Gear

If you're a photographer, retoucher, or videographer, you likely spend a lot of time at a computer. And since you're spending all that time there, it makes sense to make sure you're as comfortable and efficient as possible. Here are six non-photography items I use to make my workspace better.

Film lovers and analog purists are not-so-patiently awaiting the release of Kodak's new Super 8 camera, which should finally come out sometime this year at a cost of $2,500-$3,000. In the meantime, Kodak took CES as an opportunity to release some new test footage that looks rather incredible. At times, the reel displays a properly vintage look reminiscent of 1960s French films. Yet, in other sequences, the footage looks much more updated. It's sharper and boasts much higher contrast, which gives hope to directors that this will be a very flexible, very capable setup.

Hasselblad announced an updated multi-shot camera based on its flagship 100c 100-megapixel, full-frame 645 CMOS sensor. The result: the Hasselbald H6D-400c MS. The 400c MS allows for a 400-megapixel image by shifting the sensor in one-pixel and half-pixel increments as it takes six shots that are then combined later for a true 400-megapixel file.

Imaging Resource recently decided to put the weather sealing of a Nikon, Canon, Sony, and Olympus camera to the test. Watch as the team use a hosepipe to soak the equipment in simulation of a rainstorm to determine which camera fares best.

This can be a particularly dangerous time of year for chronic camera gear switchers. For one, the new year causes most of us to self-evaluate everything from the prior year, and photography gear is certainly not exempt. Second, for some it is the off season which means a bit of down time, and any time you stop moving can be especially dangerous for your decision making and bank account.

Weird skin tone, strange green tint, fake sky; these are a few things that come to mind when describing the colors in video coming from Sony cameras. They wouldn't look as “natural” as Fuji, Canon, and Nikon colors. But did Sony fix it? According to Dave Dugdale from Learning Video and Andrew Reid from EOSHD, something happened.

Today Leica has announced two new lenses for their SL camera system that will begin shipping next month. These two prime lenses — a 75mm f/2 and a 90mm f/2 — are the first of a new line of Summicron-SL glass.

Rokinon is adding to their line up once again with a new lens design that may delight many photographers.The Rokinon AF 14mm f/2.8 lens looks to be designed in the new style the lens family has adopted the past year. This new lens added to the lineup will hopefully impress not only the daytime shooters, but also the nighttime astrophotographers that have leaned on Rokinon lenses for Milky Way and wide-angle night sky imagery over the past few years.

Files from our cameras get bigger and bigger and we expect our workflow to get better and faster. This is not possible without using new technology for transferring our work to a backup storage device. The trend today is the portable SSD. This year several brands released their first portable SSD devices, which might make you update your on-location backup arsenal after you see the crazy speeds they can transfer data at.

Baby it’s cold outside, just look at that ice beard! Only in Northern Michigan would you find someone actually surfing in this kind of cold. But, that’s what a Marquette local, Daniel Schetter or “Surfer Dan,” does. On Christmas day, Photographer Devon Hains ventured out into the cold to photograph Schetter out on Lake Superior. If you’re thinking at all about venturing out in the cold after the next fluffy snowfall to take some shots (and you should), you need to take the appropriate actions to protect your gear. In this article, I’ll share a tip on how not to completely ruin your gear after shooting in the cold.

There are a lot of people switching from DSLR to mirrorless these days. But while Sony has the full frame side of things pretty much locked down, a ton of people, including Fujifilm X Photographer and Fstoppers tutorial maker, Elia Locardi, are recognizing the great, more compact, systems that Fuji is producing. In this video, Photographer and YouTuber Mark Duffy explains why he moved from Canon to Fuji.

Insta360 aims to immerse consumers deeper into the world of virtual reality with two new cameras introduced this week at CES in Las Vegas. The company known for lightweight, portable 360-degree cameras introduced its eight-lens VR camera and the 6DOF Light Field Camera, a 128-camera array.

As a photographer, I spend a lot of time sitting at my desk, both producing and consuming content. I have a supportive chair, high-end monitors, and all sorts of peripherals cluttering up my desk. All to make that time easier, comfortable, and more productive. One area a lot of people either don't think about or just skip is speakers. Whether you are listening to music while you work or editing your next big video project, quality speakers will improve the experience and quality of that work. In an attempt to improve the audio experience at my desktop I tried out a midsize set of speakers made by the Canadian company Kanto. The Kanto YU4 speakers are a reasonable size with a built-in amplifier making them perfect for desktop use.

At CES 2018, DJI released details of the Ronin-S, a one handed gimbal system with modular add-ons for creative filmmaking. This is already a crowded market, with Zhiyun-Tech and Moza offering some of our favorite options, but given DJI’s proven track record of building top class gimbals, should you wait for the Ronin-S before investing in a new one-handed gimbal system?

Medium-format cameras have long been known for their excellent image quality and incredible ability when it comes to rendering colors. Phase One's latest camera, the IQ3 100MP Trichromatic, takes this a step further and you can now get extremely accurate and effective colors, straight out of the camera. To learn more about the Trichromatic and how it compares to the "standard" 100MP back from Phase One, check out my previous article. The main issue with medium-format cameras such as these is that they cost significantly more than what most of us would like to pay. What if we could attain that level of quality without needing to spend anywhere as close?

It's rare that I use prime lenses and I also don't shoot video with Nikon gear very often anymore. But, if I'm in an extremely dark environment, the Nikon D850 and Tamron 35mm f/1.8 is a killer combination.

Those anxiously awaiting a full frame Nikon mirrorless camera will be interested to hear this major piece of news: the company will likely be introducing a new mount, the Z Mount, for their upcoming mirrorless camera.

Intel revealed more details about its new 8th generation CPUs with AMD’s RX Vega M graphics, and if you’re a VR video producer, avid gamer, or just a lover of fast laptops (like all photographers), you’re going to want to wait for this tech to hit your favorite laptop.

Seagate’s premium brand, LaCie, and DJI have teamed up again and announced at CES this week the 2 TB DJI Copilot BOSS USB 3.1 Type-C Hard Drive. The DJI CoPilot comes with a $349 price tag. With 2 TB of storage users can expect to get 60 hours of 4K video at 30 frames per second or 20,000 raw images.

Today Sony has released a version 2.00 firmware update for its a9 mirrorless cameras. The enhancements and added functions include changes to the continuous autofocus system as well as metadata input and image protection.

One of the most important underlying themes in being a successful photographer is streamlining your workflow. That may be in how to edit photos quickly, how to organize video files, how to quickly produce invoices, or any number of tasks that you have to perform over and over again. One aspect of my business where I found myself wasting a lot of time was in my battery charging. In today's video, I'm going to outline how Fstoppers created our battery charging station and how you too can make your life a lot easier as you prepare for the next day's photoshoot.

A few months ago, GoPro announced a new camera named the Fusion that would allow users to capture 360-degree videos. now, the company introduce Mobile OverCapture for the Fusion bringing a new way to shoot video to the world. Combined the two products will let you live the moment, capture the whole scene in 360 degrees, and then compose your video in postproduction.

Recording clean audio is extremely important but can also be infuriating. Finally, after seven years, we've found a system that seems to work... most of the time.

So you received a fancy new DSLR or mirrorless camera for Christmas, or immediately went to the local electronics store with your wallet resembling George Costanzas’ from “Seinfeld,” filled to the brim with holiday gift cards, and picked yourself a kit that has everything you need to conqueror the photography trenches, including not one but two lenses. You may be asking yourself, why would people not buy this? Buying just a camera body when this is such a good deal, makes little sense when you're first starting out. If this is sounding anything remotely close to recent thoughts you’ve had, stick around. In all honesty, I wish I would have had a few of these pointers when I got started in photography.

Toronto-based photographer and filmmaker, Peter McKinnon, is a big jerk. You won't see me saying that very often as I truly do respect McKinnon as a content creator, but at the three minute, twenty-second mark of this video my butt clenched up and stayed that way for an entire six minutes and fifty-five seconds. If you're into that kind of thing then watch as McKinnon takes apart his very delicate, and very expensive Canon EOS-1D X Mark II.

Early in my photography path, I didn’t pay much attention to the different kind of camera bags that were available. I knew I wanted a bag that could carry everything at the time, and I was looking for a backpack style camera bag. As time passed, my lenses collection grew which I didn't need to carry (or even use) it all. I also didn't want to carry the backpack camera bag with me all the time since it was bulky and heavy. I wanted a second, more mobile-friendly camera bag that could carry my essentials for me and my lightweight "on-the-go" setup if you well.

Today at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, Nikon announced their newest lens: the AF-S Nikkor 180-400mm f/4E TC1.4 FL ED VR super-telephoto. But what makes it worth its $12,396.95 price tag?

The rumors were true and today Panasonic announced the new GH5S, the "updated" version of the GH5. It's certainly better in some ways, but not all.

Today Panasonic announced at CES 2018 the new Lumix GH5S, a video focused camera that should be a boon for the prosumer hobbyists and professionals alike. Panasonic has changed several aspects of the camera to give an edge to the photographer and filmmaker that will enable them to step above the current Panasonic Lumix GH5 in usability and creativity. If you’ve been wanting even more out of your Lumix line of cameras, this may be the tool for you.

The 10-Stop ND filter is one of the favorite filters of most landscape and urban photographers, as it extends the exposure time and makes possible achieving different results. The filter market is growing and NiSi is quite popular these days. So I decided to test NiSi 10-Stop ND filter with V5 holder system to see if it is a good option.