Editorial assignments can be both boring and quite interesting. Most of the time that depends on the photographer's attitude, not the budget. Let me show you how I approached a project where I had to make portraits of a motivational speaker and influencer.
Not all cinema lenses are made the same, not even those in the affordable price range or that come from the same manufacturer. In this article, you will see the structural and optical differences between Rokinon and Rokinon Xeen cinema lenses and what to purchase if you're looking for video glass on budget.
Pricing has always been a subject of interest for photographers. Whether you practice high-end commercial photography or you take beautiful family portraits, understanding and determining a just pricing strategy for you and the client is very important.
Once again, Vanity Fair teamed up with Mark Seliger to produce iconic photographs of Hollywood stars in a custom-built portrait studio at the 2017 Oscars. The portraits are definitely great, but we as photographers always seek to find the secrets of the masters, such as lighting, camera settings, posing, post-processing, etc. Seliger did the job in four steps. If you follow these steps, it will guarantee you a similar career.
The majority of the readers of this article who shoot video probably use still lenses. You might ask yourself why you may need different lenses for video while your existing photography ones work just fine. In this article I'd like to show you certain features of the cinema glass that you probably always wanted subconsciously. Maybe after reading this you'll start saving up the money for one.
A marriage between James Bond and Inspire 2 has taken place. It's not your usual vacation drone. It's an industrial machine that, in terms of artistry, may only work for badass artists.
The video world is changing. If you thought you'd never be able to have a cinema lens because you couldn't afford it, think again, because Fujifilm just released their Fujinon MK 18-55mm T2.9 zoom glass. It will surprise you with its features and price tag.
Resolution, bit depth, compression, bit rate. These are just few of the countless parameters our cameras and files have. Let's talk about bit depth here. There's a lot of good talk about 10 bit and a lot of bad talk about 8 bit. The computer can tell the difference, but can you?
Buying the right gear for you is not only a question of money. Sometimes the wisest decisions are made within a tight budget, while the stupidest choices may be made when finances are abundant. In this article I'd like to share with you my process of buying new gear for my photography and video projects.
Being a filmmaker gives you a lot of power to manipulate the emotions of the viewer. This can be achieved in several ways. Peter McKinnon shows examples of the same clips edited with various techniques to evoke entirely different moods.
There are two types of motions in video that look similar, but are accomplished in different ways, each having a unique effect on the audience. One of them incorporates moving the camera on a track. The other uses the optical zoom of the lens. In this video tutorial you will learn what's the difference between those techniques and when to use them.
Shooting a beauty video is not quite the same as shooting beauty portraits. While in still photography there is a single frame, in video you can use the power of the moving image to tell a superior story. Here are three cool techniques that help to create this beauty video clip all in camera.
Have you experienced watching 30-second clips that felt long and boring, while some 10-minute videos seemed engaging and interesting? It's not always about the length of the footage. It's about how you tell the story.
Do you remember Adobe's Creative Suite or CS? Yes, it was that family of Adobe applications that served creatives well for quite a long time. We used to buy perpetual licenses for applications from the Creative Suite, which felt like you really owned something. You paid and it was yours. Well, Adobe says you can't do that anymore.
I've heard stories of clients who said that. They feel the service of a certain photographer is way too expensive, as to them, it's merely clicking of a button. I tend to agree with many who say that.
Tripods, jibs and sliders; they all require an attachment mechanism for our cameras and different brands provide different mounting plate standards. A small company, edelkrone, based in Czech Republic claims to provide one universal piece of gear that allows to attach your camera to any mounting plate.
Visual and special effects have a long history; they've been around since the dawn of filmmaking. Here are some great examples from silent films where the techniques used behind the scenes are still relevant today.
Someone once said that "Your first 10,000 photographs are your worst." This means you have to take lots of pictures to get better in the craft. I don't agree with that. Improving your photography as well as videography skills is often compared to an athlete training. The athlete regularly repeats a number of exercises for certain muscles. Musicians are the same. They train their abilities to play musical instruments by repeating sound sequences and so do singers. All these disciplines repeat and repeat what they do. It has to be the same with photography, right?
The story in a film is, and shall always be, king. But without good visuals the story may seem incomplete. We must admit that sometimes a film is worth watching only because of the imagery. Despite the mixed opinions on how good each of the Star Wars films is, there's some great cinematography that's pleasing to the eye.
Cinema glass has always been way more expensive than still camera lenses. Combined with the cinema camera sensors these high end lenses provide an image that's far superior to DSLRs capable of recording video. But yet, there are decent films created with DSLRs with still camera lenses. I'm not going to compare the glass quality here. I'm about to talk only about this peculiar T-stop measure on the cinema lenses while still camera lenses have an f-stop. Why should they differ?
