After the wildly successful Ditch the DSLR event in Times Square, Samsung has taken their event out west to Los Angeles, giving attendees the opportunity to trade in their DSLR, lens and battery for a new NX30 or NXMini Smart Camera. Not only that, they're also planning to set a world record hosted by Nick Cannon and Julianne Hough that afternoon.
If you aren't using some sort of software to sync audio, you're sitting in your edit bay manually matching audio to video queues, be that sounds, video hints or timecodes. But what if you could just dump all your camera footage from an interview and all the audio from your recorder into one program and hit one button to sync them all quickly and accurately? You can with Red Giant Pluraleyes, and it's nearly perfect.
Ah, gifs. The internet's favorite way to share emotions and short clips. They've seen a considerable boost in popularity in recent years, especially on Reddit. Imgur, the major Reddit image sharing choice, hosts a majority of those gifs. Apparently they've been working on a way to make the experience better, because today they unveiled Project GIFV, an initiative to bring the iconic looping video of the GIF into the modern web and dramatically improving their quality.
Blackmagic Camera 1.9.7 update is available now free of charge from the Blackmagic Design website. The biggest feature? The long-awaited format disk option! The new disk formatting feature allows you to format SSD’s and SD cards in camera so they don’t need to use a computer to prepare disks for recording. This new disk formatting feature is unique because unlike computers that format disks for general storage use, the Blackmagic Cinema Camera and Pocket Cinema Camera can format disks optimized for high performance video use.
Last night we were treated to an annual event where Adobe encourages their developers to think differently and solve problems they perceive and present them to the world. This event takes place every year at Adobe MAX and is called "Sneaks." Sneaks has led to innovations like Content Aware Fill and Shake Reduction, but not everything revlealed at Sneaks is guaranteed to make it to a final consumer release. But what we saw looked pretty amazing.
Though it’s easy to think Adobe, being the giant company that they are, doesn’t pay attention to the opinions of the average layperson, it has been my experience that the opposite is true. At the very least, the developers and project managers at Adobe indeed read Fstoppers, so this is your chance to tell them: is their direction the right one for photographers and filmmakers?
We got a fleeting glance of all the updates being made available to creatives today during the Adobe MAX keynote, but Adobe spent a majority of their time talking about mobile and connectivity. We managed to get a complete list of software updates that are coming to your desktop apps too and have it here in one place for easy perusal.
Adobe Max is a creative conference where artists from around the world the chance to interact with beta designs, see great speakers and learn from professionals and of course, see what new software and hardware advancements Adobe is adding to the fold. This year, Microsoft made a surprise appearance, and at the end of the keynote they gave everyone attending MAX a Surface Pro 3. This is a big deal, and not just because it's a free 2-in-1.
Adobe MAX is Adobe's major creative conference show that takes place annually in Los Angeles. We got a bit of a peek into what they would be announcing, which we shared with you already, but they held back all their information when it came to the desktop applications. Updating live, here is what they have revealed.
Originally, the idea of a “creative cloud” was difficult for many to grapple when it was first announced. When I spoke to him about a year ago, Photoshop mastermind Jeff Chien understood how we felt: Adobe couldn’t just put the software in the cloud and actually expect it to be an improvement. It had to mean more. Since then, Adobe has been trying to get to the point where the public would be on the same page as them in this regard. They might be getting there with today’s announcements, which are expanding the connectivity of your accounts in CC in ways that finally make the CC model begin to make sense.
To make handoffs and a more ergonomic experience, Freefly, makers of the popular MoVI, have announced the MoVI Ring Accessory for the M5, M10 and M15 handheld 3-axis stabilizers. The MōVI Ring is a rigid carbon fiber, hoop-shaped frame designed to enhance ergonomic handling of MōVI stabilizers.
Fotodiox just announced some very flat, very compact AC/battery powered LED edge lights for use in video productions. My experience with Fotodiox LEDs has been relatively positive, with strong power and excellent color consistency. The new lights, called FlapJacks look to be an excellent addition to your lighting arsenal.
Last week at Photokina, Phottix announced their battery powered TTL strobe the Indra500 to much accolades and this week they released a video on scet with acclaimed Hong Kong Photographer CM Leung and Hong Kong Arnold Classic Winner Brenda Lo. Though there isn't any talking or additional information on how the strobe handled here, you can get a feel for what it looks like in a real world use situation.
Lowepro announced new hard cases last week (which we reviewed), and to build up some more hype around how secure they keep your gear, they released this fun-filled action video that shows how much punishment the new cases can handle.
Earlier this year at WPPI in Las Vegas, I stopped by the Benro/MeFoto booth to tell the team how much I loved the MeFoto tripod... but it was lacking in just a few places for a traveling videographer. Yes, the MeFoto was really compact, light weight and quick to set up, but I wanted clip locks and a smooth video pan head without sacrificing the size and weight the MeFoto offered. It seemed like an impossible request, until seven months later they delivered me the Benro Aero.
Over the past month I've been hard at work testing the Blackmagic Pocket Cinema (BMPCC) camera in a variety of situations for an Fstoppers review (since they updated the firmware, it's like an entirely new camera). While that review is still in progress as of today, I did want to talk to you guys about one piece of equipment that made shooting with it a great experience: the Metabones EF to Micro Four Thirds Adapter for the BMPCC.
Quick update: Sigma's newly announced 150-600mm f/5-6.3 DG OS HSM Sports Lens (unveiled last week) already has a confirmed price point: $1,999. It will be available some time in October, with a specific date not yet given. At that price point, it's much higher than the Tamron we reviewed earlier this year, so Sigma must believe the performance and build quality to outperform the Tamron.
Though they are excellent for photographers, Pelican seemed to fall into the industry rather than build specifically for it. But with options between the ubiquitous Velcro inserts and foam, there hasn't been a lot to complain about in the design and function. They do exactly what they claim to, extremely well. However after using Lowepro's first attempt at hard cases, I can now see room for improvement. I think the perfect hard case is somewhere in between the two brands' offerings, but Lowepro is closer to the mark.
Think Tank has announced a set of new bag offerings at Photokina including the massive 15.7” x 40” x 12.6” Production Manager roller case, designed specifically to carry large amounts of lighting equipment long distances. It is a large roller with room for multiple flash heads, power packs, monoblocks, softboxes, and light-stands. They also released a premium quality limited edition roller and shoulder bags.
Following up their massive 512GB SD card announcement last week at IBC, SanDisk today announced that they are releasing the fastest microSD cards on the market, capable of producing 95MB/s transfer speeds and intended for use with 4K capable cameras.
