Hacking Photography - one Picture at a time
Shooting food footage has always been changing. Aside from getting the framing, lighting, and general composition right, you also need to make sure the food looks good. And if you want to add motion to the shot, it adds another layer of complexity.
We took the DigitalFoto 360 spinner for a ride and learned quite a few things about feed photography along the way, here is what we learned:
Development of the OM System M.Zuiko Digital ED 90mm f3.5 Macro ISO Pro (wow, what a mouthful!) was announced back in September 2022 in a road map update. The spot was actually allocated a year earlier, in September 2021, in a previous road map update. Until very recently, though, there was no real news on when we might hear an announcement. Then, a couple of weeks ago, that changed.
OM System released a firmware update on January 20th for the E-M1 Mark II, E-M1 Mark III, E-M5 Mark III, E-M1X and OM-5 cameras. This firmware was specifically (and only) to ensure compatibility with the M.Zuiko 90mm f/35 Macro lens. No announcement date was available then, but now OM System has announced an event on February 8, and specs for the new lens have leaked ahead of that announcement.
Travel Photographer of the Year (TPOTY) is one of those contests that takes you on a journey around the globe without you leaving your chair. The 2022 results have been announced, and like every year, it’s treated us with a selection of marvelous photos from all over the world.
This year’s winning photos show an extraordinary companionship between one of the world’s last two remaining Northern White rhinos and her keeper. And other than these moving portraits, TPOTY brings us many more stunning images, so let’s enjoy them together.
7Artisans has announced their new 18mm pancake lens, the 7artisans 18mm F6.3 II UFO. As the name suggests, it has a wide 18mm focal length with a fixed f/6.3 aperture. It’s designed specifically for APS-C mirrorless cameras and is available in Sony E, Nikon Z and Fuji X mount options. This tiny lens has a diameter of 56mm and a depth of a mere 15mm, including the mount.
It’s designed to be a bit of a walkabout lens for street photography, with a fixed f/6.3 aperture that should still give you some nice fast shutter speeds during the day. That 18mm focal length on APS-C offers a field of view equivalent to that of about 27mm on a full-frame body, ideal for street photography shots that show some environmental context. And the new version II of this lens also has variable focus from 0.3m to infinity.
AI is definitely a buzzword at the moment, some days, it feels like I can’t move without hearing about it. Most of those discussions are scare-mongering and a little bit threatening for the creative industries. But what if, for once, we took a different stance? Instead of looking at what AI imaging tools could destroy, what if we looked at what they could create instead?
That’s exactly what Creative Director Rob Brooks did recently. Brooks will happily admit that he fell down the Midjourney rabbit hole recently and, just like Alice, ended up on a fantastical creative journey himself. Brooks created a series of images using both digital photography of his twin sons and woodland fantasy beasts that he created with AI. DIYP was lucky enough to chat with Rob about how he created the images and his thoughts in general on the future regarding AI and the creative industries.
Well, yesterday’s rumours of an upcoming Canon EOS R8 and EOS R50 announcement seem a little more real today. And there’s good news and bad news. The good news is that Asobinet is reporting a leaked spec sheet for the Canon EOS R8, telling us pretty much all of the main vital information on the camera. The bad news, though, is that it appears the Canon EOS R8 will not contain an in-body image stabilisation system.
It is, however, expected to contain a 24-megapixel sensor with 4K resolution footage at up 60 fps with 6K oversampling. It’ll shoot HD at up to 180ps and you’ll be able to shoot (presumably raw) stills at up to 40 frames per second. One has to assume that 40fps stills are with the electronic shutter, but still, it’s pretty impressive.
Instagram’s verification policy has been tweaked through the years, but it might soon be a feature you’ll need to pay for. Thanks to some magic we call reverse engineering, developer Alessandro Paluzzi figured out that paid subscription badges are in the works for both Instagram and Facebook.
As the conflict between China and the U.S. progresses, lawmakers have now turned their attention to TikTok. A China-based company stands behind the super-popular app, so there are growing concerns that user data might end up in the hands of the Chinese government. Therefore, a Democratic senator recently urged on Apple and Google CEOs to remove TikTok from their app stores immediately.
As humans we always have a desire to do more, be better, and move faster. That doesn’t mean we always do, but the desire is there. When you are in the groove, you can push out new work, create, and make at hyper speed. When we do hit that stride, it feels amazing. Until suddenly it doesn’t. That’s because you can only sustain that kind of pace for so long without balance.
Vivo’s X90 and X90 Pro have been out in China for a little while now, but today sees their global international launch. Both smartphones feature Zeiss cameras, with the X90 Pro sporting a large 1-inch sensor. Both smartphones feature 50-megapixel Zeiss camera modules, with the non-Pro model also sporting 12-megapixel telephoto and wide-angle cameras. The X90 Pro, on the other hand, features 50-megapixel wide and 12-megapixel telephoto cameras.
With Zeiss optics in both devices, featuring Zeiss’s T* lens coatings, pixel shift, dual-tone LED flash, HDR and panorama modes, the expectations are high for this one. The X90’s 50-megapixel 1/1.49″ sensor offers 4K video at up to 60fps, while the X90 Pro’s 50-megapixel 1-inch sensor lets you record up to 8K at 60fps. Both devices also include a 32-megapixel selfie camera that shoots up to 4K 30p.
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