Articles from Austin Rogers

Finally, the last Nikon product announcement for the day: Nikon has just rolled out the new Nikon 1 S2 mirrorless camera system, an update to the 2013 Nikon 1 S1. The new S2 features a 14.2 MP sensor (up around 4 MP from the S1), shoots full-HD 1020p video, and fires at 20 FPS. It comes in four colors, and will have a price of $446.95 (including the kit 11-27.5 f/3.5-5.6 kit lens).

If you plan on picking up the newly announced Nikon 400mm f/2.8E you'll definitely be interested in looking into the new TC-14E III, Nikon's latest 1.4x teleconverter. This baby will boost the focal length of your lens by 1.4x, only reducing the light by one stop. This will effectively turn your 70-200 f/2.8 into a 98-280 f/4.0, or that new 400 f/2.8 into a crazy 560mm f/4.0.

In the wake of Canon revealing two new super-wide zoom lenses (here and here) Nikon has a nearly polar opposite announcement of their own. They just announced a new 400mm f/2.8 lens. It is likely that Nikon timed this announcement to allow for use of the new 400mm at the FIFA World Cup.

Today, Nikon released a major firmware update for their D800 and D800E HDSLRs as well as minor patches for the UT-1 transmitter and a few CoolPix cameras. This is the first significant update for the D800(E) since about this time last year. The update (v. A 1.10, B 1.10) brings with it something that I wish all Nikon cameras had.

Former Fstoppers writer and Columbus, Ohio based portrait and fashion photographer, Nick Fancher has recently been working on a series he calls Studio Anywhere in which he photographs models in their own homes. Nick's an avid strobist; meticulously lighting every shoot with a small army of speed lights. He has kindly agreed to give us a sneak peek into his lighting setups from two images in the series.

Photographer J. David Buerk was sitting around one Sunday morning with his Lubitel 2 TLR with plans of making a disassembly and cleaning tutorial when he decided to try to retrofit the lens to his Canon gear. This simple project takes advantage of the beautifully unique 75mm f/4.5 lens.

There's something special about taking a picture on film. That said, film also lent itself to a lot of error: a botched exposure, missed focus and light leaks could all serve to ruin an otherwise lovely image. There are few things more frustrating then getting a roll back from the lab with an error note on the envelope. Occasionally the results were a novelty, perhaps adding interest to an otherwise boring image but all too often light leak was nothing but a bother. So why would anyone want to replicate it in Lightroom?

Leo Rosas recently made a YouTube video for The Cooperative of Photography (TheCooph) that featured 7 little DIY photography mods, including a simple GoPro time-lapse setup, DIY creative effect filters, a flash diffuser and an ND filter. While it's not the first time we've seen many of these little projects (like the GoPro kitchen-timer), the video certainly got me thinking.

Today, Southland shared a rare look at the growth of DisneyLand in Anaheim, California from construction site in 1955 to the bustling theme park it is today, in 2014. In the two GIF animations of the park's evolutions (below) you see orange groves turn into the parking lots, carefully landscaped jungles, and the themed buildings that make up "the happiest place on earth".

Videographers and event photographers are all to familiar with the frustration of constantly switching out the tiny internal batteries of DSLRs. On a good day you can get a thousand or so still images or just a couple hours of video before switching the batteries.  This simple little mod from Chris Winter shows you hot to build a hardcore external battery that boasts roughly 9x the capacity of the standard internal batteries.

Thanks to an unfortunate accident, the Leica T website briefly went live today. Thankfully, the guys over at La Vida Leica were able to grab all the important bits before it was taken down. From what was archived, the Leica T is looking like a pretty sweet little MFT APS-C system.

If you've been paying attention to photo news this week you know that concert photographer, Rohan Anderson, was in a little bit of a internet-war with the band Red Jumpsuit Apparatus after they "borrowed" an image for a social media post without credit or compensation. Now it looks like another group is jumping on the bandwagon.

Michael Ash Smith is a commercial wedding, portrait, and lifestyle photographer based out of Barto, PA. As a hybrid photographer, much of Michael's work is done on 35mm and medium format film with some instant film here and there for special occasions. He recently shared images from a wedding he shot over on the Junebug Weddings blog. The difference? Everything he shot that day was with instant film. 

Today, NikonRumors published a brief story about Nikon's winnings in the 2014 Red Dot awards. Every year the fellows at Red Dot in Essen, Germany select products in various fields with outstanding design. In the past, Nikon has been awarded Red Dots for their D4, 1-series mirrorless system, and various coolpix cameras. This year Nikon took home three Red Dots for their ACULON T51 binoculars, D5300 APS-C DSLR and, surprisingly, the Df.

Earlier this week, Gizmodo released a comparison of 6 action video cameras. The test included cameras from GoPro, Drift, JVC, Sony, Garmin, and Ion. The author of the original article, Brent Rose, decided it would be easier to make his own hilariously-large 6-camera head rig than to test them individually.

According to Canon Rumors, the next addition to the Zeiss Otus line of high performance, manual primes is going to be an 85mm. The 85mm Otus will be like the 55mm in that no corners will have been cut in optical design and build. As of yesterday, the Otus 55mm is still the king of all 50-ish-mm lenses according to DxO (even the Sigma). 

Death to the Stock Photo is a Columbus, Ohio based stock photo agency created by Allie Lehman and David Sherry that was founded in 2013. Every month they release high-quality, high-res, un-watermarked, and virtually un-restricted themed image packs — for free. Sound crazy? Here's their story.

Monte Isom, NYC-based sports, entertainment, and advertising photographer just shared a look behind-the-scenes at his most recent shoot for the World Cup. The video takes you all the way through his preproduction and makeup, to shooting with a pretty good look at his lighting setup.

Yesterday PhotoShelter shared a list of 9 rockstar photographers who you should most certainly be following, and we think they did a pretty darn good job narrowing down the field to just a handful. It's stacked with some big names and maybe some you haven't heard of.

Today, Stefan Kohler shared a look at his mammoth pan / tilt head for large lenses on DIY Photography. The rig pictured below shows Stefan's D800 and the Nikkor 400mm f/2.8 lens — at a combined weight of 11.7 pounds. Here's a look at how he built it.

EOSHD shared this video shot with a pre-production Panasonic GH4 (now available for preorder) at 96 FPS. In our previous posts about the newly announced GH4 we've been pretty excited about a 4K video camera system with a sub-$2,000 price-tag. This camera is poised to give the more expensive systems a real run for their money and with features such as 96 FPS recording there's even more reason to consider adding this to your bag.

Aaron Nace recently made a video showing you a quick and easy way to make lens flare (in a blank layer) right in Photoshop. While it might not be quite as exciting as, say, removing a model's bra this is a really handy tip to add a little bit of interest to your images. This method lives the user more latitude when it comes to adjustment of color, intensity, rotation, blur, and scaling after the fact.

According to PhotoRumors, the Pentax 645z medium format digital camera is coming April 14th and will be absolutely loaded. The replacement to the 645d will feature a 52.99Mp CMOS sensor like the new offerings from PhaseOne and Hasselblad, shoot ISO 100-204,800, and shoot full HD video and 4K in "interval mode". In addition, the 645z is rumored to not have an AA filter (like the D800E, D7100) for better sharpness, live view with contrast AF and focus peaking, and a new 27-point (25 cross type) AF system.

LifePrint is a Kickstarter project looking to change the way people share their images. The device prints instant, Polaroid-esque, photos off iOS and Android devices through their proprietary app. While the printer technology is interesting in itself, there's something about this project that could really change the way we share photos.

Lomography, the company behind the reinvention of the Petzval lens, announced a new Russar+ optic this week. The Russar+ is a 20mm f/5.6 - f/22 M mount lens that is based upon the 1958 Russar and is compatible with M mount analogue and L39 digital cameras.

Every year the photo community is besieged by April Fool’s Day jokes. This year's batch included a fake Canon 1D-W, a 15-foot tripod, and BorrowLenses adding a “rent an intern” option. This workflow serves as a tongue-in-cheek reminder of just how far our editing software has come since its release in February, 1990. Photoshop 1.0 was Mac-exclusive, only allowed one "undo", and even pre-dates the .jpg file.

Just after the Sony a7S announcement, Atomos has already announced a 4K recorder for use with the new video & low-light monster. The new Atomos Shogun can handle the full uncompressed YCbCr 4:2:2 video right out of camera. Just like the Atomos Samurai and Ninja Blade, the Shogun allows for 422 10-bit images straight off the camera recorded right to SSD (or RAIDed HDD) in 4K HD ProRes, Avid DNxHD, or RAW Cinema DNG.

Today Tokina released two new ultra wide zooms into their ATX Cinema line of lenses, a 11-16mm T3.0 and a 12-28mm T3.0 (both are modified versions of their popular 11-16mm f/2.8 and 16-28mm f/2.8). Both lenses have click-less aperture rings as well as 0.8 pitch gears on focus, aperture, and zoom rings.

Today the guys over at Canon Rumors confirmed an issue that may affect the Canon EOS-1DX and Canon EOS-1DC, Canon's flagship DSLR bodies. Turns out they might not auto focus in the cold. This issue first started popping up in the forums nearly a year ago (April 20, 2013) and have largely been unconfirmed until now.

It's no secret that you can hack Canon cameras firmware with 3rd party hackers like Magic Lantern to push higher dynamic range and bitrate. Nikonhacker is looking to bring the same performance to their ecosystem. Their new set of hacks (for 11 cameras) allows you to push  1,080 video at up to 64mbps.

If you find yourself in need of a weekend photo project this might be just the one for you. In this tutorial made by Franscesco Spighi, you can turn an ordinary Nikon 50mm f/1.4 AIS lens into a selective focus "freelens." This mod will allow you to selectively blur and focus your lens like a tilt-shift or Lensbaby. Here's how:

35mm film shooters will be happy to hear that German imaging company, Reflecta, has announced a new almost-pocket-sized slide film scanner that can scan up to 10,000 DPI. The ProScan 10T is advertised to have a DR of 3.9 DMax. Here’s the kicker - it comes in at a surprisingly low € 469 (just under $650).

Mike Kelley is an amazing architectural photographer and guest contributor at Fstoppers. Recently, Mike published an article on B&H's Explora blog about the science and magic that went into the featured image above. In his article, Mike takes you behind the scenes in a rare look at the process behind his photographs.

Yesterday, the people at Lowepro released a set of new cases for GoPro users. The Dashpoint Action Video Case (now available) comes in two sizes, a small AVC 1 and a larger AVC 2. Both cases are semi-hard shell plastic cases with a soft, customizable interior and are available in two colors: black or blue. Anyone who's used a GoPro knows how difficult it is to keep all the little parts organized in your bag, this might just be the solution.

This just in: Panasonic announced a new 15mm f/1.7 high speed Leica Summilux lens. This new optic will give about a 30mm full frame equivalent at a cool $599. As of today, this lens is available for preorder through B&H. If the rumors are true, we can expect the new 15mm f/1.7 to be bundled with the DMC-GM1 (pictured below) as early as June.