Articles from Adam Ottke

"La La Land" seems to be Hollywood's favorite film of the year. From the extraordinary opening dance scene on a Los Angeles freeway junction to the final dream sequence, it is doubtless an example of some of the best cinematography this year.

Developing your own film might be the cheaper (and more amusing) way to go, but with all the preparation and lab space required, that simply hasn't always the best option. Ars-Imago's Lab-Box hopes to solve these problems in a small, light-proof container that enables you to develop your own film at home or even while traveling – yes, it's that easy and compact.

Today is the day that Sigma fills out its Art-series lens lineup to offer what could easily be considered everything you'd really need since its most recent release of the 85mm f/1.4 Art.

Keeping your gadgets charged on the go is essential if you travel a lot and expect to get any work done on the road. Thanks to the millions of battery packs that are out there, charging your phone is easy enough. But what if you need to keep your laptop charged while off the grid for a day’s shoot or while on a long flight without an outlet?

A few months ago, I started a passion project of mine: FilmObjektiv.org. Film Objektiv was started with one goal in mind: to get more people shooting film. We do this by renting film cameras at low prices for longer periods of time, by providing prints at a low cost, and also by serving as an online and educational resource to help film shooters find everything they'd ever need.

For me, storage is a huge pain. On one hand, it’s simple. Buy a bunch of hard drives, back everything up, repeat. But I want to simplify it further. I hate having one system that’s speedy for in-office editing and another that’s slow, but network-connected.

I recently traded my Nikon DSLR for an unbranded mystery camera for a few days to test out an entirely new concept: camera as a service. 

Popular online photography community 500px launched a new global photographer directory that allows consumer and business clients to search for photographers of all disciplines and locations around the world to fulfill their custom imagery needs. Already 50,000 strong, the service is open to any photographer and allows for listings under multiple genres of photography. 

What happens when you lose track of a few extra boxes of some film cameras, and then find them again a few years later? You sell them, of course! And that's exactly what B&H is doing with a number of Fujifilm GF670 cameras that Fujifilm found in its American warehouse.

The Leica M10 is the latest iteration of digital German rangefinders. The M10 features a similar 24MP CMOS sensor to that of the M-P (Typ 240), expanded ISO performance from ISO 100-50,000, an improved viewfinder, new three-button back panel design, and more for a discount over the Typ 240. 

Even after its death, if was there ever one film stock that was the color film, it would have to be Kodak's Kodachrome The last roll was famously given to Steve McCurry, who essentially built his career with the film. To say that was a sad moment for lovers of film would be a gross misrepresentation. This was something that was lost.

Despite the company's unfortunate demise with the advent of a number of technologies that were simply cheaper and better, there's something to a Polaroid photograph that you can't get anywhere else: that tactile, one-copy, 3x4-inch film image seconds after taking the picture.

Now available for pre-order, Fujifilm announced an X-Pro2 Graphite Edition kit that comes with a matching 23mm f/2 lens as well as a standalone X-T2 Graphite Silver Edition body to complement the standard black bodies of the brand's flagship cameras.

You could say a lot of things about the Space Hero Mission, but the concept of exploration of this world is unmistakable. The whimsical combination of the character of an astronaut with the seemingly endless exploration of the natural ends of our planet here on Earth takes the normally arduous task of worldwide expedition and makes it more relatable.

Luminar is Macphun’s latest editing platform, and it’s the company’s first try at an all-in-one solution that can go head-to-head with Adobe Lightroom and Apple’s discontinued Aperture programs. Still in beta, Luminar recently received an update that helped improve speed and fixed over 300 small bugs, making it nearly ready for its public release on November 17.

Adobe Sneaks is the software company's behind-the-scenes sneak peek into ongoing projects that could eventually — if we're lucky — find their way into one or more products. This year at MAX, Adobe previewed a number of tools that should excite virtual-reality editors, desktop designers, and audio editors working on long-form speech formats. 

For better or worse, Apple ditched almost every port on its latest MacBook Pro lineup, opting instead for a single audio jack and four Thunderbolt 3 ports with the new USB-C connector. While there are inherent advantages to such a setup, it is true that users will need to invest in a series of adapters to connect their devices.

Adobe concentrated its Creative Cloud 2017 updates heavily in newer media areas as it announced an After Effects improvement to render 3D elements up to 20 times faster, a Premier Pro update that automatically detect and create settings for different types of virtual reality content, and a new project, Project Felix, to aid in the creation of photo-realistic images by combining 2D and 3D assets

If it works, GearEye's new RFID tagging system for your gear could change the way you pack for your shoots forever.

On one hand, it’s understandable to be territorial over the features in our technology and sensitive to change. But technology inherently demands change — and that change is demanded at the fastest rate possible.

We have two, fantastic reasons to be happy today in the form of two, long-awaited lenses. First, Nikon announced an update to its flagship 70-200mm f/2.8 professional zoom that features fluorite lens components, an electromagnetic diaphragm, and a slew of other quality and durability improvements.

Audi took advantage of Monday night's presidential debates with its "Duel" ad spot. Nearly the entire clip plays in reverse, allowing the chronology of the true story and how the action unfolded to the point at which you began to unravel itself in an action-packed scene.

GoPro has brilliantly teased us with its careful, controlled releases of Karma drone videos. Today, they've launched the new Karma alongside a pair of Hero5 cameras that are as wonderful to see as the Karma itself. Advanced stabilization looks impressive in the videos (see the mountain biking scene at 1:53), but something to note is how cinematic the image quality now looks.

Astrophotographers have a tough job, balancing the use of electronics and star-gazing apps with the ability to keep their eyes adjusted for the night sky or the dark ground that surrounds them as they shoot. I have wrapped my phone in red cellophane plenty of times.

Adobe recently released a new version of its Lightroom Mobile app that takes advantage of the raw image support in Apple's just-released iOS 10. Taken on an iPhone 6S running the developer GM seed of iOS 10 (10.0.1), these images show just how good your mobile photos can now be.

Some things are too good to be true. But every now and again, the world offers you an opportunity to feel like you got the lucky ticket for two on an all-expenses paid vacation to Disneyland. This isn’t quite that good, but I don’t know many people who would say, “No,” to a free iPhone, let alone one that can make you money.

In an industry where product differentiation is tough because everyone has to meet similar standards, G-Technology continues to show that it can innovate on top of simply promising higher-quality products.

Peak Design’s last Kickstarter for the Everyday Messenger was the most successfully funded photography product on the crowd-funding platform. With two days to go, its latest for the Everyday Backpack, Tote, and Sling just beat that record with nearly $5 million in pre-orders.

It’s hard to pick a component of gear that’s most important for editing your color-dependent photo and video work. But it’s easy to say that a great, accurate, wide-gamut monitor is near the top of that list. NEC recently gave us a chance to review a monitor of theirs that's popular for its balance of features, size, and mid-range price for its tier: the EA275WMI-BK. 

Although its business practices have shifted more than once since the Facebook takeover, most of us still love Instagram for its ease of use, reach, and simplicity. But today's app update makes little sense... today. On one hand, the new pinch-to-zoom update is extremely late.

A number of websites offer multimedia content to content creators for their projects through an easy-to-access online portal. But as well as those sites serve the many that use them, they all have one thing in common: they set the price for all content.

Nikon has announced the AF-S 105mm f/1.4E ED. Yes, that wide aperture is real. And yes, at $2,196.95, it's as expensive as anyone thought it might be. The good news is that optical quality is supposed to be at the top of its segment. With a relatively long focal length of 105mm, the f/1.4 maximum aperture is impressive regardless of the price.

In the same style and featuring many of the same advancements (such as Peak Design's MagLatch) as the original Everyday Messenger bag, Peak Design is back, this time with four new bags based on a backpack (in two sizes), tote, and small sling design. If you want to get in on the best prices, you still have time to save an additional 10 dollars on early bird pricing.

We spend thousands of dollars on the best cameras and lenses, but we often forget about the smaller accessories that come between us and our subject. Switching out your eyepiece for something better is an extremely underrated and cheap improvement you can make, and from special coatings to magnifiers, you actually have a few more options than you may have known. 

As photographers, we have a never-ending, ever-perpetuating growth of photos piling up on our hard drives. Inevitably, whether that work is professional or personal, our photos end up taking space on cloud storage accounts that we keep upgrading whenever we reach the limit. But what if you could cut the size of these files in half without losing any visible quality?