Fan of the E-Mount or already an owner of the pretty sweet Fuji X-mount systems? Then you might like this: Zeiss just announced a 50mm f/2.8 macro lens for both mounts that sports the styling of the Zeiss lenses we've come to love over the years. It will be available at the end of March for $999.
PhotoShelter regularly releases awesome guides and data they collect from the industry and today's release of The Photographer's Outlook on 2014 is no exception. This guide has insights from over 5700 photographers worldwide on the business goals and challenges they expect this year. They also highlighted the blogs that pros & enthusiasts read to keep up on industry news (of which we are honored to say Fstoppers was listed), plus the photographers they follow for inspiration.
The much speculated Facebook reader is real, it's called Paper and I have to say it looks beautiful. As shown in the the promotional launch video, the app is all gesture driven (though some of the gestures look impractical) and it looks to be a new and pleasant way to stay up to date with the stories that matter to you, with a design UI that takes a lot from other established reader apps like Flipboard.
Early this morning Olympus announced the new OM-D E-M10 (that's a mouthful), combining aspects of two popular cameras the E-M1 and E-M5. It features the new TruePic VII image processor, the same found in the OM-D E-M1, 16 megapixel Live MOS sensor, Wi-Fi technology, a large, high-speed electronic viewfinder and 3-axis image stabilization.
Yes, you read that right. This is indeed a short tutorial on color grading video in Photoshop. Unconventional? Yes, but it is effective. Not too long ago I was having a conversation with the other Fstoppers writers when the conversation of quickly color correcting video footage came up. Without the hassle of Premiere, Speed Grade or any other grading software, was there a simple way to make adjustments that were easy and intuitive? I believe the answer is Photoshop.
If there was a camera that really got people talking in 2013, it was the Sony a7 and a7R. Hailed as a “game changer” and “camera of the year” by both PDN and PopPhoto, it’s gotten a lot of attention. A full frame, powerful and purportedly pro-level mirrorless compact, what’s not to love? Many Sony fans were quick to hail it as the beginning of the end for the DSLR, and even many DSLR shooters seemed ready to join them. I’ve been shooting with the a7R for a few weeks now, and it’s time I laid down my personal verdict on this camera.
Cranes can add that extra bit of "oomph" to a video, giving it that one extra piece to make for compelling and dynamic footage. If you saw Patrick Hall's review of the Rhino Slider, you probably noticed some footage from a crane in there too. Pro Am just announced a new $300, 12-pound, 3-foot crane that can support a camera rigs up to 20 pounds and manually tilts cameras up to 10 pounds.
Before I heap on the apologies, I do want to say that I get sent a lot of gear. Gear that varies in required skill level, genre of photography and purpose. I've reviewed a lot of equipment over the years, and eventually I was bound to make a mistake- I'm pretty much the furthest thing from infallible. Well it happened, and I'm sorry. My initial review of the Fotopro tripod was negative due in most part to, you got it, user error.
Wistia is a video player (think Youtube and Vimeo) for businesses who want a high quality player but don't necessarily want the social features you get with the mainstream platforms. In addition to being a quirky and fun culture and offering a sweet product, the Wistia team also provides tutorials and tips on making your own great company videos. This one offers some great info on choosing a microphone.
Hasselblad, who hasn't done a heck of a lot of innovating in the past few months, might finally have something worth talking about. They announced that they are working on the world's first 50 megapixel CMOS sensor back for their medium format cameras, rather than the CCD format previously used. This means faster capture rate, longer shutter speed capability and much greater ISO performance.
The Adobe product manages and developers that I have spoken to praise the new Creative Cloud process mostly for the ability to instantly update users with new features and stability enhancements. While we have seen a plethora of updates that mostly contain "bug fixes" over the past few months, Adobe has finally given us three new features for Photoshop to get excited about: 3D printing integration, linked Smart Objects, and what is most interesting to photographers, Perspective Warp.
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.
As many of you who have your own photography pages probably already noticed, Facebook drastically changed their Pages organic reach algorithm on December 3, 2013. We have been living with the changes for a month, analyzing the effects on our brand and how it affects you, and the news isn’t good. With dramatic decreases in reach and engagement, our Facebook community is not nearly what it was. So what can you do about your own Pages?
Lot of announcements coming to us from CES this week, and in addition to the news surrounding a D4s, Nikon let loose a new 35mm f/1.8G ED lens and the D3300 DSLR. The 35mm f/1.8G should be exciting for all Nikon users that are fans of prime lenses, and the D3300 sports a 24.2 Mp DX-Format CMOS Sensor 11-Point Multi-CAM 1000 AF Sensor.
(Updated with more images to whet your appetite until we see some test shots!) Sigma has just announced two new lenses, a redesigned 18-200mm F3.5-6.3 DC Macro OS HSM and 50mm F1.4 DG HSM. The pricing and availability has not yet been made public, so for now these two images of the lenses will have to do. The 50 f/1.4 has been highly anticipated, and I'm sure there are many of you who are ready to add this lens to your collection.
The Canon 24-70mm f/2.8 L II is presently listed for $1999 (after adding to cart) on B&H, but you can get an addition $300 off by sending in the Canon mail-in-rebate, bringing you down to $1,699. This deal is only good until Saturday January 4 at 11:59 PM EST.
With all the announcements in the past few months from manufacturers like Olympus, Nikon and Sony, it's easy to forget that Samsung has a large footing in the interchangeable lens compact (ILC) market. I know many of you may not consider their cameras presently, but Samsung is taking the development of their ILCs very seriously. I had a chance to sit down and chat with the folks at Samsung as they walked me through their latest announcement, the NX30.
Samsung saw enough success with their Galaxy Camera to build and offer a second version, due out sometime this year. The original Galaxy camera seemed to be an easy choice for consumers eager to maintain the comfort of an Android OS and smartphone-like functionality. The GALAXY Camera 2 includes an upgraded 1.6GHz Quad Core processor and the latest Android 4.3 JellyBean platform. It has a lightweight and what Samsung is calling a "retro" design.
If you recall, we partnered with Profoto USA this month to give away their new B1 TTL location light. The new Profoto B1 makes it easier than ever to use your flash off camera. With battery-power/ without cords, the 500w/s B1 goes wherever you go. Combining performance and the legendary Profoto light shaping system the B1 makes great light easy. We picked a random winner and it turned out to be Ryan Williams who isn't just a photographer, but a United States soldier actively deployed in Afghanistan.
I think I speak for all of us here at Fstoppers when I say the last few years has been one hell of a ride. Fstoppers went from being a tiny little speck of a niche interest blog to over 10 million readers in just shy of three years. We're hugely proud of what this site has become to all of you, and hitting the 200,000 Like landmark means a lot to us. So thank you!
Thanks to our friends at Photography Life, we have recently organized a Nikon D610 / Canon 6D / Sony A7 Giveaway, which ended on the Christmas day. After the list of participants was cleaned up and a bunch of entries were disqualified (fake email accounts from mail services like yahoo.de, inbox.ru and mail.ru, plus newly created Facebook accounts), we were left with a total of 33523 entries (Facebook and non-Facebook participants combined). Well, it is now time to announce the lucky winner, who gets to pick his favorite camera. Random.org picked a number for us and it is...
We recently shared test footage directly from Blackmagic's CEO, but today more footage has shown up online from some of the Blackmagic testers. Captain Hook, a cinematographer out of New Zealand, made this compilation of footage for you to take a look at. At this point, since I doubt many of you have 4K monitors, we should focus on detail and quality of the footage. What do you think?
Sigma, feeling rather in the holiday spirit, created this fun, seasonal size comparison graphic to showcase their line of lenses as we near Christmas. I thought it was a cool look at the diversity of lenses and might actually help you decide what to get and what you can fit into your bags. I want that one the size of a bazooka.
Blackmagic fans have been eagerly awaiting news of the 4K production camera, as well as test footage shot with it. Today Blackmagic confirmed they are in the final stages of testing the camera, and released several gigabytes of ungraded 4K footage to the masses for blanket toying with. Though we didn't grade or otherwise edit the footage other than what you see here, we encourage you to give it a shot!
Yesterday I got my hands on the new Sony a7R for a review here at Fstoppers, and I was instantly and somewhat begrudgingly a fan of it. It feels great in hand, doesn't lack physical buttons like with other interchangeable lens compacts (ILCs), and it sounds fantastic (the shutter has an absurdly glorious “click” that you can’t help but love). My feelings for the a7R were such that I began to wonder why Canon and Nikon can’t seem to get it right in the ILC market. The answer to making the perfect compact appears so clear, but they don’t seem to have any interest of going this direction.
Oh man, less than two weeks until Christmas and you STILL haven't finished shopping. It's ok everyone, we're in the same boat. That's why we are continuing to update our Holiday Gear Guide to reflect the best gifts between $200 and $500 so you can make a big splash with some amazing stuff stuffed in those stockings.
Tamron has announced the launch date of the newly-designed 150-600MM F/5-6.3 DI VC USD today, saying they anticipate the lens to be available in the USA on January 17, 2014. For more information on the lens, please see our original story on the upcoming Tamron glass. If you are interested in how it performs, we also posted sample images purportedly taken with the lens.
Adobe released their Fiscal Year 2013 numbers today, and though the Q3 earnings were below expectations, Adobe seems to have rebounded in Q4 and just matched their targeted range of $1 billion to $1.05 billion, resulting an increase in stock value in after-hours trading.
Adobe has announced Lightroom 5.3 and Camera Raw 8.3 to provide additional camera raw support, lens profile support and address bugs that were introduced in previous releases of Lightroom. New raw support includes cameras like the Canon EOS M2, Fujifilm X-E2 and Sony A7R.
If you have been following Fstoppers this year, you probably know that Lee Morris tested the DJI Phantom out in Charleston and crashed it into a marsh. The Phantom is really awesome, but comes with some risks. Chase Jarvis wasn't satisfied with the quality of GoPro footage on his Phantom and tried attaching a Sony RX100 II to it instead. Does it work?
UPDATED: Canon representatives have confirmed they have no current plans for an announcement in the United States. Canon Japan and Canon China both outed the anticipated EOS M2, but there hasn't been (and won't be) any such announcement from Canon USA. The EOS M was met with a rather tepid response stateside when it was first announced, and even after firmware updates and a price drop, it hasn't had much traction.
The Blackmagic Cinema Camera isn’t new, but when it was first introduced it created such a buzz that actually getting one’s hands on the new video camera proved difficult. Though Blackmagic has since pumped out the Pocket Cinema Camera and the 4K Cinema Camera, the original 2.5K camera is still quite the looker. I wanted to know, would it be possible to transition from my beloved DSLRs and over to the Blackmagic, which boasts some rather impressive specs, without much trouble?
UPDATE: Though the B&H deal has expired, you can grab Lightroom 5 on Amazon for a cool $69. Lightroom 5, which was already on sale for under $110, for the next three hours (1 PM ET to 4 PM ET) is only $89. If you've wanted to own Lightroom 5 for a bargain-basement price, now is the time to grab it. For those of you who bought it at the $110 price, maybe there is still time to cancel the order and pick it up for cheaper.
There are a lot of contests out there this time of year, but I wanted to take a minute to bring the California Academy of Sciences Big Picture: Natural World Photography Competition to your attention. Now through March 31, 2014, Cal Academy is inviting photographers to enter their wildlife and conservation images to this competition for a chance to win a share of the $20,000 in cash and photography gear prizes.
Well there is no avoiding it now that Thanksgiving is over and December has begun: the holidays are upon us. If you're still thinking about gifts for that photographer in your life (or yourself), we have updated our Holiday Gear Guide to reflect the best gifts between $100 and $200 for those of you with a little bit more set aside to afford to pack under the tree.
