"Underwater Beauty" was an image commissioned by a local company as a part of their campaign supporting various independent artists. The image was created as a composite for obvious reasons. In this article, I'd like to walk you through the process of creating it from the initial idea to the final result.
You have to see it to believe it. Canon's new 470EX-AI Speedlite has built-in artificial intelligence (AI), so that even if you don't know what a perfect bounce flash is, it will do it for you. At the end, you will get a perfect, naturally exposed image.
Amazon has been a reputable store for many years. But this happened: a guy received a Canon 1D X Mark II box full with rocks. You think that's all? See what happened when the Amazon representatives apologized and sent a second package to him.
We've never been fortunate to fund our expensive gear with money from a generous Nigerian prince. When filmmaker Adam Grumbo met such a scammer online he decided to pay and hire him as a photographer and a videographer, and the results are quite interesting.
I will speak from a perspective of a non-American here. I find lots of U.S.-based photographers who are working on projects they hate, and they admit it. I tried to dig into the reasons for that, and here are my conclusions, and my advices.
The process of color correcting and color grading in filmmaking is an art of its own. Even if you do not work with video, such techniques can bring your photographs to the next level. The goal of this short tutorial is not creating an orange and teal look, but rather teaching you how ambient light affects highlights, midtones, and shadows of the skin. Knowing this technique you can color grade visuals the way you see them in many films.
Working with multiple cameras in filmmaking is almost inevitable. Most of the time you are in a situation working with cameras of different brands or different models. Matching the picture from these cameras can be a painful process involving color charts, reference frames, creating custom LUTs (look-up tables), etc. PolarPro tries to make our workflow easier by releasing presets of cinematic LUTs that can be used to match footage from different cameras and drones.
I just watched Justin Timberlake's "Say Something" video, and then, I watched it again. No doubt that's professional production work. Knowing the technical challenges of such a video, for me it felt like I was watching a reality show. The almost "unplugged" vibe of the song was so right for that video that the rest of my senses could be focused on how those guys pull that work off (pun intended). This article will be a humble attempt to reveal how they shot the video.
Erik Almas is an inspiration to many of us not only with the work he does as a commercial photographer but also as a person who shares the struggles and successes he had in his career. No doubt that he works with many companies and brands we can only dream of, but in a recent interview he confessed that despite that there wasn't a moment in his life when he could say he "finally made it." It is exciting to hear what his measure for success really was.
New and shiny gear from Apple is always good looking and always sounding good on paper. We've seen lots of paid reviews on various products of theirs and lots of boring laboratory benchmarks showing soulless numbers we had to believe in. How about ditching all that and making a real-world test in workflows that demand a good amount of hardware resources? You guessed it: video processing. The guys from cinema5D got an iMac Pro and decided to see if it could get the work done better than what they already had.
Files from our cameras get bigger and bigger and we expect our workflow to get better and faster. This is not possible without using new technology for transferring our work to a backup storage device. The trend today is the portable SSD. This year several brands released their first portable SSD devices, which might make you update your on-location backup arsenal after you see the crazy speeds they can transfer data at.
Shooting with various cameras is not uncommon in the video world. Most of the time, it's because of budget constraints, but sometimes, it's because different parts of the project require different cameras. In this video, Tom Antos shares his way of matching footage from three camera brands.
The "bullet time" effect keeps evolving and today it can be achieved not only with an array of digital cameras, but with high-speed robots equipped with high-speed cameras. We, the lower budget society, always try to get the latest visual techniques in our work, but, if possible, on the cheap. This video will help you imitate a high-speed camera movement with simple tools you may already have in your video production workflow.
You've probably seen thousands of articles on screen calibration and you may strive to deliver perfect images and videos. Unfortunately, in the end, your client views them on their non-calibrated way-too-blue or way-too-orange screens. Sometimes they say "looks good to me." Other times the response may be "it's too dark," or "it's too blue." They may even edit your photos to make them look "better." How do you handle these situations and is it really critical for you calibrate your monitors?
Autofocus is probably the only auto-feature on my cameras that I like to keep turned on. Knowing how autofocus works in detail is not essential, but having a general overview of it is a must. It may affect your next camera purchase and the knowledge can be helpful in controlling situations where the autofocus doesn't kick in. This video explains very simply, without going into much technical details, how your DSLR automatically finds the focal distance and why it fails sometimes.
A few years ago I was talking with a fellow photographer about the color correction of portraits. While on the topic of using white balance cards and color charts in order to get a perfect skin color, he interrupted me and said, “You can't have perfect skin color with these.” I immediately thought to myself, “Oh, yeah?” Oh, yeah. That was the truth, and I will explain why below.
A black rugged box that costs $50,000, has an "8K" label, sometimes it's called а "weapon," and it also shoots. What is it? A RED camera, of course. In this video, you will see the process of how these professional cinema cameras are manufactured.
As filmmakers and photographers, we tend to guess how other people shot specific scenes. Depending on our level of experience, we may be right or wrong. In this video we can see the approach of master DPs to deconstructing the cinematography of their favorite moments from "Blade Runner."
Photography today is more accessible than ever before because cameras are everywhere: not only shaped as DSLRs, but in phones, tablets, laptops, and in the James Bond ball-point pen. It is easy to press a button a capture something your camera is pointed to. Lots of people are thinking about taking the snapshot game to another level: buying a professional camera and making professional photographs. Most of these purchases end with disappointments, but there's not much talk about them. This article will take a peek behind the scenes of the failures newbies face when they first try using a DSLR.
Whether you think about conceptual art, impressionism, or high fashion, they are all deviations from the traditional art expressions. Is the emperor naked, or do these forms of art have nothing to do with that well-known story? Is it possible to make more profit from impressionism than from traditional photography?
Whether or not you are a purist, there are times when you have to change the color in post production of something you've photographed. This video will tell you how you can easily alter hair color of a portrait to whatever hue you want.
The Italian town of Positano is one of the travel destinations adored by photographers and tourists because of its colorful and dynamic scenery. If you want to know how Landscape Photographer Elia Locardi photographed Positano and many other beautiful locations, check out Fstoppers' latest tutorial "Photographing the World 3." But before that, you need to be aware of the new taxes imposed by city council of the beautiful Italian town, regarding permits for photography and video.
You've probably heard the statement "nice and simple." Sometimes it's true, indeed, but most of the time the results and consequences from following that philosophy are not so nice, especially for those who are in the business of photography and filmmaking.
Telling a story is not easy. On the other hand, making short films is easy. There are lots of shorts on the Internet, but few of them manage to capture one's attention with visuals, audio, and plot. "Two Devices Connected" is a great example of combining those three together into a short film with an unexpected end.
You want Hollywood-grade shots but you don't have the money? The bad news is most of the time you can't do anything about this. The good news is there are cases when with the help of some VFX you can go a long way, as in this case. This video will help you recreate that orange desert look from "Blade Runner 2049."
Understanding the internal light meter of my camera is one of the best skills I've ever learned. It helps me to shoot in fully manual mode, so that I rarely look at the back of my camera. Let me tell you how to get a correctly exposed picture from the first click just by using your camera's internal light meter.
Whether you are making a video blog, a wedding video, a documentary, a commercial, a tutorial, a short film, or a feature film, there are times you make a bad one. Here are a few tips that will make sure you are consistent in making a bad video every single time.
Canon's C200 has been on the radar for quite some time as an affordable cinema camera. This review shows if it's really worth buying it because of its advertised key features such as ability to shoot raw footage, dynamic range, build improvements from previous models, and others. The test has been performed by the guys from The Slanted Lens on a sunny day outside in the city. The reviewers mostly shot in Raw Light format although they've got some files in AVCHD, so they could compare the results later.
After waiting for so long, Vimeo finally launches a live streaming service which allows events to offer high-quality video to their viewers. Here are the list of updates that are included in Vimeo Live.
Whether or not you are a filmmaker, making-of videos will always teach you new things. You can see how scenes have been shot, what cameras have been used, what lights were set up, if visual effects were used or it was a real shot, how the set was designed, and more. In a series of videos we will take a peak behind the scenes of the movie "Blade Runner 2049."
Instagram is planning a change that is going to upset a lot of people. If you are one of those who likes to keep all your images in order and make use of the 3 x 3 grid, prepare for a storm that may stir your account's real estate.
I don't make time-lapses, but as a viewer I frequently happen to find time-lapse videos that I can't or don't watch at all. Here are my tips for all of you out there to make your sequence of images more appealing to any audience.
RED made a surprising announcement a few months ago, entering the smartphone market with its Hydrogen phone. What the company didn't reveal then was how its innovative "holographic" display looked. This kept us interested and anticipating what this might be. Now, however, RED lifted the curtain up a little bit more, showing us the concept behind the display.
Recently we wrote the sad news that Lexar was going to close doors. Now we hear that it's going to live. Technically speaking, it will be the same brand name, but resurrected with another heart. Will that heartbeat manage to keep the company running at top speeds?
I'm not a strong supporter of business cards nowadays. It's not because they don't do any good, but because most people are throwing them in the trash bin without even visiting your website and seeing what you do. Despite of that it's good to have some in your pocket. Here is my solution to using a special type of business cards that your potential clients may not throw away.
