Tokina has just announced an SZ 8mm F2.8 FISH-EYE lens. It’s designed for mirrorless cameras and it comes in two mount variants: Fuji X and Sony E. This lens is compact and lightweight, fast, and can focus pretty close. Because of all this, it wants to be a lens that you’ll always have in your bag. The Tokina SZ 8mm F2.8 FISH-EYE is a manual focus lens with a clickless aperture ring....
Mirrors are… well, they’re not really a modifier but they can certainly be used as one, so that’s what I’m going to refer to them as here. Mirrors are probably one of the most misunderstood and underused modifiers out there when it comes to lighting, but they can be extremely helpful. I’ve been using mirrors for my own photography, especially small product stuff, for quite a while now and they’ve been excellent for throwing a little extra light in places....
Twitter account One Perfect Shot is all about the iconic frames from movies and TV series. But here’s an interesting twist: the account itself is soon to be adapted into a TV show. In collaboration with HBO Max, One Perfect Shot is about to become a documentary series. So, how do you turn a Twitter account into a TV series? I was wondering the same, but it sounds like a pretty interesting concept for everyone who’s into photography and cinematography....
The U.S. Copyright Office is proposing changes to fees for copyright registration. The Office has issued a statement outlining the proposed changes in detail, but on average, fees will increase by as much as 41%.Advertisements According to the statement, the Office analyzed potential changes to fees and wants to ensure that they are “fair and equitable and give due consideration to the objectives of the copyright system,” as required by the statute....
Shooting video usually isn’t as simple as just pointing a camera at something and hitting record. Sure, sometimes it is, but if you want to try and tell a story with your films, you need to think about how the camera can help you to tell that story. In this video, Jordy from Cinecom shows us 10 tricks to help tell better stories in our films. So how can we use our camera to enhance the story in our films?...
Earlier this year, Laowa announced the 10-18mm f/4.5-5.6 for Sony E-mount. And now it’s finally here: the widest zoom lens for full-frame Sony cameras is ready for preorders. We bring you more details and some sample images taken with the new addition to the Laowa family. The Laowa 10-18mm f/4.5-5.6 is designed primarily with travel photography in mind. Because of this, this lens is the smallest in its class: less than 9....
Climate change is one of the burning issues in our society, and many photographers are doing what they can to raise awareness about it. But Vogue Italia recently turned to a pretty unusual method of helping the environment – they banned photography completely. The latest issue of the popular fashion magazine features no photos whatsoever, and it caused mixed reactions in the community. In a series of Instagram posts, Vogue Italia shared previews of cover images for its January 2020 Special Issue....
With so much information in the world, sometimes it can be hard for newcomers to sift through the noise when they want to learn how to use Photoshop. For me, I started by purchasing the software. I tried to work out what each tool did, then realised I was getting nowhere…although I did manage to somehow to put together this monstrosity of an image. This is one of the first manipulated images I created, beautiful isn’t it?...
Encountering wild animals as you photograph them can sometimes be scary. But other times, it can be so cute that it makes your heart melt. Swiss photographer Stefan Forster recently found a wild white arctic fox in Greenland. As he was taking photos, the fox approached him and started closely examining his camera. Maybe even a bit too closely! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ycl9JCRh8ew The adorable young fox approached Stefan with caution, but still with great curiosity....
It’s not a secret that things like lasers and lidar can kill camera sensors. You get an intense beam of light pointed towards your camera, and then the lens focuses it into an even brighter point, frying pixels. But did you know that diffused reflected laser light can also cause this to happen? Photographer Andy Boyd knows. He had to learn the hard way after filming a laser tattoo removal which very quickly and easily fried a bunch of pixels on the sensor of his Sony A7SII in a series of rapid laser bursts....
One of the big downfalls of many drones is their inability to handle strong winds. It’s something that now seems to have become a mission for drone manufacturers to overcome. We’ve seen Sony’s video showing off their Air Peak drone in the wind tunnel and a Saildrone survive a Category 4 hurricane and now it’s DJI’s turn with the newly announced DJI Mavic 3. In this video, DC Rainmaker puts the DJI Mavic 3 through its paces with a real-world high-speed wind test....
Canon PowerShot Zoom was launched earlier this year, but only in Japan. If you got interested in this weird piece of gear, it’s now coming to the US as well, and shipping worldwide. So, let’s dive in and see what you get in this strange, tiny camera. Canon PowerShot Zoom started as a concept camera, one of a few that Canon showed off at The Photography Show 2018. It’s a compact camera that looks kinda like a director’s lens....
To shoot medium format has been a yearlong dream, but I have to admit I didn’t know it would be such a mind blowing experience. The Pentax 645Z (51,4 mega pixels) arrived on the market in 2014 and was the first camera to ever exceed 100 points in the DxOMark sensor test. For some unknown reason the score and review wasn’t published before 2017. There is plenty of info to be found on the internet concerning the camera specs so I won’t cover that in much detail....
It’s such a commonly used lens that it even has its own nickname, the “Nifty Fifty”. Regardless of the brand you shoot, or the size of your sensor, a 50mm lens is one of the most versatile you can get. Whether you’re doing street photography, landscapes, portraits, or something else entirely, they can produce amazing results for very little cost. It’s the lens Peter McKinnon recommends people buy when they ask what lens to get next....
After CES and CP+, the next year’s WPPI (Wedding and Portrait Photographers International Trade Show) is changing plans for 2021 as well. Instead of March, the trade show will take place in August 2021. Rangefinder has issued a notice about the new plans for the 2021 conference. If you have already registered for WPPI 2021, your registration will be valid for the new dates. You’ll receive an email from WPPI that should provide you with more information, and you can also follow all news and updates on the WPPI website....
Instagram likes Reels. It likes them so much that it turns all your videos into them, and now it lets you cross-post them to Facebook too. From now on, if you use both social media apps, you can post your Reels directly to both of them. Along with cross-posting between the apps, some other changes are coming to Instagram as well. And yes, of course, they’re Reels-related. But if you’ve started gathering likes and comments through the TikTok-esque short videos, you may actually like these....
Photographer Mathieu Stern has built an admirable collection of rare, weird, super-cheap and DIY lenses so far. With his latest finding, he kinda brought all of this together. He laid his hands on a Cinestar 75mm f/1.9, a cinema projector lens. After making his own adapter, he used it on a Sony a7 III and tested it in a video. If you are a swirly bokeh fan, you’re gonna love it....
Dear writer of the Forbes Magazine article, “Your Top 10 Objects Your Kids Don’t Want,” I just read your article. In it, you outline the objects in your home that you feel one’s children will not want passed on to them. You state the list was inspired by conversations with your 30-year old son and boomer clients and their millennial heirs. I must admit, I was a little dubious going in, as I know that millennials, for all their love of tiny homes and Marie Kondo lifestyles, are also responsible for the resurgence of vinyl records and shooting with film cameras....
Since the outbreak of COVID-19, the photography community is equally affected due to pandemic quarantining and social distancing. Every day, things are getting worse from assignments being called off to major photography events getting postponed. We all are vulnerable right now — but we can use this gloomy time to be more creative and productive by following the things we always wanted to do — sharing here my to-do list for the coming few days/weeks/months/years....
We’ve all had those awkward clients at some time or another. If you haven’t, then you will, don’t worry. I’ve been working in various creative fields for around 25 years now, and I’ve experienced all of these. In fact, one particular former client springs to mind that single-handedly embodies at least six of them all at once. Fortunately the folks at Coplex (formerly Ciplex) have come up with this handy guide on how to deal with them....
