TESTING THE NEW PRO PORTRAIT TELE G4

Photos and text by @DamonBeckford

It’s the end of July and me and my girlfriend just finished our last shifts at work for a long time.

It’s time to go on a road trip I’ve been dreaming of for a long time. Drive from Helsinki to Lapland and then to Northern Norway. From there we would drive all the way to the fjords of Southern Norway and finish in Stockholm where we would take the boat back to Helsinki. The ultimate Scandinavia road trip! And we have a whole month time to do it.

This is also a great opportunity to test out the new Black Eye Pro Portrait Tele lens.

First, we went to do some wild bear watching at Martinselkonen in Suomussalmi, which is very close to our summer cabin too. If you want to see wild bears in their natural habitat and be safe too, this is the thing to do!

Black Eye Portrait Tele
Black Eye Portrait Pro tele

The new Pro Portrait Tele lens came in handy here as you definitely need to zoom in a bit to photograph the bears. iPhone built-in zoom often messes up the quality of the photos, but with the Pro Portrait Tele lens, you don’t have to use the built-in zoom, so you will end up with great quality photos!

The next week we were driving up towards Kilpisjärvi and decided to stop for one night at Särkitunturi fell. I’ve never visited this place before, but after reading about it and the great landscapes you’ll be seeing from the top, we just had to go there. The view was indeed very beautiful and for our luck, we got a fantastic sunset that lasted for more than an hour! Next, to our camp spot, there was a very picturesque toilet which looked great in photos. The new Tele lens was a good tool for taking a portrait of the toilet!

Black Eye Pro Portrait Tele
Black Eye Portrait Pro Tele

After driving around Finland for 1,5 weeks, we crossed the border to Norway where we would spend the next 2,5 weeks driving from North to South. The weather in Scandinavia had been amazing for the whole summer, with blue skies and warm temperatures. Unfortunately, the weather was the opposite for most of the time during our trip. We had a few good days when the sun was out and it was warm, but most of the time it was raining. Classic Norwegian weather!

Black Eye Pro Portrait Tele Landscape lofoten

We visited the Lofoten Islands and made a few classic hikes, but also a new one. The Mannen hike next to Haukland beach, which surprised us with a stunning view of the beach and surrounding mountains. This was a great place for some Portraits of Pihla-Sofia with soft dusk light and a nice mountain background. The new lens was great for taking portraits and blurred the background very nicely!

Black Eye Portrait Pro Tele
Black Eye Portrait Tele
Black Eye Pro Portrait Tele

After Lofoten, we started our long drive to Southern Norway. One of the highlights was visiting the famous Trolltunga cliff and spending the night there in a tent. Carrying the camping gear to Trolltunga was the worst experience of our trip haha! The trail was 14km one way with most of it going up. But when we finally got there it was totally worth it. And staying there for the night, we got the place almost all to ourselves in the evening and morning with only a few people sharing the experience with us.

Black Eye Pro Portrait Tele Trolltunga

We also visited Geiranger fjord and Preikestolen (Pulpit Rock), which both were very beautiful but very crowded with tourists. But these places have great views so why not visit them! After visiting all these places, we drove to Stockholm and took the overnight ferry back to Helsinki. It was a fantastic trip and I would definitely do it again, but next time with more time. A month is a minimum time I could recommend for this type of road trip with 6000km of driving!

Black Eye Portrait Pro Tele

The new Pro Portrait Tele lens was a great addition to the already wonderful kit of Black Eye lenses. The lens feels like it’s a proper quality lens, not a cheap piece of glass and plastic.

Black Eye portrait tele landscape

There’s a big improvement to the older Tele 3x lens and it delivers sharper images and less corner blur.

It feels like shooting with a 50mm lens on a full-frame DSRL camera. The lens is great for portraits, getting detailed landscape shots and even for some close wildlife photography.

You can shop the new Pro Portrait Tele G4 here and make sure that you follow @DamonBeckford & @Pihlasofia on Instagram to follow their ongoing adventures.