Leica is on track to have the most impressive set of announcements for Photokina. This morning they released the Leica M-A (Type 127), a beautiful, fully mechanical, 35mm rangefinder camera.
Two weeks back Sony released a teaser image for the Zeiss 16-35mm f/4.0 FE zoom lens for their α7 line of cameras. This lens rounds out the "Holy Trinity" of zooms, the 16-35mm wide-angle, the 24-70mm standard, and the 70-200mm telephoto. The lens is immediately available for preorder for $1,349.99.
Breaking: The guys over at Sony Alpha Rumors have reported on the four newly announced lenses offered by Sony for their FE mount α7 series cameras. According to Sony Alpha Rumors the long-speculated Zeiss fast-aperture prime is a 35mm f/1.4 distagon. While details are still incoming we now know that the lens I had hoped would be an 85mm is, in fact, a 35mm. Heartbreak.
In addition to the 35mm f/1.4 Sony also announced a 90mm f/2.8 macro "G" lens which features OSS optical stablilization. This lens will be awesome for portrait and macro...
Martin Melnick is a Portland-based director and colorist. His studio, Tree House Post, specializes in color, VFX, editing, and motion graphics. Recently he along with his team put together an amazing music video for the band Adventure Galley based on classic 50s and 60s scifi shows such as Men into Space, Destination Moon, and Dr. Strangelove. The video has already received quite a bit of attention from various film and music video festivals and Martin was kind enough to share a behind-the-scenes look at the creation of the video in a brief interview.
Among the biggest complaints about the Sony α7 line is the lack of glass available for the new FE mount. So far they've done a good job producing two semi-fast standard primes (a 35mm f/2.0 and a 55mm f/1.8), and two slow-ish pro-zooms (a 24-70 f/4.0 and a 70-200 f/4.0). Yesterday, Sony Japan released a teaser image for a 16-35mm FE lens. The 16-35mm would round out the "Holy Trinity" of FE lenses, making the α7 line an even more appealing option to people who rely on those focal-lengths — though it would be nice to see them make some f/2.8 zooms, too.
I hang out with a lot of wedding photographers and have heard them raving about RadLab, the Photoshop-based editing platform from the guys at Totally Rad!, for the last three-or-so years. The thing they love most about RadLab is the ability to visualize the change a setting will make before applying it — no more Command Z. Over the last couple months I've been using RadLab in tandem with my normal Lr and Ps workflow and have, overall, been very pleased with the results.
If you've had a chance to check out Framed Network's fabulous mini-series, Film, you'll be familiar with the awesome, inspiring work of Ryan Muirhead. Ryan's career as a photographer started only around five years ago, since then he's made quite a splash in the film-shooting (and otherwise) community and become a constant source of inspiration for me. In this interview he chats with The Artist Report about the importance of living in the present, embracing (or at least learning to live with) failure, and how he's gone about weighing what he wants to do against what he needs to. If you have an extra 25-odd minutes this afternoon I'd highly encourage you to check out this video, you may be a better photographer for it.
If you listen to the podcast On Taking Pictures, you know that co-host of the program Bill Wadman is a New York-based portrait photographer who's worked with the likes of Seth Godin, Malcolm Gladwell, Philip Glass, Ze Frank, and many, many others. Though his traditional portrait and conceptual work are tremendous in their own right, Bill has gotten quite a bit of attention over the years for his projects such as his critically acclaimed Dancers in Motion, cinematic Drabbles, and the 365 Portrait project that helped him to start it all.
Scott Kelby over at KelbyOne recently shared this video showing you a quick and easy way to edit video in Photoshop CC. I personally tend to lean more on the still-photography side of things and am not entirely versed in video post production. This tutorial gives me and photographers / videographer like me a simple option and alternative to the under-equipped iMovie for quick video edits.
Photographer and educator, Tony Northrup, was inspired by Fstoppers' own Dani Diamond's awesome larger-than-life ring light and put together his own tutorial video showing you how to build a light source in just about any shape you set your mind to with supplies picked up at a hardware store. This nifty little tutorial will get you up and running in an afternoon with catch lights that'll make your buddies green with envy and left scratching their heads.
500px has taken the world by storm since their launch in 2009. In many ways it's become the new hub for sharing and expoloring work from some of the greatest photographers around. This nifty little pluggin from the developers at 500px (available here) will alow you add one quick step to your workflow to share your images on the site.
There are few things I see photographers skimp on more frequently than a good camera strap. While the default manufacturer straps can certainly get the job done under most circumstances they're pretty limiting in terms of style and functionality and can serve as a un-needed advertisement for the gear you're packing. The guys over at Cecilia Gallery want to give you an alternative to the stock strap that provides a similar minimalistic design with high-quality materials and some cool little nuanced touches.
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. The New Yorker recently shared this video taking us behind the scenes at Platon's New York studio during a portrait session and offers a glimpse at a true master at work.
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 ten through 4:3. Take a look.
David Hobby, AKA the Strobist, appears to have uploaded an image from the yet-to-be-announced Fuji X100T, the next iteration of the vastly successful X100 line of high-end, fixed lens mirrorless cameras.
There are few things we, as photographers, are more OCD about than tack-sharp focus. We invest so many of our hard-earned dollars into nice glass, painstakingly focus, then spend hours in post afterwards pulling our hair out when the eyes aren’t sharp. While of course sometimes OOF images are due to user error, small variations in the lens and camera can result in less-than-sharp images. These discrepancies in camera / lens combination can be dialed in to get perfectly sharp images more consistently. Enter FoCal, a [semi]automated focus calibration software.
B&H is running some really great deals on the Blackmagic Pocket Cinema Camera, which has to be the deal of the year so far. The camera is being marked down by the manufacturer to 50% off, making it really difficult to pass on it.
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. I just stumbled across this awesome tutorial by event and wedding photographer Andrew Klokow showing you how to replicate this cool look quickly and fairly easily in Photoshop.
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.
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.
