Dan Carr

Founder of Shutter Muse, full time photographer and creative educator. Dan lives in the Canadian Yukon, but his wanderlust often sends him in search of images all around the world to meet the needs of clients and readers alike.

Beautiful Metal Prints!

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I recently had some metal prints done by a specialist printing company in Florida called Shiny Prints, and the results were fantastic. I’ve written a much more in-depth post about their services and they results I got over on Shutter Muse, but I just couldn’t help sharing a quick note about them here too. This is the first time I’ve had my work printed on metal and I was really blown away by the final look of the product, particularly the Frame Mount glossy prints that I received. This definitely won’t be the last time I get something from these …

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Gear Check: UniqBall iQuick Plate

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I came across this interesting ballhead accessory when I was writing a guide about L plates for Shutter Muse. Typically an L plate for a camera is a big bulky thing that wraps around the end of a camera to allow you to switch between portrait and landscape orientation very quickly. One of the disadvantages of the traditional design is that the plates can be quite heavy, so I was intrigued when I found the iQuick plate solutions that are being manufactured by UniqBall. At first glance these iQuick plates appear to be pretty typical universal Arca-Swiss plates for use …

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New Elinchrom Transmitter PRO = Skyport Plus HS

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Elinchrom launched a battery flash system called the ELB500 TTL. As the name suggests, this is a TTL capable 500w/s portable strobe unit and it’s the first TTL unit that Elinchrom have produced. I’ve used Elinchrom gear for many years, and currently have an ELB400 in my kit, along with the Skyport Plus HS, which handles the wireless control of the flash. Alongside the release of the ELB500, I noticed that they were also talking about a TTL capable transmitter called the Transmitter PRO. Confusingly, it appeared to look identical to the Skyport Plus HS and for a while I …

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In My Bag: Quick 2018 Edition

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I posted this photo on my Instagram Stories and Facebook last week as I was getting on a flight, but I thought I would share it here as well because it sparked good conversation in both places. A lot of people said things such as “good luck carrying that” – which struck me as odd. Yes the bag has a lot of camera gear in, but there’s also 15 litres of additional space for other items too. What you’re seeing here isn’t even nearly the full capacity of the backpack. I’m not going to pretend it’s not heavy, but when …

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Uh Oh – They Weighed My Carry-On Luggage..!

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If you’re reading the blog posts in chronological order, you’ll know I had a less than pleasing travel experience a few days ago on a flight to the Yukon. It seems that air travel is only destined to get more complicated, and on my return flight to British Columbia this morning with Air North (actually I’m writing this on the plane), I had another experience that’s worth talking about. In this instance I ran up against the dreaded carry-on luggage weight limit. I’ve flown a lot in my career and in well over a decade of flight you can count …

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Flying in Canada? You Need to Know This About Transport Canada’s New Security Procedures, or You Might Lose Your Laptop

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I generally enjoy the process of flying to, from or through Canada’s airports. They are usually friendly, efficient places to be, and travel normally seems hassle free. Unfortunately, Transport Canada has just dropped the ball in a big way, and if you’re not prepared for it, you may end up having a frustrating experience and potentially have someone walk off with your laptop. The system at fault is the new hand luggage screening process that is currently being implemented in Vancouver, Toronto, Montreal and Ottawa. At the moment I’m not sure if it will be more widespread than that, but …

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From My Office: The Canon Printer Without Ink Cartridges

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I’ve had this printer, the Canon G3200, for about a year now and I keep meaning to tell you guys about it. It’s part of a new line of printers from Canon called “Mega Tank”. As you can see from the photos, it has ink tanks instead of the typical cartridges that are found in most small printers. Refilling the ink is a simple matter of buying bulk ink in a bottle and pouring it in. Even if you buy Canon ink, it’s still much cheaper than the old scenario of replacing entire cartridges, and there’s also cheaper third-party ink …

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My Favourite Canon Multipurpose Lens Trifecta

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These are the three lenses I usually grab if I’m heading out for a day of photography and want to be prepared for anything! With this kit I have a focal range from 11-400mm and can tackle everything from landscapes to astrophotography, portraiture, sports and wildlife.

New SanDisk Extreme Portable SSDs Look Cool!

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It looks like SSD pricing has really turned a corner this year and I’m seeing products that are less then half the price, and half the size of the ones that were on the market last year. G-Technology launched a series of small, USB-C enabled rugged SSDs, and now SanDisk has done the same thing with the Extreme Pro SSD. Since both SanDisk and G-Technology are both Western Digital companies, it’s entirely possible they contain the same drives, but the external styling is quite different. The SanDisk Extreme Pro SSD looks to be significantly thinner than the G-Technology equivalent, and …

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Behind the Shot: Sky Pilot Pano

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I was tweaking a few galleries on my website today when I came across this panoramic photo of Sky Pilot mountain in Squamish, BC. The smaller peak on the right-hand side is called the Co Pilot. This photo was taken from a viewing deck outside the lodge at the top of the Squamish gondola, just a few seconds before sunset. You can see the last light of the day is just kissing a few parts of the mountain, but largely the whole thing is in the shade by this point. Something about the symmetry of this scene made me want …

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How Not To Perform Autofocus Microadjustments

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As I mentioned recently, I’m working on some in-depth tutorials for Shutter Muse about autofocus microadjustment, which is a feature of some mid-to-high end cameras that allows you to fine-tune the autofocus performance of particular lens and camera combinations. Perhaps microadjustment is something you already do, and maybe you even own a LensAlign II or a SpyderLENSCAL? Well, during my research, a bit of lateral thinking lead me to discover something which many people are getting wrong when they are performing microadjustments. These days all cameras have a live view function, but what many people aren’t aware of is that …

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Do You Microadjust the Autofocus On Your Camera?

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A few days I was performing some microadjustments to my camera’s autofocus system and I snapped a photo of my setup and posted it to my Instagram stories with the question “do you microadjust your cameras and lenses?”. I wasn’t thinking too hard about it at the time, I was just snapping a quick photo of day-to-day life behind the lens as I often do on Instagram. Some of the responses to the question caught me by surprise though! I’m paraphrasing them slightly, but they loosely speaking they fell into 4 categories You know, this is the reason I use …

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