Articles from Jaron Schneider

Let's face it, the Sigma 50mm f/1.4 Art is hard to find. I've been getting barraged with questions from fellow photographers asking me when they could buy the 50mm, or if I have some sort of mystical connection that will allow me an unlimited supply of the lenses for them to tap. The popular lens has been nearly perpetually sold out since the lenses came to the market. I just got word that B&H got a new shipment of Canon mounts for the lens in, so if you've been waiting to buy, you can get the lens right now. 

Last month we shared a really impressive project of an underwater shoot in Bali done by my friend and conceptual photographer Benjamin Von Wong. He stated then that was only part one and that part two would be coming soon. Well, soon is here and he's sharing more technical aspects of how he made the project come to life. 

Sigma wants to encourage new users to try their new dp2 Quattro so badly they've decided to tear down the walls: you can borrow the dp2 and test drive it before you buy it... and even before it’s available to purchase in stores. Though you have to throw down the value of the camera as collateral, if you return the camera you get the money back. Free rental? Yes please. 

Iceland is lauded as one of the most amazing places for photography due to the absolutely stunning landscape (Mike Kelley visits there frequently). In anticipation of their new Illum camera coming at the end of the July, Lytro wants to give five photographers an all-expenses-paid trip to Iceland to take part in an exclusive photo shoot with Chris Burkard, a premier adventure lifestyle photographer who serves as the senior staff photographer for Surfer Magazine. If you pre-order the Illum and submit a photo shoot idea, you're automatically entered to win.

Though this probably won't surprise many of you, Apple is reportedly discontinuing development of their once-popular photo editing and organization platform, Aperture. Aperture was once considered on a level playing field with Adobe Lightroom, but Adobe's continued development and advancements to the software obviously have affected Apple's software, and today's announcement basically confirms that Apple also believes that Lightroom has since catapulted it beyond Aperture's reach. 

Streamnation, a media storage and playback solution, has always sought to fix the problems with the current paradigms in the cloud space. Expensive and limited, there is a lot to improve on. As part of that vision, they have released a new app called Shutter that is aimed at replacing the camera on your iPhone by building-in automatic and unlimited cloud storage.

Fstoppers has partnered with the awesome folks at ViewBug to bring you sweet, sweet contests weekly! This week if you impress the ViewBug community, you could win yourself a feature on Fstoppers.com! The winner’s photo will be given a 24 hour feature on our top slider as picture of the day as well as a full featured article.

Adobe has announced a great number of updates to the entire Creative Cloud set of applications (every single application is being updated in some way), but let's focus here on just what's new in Photoshop CC: New Motion Blur Effects, Focus Mask and improved Content-Aware color adaptation along with a set of other updates and enhancements to the entire experience.

That's right, the highly popular Photography Plan that Adobe seemed to continually threaten was going to be a limited-time deal, is finally a permanent pricing fixture. They are removing Behance Pro Site from the bundle, but it does contain Photoshop, Lightroom (on desktop and mobile) and now integrates the newly announced Photoshop Mix.

Adobe has made Lightroom Mobile available on iPhone, and has managed to keep all aspects of the software intact despite the much reduced screen size. The application works exactly the same as the iPad app, just on the smaller profile of your iPhone.

Adobe was very clear that the 2014 updates were mainly focused on what they have seen to be a rapidly evolving market: Mobile. Adobe is seeing a rapid pace of change, explosion of mobile, and a world that is continually and incredibly connected. But their software, for real-work at least, is still tethered to a desk. Adobe thinks this is a problem, and sought to solve it.

Last week, Adobe teased one of the many new features they will be unveiling this week during their launch event in New York (and online). A question that I saw asked in the comments of that article, as well as again posed during a recent Adobe briefing I attended, asked that since we were promised fast and regular updates as a part of the Creative Cloud model, why then are we waiting for a major hyped release? Well, I have an answer for you.

Softboxes, at least traditional ones, suck. They are not fun to put together and even more painful to break back down. In an attempt to relieve this, companies like Westcott made umbrella-style boxes and Phottix took a swing at the collapsible beauty dish. Now Interfit has a hand in the game with a full line of options in the collapsible category, from octos to strips.

Fstoppers has partnered with the awesome folks at ViewBug to bring you sweet, sweet contests weekly! This week, you have a chance to win either a National Geographic Earth Explorer Small Backpack or an Earth Explorer Messenger sling bag. Show us your best photo of a journey into nature to win!

In February of this year, Sigma announced the next generation of their fixed lens professional camera series, the dp2 Quattro. We have had a bit of experience holding the new camera but none shooting with it. We expect that to change as today they announced the pricing and availability of the new camera, which will come to market at $999.

Panasonic has released what looks to be a "bridge" camera between point and shoot and "complex, bulky DSLRs" called the DMC-FZ 1000. The fixed-lens 25-400mm f/2.8-4 on a 20.1MP 1-inch sensor performs up to ISO 25600 and 50 fps continuous shooting, and features 4K shooting at 30 fps, 1080 at 120 fps, 720 at 240fps and 480 at 360 fps all for under $900.

Adobe is hosting a special event on June 18 to show the world what's new in their Creative Cloud set of applications, but today they released a short video highlighting one of the features they're working on in Photoshop: a new way to make automatic selections based on pixels in focus against those out of focus.

One of the main issues some of you might have with Lytro is the rather boxed in and silo-ed image viewer that we have had experiences with in the past. Well, Lytro is opening things up to a bigger audience with the launch of a new open-source WebGL player, with 500px as their flagship partner. Prepare for Lytro images to get a lot more reach.

My friend Chris Lavigne is what I like to call the "master of media" over at Wistia, which means he gets to make all their product videos and also spends a lot of time sharing tips and tricks he uses as a cinematographer. He recently released this video which explains how he records audio to his 5D Mark III in a somewhat unconventional, yet still effective, way.

I just got notified of a rather extensive contest that Profoto is putting on, who are releasing prizes every month from now until December. Many of you might be happy to hear that the contest isn't based on random drawings, but instead is a photo contest that asks you to submit your best photo that follows different themes. June's theme is "The First Kiss."

Fstoppers has partnered with the awesome folks at ViewBug to bring you sweet, sweet contests weekly! This week enter your best photo featuring tree trunks to win a WoodSnap Photo Collage worth $1000, with the People's Choice winner nabbing one worth $500. Woodsnap is a nifty way to showcase your images printed as custom wood wall art.

Though it's not yet safe to say that 4K has "landed," it is getting close. There are more capable hardware solutions landing on the market every day. G-Technologies is getting ready to show off some new 2K and 4K ready storage solutions for the market: the G-DRIVE ev 220 and a new G-RAID with removable drives.

LaCie has upgraded their iconic "Rugged" line of portable drives and challenges WD's most recent bus-powered portable drive by offering Thunderbolt 2 and USB 3 in the same water, dust and drop resistant package. With the SSD versions, the LaCie Rugged is stated to perform up to 387 MB/s. With the standard hard disk version performing up to 122 MB/s.

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.

A major part of the driving force behind what we share is based in not over-sharing. We have never wanted to overstay our welcome, which is why we don't have an email list. That said, we have been receiving a lot of feedback from readers that they aren't getting any updates from us. Though we continue to let you know of new stories on Facebook, Twitter and Google+, we're wondering: how do you want to receive updates from us?

Medium format Phase One shooters have a new lens to lust over, as today Phase One and Schneider lenses announced the availability of the Schneider Kreuznach 40-80mm f/4.0-5.6 leaf shutter zoom lens. This is the second zoom lens designed for the Phase One 645 camera platform. It is the latest in the close collboratioin partnership between the two companies.

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.

Fstoppers has partnered with the awesome folks at ViewBug to bring you sweet, sweet contests weekly! This week you can give your GoPro more storage space than ever with a 128GB microSDXC card and adapter (two of these are being given away with 10 more 64GB microSDXC cards to runners up).

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.

If you're like me (and basically every photographer I know), you're a little bit paranoid. Your heart skips a beat when you hit "Format" on your memory cards. You don't trust a source unless it's backed up. ioSafe was not originally built for photographers, but it certainly caters to them with a fireproof, water proof and basically life proof design. With the addition of specialized apps, ioSafe looks to be a the way to store and monitor your precious images and video.

On Tuesday, May 27, 2014 from 1:00 PM - 3:00 PM eastern daylight time B&H is hosting a panel discussion with special guests Eduardo Angel, David Flores, and Mathew Frazer who will explore and discuss the new 4K Panasonic Lumix DMC-GH4. The GH4 has a lot of hype behind it, and for good reason- The camera is shaping up to be a video monster.

Fstoppers has partnered with the awesome folks at ViewBug to bring you sweet, sweet contests weekly! This week if you impress the ViewBug community, you could win yourself a feature on Fstoppers.com! The winner's photo will be given a 24 hour feature on our top slider as picture of the day as well as a full featured article.

B&H is offering a pretty darn good deal on the Canon 70D, one of my favorite DSLRs for shooting video due to the awesome Dual Pixel sensor. Right now it, a lens, a battery pack, a bag, a memory card and a printer is down to $1,154 after a $400 mail-in rebate. Not too shabby for a darn fine APS-C camera. Plus the flip out screen is super helpful. [via B&H]