Articles from Jaron Schneider

THIS CONTEST HAS ENDED. Profoto and Fstoppers have teamed up to ring in the Holiday season by offering one of the hottest and most talked about Products of the year. The new Profoto B1 makes it easier than ever to use your flash off camera. TTL achieves your light in an instant. 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. Are you ready to win?

CamRanger, maker of one of the must-have products that architectural photographer Mike Kelley uses on a daily basis, today announced a new set of products: the CamRanger PT Hub and MP-360 motorized tripod head. If this new product works anywhere as well as the current camera control device, we all have a reason to be excited.

Ah the week of Thanksgiving. Turkey, gravy, family and the harsh realization you are horrifically underprepared for the holiday season. That's ok fellow photogs, we at Fstoppers have your back! Over the next few weeks we will be releasing updates to our Holiday Gear Guide, first starting with the lower-cost items and working our way up to the premium stuff. This week, let's look at the best ideas under $100.

We are very excited to announce yet another great Facebook giveaway and this time we are partnering up with our friends at Photography Life to do it. The winner will have a chance to choose between three different cameras: Nikon D610, Canon 6D or the new Sony A7 full-frame mirrorless camera! We are approaching the end of the year, so we decided to give this one away on the Christmas Day. So you have exactly one month to participate in this awesome contest! The contest is open for everyone, not just US residents.

We have been doing our best to provide you all with the most amazing original and curated content for the past three years, but up until this point that's pretty much been guesswork. We think we know what you like, but often times we can be very, very wrong. So help us out by letting us know who you are and what you do. We will use it to tailor our content as we head into year 4 of Fstoppers.com.

Well, at least for a couple weeks. Adobe initially launched the Photoshop Photography Program in September to support the needs and workflow of photographers who use CS3 or later. This small stipulation, however, limited quite a few photographers and several of you weren't too happy about it. But valid from Nov. 20 (9:00 a.m. PST) through Dec. 2, 2013 (11:59 p.m. PST), everyone qualifies, not just those who owned prior Adobe products.

If you're like me and shoot a lot of video, you use both an on-camera shotgun as well as lav mics interchangeably, depending on the situation. The shotgun I use is the Rode DSLR video mic, and it rocks except for the need for a 9 volt battery. Seriously, who has those kicking around anymore? It seems Rode is listening to bitter complaints like mine, and their latest microphone, the VideoMic GO, requires no dedicated battery.

Sigma reached out this morning to let us know that they have put out a free firmware upgrade for photographers using Nikon mount Sigma lenses on their Nikon D5300 cameras. Sigma had discovered that, when paired with the D5300 camera, its Nikon mount lenses containing internal motors do not properly operate the optical stabilization (OS) and Live View AF functionality.

On November 1st, I let you know that the Fstoppers team was participating in Movember, and asked for you guys to join us. The month is half over, and we wanted to share some of our spectacular facial growth. Check out how Blair, Lee, Mike and I have been doing, and lend us your support!

When a movie or video aims to make the viewer truly feel, it can be a tough mountain to climb. Emotion is difficult to compress into a visual and auditory experience but when it's done right, it can really make viewers think and share in a cohesive moment. This short video about the soul of Leica is one of those short films that excels at that experience, and now I'm going to shut up so you can enjoy it.

Blackmagic Design, makers of the line of cinema cameras that are growing in popularity, today released the Blackmagic Camera 1.5 software which adds new 12-bit Log CinemaDNG RAW recording to the Pocket Cinema Camera. This update is free from Blackmagic's website and can be downloaded today.

Yesterday Tamron announced the development of a new lens, but what caught my attention more than specs and the PR-speak that comes with a product launch was the way the new lens looked... strikingly like what Sigma is going for. I’m excited and happy to see Tamron pushing with a new design, but they have a lot to prove with the change and, arguably, a lot to lose if it doesn’t stack up.

When it comes to bags, I’ve come close to seeing it all. I have a bag for basically any situation plus spares in each category. Over the years I’ve seen different designs from a broad range of manufacturers, and that means I’ve seen both good and bad ideas. Bags are seen as a commodity, and I won’t argue they aren’t. But in their attempt to reinvent themselves and grow out of that box, sometimes we end up with bag designs we never needed or asked for. That’s why it’s such a relief when a bag company just makes a no gimmicks bag that just works.

This morning Tamron announced the development of a new lens to replace their current 200-500mm model on the market. It has "cutting-edge eBAND Coating and three LD (Low Dispersion) glass elements, [it] delivers superior imaging performance while the latest built-in VC (Vibration Compensation) system broadens users' horizons in achieving sharper handheld photographs." The new SP 150-600MM F/5-6.3 DI VC USD also sports an all-black, classier design.

With the growth of powerful and reliable small cameras, it’s only natural that photographers look for bag options that fit the new compact lifestyle. That said, if you’re like me, even if you plan on “downsizing,” you don’t want to give up too much, you just want a more compact version of what you already have. I took the Think Tank TurnStyle with me overseas and used it as my primary bag to see if it could act as my go-to travel satchel.

What ever happened to loving a camera for the camera? Why does everything we buy have to fill a utilitarian hole? What happened to a love for the craft and as much as for the tool? There has been a lot of chatter around the Nikon Df and if we as photographers need it. It's gone so far as to suggest that it represents all that is wrong with photography these days. I want to argue the opposite. I want to argue it represents what many of us have lost as photographers: joy in the craft.

The Nikon Df is finally official, after a full day of leaked information and a the past week with information basically already out there. That said, it's all technically speculation until the official release happens. Nikon has finally pulled the curtain back and revealed their latest full frame DSLR.

I'm not used to so many leaks/mistakes the day of a release, but it looks like someone at Amazon got a little trigger happy. Though the page is no longer active, we screen captured the entire upcoming product release for the hotly anticipated Nikon DF, including price, sensor size, and all the rest of the nitty gritty.

November 5: will the day live in glory or infamy? We're going to find out, as that looks to be the day Nikon will release their new retro compact full frame. Rumors are everywhere, so we'll just try and stick to what we know. There are five videos, giving you five chances to sneak a peak at this new camera.

For those of you who don't know what Movember is, Movember (the month formerly known as November) is a mustache growing charity event held during November each year that raises awareness and funds for men's health. Fstoppers like Lee Morris, Blair Bunting, Mike Wilkinson, Dave Geffin and I are part of team Mo'Rice Lacroix Team USA. Will you lend your support?

Well, I guess Hasselblad is continuing on their path of form-over-function despite critics and general malaise from actual photographers the world over, adding more to their previously announced Stellar line. "The latest Stellar models offer photographers the choice of three new camera body colurs: black, white and orange - and ship with bespoke camera cases in black or white leather with signature stitching and shoulder and wrist straps."

We like to keep you all informed of the best time to make your larger purchases to save your hard-earned money, and now is one of those times. Sigma has 25 lenses on up to $200 off some of their top selling glass. They also have three flashes on sale, including a macro ring flash.

If you couldn't make it to the Photo Plus Expo in New York (PPE) which kicks off today, you don't have to miss out on everything. Not only will our own Zach Sutton be reporting from the show floor, but Sigma is providing a live stream from their booth that they are calling "Sigma Safari," featuring hands-on shooting experiences starring professional models transformed into safari animals.

Tonight from the PhotoPlus Expo, Sigma has announced the pricing and availability of its new 24-105mm F4 DG OS HSM Art lens. It will be on shelves next month, starting with Canon mounts, for the MSRP of $899. That's quite a bit less than the Canon equivalent that, for many, leaves a lot to be desired. If Sigma's past lenses have been any indication of quality, we can expect it to be worth it.

Nikon put out a video that seems to be teasing something huge for the company... the retro full frame compact that has been hitting the rumor mill pretty heavily in the past week. That said, this video from Nikon seems to be pointing to the rumors being more fact than fiction. This camera looks like it's coming, and soon.

This was unexpected: the popular retailer and manufacture of digital and physical imagery products, Shutterfly, has aquired BorrowLenses, one of the top online gear rental outlets in the country. As part of the deal, BorrowLenses's Founders Max Shevyakov and Mark Gurevich, will join Shutterfly Inc. Aside from vesting stock information for the two founders (and even then, that information includes no explicit dollar amount), no monetary value of the exchange has been released.

I am not sure how widespread the issue is, but for some of us who updated to Apple's latest OS, Mavericks, Adobe Creative Cloud doesn't seem to be functioning fully. Some Fstoppers staff are reporting the inability to access their cloud files, inability to update their apps, and in an extreme case, the inability to even open any Adobe apps. So we ask, how is it working for you?

In 2012 I interviewed Carli Davidson regarding her animal portrait photography. She was able to bring out and show personality and emotion in our furry friends in a way that was truly unique. She recently released her book "SHAKE" which is filled with pages upon pages of dogs shaking off, caught in the action. If you or anyone you know is a dog-lover, this is a book you'll want sitting on your coffee table.

I don't speak Russian, but to understand what is going on in this video, you don't have to. It's amazing what can be done in post, but to be honest, I wasn't even aware the extent this could be done in video. You can see the "cloud" following her hair on the right, so I'm guessing they did some retouching on a still frame, and then motion-tracked those layers with her eyes. Perhaps? I don't know. It's pretty amazing stuff.

Nikon has unveiled the Nikkor 58mm f/1.4G lens priced at $1696, apt timing after Zeiss released their $4000 55mm last week. The lens uses two aspherical elements, a Nano Crystal Coating, and Nikon's Super Integrated Coating in an attempt to remove all traces of flaring or light falloff. Nikon claims this will allow it to be used in low-light situations by maintaining edge-to-edge sharpness and even lighting at all apertures.

I've wanted to be impressed with Sony for a long time, and I think that time has finally come. The rumored full frame compact interchangeable lens camera is real, as Sony has announced the Alpha 7R and Alpha 7. Featuring full frame sensors, fast hybrid AF with phase-detection and a new image processing engine, these might be everything we've wanted in a compact camera.