Fstoppers Gear Reviews

Two weeks ago we saw Tony Northrup comparing the Canon and Yongnuo 50mm 1.8 lenses with his thorough video. Now Kai of DigitalRevTV has decided to bring you his own version of this same comparison. In typical Kai fashion, his presentation is perhaps more humorous than scientific, but in between the jokes are some real kernels of truth. Take a look at how his analysis compares with Tony's and whether the Yongnuo copy is really worth the savings.

One year after the announcement of the original Sony Alpha a7, the new Sony a7II takes calculated steps towards improving function and ergonomics in their full-frame compact system camera series. With its revised exterior design now fashioning a pronounced grip with a DSLR-like forward-angled shutter button as well as the internal introduction of five-axis sensor-shift image stabilization, Sony turns their base model a7 into a not-so-basic specialist of its own. In this Fstoppers review, I examine the good and bad of how the Sony a7II performs with real-world use.

It goes without saying as photographers we prefer gear to be highly attractive in both form and function. Usually taking a hit in one department or the other due in part by price or depth in features, it's never a flawless combination. These two things for many companies is difficult as they balance high-end product design with outstanding thought in function all while fitting it inside an appropriate price point. Enter the perfect blend of both with the Union Street Camera Bag by ONA. It's not just another accessory in the world of camera gear, but rather a perfect pairing of design and functionality that I can truly stand behind and wear with distinction.

This year has already been filled with some compelling DSLR camera releases and announcements and the new Nikon D5500 is no exception. For the a quarter of the price of the Canon D5 Mark 3 that I purchased a couple of years ago, you can have more resolution, full HD video function with a wide-array of frame rates, comparable ISO range, and even its own built-in WIFI transmitter to send images to your favorite mobile device on set. Pretty impressive with what Nikon has been doing with its pro-sumer camera bodies these days. Check out Digital Rev's full review.

Yongnuo recently released a 50mm F1.8 auto focus lens to compete with the very popular Canon version. The Canon 50mm F1.8 is already considered a bargain lens, so with the Yongnuo coming in at half the already bargain basement price, can it possibly perform equally or even better? Tony Northrup put together a fantastic and comprehensive video that pits these two lenses side by side in a comparison that will answer all your questions.

Elinchrom has been the brand of choice for years many Europeans and Australians photographers alike. They are cheaper than Profoto or Broncolor, offer a good range of modifiers and – unlike Paul C. Buff – have service centers outside of the USA. To many photographers they also have been a great way to get into studio photography before moving up to Broncolor or Profoto. With the Elinchrom ELC Pro HD, it seems like the brand wants to change that and offer a higher-end light.

The ELC Pro HD were developed by Elinchrom to:

[...]combine everything a...

The calendar just turned its pages to 2015. We have tiny and versatile cameras like the GoPro Hero 4 filming 4K video, camera companies making 50-megapixels DSLRs, and artists making mind-blowing stop-motion/hyper-lapse/time-lapse films. So why is it still so hard for artists and big brands to easily connect to collaborate on photo and video projects?

It's already been a couple weeks since Serif announced the release of the Affinity Photo beta. I, along with literally thousands of others, have downloaded the program and started putting it through its paces, trying to fit it into my own personal workflow. In this little first impressions review I'll focus on Affinity Photo as a raw converter, a basic retouching platform, and put it up against the big dogs: Affinity versus Lightroom, and Affinity versus Photoshop.

I’ve been shooting stills and video alongside the rest of the crew with Clear & Cold Cinema, while working on the Michigan Ice Film. Before I departed sunny Colorado, I was lucky enough to get my hands on a Mountainsmith Descent Pack, and I don’t know what I would have done without it.

I haven't had the Meike MK-DR750 Battery Grip and Wireless Remote for long, but I can already tell I'm definitely keeping it. Not only does it fit well enough and do everything as promised, but it also comes with a wireless 2.4GHz (not infrared) remote control that can trigger the Nikon D750 to which it's attached. Meanwhile, Nikon's grip costs upwards of $350, and their wired remote cable release timer clears the $150 mark. Naturally, there have to be a few caveats for a grip and remote package to come in at an astoundingly low $80, but I was hard pressed to find any at all.

With companies like Profoto and Elinchrom offering an increasingly broad range of self-contained strobes, Broncolor was no doubt feeling left out with its predominantly pack and head oriented lineup. That’s all changing now with the release of the new Siros strobe; a compact, wall powered, feature rich and wallet friendly flash unit.

Thunderbolt docks have always been something that I've wanted, but haven't absolutely needed. The $300-$500 price range of these little all-in-one boxes didn't spark urgency in my search for the perfect dock either. Given a little time for the excitement (and price) of Thunderbolt-related technology to die down a bit, however, the prospect began to grow more interesting. An improvement on their previous dock, CalDigit's $200 TS2 seemed to be the perfect connection dreambox at the right price. So how did reality fare against expectations?

The Venus 60mm f/2.8 2:1 Macro lens has many wondering if the relatively small price tag ($379), coupled with the intriguing 2x magnification and 14 blade aperture, is as good of a deal as it seems. Macro photographer Thomas Shahan was sent one of these lenses to try out, and his results look promising.

Since launching their two mobile photography lenses last year, the Moment team in Seattle has been working hard to improve other aspects of the mobile photography experience. They have revealed their newest creation, the Moment Case, which works in conjunction with their mobile app and current two lenses. With the Moment team’s success with using Kickstarter on their last project, they have decided to turn back to the site to fund the Moment Case as well. The best part is, it’s available for order as of today, and lucky for me I had the pleasure of being the sole individual outside of the Moment team, to test the prototype case prior to today’s launch. However, it’s currently only available for the iPhone 6, which is making me wish I didn’t pick up the 6+ a few months back.

The CASE remote is a wireless device that creates a mobile hotspot attached to your camera, providing you with live-view connectivity on your mobile device. One can easily control shutter triggering, HDR, focus stacking, time-lapse, and photo transfers from your iPhone, Android, or tablet. Fstoppers had the opportunity to give this device a spin and here's what we thought.

As the old adage goes, it’s not the gear, it’s the photographer that takes a good photo. While this is generally true, is there something to be said about $20,000 worth of Broncolor lighting gear? I mean a flash of light is a flash of light, right? Or is it?

Accomplished Forth Worth, Texas-based wedding photographer, Hiram Trillo recently turned his attention to another craft, namely leather work. His newly-opened company, Trillo and Son, specializes in creating high-quality, pass-it-down-to-your-grandkid, small-batch camera straps designed with the working professional in mind. I had the opportunity to spend the better part of a month with a trio of these straps, a Warhol in cognac, a Bresson in natural leather, and a Capa in oak.

Joey L. is a photographer best known for his stunning personal work creating portraits of the peoples of Ethiopia, India, Indonesia, and other exotic places of the world. He uses studio lights on-location to achieve his unique and dramatic look for his portraits of these exotic people. Consequently, he is frequently asked about what lighting gear he takes with him for those kinds of shoots. Recently, Joey made a video and blog post outlining three major options for portable studio lighting for photographers with varying budgets who want Joey L.-esque studio lighting on the go.

As a professional photographer I have always been curious about the art of videography since the two seem to go hand in hand, but I have never made the jump to shooting my own content because I was always quite unsure of where to start. I wanted to quickly learn the basics and start shooting right away. I’m a visual learner, and I figured a crash course in an online tutorial would be my best bet, but searching for tutorials scattered across Youtube seemed tedious. Recently Jared Polin, better known as Fro from FroKnowsPhoto released a comprehensive guide to shooting video using a DSLR called The FroKnowsPhoto Guide to DSLR Video.

The recently released Samsung NX1 totes a promising list of specs: 4K video at 24fps recorded to the new H265 codec, 1080p at 60fps, 28MP stills, 205 phase detection AF points, Wi-Fi, and Bluetooth. However, none of that matters if what comes out of the camera looks like crap. Fortunately, Andrew Reid over at EOSHD got his hands on the new camera to put it through its paces and the NX1 turns out to be quite the performer. In his tests he compares footage from Samsung’s newest flagship body to other heavy-hitting video-shooters such as the Panasonic GH4 and Canon 5D Mark III, and the Samsung proved that it can hold its own with the big boys. Take a look at the footage and see for yourself.

In perhaps one of the best photography books you'll own, Californian photographer Tim Mantoani has archived photographic legends with his book project, "Behind Photographs." Since 2006, Mantoani has been photographing notable artists holding some of their most iconic photographs. Perhaps the most interesting aspect of this project is the mammoth format each portrait was shot on Mantaoni uses the enormous 20x24 Polaroid camera to capture these individuals. Taking on a project of this literal size was not a small feat. After a portrait session with notable San Francisco photographers Jim Marshall and Michael Zagaris, Mantoani quickly realized he was on to something historic and began to formulate a plan.

As a relatively recent convert to Instagram, a former outsider-looking-in, there are a few things about the app that I don’t particularly care for or make use of. Like most people I know, I’m not at all tempted to make use of the built-in, over-cooked, HDR-gone-wrong filters. When I do post a photo taken on my phone, it’s been edited in VSCO Cam. I’m also not a huge fan of the user interface in Instagram. It’s a little clunky, oft overwhelming, and features a rather uninspiring design. For a better viewing, browsing, and exploring experience I’ve turned to a seemingly unknown app, Primary.

Before you blindly answer this question, you should know that fast memory cards are not only for sport and wildlife photographers. Wedding, event, and portrait photographers all benefit from having cards with fast write speeds to capture that unexpected moment. Even landscape photographers who take far less images can benefit. Cards with fast read speeds can download large image files to computers much faster. Memory card speed is just as important to your camera as it is to you in order to perform your best on the job. With this in mind, the folks over at Photoshelter have documented a series of tests to help determine which card is the fastest for your camera.

The Syrp Genie is a great, though imperfect, timelapse machine that has recently added another trick to its arsenal: repeatable motion. Originally, the first couple bits of firmware to the Syrp weren't perfect at the repeatable motion tasks, but the most recent update has fixed all the issues, giving us the ability to fine-tune motions and get them time and again, exactly as they were the first time. With the addition of the new Magic Carpet, there is a lot we can now do with the Syrp.

Owners of Sony Alpha and NEX camera bodies have long been complaining about the rotational barrel wobble experienced with mounted lenses. Entering what is quite a unique product space, Fotodiox recently released the Tough E-Mount that replaces the original body mount of these cameras. As a sufferer of said wobbles, I purchased the Tough E-Mount for my Sony a7R to test and give you my verdict of the installation and results.

I have to say, it's been a blast seeing where Carli Davidson's passion for dogs has taken her, starting way back in 2012 when I first featured her on Fstoppers, and again last year with the release of her book Shake. Today marks the official release of her new book, Shake Puppies, and she somehow managed to create a book of cute that surpasses that of her original printed piece.

YouTuber, Casey Neistat is known for his over-the-top viral videos, his sometimes eccentric working and organizational methods, and countless little DIY studio and life hacks. Rather than working with dedicated cine gear or even DSLR kits, Neistat typically uses $100 point-and-shoot cameras for their compactness, accessibility, cost, and their innocuous appearance. For these reasons, it's pretty easy to see why he'd be interested in taking Google Glass for a spin.

About two years ago, Blackmagic made enormous waves in the cinema industry with their original cinema camera. A year later, they packed that camera into a preposterously small package, giving filmmakers the ability to take high quality video with them virtually anywhere. With numerous highly desired firmware updates since then, we wanted to see how the Blackmagic Pocket Cinema Camera has handled the test of time.

Do you have an eye for editing video? The editor often wields the power and ability to breathe life into a piece of motion work, or to kill it off. But where do you go to learn how to edit? Inside The Edit recently launched the world’s first end-to-end online program, and while it’s not without it’s considerations, it represents a giant leap forward for anyone who wants to get hands-on experience in the world of motion storytelling.

We just spent a week shooting the new Pentax 645z, the new, somewhat-affordable medium format system. We wanted to take a real world approach to how we would test the camera, so like most reviews on Fstoppers, this will be less technical and more about how it performed on the job. It was put through its paces at full wedding, a weeks worth of portrait sessions and a night shoot.

A sign at the flea market read "Creative Minds are Seldom Tidy." Do you ever feel this way? Do you ever wish you had a program that would help you organize your thoughts, your to-do's, your contacts, contracts, invoices even bank information? As a creative, often we get so caught up in our work that we forget to run our business like a business. Fortunately a new program recently launched that will help you get everything organized and automated in your business making more time for you to actually do the things you love.

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.

One year ago we all started hearing the buzz about MagMod after they launched a Kickstarter campaign that ended successfully. They then went on to be one of the hottest booths on the tradeshow floor at WPPI. Rather then sit content with their success the team at MagMod has been making improvements to their system and just released version 2 making their popular Speedlight light modifier better than ever.

In a recent article by Jaron Schneider about the Metabones Speedbooster on a Black Magic Pocket Cinema Camera, several readers had questions about the model designed for the GH4, whether this one would work with it or not, and other comments. I bought one of these a week ago and wrote this article to tell you what works, and what doesn’t.

“How to Market your Photography” is a wonderful resource which was written by the marketing specialists at Photoshelter.com and MadMimi.com. I found this guide to be very user-friendly, with just the right amount of information you’ll need to get going, weather you are just starting out in the industry, or a more established photographer, who is looking to update the approach you’ve been utilizing to generate business. I will quote some excerpts from Part 1 of this guide, which contains the most fundamental advice to those of us who find words like “strategy” and “marketing” as intimidating and stressful.

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.

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.

I did not expect much other than an ordinary photo backpack when I received my review unit in the mail. After all, I didn't know anything about it -- only that it was a medium-sized backpack and that I wasn't supposed to talk about it until today. As soon as I opened the package, however, I think I actually experienced some butterflies. For such an average-sized bag, there's a lot to talk about, which is already your first good sign. The ProTactic 450 AW certainly looks the part. And it doesn't disappoint.

I don’t do a lot of gear reviews, in fact, this is my first for Fstoppers (bear with me). But Lumu is a product I’ve been following since it’s launch on Kickstarter back in 2013. I didn’t invest back then, I’ll tell you why later, but it's a great concept that has become a reality so I’m here to give you my honest thoughts and a short video we hacked together using the meter in the field.

Can't decide which lens to take? Why not take them all! With Lowepro's new Pro Trekker 650 AW, you'll likely have to buy more lenses and accessories to fill this behemoth of a camera backpack. I got to test drive this bag for several video and timelapse shoots, so I got a pretty good idea about how it performs. In my full review I'll cover the build, features, and whether it was helpful to have or simply too bulky to deal with.

RadioPopper just released their new mid-range set of triggers – the Jr2 system. It’s a complete overhaul of their much successful JrX system with some additional new features like 4 groups, stop-accurate remote power adjustments and 4 memory locations. The transmitter is completely backwards compatible with all previous RadioPopper products and can remotely power all Canon and Nikon flashes as well as Paul C. Buff and Photogenic monolights. Like me, you probably already have an off-camera flash triggering system you’re used to and using regularly… but the Jr2 may very well have you switching triggers!

A lot of my work is on the road, which is why I spent a long time looking for the best mobile storage options before eventually landing on the WD My Passport Pro and the LaCie Rugged SSD. But when I'm not on the road, I'm at my desk editing a wide range of video. It's here that I realized I needed not only a reliable backup, but also a powerful and fast working drive to burn through edits. What I found was the G-Speed Studio, and I love it.

I live in constant fear of either accidently formatting a card or having data corruption of information before I get back to my main workstation. Because of this somewhat totally rational fear, I tend to back up cards on location during or right after shoots. To fill this remote backup need, I tested the LaCie Rugged 500GB SSD which offers USB 3 and Thunderbolt 2 speeds in a tiny package.

Case Logic has been making bags, tablet sleeves and accessory holders for quite some time, but this was my first time reviewing, and using, a dedicated camera bag from the company. The Luminosity DSLR Split Backpack is a hearty, sturdy bag with a few neat compartments and a unique design that is aimed toward either the professional photographer or pro-sumer who needs to protect their gear while on the go. When considering this bag, know that protection was at the forefront.

Pictured above are the two lenses currently available from Moment that I stumbled across while browsing Kickstarter and immediately knew I had to have. The 60mm Tele and 18mm Wide are small enough to fit in the palm of your hand, while maintaining the sturdiness and incredible optics of products ten times their size. The following are my first impressions after they landed on my porch.

I hang out with a lot of wedding photographers and have heard them raving about RadLab, the Photoshop-based editing platform from the guys at Totally Rad!, for the last three-or-so years. The thing they love most about RadLab is the ability to visualize the change a setting will make before applying it — no more Command Z. Over the last couple months I've been using RadLab in tandem with my normal Lr and Ps workflow and have, overall, been very pleased with the results.

In today's world of hyper-exposure to media and art, it is a rare occurrence when a piece just grabs you by the heartstrings. Day in and day out you see another reiteration of the same old concept. But every once in a while, there's that moment when you come across another photographer’s work that leaves you in awe of their talent and unique vision. It's the kind of work that inspires you, and also makes you a bit jealous for not coming up with it yourself.

What's the best way to optimize photos so that I can deliver quality to my clients while reducing the file size for faster uploads into the cloud? This has been a question I’ve been thinking about for sometime. I have tinkered with settings in Lightroom to try and find the right export recipe but it wasn’t till another photographer told me about JpegMini that I finally felt I had the solution. Using image optimization technology they developed, JpegMini was able to deliver maximum quality at minimum file size. I ran it through some tests and here are my results.