The LitePanels 1x1 has arguably been the industry standard for LED lighting in many news and documentary productions. At the recent CineGear show, LitePanels demoed their latest product, an update to the award winning 1x1. The new "Astra" light claims to have an output 4x greater than the original 1x1. Nate Weber from Newsshooter.com shares the first look in this video.
In a short film created by media group Blue Chalk, photographer Cory Richards discusses his growth as a photographer and his experiences shooting in some of the most beautiful-and dangerous-places on earth. Essentially homeless after dropping out of high school at 14, Richards credits the observance of the "richness that comes with struggle" for his initial education as a visual storyteller.
Michael Schmidt of Chemnitz, Germany, shares a video review of Canon's new and quite affordable EF-S 10-18mm IS STM lens. The lens features silent focusing thanks to its stepping motor (STM) and even throws in built-in image stabilization (IS). While the lens exhibits some minor issues (some expected distortion seems quite controlled for this focal length), overall image quality seems fantastic and the lens' focusing motor is truly silent and smooth.
Earlier this year Lukas Renlund, a 30-year old professional photographer from Scandinavia, sat down and tried to imagine what the photography industry might look like in 5 or 10 years. That imagination-session lead him to quickly start a new photography/media company named 'Not So Fast | Media'. Instead of offering still photographs to their clients, the new company focuses only on creating motion photographs- Beautiful moving images.
Thirty years after their original collaboration for Koyaanisqatsi, filmmaker Godfrey Reggio and Philip Glass are at it again with documentary where the audience is placed in an unusual situation: watching the varied expressions of others interacting with technology. This video, an Fstoppers exclusive, gives you a look into the mind of Godfrey Reggio while making the film.
If you watched the Fstoppers "How To Become a Professional Commercial Wedding Photographer" DVD, you might remember a scene where Lee Is shooting by the water. He later told us he was too concerned for the structural integrity of a dock to put a wedding party on it, stating he didn't want to be "that photographer." Well, Lee might have avoided it, but this group sure didn't.
This little DIY "hack" from MrCheesyCam on YouTube shows you how to add a 3 stop ND filter to lenses that you might otherwise not be able to (such as the MFT Rokinon Fisheye as shown in the video). All the components needed for this nifty little mod cost well under $10.
When it comes to camera memory cards, most of us gravitate towards Sandisk and Lexar. Maybe PNY or Sony too. Samsung has been making memory cards for other companies for quite some time, but only recently have they decided to branch out and brand them as Samsung. So how do they perform? Surprisingly, or maybe unsurprisingly, quite well.
I've always been a Lowepro fan. I own pelicans, Think Tank, ONA, swag backpacks... the works. But for some reason I keep gravitating back to Lowepro. I currently own both the old and new versions of the Pro Roller bags. In an attempt to show how well protected your gear is inside the new Lowepro Pro Roller X-Series, Lowepro decided to do the ridiculous.
Let me preface this by saying I hate calling anything the "ultimate." Odds are, I've missed something in the market that might be better. It's nearly impossible for me to keep a pulse on everything in this massive and expanding industry. But if anything comes as close to "ultimate" in the video tripod world, it would be the Benro S8 Video Tripod.
The RagLite LED systems are a product seeking backing on Kickstarter to do a production run of what appear to be LED strips on fabric that can be rolled up, powered by battery, are waterproof, and claim a CRI of 95. With several rewards being offered, including various sizes of their light, they seek to raise about $25,000. Read on for their video and more information on these unique lights.
I was recently introduced to a new business, TogTools.com, from a photographer friend of mine and co-founder, Jess Robertson. TogTools is a free online resource for new or emerging photographers to gain knowledge through various podcast interviews from notable creatives in our industry. The focus of their interviews are all things related to running a successful business.
Last month, Lytro announced their second generation light field camera they call Illum. The Illum system is clearly geared at serious amateur and professional photographers interested in experimenting with variable focus photography. This new mini-documentary features photographers using the Illum system, the technology behind it, and their creative process.
In beauty and portrait retouching, one of the most important goals is to retain skin texture and keep the image from looking soft. We often however face a situation where the existing texture is unflattering and harsh. While we could heal out each pore or patch manually, this often leads to sub-par results and takes a long time. In this video I'll show you a unique, precise and fast way to target a particular texture frequency and offset it in a largely automated way.
Capturing a high action activity like ice climbing can be tricky enough, but photographer Ray Demski took it one step further– to include the aurora borealis, and to do it in a single image (no compositing). In this behind the scenes video, see the challenges Ray faced when having to deal with capturing a long exposure of the scene, while dangling on the side of an ice cliff himself.
In case you didn't know, Amazon recently put out a patent on White Seamless Studio Photography which a lot of photographers found to be quite bogus. You can read our article about that here. Colbert put out his video of him ripping on Amazon with some pretty humorous jokes and going a bit in depth into the patent they filed.
Intelligent Details is the new ad / documentary that Bentley Motors commissioned. It was filmed throughout New York and highlights what inspires Luc Donckerwolke, Bentley's Director of Design, and SangYup Lee, Head of Exterior Design. At around the 3:16 mark, you'll be treated to a behind-the-scenes look at how the film was created. Their YouTube channel explains, "Intelligent Details was filmed, assembled and edited using the in-car connectivity and entertainment platform."
A few weeks ago I released a video featuring my friend and fellow photographer Blair Bunting in the backseat of an F16. The video blew up on Reddit (#1 in r/Videos making it to the top 5 of the front page), was featured on Gizmodo, Jalopnik, Daily Mail, Telegraph, CNN, ABC World News with Dianne Sawyer, hundreds of other blogs and even was officially recognized by YouTube. But for reasons still unexplained to me, it has been removed from YouTube and there is nothing I can do about it.
Nikon provided a new video highlighting the benefits of using its fluorine coating, first used on the just-announced updated 400mm f/2.8 lens. In addition to adding a certain clarity to the image because of its antireflective properties, the new 400mm f/2.8 benefits from the fluorine coating's ability to repel just about anything that might hit it. I want this on all of my lenses!
Vincent Laforet’s Directing Motion workshop has done what every workshop should do – it’s challenged my current way of working and given me clarity on how I can improve my work. Less than 24 hours after the workshop, I was working differently, shooting differently and thinking differently. This might just be the best workshop for those shooting (or with an interest in shooting) motion work, ever.
Sound is critical to a successful video. Clear sound. Crisp sound. Real sounding sound. Once you get into audio (and I mean really get into it), it's hard to get out. "Pictures say a thousand words? Sounds say 10,000 words." It's rather literal, but it's true. Sound is often under-appreciated in video and that's a shame. This video is an ode to sound.
Edelkrone raised a few interested eyebrows with their unique slider design a while back, but with their recent add-on items, the latest of which is the "Action Module," both filmmakers and manufacturers alike are taking a long look at these innovate products. The Action Module not only brings timelapse and repeatable moves, it does so in a simple, intuitive way.
Martin Heck from Timestorm films kicked off a series of timelapse videos through New Zealand with the release of Awakening earlier this month. While Awakening took the viewer across New Zealand's grand landscapes, his latest film Amplitude explores its details. Taking you on a journey through its caves, waterfalls and lush greenery, the details and colors are sure to excite your senses and have you putting New Zealand on your bucket list.
'Boyhood', a soon-to-be-released movie is doing something that was never attempted by a major film before. Filmmaker Richard Linklater made a movie about growing up and decided it would be interesting to film it using the same actors for all stages of the story and therefore it took 12 years to complete. The youngest actor was 7 when filming started in 2002, and 19 years old when they finished.
From time to time, we show of some behind the scenes videos of popular movies and TV shows that highlight the hard work done behind the camera to make the stories come alive. However, rarely do we get to see a side by side comparison of a visual effect heavy movie such as Final Destination 5, showing us all the hard work that is done to seamlessly create exciting moments on a budget.
Leo Rosas recently made a YouTube video for The Cooperative of Photography (TheCooph) that featured 7 little DIY photography mods, including a simple GoPro time-lapse setup, DIY creative effect filters, a flash diffuser and an ND filter. While it's not the first time we've seen many of these little projects (like the GoPro kitchen-timer), the video certainly got me thinking.
Last week Fstoppers and Peter Hurley hosted a free Illuminating the Face release party on Spreecast (view it here if you missed it). Since I had learned so much from Peter's tutorial I figured it would be exciting to use some of his studio lighting techniques for my own webcam session. What I didn't expect was all the emails, tweets, and live questions concerning my lighting setup. So in this post I'm going to share my lighting setup with everyone so you can reproduce it with your video sessions.
Known for its top of the line outdoor adventure camera bags and backpacks, F-Stop Gear recently unveiled the Loka Ultralight, or "UL," a revision of the popular Loka backpack. In this review I’ll go over the differences between the UL relative to its older brother, and point out who this pack is and isn’t for.
Technicolour Alaska is an incredible time-lapse film of the Northern Lights by Alexis Coram. Not only did this once in a lifetime trip produce an amazing time-lapse video, the photos themselves are are incredible. Coram was born and raised in England and now resides in Northern California. She considers herself a consumer of life and adventure.
It's easy to dismiss the amount of difficulty involved in location shoots. A few years ago, Joey Lawrence (JoeyL) shot a personal project of portraits in Ethiopia. Whether traveling by van, boat or Indiana Jones plane, it's great to have the opportunity to see how hard the literal journey was on the way to the figurative photographic destination. Just handling the equipment was a pretty substantial undertaking.
Wired's Design FX has given us a great behind the scenes video of everything that was involved in the updated Helicarrier crash scene for Captain America: The Winter Soldier. The sheer scale of the project is astounding as FXGuide.com's Mike Seymour and ILM's Digital Models Supervisor Bruce Holcomb take us through the design of the crash and its scale to the actors on the green screen.
Check out this footage taken at the Monterey Bay Aquarium in Montery, California (my old stomping grounds!) from Cheesycam.com. The footage is, because it is on Vimeo, not 4K obviously since it's not supported, but you can download the original footage here. What do you think?
What happens when two filmmakers get together, fill a suitcase with camera gear and hop on a plane? In the case of Preston Kanak and Brent Foster, a great work of digital cinema. With only a rough idea of what they wanted, much was left to chance as these two spent 8 days in Havana, Cuba. Read on for the final film and some insight from the creators.
SPOILER WARNING. Listening to Vincent Laforet might leave you forever changed, never able to watch film or TV the same way again. The silver lining is he can also change the way you shoot, and engage, with your audience. With that disclaimer out of the way (you can't say I didn't warn you), join me as I talk to Vincent for this exclusive as we venture down the film and motion rabbit hole. How deep we go is really up to you...
One of the hardest parts of filming on moving sets such as moving cars or trains is to maintain perfect lighting in a way that makes sense to the viewer. There are many obstacles the filmmakers have to deal with when shooting on a moving set, like how to move the lights while keeping it on the same angle while the vehicle is moving and how to keep the camera shot steady and focused on the subject. Check out this great BTS video showing how filmmakers in China solved these problems.
Videographers and event photographers are all to familiar with the frustration of constantly switching out the tiny internal batteries of DSLRs. On a good day you can get a thousand or so still images or just a couple hours of video before switching the batteries. This simple little mod from Chris Winter shows you hot to build a hardcore external battery that boasts roughly 9x the capacity of the standard internal batteries.
"Here come the G's." Words that might not mean anything to you sitting at your computer, but if you're strapped into the back seat of an F-16, it means remember your breathing training and don't pass out. Blair Bunting, recent addition to the Nikon Ambassadors list, took to the skies with the United Air Force Thunderbirds in part to see if he could sustain 9 G's.
Most of the readers of this site I’d wager fall into the category of content creators, not content consumers. That being the case, rants about not being properly compensated for the hard work put in to producing images comes up every so often. But have you ever been on the other side of that situation?
For those who dabble in video but come from a photo background, you might not know the difference between a still lens and a video lens. If you do, you might not know why those differences exist. DSLR Video Shooter has this really informative video that breaks down the differences and shows you how to convert your still lenses into cinema glass.
Andrew Dean from HillBillyGripTruck.com posted his updated video shootout of the Gh4, Gh3, 5d3, 7d, and C100. The results were pretty cool and we were able to get a nice side by side view of quality from each of the cameras as they were all setup to be relatively close in settings. On top of making sure settings were close, all of the cameras shot at the same time in the same exact lighting situation to make sure they were all brought an equal scene to work with.
After yesterday's post, Lars Steenhoff sent us an updated, side-by-side comparison of video bitrates on the Nikon D800 at 3200 ISO with NikonHacker's new firmware. Steenhoff comments that the 64Mbps file has more noise as a result of less compression, but cleans up easily in a final file output that is cleaner with just a little noise reduction. For those interested, he has also made the original 64Mbps and 24Mpbs files downloadable on Dropbox, too.
To date, Nikon users haven't enjoyed the benefits of Magic Lantern hacks appreciated by many Canon shooters. However, this is slowly changing as NikonHacker has added firmware hacks for a variety of Nikon DSLRs. Using recent NikonHacker updates, Lars Steenhoff has shared his own 54Mbps sample, albeit without comparisons for the moment. NikonHacker user, LPowell, however, has shared a series bitrate comparison videos with the Nikon D800.
"It is not about getting as close as possible, but to capture the feeling of being there. I don't want to just look into their world, I want to be a part of it." Asgeir Helgestad is a photographer from Norway whose wildlife imagery seems to step inside the world of the animal. In this short video, Asegir explains why he chose this pursuit, and what he hopes to convey with his work. Worth the watch in HD and fullscreen.
We posted a set of videos released by Pathé News, part of their 85,000 reels released, but this one really stood out to me- it's hilarious. I'll add that I've taught and taken quite a few photo workshops in my day, but I would kill to know what that instructor was saying to his students and the models. Let's break this video down shall we?
It's pretty easy to get caught up in the MoVI hype- it's an outstanding achievement in camera stabilization technology. Magnanimous Media, a large video rental house in Chicago, took some time to explain what the MoVI is really good at, while also tempering expectations on what it can do and what a traditional steady cam would better for.
Pathé News (AKA "British Pathé") was one of the biggest news agencies in the world in the 20th century. Maybe the biggest of all. The company was founded in 1896 and mainly focused on producing newsreels for movie theaters (before the TV took over). They stopped producing newsreels and documentries in the early 1970s as they couldn't compete with news broadcasts on TV. This week they uploaded the full collection of their films (85,000 of them) to Youtube, including un-aired materials.
Earlier this week, Gizmodo released a comparison of 6 action video cameras. The test included cameras from GoPro, Drift, JVC, Sony, Garmin, and Ion. The author of the original article, Brent Rose, decided it would be easier to make his own hilariously-large 6-camera head rig than to test them individually.
While browsing the web for editing tips, I ran across this video tutorial that had me intrigued based on the title "How To Make A Sick Mountain Bike Edit." I normally don't watch mountain bike videos, but this one had me from the beginning.
Monte Isom, NYC-based sports, entertainment, and advertising photographer just shared a look behind-the-scenes at his most recent shoot for the World Cup. The video takes you all the way through his preproduction and makeup, to shooting with a pretty good look at his lighting setup.
Many photographers try to take on cool on-going photography-related projects, and many break in just few days or weeks. You know what i'm talking about - 365 projects or 1 Second Everyday kind of projects. Dutch filmmaker Frans Hofmeester, took on one of these projects and took it to the extreme. He filmed his newborn daughter every week from the day she was born all the way until she celebrated her 14th birthday.