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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 and Facebook.

How to shoot great product photos with just one light… and a diaper

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Product photography can be a lot of fun. For many photographers right now, it’s the only type of photography they can really try. They often don’t need a lot of space, and you don’t really need a lot of gear to shoot them, either. For small things, you can usually get away with just a camera and lens and one light – and a bit of work in Photoshop compositing things together.

That’s what Peter Lindgren does in this video, with the assistance of fellow photographer, Jonas Häll. They use very minimal gear to get a very impressive final result. Their camera Sony’s new ZV-1 compact vlogging camera to shoot the images and only a single light source is used. It offers some great tips for making your beer look ice cold, including some you might not have seen before.

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This handy Crop Factor Calculator shows how your lens will look on different size sensors

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Crop factors caused by different sizes of sensors in different cameras still confuses a lot of people. Mostly because there’s so much bad information out there and a lot of the explanations about how sensor size affects your image either try to simplify things too much or they get overly confusing, making the situation worse.

Well, filmmaker Daniel Scott Murphy is trying to help you understand them with his new crop factor calculator. There are a few of these out there already, but this one actually offers a visual indication of the crop, simulating the results with a real image. It can even take speed booster lens adapters into account.

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The Hollyland Mars X HDMI transmitter lets you stream your camera wirelessly to your phone

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Hollyland has today announced a new addition to their Mars series video transmission systems – the Hollyland Mars X. It’s designed to be a more cost-effective wireless video system for entry-level users than Hollyland’s other systems like the Mars 400S (review here).

The Hollyland Mars X is a transmitter-only system. There’s no receiver here for plugging in an external monitor. Instead lets you to take a feed from your camera’s HDMI output and transmit it wirelessly to your Android and iOS devices, allowing you view what your camera sees on up to three devices simultaneously.

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YouTube launches “Chapters” to help you easily skim through long videos

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Recently, YouTube started trialling what it calls Chapters. These are key points within videos that allow you to separate it up into segments. The best part about it was that it allows YouTubers to start planning for it in advance as it utilises existing techniques that YouTubers have been using for years to help their audience navigate their content.

Essentially it uses timestamp lists in the description of the video in order to generate these chapters which show up when you more over the timeline on the YouTube website or scrub through it in the YouTube mobile app. It’s a handy tool for both creators and viewers. Now, as a result of positive feedback, YouTube says this is now a new permanent feature.

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Nikon lays off 700 workers in Thailand and Laos as part of “structural reform”

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Nikon Corporation has announced that they’ve reduced the number of employees in their Imaging business by 700 at its factories in Thailand and Laos – around 10% of their workforce in each of those locations. Nikkei reports that Nikon has been laying off the staff under “early retirement” since last Autumn.

Nikon is now looking towards the future, stating that they will “optimise according to the production scale” (downsize) depending on the influence the coronavirus pandemic has on their business going forward.

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Check out these 9 creative tips for shooting with 360° and action cameras

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360° cameras have become much more readily available over the last couple of years and most of us own or can get our hands on at least one of those these days. Both types of camera offer a lot of versatility, but they’re not always that easy to film with, especially if you’re used to bigger cameras. But they both can offer some great advantages.

In this video, Jordy at Cinecom takes the Insta360 ONE R out for a spin with both the 4K action camera module and the 360° module, to show us nine creative filmmaking techniques you can use to step up your game when shooting with small cameras.

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Check out these 10 workflow hacks to make your video life a little easier

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We all run into issues during the course of our shoots, whether they be for photos or video. We pick up little tricks here and there to help us with our future workflow going forward. Caleb Pike is no exception, and in this video, he tells us his top ten “hacks” to help make his life a little easier when shooting video.

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Pentax has finally released the new HD PENTAX-D FA★85mm F1.4ED SDM AW lens

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It’s been long-awaited and after a development announcement in March, Pentax has now officially announced the HD PENTAX-D FA★ 85mm F1.4 SDM AW, ahead of its original “late 2020” target. This is the second fixed focal length lens added in Pentax’s newest “Star” lens series, adding to the 50mm f/1.4 released in 2018.

There was some speculation that the Pentax 85mm was simply a rehoused Sigma 85mm f/1.4 Art, but now that the optical formula for the new 85mm f/1.4 has been released, I think it’s a pretty safe bet to say that it isn’t.

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Rokinon/Samyang have announced their new $799 85mm f/1.4 lens for Canon RF mount

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Rokinon/Samyang has today announced their new AF 85mm f/1.4 RF lens for the Canon RF mount. While it appears to simply be a new mount version of their existing AF 85mm f/1.4 for Sony, it presents something of a bargain when it comes to fast portrait glass for Canon’s EOS R mirrorless cameras. The price isn’t quite as good as some might hope, though.

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The Canon EOS R5 launch price will be “under US$4,000”, report says

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Recently, there were rumours that the upcoming Canon EOS R5 mirrorless camera would cost an eye-watering $6,700. These rumours were then quashed as the source of the “leak” admitted that they pretty much just plucked the number out of thin air and had no idea what the actual cost would be.

Now, more in line with Canon’s confirmation that the EOS R5 will essentially just be a mirrorless counterpart to their 5D DSLR product line, Canon Rumors is reporting that the price is definitely going to come in at under $4,000.

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