Videography

If you ever tried to extract a good still frame from a video, you probably know there are few different methods of doing this, but none of them are really great.

Magnanimous Media posted a video detailing some of RED's newest technology as they go through the performance of the sensor in the new 6K-capable Epic Dragon. In what is perhaps one of the most interesting and visually appealing ways to display RAW and ungraded vs.

Our friends at the automotive website Jalopnik have announced their second transportation-focused film festival, and it is great news for car lovers and creatives alike for a few reasons.

Liquify gets a bad rap. Its misuse accounts for a pretty alarming number of Photoshop disasters. And although it is easy to learn, it does take a great deal of time and energy to master. Luckily, Aaron Nace over at Phlearn is here to help.

Noted conceptual photographer Benjamin Von Wong has been captivating his audience for years with his imaginative imagery. So when Von Wong showed up to Australia gift-wrapped in box to surprise one of his biggest fans for their birthday, was it really so strange?

While in Macedonia shooting video and stills for the company Petzl, photographer Keith Ladzinski was capturing aerial footage in the village of Prilep with a DJI Phantom II. The unexpected happened and the quadcopter got stuck on a church steeple in the middle of a shot. How they got the Phantom back was even more of a spectacle.

In this quick-and-easy tutorial, Howard Pinsky teaches you how to create the ring light effect in your subject's eyes using Adobe Photoshop. Applying a custom shape, layer styles and blending tweaks, Pinsky demonstrates an effective way to produce this reflection without using a physical ring light.

There is a good chance this video will make you jump.  You may even pee your pants just a little.  The REMUS SharkCam equipped with GoPro cameras gives us a clear view of what it would be like to be attacked by a great white.  Watching this video I couldn't help but appreciate how cameras have opened the world to us.

This weekend I had the privilege of taking my family to go see James Gunn's new Marvel epic Guardians of the Galaxy. The summer blockbuster has been hugely anticipated by both Marvel fans and science fiction fans world-wide. I'm happy to say that the movie did not disappoint expectations. In this behind the scenes b-roll video we get an up-close look at how the movie was shot. 

The premise for the Cutting Edge Tour headed up by Adam Epstein, five year veteran video editor and post production guru for Saturday Night Live, was a tricky one. I know because I spent a few days bouncing ideas around with him and looking at how to structure the thing. This review will set out specifically what you will (and won’t) find in the workshop. 

I recently produced a documentary on fine art photographer Tony Irons, showcasing his new photography exhibit entitled “Dead Weight.” The collection includes images created in a studio setting on large format film and landscapes photographed in and around Taipei, Taiwan. 

David F. Sandberg goes behind the scenes of his recent horror film Not So Fast and shows us how he lit and created the short. Sandberg reveals his innovative lighting set up that allows him to create a dark and haunting scene.

In this Adobe Photoshop Playbook video, Bryan O'Neil Hughes suggests a variety of options to help you tackle noise when processing your photographs. Due to the improvement of pixel quality, noise isn't usually so much of an issue. However, it still can be a problem especially in your low light images. 

Now this is fascinating: Lady Gaga worked with photographer Robert Wilson to produce a stunning video portrait. The portrait was one of a set of others that were on display in the Lourve last year, but are only released to American audiences last Saturday at the Watermill Center in New York.

Platon is a renowned photographer who's taken the portrait many of the most important, influential, and infamous people in the world. His portfolio includes photos of President Obama, the First Lady, Vladimir Putin, Muammar Gaddafi, and Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, amoung many, many others.

If you want to learn video on DSLRs and the like, there are few better resources than EOSHD. Andrew Reid is extremely knowledgable (it actually frightens me how much he knows) and is excellent as a real pro talking about, often, consumer equipment.

Zack Arias has always been an avid Fuji shooter (starting off with the fabulous X100) and was one of the biggest influences in my decision to finally take the plunge and co-purchase an X-Pro 1 this summer. In this video Zack knocks some sense into you about how silly the full frame / crop debate really is by reviewing the progression of different formats from eight by t

There is great satisfaction in landing that amazing shoot with an A-List client, but even the perfect gig can sometimes leave us wanting more. Often the answer lies only within a project of your own conception. Adventure photographer/director Tim Kemple shares with us how he's fueled by personal projects, and why they are often more important than any paid assignment.

DigitalRev Tv review and compare the latest standard prime lens from Sigma, The 50mm f/1.4 DG HSM Art lens, to it’s Canon and Nikon rivals, the Canon 50mm f/1.2L and Nikon 58mm f/1.4G. 

Lars Schneider, an adventure and landscape photographer from Germany, spent two months on the road with his family traveling across the Southwestern US. This video documents his trip, but I also interviewed Lars about the challenges and rewards of running a photography business on the road, while at the same time taking care of a family. 

Opening Photoshop for the first time can be pretty overwhelming. But whether you're new, relatively new or looking for a good refresher on the basics, Aaron Nace at Phlearn has assembled a can't-miss, three-part series on the need-to-know elements of Photoshop.

Don’t believe everything you see or read on the internet, guys. Case in point, "We Still Coming." There has recently been a photograph allegedly supported by a text message screen-capture making the rounds online. It alludes to a wedding barbecue being crashed by a group of strangers because the bride-to-be sent out an invitation to the wrong number.

Drones are probably the hottest gadgets in the photography industry this year. We see them being used for commercial aerial shoots, for news coverage, for wedding photography and, well, just for fun. The guys at 'Earth Touch' recently decided to see if they can create a drone that instead of going up to the sky, will be able to go down under the water.

YouTube Star Michelle Phan, who has 6.7 million subscribers to her beauty tutorials, is being sued for multiple copyright infringements. Ultra Records claim Phan has used music from its artists Kaskade, Deadmau5, and Calvin Harris, and profited from them. The company's lawyers claim they have found over 50 examples of her using said music.  

Cancer is a vicious and terrible disease that affects everyone around it, even those it does not directly infect. This video, which is beautifully produced by Shannon Palmer, captures the emotions and mental strength of her aunt, Lisa Cook and her 14 year battle with breast cancer.

The guys from Film Riot catch ‘Guy Ritchie Disease’ and in the process teach you how to create the "Guy Ritchie" freeze frame effect. Whether you need an awesome intro title for your film or even a great effect for your own behind the scenes photography vlog, this Film riot video shows you how to create it in Adobe After Effects.

In short, no it is not. But a few minor dealbreakers are all that stand between leaving this camera on the shelf, and making it best digital camera in its class.

What started out as a couple of school girls playfully creating a video ends up as an ad spot for Suntory's C.C. Lemon.  This is not an educational video so much as another good demonstration of how low cost gear and some skilled editing can turn out pretty awesome, that is, if the camera shakes don't make you nauseous.

My friend Mykii Liu shared this video on his Facebook this morning and I really felt like I had to pass it on. This film focuses on a young woman who talks about the simple things she has, why she has them and what they mean to her. Not only is the message great, but the manner in which this is filmed is also fantastic.  

What do you carry with you? 

If you are interested in creating the softest light with an amazing wrap around quality, look no further. The book light technique, coined by film maker Shane Hurlbut is so simple and basic, requires the most inexpensive light modifiers, yet gives you the maximum control over the quality of light. 

Announced less than a month ago, the new Nikon D810 has made video DSLR shooters foam at the mouth with its long list of cinema-centric features. The crew from Cinescapes Collective got their hands on an early release of the D810 and put together a short film for Nikon Professional Services.

What is Auto Exposure Bracketing? (AEB) is the setting on many DSLR cameras which allows you to take three different exposed images in quick succession. Often one image is under exposed, the second is mid range and the last is over exposed.

In this valuable tutorial Glyn Dewis takes a quick snapshot and shows you how to pull detail from highlights and shadows to make it a beautiful image. Dewis mentions some great workflow tips and tricks in Adobe Lightroom as well as how to bring your image over, non destructively, to Photoshop camera raw. 

[via Glyn Dewis - Youtube]

In this brilliant tutorial from Phlearn, Aaron Nace shows you how to create an artistic, composite image to replicate the double exposure effect. Despite being a little complex, the instruction is easy to follow.

In December of 2013, Amazon teased the world with the thought of delivering (small) packages to your doorstep using drones, as first reported here. It got a lot of people talking. But since that initial announcement from Amazon, there hasn't been any indication that it was real. Was it purely a publicity stunt? If it was, it was a good one.

When it comes to creating great advertising campaigns, photographers should take a page out of the sports apparel company Bogner's book:  capture something never seen before in the most beautiful way possible.  Bogner teamed up with elite downhill snow skier Chuck Patterson for an idea that simply seems impossible yet breathtaking.   

Last year, photographer duo Dylan Howell and Sara Byrne (of Dylan and Sara Photography) posted an awesome video showing you how to create beautiful double-exposure photos in-camera, a technique popular in fine art, portrait, and wedding photography.

The ever talented team at Scanline VFX have posted their most recent BTS video of the popular wight fight scene from the Game of Thrones Season 4 Finale. In this run down you can see the incredible detail and heavy visual effects work that goes into each and every scene from that fight. This one sequence has been remored to be one of the most expensive scenes created for the show.  

Check out this cool BTS look at working in 4K / slow-mo on-the-fly with the RED EPIC camera system in three different film projects for the REDirect Competion.

 This four-part video series appears on the Shot on RED YouTube channel and showcases the awesome ability of this little system.

Below are the other three parts of the sereis, enjoy!

If you've ever tried to film something, you probably know what it's like to try and cobble something together with a bunch of borrowed and/or homemade gear. I know the first music video that we ever shot we done with a "borrowed" shopping cart, a camera on loan, and some shop lights.

The guys over at Ledicia Audio Visual recently shared this beautiful video that shows process behind large format 8x10 film photography from start to finish. The film folows large format photographer, Luis Plácido López Caballero, as he sets up and composes his image all the way through his manual dodging and burning and developing in the darkroom.

If you’re anything like me, you’ve got hard drives full of footage from personal or other non-commercial projects, that don’t serve much use once the project they were shot for is completed. I’ve considered trying to license it as stock footage, but never really taken the time to do it.

Last week, we featured an interview with the awesomely talented retoucher and photographer Marina Dean-Francis. This week, she's shared a video with Fstoppers showing her retouching on a hair and beauty image. Although the video has been sped up tremendously, it's not hard to see that there aren't many quick tricks in play here.

Inspiration spurs creativity and it is often you find a photograph or artist that influences your practice. In this Photoshop tutorial Ben Secret helps you recreate the look and feel of an image by matching contrast, tone and saturation. With these brilliant tips get a handle on colour and tone through imitation, but then have fun adding your own unique style.

The hit TV show on HBO Game of Thrones has some stunning practical and visual effects. Season 4 was no exception, and the team has behind the VFX just released a behind-the-scenes video showing what they did. If you haven't watched the season yet, be aware, it contains SPOILERS. 

I don't know about you guys, but I sometimes get some pretty questionable packing from Amazon, but this far exceeds anything I've ever encountered. Youtuber Ottar Gilason works for a camera store and the amount of packaging DHL included on an order for a single camera battery charger is downright hilarious.  

Watch this video where Glyn Dewis talks about his method to shoot landscapes, and his use of various techniques to develop the image in Lightroom with some fine tuning in Photoshop. 

Michael Bay, the American movie director and producer, is worth millions of dollars. In fact, Forbes has Bay making $66 million in 2014 – and that’s just through the first six months of this year.

How’s he do it? Well, Tony Zhou has created a mashup of Bay’s movies for us to study. Let the Bayhem begin.

Slow motion is, certainly, one of the most beautiful cinematic inventions of all time. It can show us so many things that are not normally visible and can make any "normal" scene look magical and unique.