Have you ever wanted to film yourself while doing a photoshoot for some behind the scenes action, but not one of your videographer buddies wanted to get away from whatever indie marathon was running that weekend and help you film it? Well, now with SOLOSHOT you don’t have to worry about picking up the phone and degrading yourself by begging to your cinephile friends, you can do it yourself. [more]
I love it when teams can keep churning out interesting tutorials or behind the scenes videos regularly and still keep the quality high, and one team that continues to do just that is PHLEARN. We’ve featured them a few times in the past, and today they released this new video on shooting beauty, but with sparklers. [more]
Adventurer Dean Potter is the subject of a Nat Geo project called “The Man Who Can Fly“. For part of this project, filmmaker Bryan Smith with shooter Michael Schaefer worked on this stunning clip of Dean doing a highline walk in Yosemite with the moon filling the sky. Read on to find out how he got such an amazing perspective. [more]
Since the increased availability of small, high quality video cameras, we’ve seen some truly amazing footage. But this video from Scott Ziegler gives us a first hand look at what firefighters deal with on a call! It’s pretty intense! The music on the video might be NSFW in places so you might want to turn your sound down.
Well, the teaser ad from Canon France that we showed you last week was confirmed today. The PowerShot N is the compact camera that Canon is pushing of their four released cameras today. Here is a promo video they put on Youtube. [more]
Last time I was writing about polar bears, some poor photographers at a public zoo had dropped some Canon gear into a tank. Word must have gotten around that lenses and camera bodies are a tasty treat, as this video shows wildlife shooter Gordon Buchanan from the BBC getting tossed about inside of his plexiglass enclosure by a large female polar bear! [more]
For the past few years DigitalRev has done the “Cheap Camera Challenge” with a professional photographer and a crappy little toy camera. This year’s challenge consisted of Strobist‘s David Hobby, a 2MP Buzz Lightyear toy camera and 3 of the best named speedlights of all time, the Family Jewels FUQ 690. Kai of DigitalRev gives Hobby 5 photo tasks in 5 different locations and Hobby handles it pretty dang well considering the slight limitations. Enjoy!
For years, videographers have been saying video will replace photography altogether. Last year we tested this controversial statement in our own Red Epic Video vs Hasselblad Photo Shootout. In this latest video, Abraham Joffe along with Philip Bloom and Sue Bryce test the idea of simply pulling out still shots from video and printing them at reasonable sizes. Just as we found with our own video, capturing the definitive “micro expression” with a video camera like the new Canon EOS-1DC can be both precise and incredibly clunky. [more]
Den Lennie from F-Stop Academy shot this behind the scenes video that documents James Tonkin as he creates visuals for his short film “A Night at Nine Elms” with the EF-Mount version of the BlackMagic Cinema Camera. James talks about his experiences with the BMCC and discusses using Canon EF lenses. See the final short film in the full post. [more]
If you’ve watched the TV series “Grimm,” you may be curious how the mythological creatures from Grimm’s fairy tales make it onto screen. Bent Image Lab, the production company behind the cg creations of the show, explains their process of transforming characters into creatures and adding a fantastical element to each episode.
A few weeks ago we featured a really whimsical BTS of a shoot from the team at PHLEARN, and this week we have something from them that’s edgier and totally different. They took brightly colored beetles (that were framed as art prior to the shoot) and used them in conjunction with colored lipstick for a really sweet final result: Beetle Beauty. [more]
Everyone who has ever taken any interest in photography has thought about attempting to take one picture a year in order to fuel creative growth or to create an interesting and varied body of work in a relatively short time span. Jonathon Britnell put his own spin on the 365 project (technically a 366) by shooting one second of video every day for a year and compiling into a very cool documentary look at his life over the last year. [more]
Dr. Amir Amedi, brain researcher and Neurobiology professor from the Hebrew University in Jerusalem, developed a technology that lets blind people ‘see’ with their ears. In this TEDx talk (TEDxJerusalem) he shows how he managed to use a simple camera, and transform the video captured into sound waves that quickly become visual images in the brain. It’s amazing to see how they can ‘see’ when someone smiles at them, just by listening to the video they capture with that small camera. [more]
Though we are still working on our review of the Canon 6D, Gizmodo just published their Lightning Review and besides the expected nods to the high quality of the stills, the unexpected moire issues they found in video have me frowning. [more]
DIY photo/video gear projects can almost always save you a few bucks if you have the skills and time to make it. But there are a few DIY gems out there that can save you hundreds of dollars, if not more. One of these gems is stillmotion‘s tutorial on 3 point lighting for video interviews made from a whopping total of $26! They did a great job of pinching every penny while still yielding a great DIY product. If you end up trying this (or variations of it) we’d love to see your outcome in the comments below. Enjoy! [more]
