Ergonomics may not be something that is directly discussed in the workshops and classes you’ve attended on landscape photography but as one progresses further into the craft, one will realize that equipment that allow you to adjust and adapt promptly to sudden changes in the scene are crucial in getting the shot that you want.
One year ago today, Sony announced the FE 200-600mm super-telephoto zoom lens. I was one of the first people on the planet to use the lens before that announcement, and later in September 2019 I purchased my own copy and have used it extensively ever since.
In a previous article (Easing into Astrophotography with a Telescope), I listed a few resources for stepping up to telescopic astrophotography. Beyond learning the basics of sky navigation and learning to extend your photographic equipment knowledge into long exposures, an introductory overview of astronomy is a good idea so that you are aware of the photographic possibilities available to you and the wide array of equipment that may be needed.
Camera cranes and jibs are becoming more commonplace in the DSLR video maker's arsenal due to more, light weight options and falling prices. ProAm calls their Orion DVC210 the "first camera crane built specifically for DSLR cameras" and it extends to eight feet tall for a surprisingly affordable $300. Sounds great on paper, but how does it function in practice?
THIS REVIEW HAS BEEN MOVED AND UPDATED. When an idea is good, it’s bound to sprout imitators. There isn’t necessarily anything wrong with this. Often it leads to a product that took the good from one idea and implemented other original concepts to make an end product amazing. But sometimes, and rather frequently in the photo industry, we end up with products that feel like hollow copies, existing to just take advantage of positive consumer feelings towards an existing product. That’s what I feel happened with the Fotopro tripod.
Western Digital makes some of my favorite hard drives, and one drive in particular recently caught my interest: the My Cloud Mirror. The idea of the My Cloud Mirror was appealing: managing my own cloud network that could be accessed from anywhere and also shared out of, but without a monthly fee. Basically, it is a personal DropBox. I had a pretty set-in-stone process for working remotely and delivering content which has included DropBox, but I decided to give a wholly WD workflow a shot and see if it could do the job just as well, if not better.
With my recent jump into shooting more and more with my mirrorless system, I have been looking for a camera bag that better fit the smaller kit. So when I got the chance to test out the Everyday Sling from Peak Design, I jumped at the opportunity. With how popular their Everyday Messenger was, in addition to completely destroying their Kickstarter goal for the new set of bags (going over their goal by more than $6 million), I knew it had to be a good bag. But once I got the bag and used it for a couple days, I was surprised by just how much I liked it.
In working for Fstoppers, we often get the chance to test and review new gear. When an assignment to try the new Sigma 150-600mm popped up, my ears instantly perked up. Superzooms are my secret weapon, and I am excited to share the results of my testing with you.
The Viltrox AF 56mm f/1.7 E lens for Sony E was my first time trying a Viltrox lens. Honestly, I wasn't quite sure what to expect. I've used plenty of third-party lenses but never these. Well, I was blown away by the sharpness of this lens. I'm excited to share my experiences, both good and bad, with this powerhouse of a lens in such a tiny package.
A camera bag can really make or break your work. I'm one of those people who is terrible at packing light, so when it comes to carrying 50 pounds of gear, I want a bag to be well organized, comfortable, ergonomic, and durable, because I pretty much place my studio on my back. Enter the Mountainsmith Borealis.
Are you looking for a display that will make your precision editing and retouching more convenient? Let’s check out what a high-resolution pen display tablet can offer.
I am becoming a fan of Neewer gear. Since they changed direction and started producing equipment for themselves, the designs have vastly improved, and the quality of the products has rocketed. Here are two new lights from their stable that are exceptionally good. Their competitors should look out.
Smash, a new file transfer service has launched, threatening competition such as WeTransfer by becoming the first to offer unlimited file size. The site also allows longer expiration times than WeTransfer’s standard 7 days.
If you've ever wasted a good sleep because your alarm was set before dawn, but it turned out the weather wasn't going to produce anything worth photographing, this new app may be for you. Here's my review of WeatherScout for iOS.
The TTArtisan 27mm f/2.8 lens has garnered attention among photographers seeking an affordable, compact prime lens for APS-C mirrorless cameras. Available for Fujifilm X, Sony E, and Nikon Z mounts, this lens offers a 40.5mm full frame equivalent focal length, making it versatile for various photography genres, including street, travel, and everyday shooting.
I spent a Sunday in Paris with a friend, Jason Boone, who's made a video about Adobe Rush and what makes it such a good video editing tool. It has been presented as being easy, syncs over Adobe Creative Cloud and has a lot built in to make you a more productive editor. This video shows whether that's true.
I work in some pretty inhospitable environments; in places that take multiple planes, trains, and automobiles to get to. I'm typically trying to manipulate my bags and gear at -31F (-35C), or 100F (40C), trying to get my gear out for a shot in a blizzard, or while bouncing along in a soaking wet zodiac. I've been searching for the perfect bag for a long time.
While there are plenty of companies that offer film emulation presets, not all of them are created equal. In order to get things perfect, DVLOP has teamed up with Jose Villa, one of the most popular film photographers in the industry.
More and more photographers are starting to adopt a minimalist approach to their photography gear. What this means is that users want and need smaller bags that accommodate their gear. Having a small camera body and a couple lenses is almost useless if you have to let them rattle around in larger traditional camera bags. Fashioned after WWII army backpacks, the Wotancraft Scout shoulder bag has the looks and size to fill this need, but does it have the functionality to stand out in the growing market?
Every photographer needs a good mid-range lens. Most go for a 50mm, but you should consider this 65mm from Sigma, as it has a small size and weight and astounding image quality for a low price.
I've never had the highest opinion of Hasselblad. 10-15 years ago I saw two of them completely fail on set. I saw them struggle with autofocus even in a bright environment. I've seen my cheap DSLR take better-looking images in low light.
You’d be hard-pressed to find a portable flash at the level of Profoto A2 in terms of build quality, size, weight, power, ease of use, and consistency. It is genuinely a tiny marvel for any photographer. It is almost hilariously simple to set up, and yet, it delivers terrific results. Best of all, if you buy a Profoto A2 between now and October 31, you get a Connect remote for free.
The original Rode Wireless Go was probably the best microphone system for the money when it came out. The new version, the Rode Wireless Go II, is better in every single way and still incredibly affordable.
Fujifilm set the bar for APS-C portrait lenses with their phenomenal XF 56mm f/1.2 a few years back and they have done the same for digital medium format with the GF 110mm f/2 R LM WR. The GFX system is an exceptional fit for those shooting high-end portraiture and the GF 110mm f/2 is quite possibly the perfect portrait lens for this application.
A pen tablet improves your editing and retouching workflow. Here's an affordable option.
Lightroom and Photoshop are programs full of sliders and the like, none of which are naturally suited to a mouse and keyboard. As a dedicated editing console, the Loupedeck+ aims to fix that and save you serious time, and it packs quite the punch. Check out our review!
Shift lenses, or tilt-shift lenses, are pretty rare across all brands and seem to be quite an engineering challenge. Most of us thought that their ability to zoom was impossible, but Laowa seems to have proven otherwise.
Sharing your work on social media, you may come across a few people who ask "what are your camera settings for this shot" or something similar. There are even a few groups on Facebook that have this as a requirement to post your work. There are a few different ways you can do this, but here's an app that makes it easy.
This camera backpack from Nomatic has been talked about by many photographers for its unique aesthetic. But is there more to this camera bag than that?
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.
I was invited for the introduction of the new Fujifilm GFX50S II at Fujifilm Netherlands. Besides the introduction to this new mirrorless medium format camera, I was able to use a pre-production model in the studio. In this article, I will share my first impressions of this new camera and compare it with the first version.
It was about a year ago I reviewed the NIK Collection 2, a rebirth of popular Adobe plugins that laid fallow while its new owner, Google, tried to figure out what to do with them until DXO bought the software in 2017 and continually upgraded the collection. They have now added a feature that is really going to excite photographers.
If you’re looking for a full frame compact camera, you can get a Sony RX1 series camera and it gets the job done. If you’re looking to get the job done in style, you can spend thousands more and get a Leica Q, but you’ll probably arrive at the same place. That about sums up the relationship between the MeFOTO RoadTrip Classic Leather Edition and the original RoadTrip Tripod.
What do you do when your heart wants a Sony RX10 IV, but your stock portfolio just took a beating since the start of the year? You turn to superzooms of yesteryear, and that's where I've come up with this interesting specimen from 2006: the Panasonic Lumix FZ50.
Some say it’s the best focal length. I certainly believe so. And while the options for an equivalent 35mm lens for Fujifilm cameras have been scarce, there are good ones out there. Does this one fit well? Does it stand out? Is it better than some Fujifilm offerings? I’d say it’s worth trying.
Blackmagic sent me one of their 4.6K URSA Mini Cameras to play with, and after just a few short days of messing around with it, the URSA Mini certainly made an impression. A RAW, 16-bit, 4608 pixel-wide impression to be specific. In short, this camera system is a beast, and comes at a price point that is very attractive.
I know. It’s another one of those dang camera bag reviews. It’s a bag and it holds a camera, why does there need to be a full on review? Well in this case, because Wotancraft is not a well-known name in the industry and there is not a ton of information out there about their products in comparison to other brands. Their Ranger bag is also really good looking. It’s fashioned after World War II military bags and is completely handmade. Plus, I’m a sucker for a good bag review.
Usually, astrophotography is a trade-off: noise versus star trails. An extra device like the MSM camera rotator can help you shoot clear and sharp photographs of the night sky even at a very low ISO.
For those of you who haven't heard of Hasselblad, they were one of the first cameras used to shoot from space and are known today to be one of the top medium format companies around. With a recent release of their X1D II and a unique digital back for their v-system, what is it like to shoot with one of these cameras?
Canon recently launched the successor to the EOS M6 with the aptly named EOS M6 Mark II. It's a seemingly innocent camera that looks almost exactly like its predecessor but is packed with very significant upgrades inside.
Formatt-Hitech is a company that's been making ND filters for quite some time now. There are a large number of photographers that consider them to be the only choice for them and Formatt has worked hard to develop that reputation. With several new companies entering the market recently, I wanted to see how Formatt-Hitech filters performed.
If you're in the market for a new, battery-powered strobe/flash, you've come to the right place. In this video/post we will compare the top 8 battery-powered monolights currently on the market.
I love editing photos. For me, pressing the shutter is only the first 10 percent of the adventure. So, any product that promises to not only speed up the editing process, but just as importantly, make it more intuitive, is an intriguing proposition. Enter Palette, which transforms editing from an exercise in mousing sliders to a real, tactile process.
Many different lens filters for photography are steadily being replaced with multiple-exposure camera tricks and post-processing software tools. However, one filter more resistant to this change is the circular polarizer (CPL). This special tool filters the light entering a lens in ways that software has yet to be able to mimic realistically. The resulting images when using a CPL are more saturated with color due to cutting down reflections of haze, water, and other surfaces in the world around us. In this review, I take a look specifically at the B+W XS-Pro KSM HTC-POL MRC-Nano Filter.
Over the past month I've been hard at work testing the Blackmagic Pocket Cinema (BMPCC) camera in a variety of situations for an Fstoppers review (since they updated the firmware, it's like an entirely new camera). While that review is still in progress as of today, I did want to talk to you guys about one piece of equipment that made shooting with it a great experience: the Metabones EF to Micro Four Thirds Adapter for the BMPCC.
Over 20 years of digital photography produced 80,000 images. Culling is a time-consuming, tedious process that I’ve neglected. Consequently, my hard drives and cloud storage are bloated. Can Aftershoot PRO help me lighten the load?
Camera straps are an often-overlooked accessory for photographers. If it’s something you’ve not considered before, then it’s worth looking at the adaptable Peak Design Leash.
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.
I have a massive soft spot for fresnels. I love them. Fresnels give out unique light qualities that can’t be replicated by anything else. The Aputure F10 Fresnel is no exception, as it turns an LED into a super-light. Here’s why.
