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When we make purchases, we all tend to spend a lot of time concerned about the price of acquisition and the buying experience. When I get a car, I interview the Service Department because I will see those folks for years and more often that the sales professional. Our camera equipment follows the same pattern. Quality of service is critically important.
Read MoreRegular readers know that I am an advocate of tablets for editing photographs. I have been a Wacom user for a long time, using the Bamboos, a variety of the Intuos and Intuos Pro line as well as two different sizes of the Cintiq. I have clearly spent more than enough money into this sort of device. In 2015, I first became aware of an app service called Astropad that would turn your iPad into a working tablet for editing purposes.
Read MoreI've been a cheerleader for the original 1Dx since mine arrived just before the London Olympics. It built on the framework of the 1D Mark IV and the 5D Mark II to make a superbly capable professional camera. I loved it then, and it is my go to body to this day. When word started to leak that there was a new version imminent, lots of folks asked me what I thought. I was very clear then. The only thing that would make a Mark II extraordinarily compelling would be a significant increase in dynamic range. The Mark II was officially announced on Feb 1, 2016. Let's take a look at the announcement and see what Canon has done.
Read MoreThe demand for fast, high quality video increases every week. Youtube and Vimeo libraries continue to grow as more and more people and companies use mirrorless and DSLR cameras to create video content for friends, communities and customers. We also know that the thing that destroys good video fastest is bad audio.
Read MoreI was one of those people who supported this project via Kickstarter. I received my bag earlier this week, about two days before it showed up in retail stores. Not exactly the early preview I was expecting, particularly given that some folks have had theirs for well over a month. I liked the concept online very much and paid my money to support a company whose products I really like and recommend highly. Sometimes, expectations and reality don't end up in the same place and this is what happened to me.
Read MoreIn this video I look at what goes into the whole concept of tilt / shift, starting with examples on the view camera and then moving to the popular style of tilt shift lenses available for digital cameras.
Read MoreIt's 2016 and while we spend a couple of weeks misdating cheques and other paperwork, let's fix one thing right now.
Read MoreWhen you're working to a deadline, or with a client who needs to see the work quickly, tethering is a huge asset. No one is scrambling over a miniscule image on the camera, you aren't looking at some JPEG rendition, you see the converted RAW on a large screen in real time. Fortunately, most cameras can be tethered. Let's look at some options to make that work.
Read MoreHooray! You received a new camera for Christmas! Or you went out on Boxing Day and got yourself a new camera. Good for you! But now you have a box of stuff, you want to get started and aren't exactly sure where to start. You want to be making photographs, RIGHT FREAKING NOW, but are concerned about what could go wrong, what got missed, and what you forgot. Relax, I'm here to help!
Read MoreLet's say you are out shopping for Boxing Day, or are so crazy to be shopping today (the 24th) and just aren't quite sure which focal length prime or zoom range to choose. I was out doing some test work with Nikon's new 200mm-500mm today (more on that in it's own review) and put together this simple sequence to give you a sense of what different focal lengths will deliver with the same camera position.
Read MoreHotshoe flash is wonderful, except when shot direct from the hotshoe. There are myriad modifiers in the marketplace but many of them don't deliver the light that you really want. Rogue's Flashbender lineup is different so have a look and you'll see why.
Read MorePhotographers are always looking for advantage, being it in sensor power, lens reach or scope and very often weight and size reduction. When Olympus released their OM-D E-M5, they really shook up the competition. The camera was fast, easy to handle and extremely usable. They followed up with the E-M1 and then the E-M10. Recently, Olympus released the second iteration of the E-M5 called the E-M5 Mark II and the good folks at Olympus sent me one to review, along with a pair of lenses, the 45/1.8 and 12/2.0. It's a very impressive camera and I wanted to share my findings with all of you.
Read MoreIn this video I show how easy it is to use the XPOBalance and demonstrate using Lightroom how to make the settings once for an entire session and then sync them across all the images from the session.
Read MoreHere's a quick video on the XRite Color Checker Passport explaining why you should use one and how to make camera profiles with it.
Read MoreIt's that time of year again and time for my annual gift guide. You'll find great gift ideas for photographers and videographers of all levels and I've worked to ensure that I cover different budget sizes since we aren't all millionaires. Well maybe you are, me not at all.
Read MoreRegular readers know that I've looked at a lot of mirrorless cameras, always looking to see if this is a space to expand into. I've liked many of them, and hoped for more from others. I guess I'm already a mirrorless user, as I've been shooting Leicas for many years, starting with film, then a substantial gap in time to the M9 and now the M (240). They are wonderful cameras but different from the "standard" mirrorless in that they are manual focus rangefinders. The SL however, is something very different indeed.
Read MoreI've been hearing questions from people in my programs as well as other folks about some confusion between using heads on monopods vs tripods. I've written a lot on tripod heads and it's probably time for a quick treatise on monopods and monopod heads.
Read MoreI have a shoot coming up where I need to provide 4x6 prints to the client's guests nearly immediately after making the photographs so they can take the photo with them that evening. Research led me to the Canon CP100 printer, a dye sublimation system that puts paper and dye sub film into a single box. My MacBook Pro runs El Capitan, the current shipping operating system from Apple. As I have found in the past, Canon's installer is OS version specific, even when it makes no sense to do so. I would be stuck, except for Pacifist.
Read MoreIt’s official. Nikon has announced that the D5 is coming. The D5 will be the follow-on to the professional grade D4S. Nikon also announced the pending release of the SB-5000 Speedlight and the WT-6 wireless transmitter. The release is included at the bottom of this article and I find it very Rumsfeldian. We don’t know when, we don’t know where and we don’t know how much, but it’s coming. Regardless, the announcement is absolutely necessary.
Read MoreMy dear friend and fellow tenured photographer, the incredible Joseph Leduc, introduces me as Mister Flash. Sounds great, and potentially creepy but he's right that I love using flash to make better images. Sometimes other photographers find flash frustrating and often very expensive. I recently had a chance to use in production some new Cameron products available exclusively from Henry's, Canada's largest independent photo-video retailer.
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