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About John Aldred

John Aldred is based in Scotland and photographs people in the wild and animals in the studio. You can find out more about John on his website and follow his adventures on YouTube.

7Artisans teases new 12mm T2.9 cine and 4mm f/2.8 drone lenses on Chinese social media

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7Artisans has been showing off a couple of new APS-C lenses on Chinese social media platforms. One is a very wide angle ultra lightweight 4mm f/2.8 lens designed for use on drones while the other is a slightly less wide (but still pretty wide) 12mm T2.9 cinema lens. Both lenses appear to be manual focus lenses but beyond that, there isn’t much information available about them yet. We do know what mounts they’ll be available for.

Despite reportedly showing the new lenses off on Chinese social media, the two lense shave yet to make an appearance on the 7 Artisan website. But from the images teased, we can see that the 12mm T2.9 cine lens will be available in Sony E, MFT, Fuji X, Nikon Z, Leica L and Canon RF mount. The 4mm f/2.8 drone lens, though, will only be available for Sony E, Fuji X, MFT and Canon EF-M mounts.

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Sony FX30 APS-C cinema camera coming Sept 28th – ZV series & A7R V camera announcements expected next month

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Sony has posted a teaser to YouTube for a new product being announced on Wednesday, September 28th at 10am Eastern (3pm UK time). Sony hasn’t specifically said what’s coming, except for the fact that it’s a new camera and that it’s part of the cinema line. Right now, though, all rumours seem to point towards it being the Sony FX30.

There hasn’t been a massive amount of leaks on the FX30 yet, and nothing has really been confirmed, although it’s expected to essentially be an FX3 with the same body and almost exactly the same specifications, including 4K 120fps, but with a smaller 26-megapixel sensor. All we know for sure though, is that Sony is definitely announcing a new cinema camera of some kind in two days.

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I saved $250 by making my own DIY contrast filter holder for the Omega B66 enlarger

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Have you ever had a repeated inconvenience that finally makes you say to yourself “okay, I’m done with this garbage”? Well, that’s the exact feeling I had with using contrast filters on my enlarger. Anytime I wanted to use a contrast filter, I needed to use tape to hold it in place while I was printing.

The design of some Omega enlargers requires a removable “cradle” that holds the filters underneath the lens. After a bit of searching online, I found that B&H Photo sells a replacement filter holder for B series enlargers for the low low price of $269. Even used, these things are expensive. eBay had a few listed that were selling for about $79. Unwilling to part with my hard-earned cash for such a frivolous purchase I was left with the only other option- to build one myself.

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Canon issues service notice over lockups with Canon XF605, EOS C70 and EOS R5c cameras

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Canon has issued a slightly odd service notice. Well, it’s not that odd for Canon XF605 owners, as it relates to a problem specifically targeting that camera. What’s a little odd is that they’ve also included the Canon EOS C70 and Canon EOS R5c in the service notice, too. Canon says they’ve confirmed the “possibility” of them being prone to the same issue although there are no actual reports of it happening in the real world (yet).

Still, if you’re shooting an FX605, an EOS C70 or an EOS R5c, there are certain situations in which various settings and actions performed on your camera may cause it to lock up and become inoperable. There’s no word on whether or not simply powering the camera down and back up again (or pulling the battery) resets the function, but a new firmware is available already for the XF605 and they’re working on updates for the other two.

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Capture One for iPad now supports both wired and wireless tethered shooting

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When Capture One for iPad was released in June, there was no option to tether your camera to your iPad. They promised it would be coming soon and now they’ve made good on that promise. The latest v1.10 update for Capture One for iPad now supports tethering your camera to your iPad while shooting. And it does it wired through a USB cable or wirelessly over WiFi.

The new update lets photographers shoot directly into Capture One on the iPad to be able to see a large preview of your shots as they’re being taken and you can apply a preset to them by default to get a good idea of how the final image is going to look. You can also use your iPad to remotely trigger your camera without having to touch it at all – very handy when you’ve got a camera mounted in a hard-to-reach location.

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Loawa has released another macro lens – the 58mm f/2.8 2x Ultra Macro APO for mirrorless cameras

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When it comes to macro lenses, the name that springs to mind most these days is Laowa, produced by Venus Optics. Now, they’ve added another new one to their lineup, the Laowa 58mm f/2.8 2x Ultra Macro APO designed specifically for mirrorless cameras. Like Laowa’s other lenses, it’s a manual focus lens, and this one comes in four full-frame flavours. Sony E, Canon RF, Nikon Z and Leica L mounts.

The new lens offers a 40.9° field of view on full-frame sensors and focuses all the way from 2:1 magnification to infinity, making it suitable for not just macro but also portraits or a general walkaround lens. It features an apochromatic (APO) design to suppress chromatic aberration as well as 3 ED and 3 Ultra-High Refractive Index lenses for maximum sharpness.

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The better you get at photography, the more difficult it becomes – but that’s not a bad thing

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I’ll admit that this is something that I haven’t really thought of before, but after having watched this excellent video from aows, I think it explains why I often change the topics I like to shoot. His argument is that the more you do photography, the more images you shoot, and the better you become, the more difficult it becomes. It seems odd, but when you think about it, it makes a lot of sense.

The reason it gets harder is that you’re following that advice often told to photographers. Stop competing with other photographers. The only photographer you need to compete with is the photographer you used to be. And this is basically the problem. As you learn more, get better and your work improves, you’re setting your own bar higher. It gets more and more difficult to best yourself.

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The DJI Osmo Mobile 6 supports larger smartphones and has new ActiveTrack 5.0 and Quick Launch features

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DJI has announced their newest handheld smartphone gimbal, the DJI Osmo Mobile 6. Over its predecessor, DJI says that it comes with a larger clamp for supporting the ridiculously large smartphones that companies seem to be releasing these days (for real, how big do they think our pockets are?) along with a new Quick Launch feature as well as the updated Active Track 5.0 subject tracking features.

A new built-in status panel allows you to quickly see and set your mode – of which there are four – as well as being able to easily keep an eye on your battery levels. A new Side Wheel allows you to adjust zoom and focus without touching your phone while the more powerful motors help to keep your smartphone’s camera steadier than previous Osmo Mobile gimbals.

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Stock photography sites shut down AI images as Getty and Unsplash implement outright bans

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It looks like the photography world is starting to get a little sick of AI-generated imagery. Or at least, much of it is sick of it being classed as “photography”. Last week, UK-based model and photographer website PurplePort AI-generated images on its website and now it seems that so have Getty Images/iStock and the “free” stock image website Unsplash.

Both platforms have made announcements in the past few hours stating in no uncertain terms that AI-generated images are banned from their platforms. Both companies also stress that this only applies to AI-generated images, and not human-created 3D render submissions or digital editing tools that are designed to enhance or manually create images from scratch (like Photoshop and Illustrator).

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These custom FPV drones let you film both in the air and under the water – sort of – and it looks amazing

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Underwater drones or at least drones that can land and take off from water have become quite a thing over the last couple of years. Most true underwater drones can only operate underwater and don’t fly. Most airborne drones that can land on the water can’t exactly swim underneath it. FPV pilot Blaster, however, has figured out how he can film both in the air and underwater the same flight.

Two drones were used in this video. DroneXL says that the Dex Models Dex Hydro H was the one used for the underwater shots and the Deep Designs Deep6 is what we see flying into the waterfall. But the film’s creator, Blastr, says that these are custom quads that “are difficult to build and took lots of trial and error to get right”. Some behind-the-scenes b-roll later in the video gives clues as to how it was done.

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