heavy snow, high winds and a snowstorm, this drive took us five and a half hours instead of the usual hour and a half. We left camp at 6am, anticipating the drive would be slow in the prevailing conditions. Indeed, the deep snow drifts saw us bogged down or stuck eleven times in our 4-wheel drives. Even once we made the main road, we were frequently slowed down by road closures and snow and ice conditions. Thanks to the tireless work of our local guides and drivers, we got moving each time and finally made it safely back to the capital an epic sixteen hours after our departure. Although this proved a very long travel day, the resulting photographs from the expedition were superb and totally worth the long hours in the car to and from the capital.
I will return to Mongolia this July for an expedition to photograph Pallas Cat and Pallas Cat kittens in the warm summer sun. This workshop is now sold out, but I am taking bookings for January and winter 2025. If you are interested in photographing this beautiful wildcat in winter snow conditions, drop me an email for more information or to register your interest.
www.WILDNATUREPHOTOTRAVEL.com 