Articles written by Lee Morris

Realm Pictures has been working on "The Underwater Realm" (one of the most ambitious indie film attempts I've ever seen) for months now and have been coming out with great BTSVs along the way. The team recently realized that they need to film parts of their movie in an underwater studio and to do this they need to raise more funds. The team has turned to Kickstarter.com to help out but they aren't just asking for money. If you pledge $50 you will receive a special edition copy of their movie "Zomblies" and 10 in-depth video tutorials on indie film making tips like the one below. In the video below Dave shows us how to make a safe and explosion on an indie budget. If you feel like helping these guys out head over to Kickstarter and pledge today.

This past month, we tasked you Fstoppers with entering your best self portrait for a chance to win a brand new Westcott Apollo Orb. Self portraits are understandably hard to judge, but I based my considerations on three aspects: 1) Well lit; 2) Concept well executed; 3) The photo tells me something about the photographer. There were many quality entries and I really enjoyed going through them. Thank you everyone who entered, as it proves what a solid group of photographers we have here. Check the full post to see the winner and the runners up.

Just a few weeks ago Canon announced the new C300 video camera to join the professional video world. Many people were confused because the specs didn't seem that much better than the 5DM2 but the price was way higher ($20k). In the video below Jonathan Yi does a great job of showing many of the benefits of the C300. If I had a little bit more money I would be tempted to buy one of these myself.

I've taken quite a few stock images in my life and it's always been funny to me what sells and what doesn't. Usually the most popular images don't really make much sense in real life. One of our readers just sent me this group of hilarious stock images with dialog boxes. Check out the full post to see them all.

Sometimes we need to be reminded that we have all of the tools we need to create the projects that we envision. It's easy to just think "if I only had that new camera I could finally take the type of pictures I want to." or "If I could just afford the new Red Scarlet I could finally produce that video concept I've been thinking about." I can tell you from experience that you have access to everything you need right now. Stop thinking so much and take the cell phone out of your pocket and do it.

It's that time of the year again when all of our favorite photo gear goes on sale. We plan to post sales all day long on our Facebook and Twitter page but for the best deals like the one below, we will post them on Fstoppers. Online sales sometimes only last a few minutes so we will be pulling posts down once the deal is no longer available. Currently the Nikon P7000 is 50% off at Amazon.

Our friends over at Nikon Rumors just got their hands on images and specs of the new D800. This camera was supposed to come out weeks ago but was put on hold due to the flooding in Thailand. Once again they are saying this thing is going to be 36mp and shoot 1080p video. I am most excited to hear that it is going to have 60FPS video, even if it is only at 720. Head over to NR to read all of the other details.

The Fstoppers 2011 Behind The Scenes Contest has been picking up momentum as we near the submission deadline (December 31st). We are giving away over $20,000 in prizes which is pretty exciting on it's own but I'm happy to say that things are about to get even better. We have finalized all of the judges for this competition and these four are some of the best in the industry. Check out the full post to see each of their bios.

I am shocked that I've never seen this amazing commercial before. I actually overlooked it a few times because I thought it was fake. It wasn't until I saw this BTSV that I found out that this really did happen. The camera had to endure temperatures down to 90 degrees below 0 and a massive fall once the balloon finally popped. Luckily the gear survived with the help of a parachute and they were able to create this amazing commercial. Check out the finished commercial in the full post.