Hacking Photography - one Picture at a time
If there’s one thing that German photography accessories manufacturer Novoflex is known for, it’s lens adapters. Sure, they don’t have fancy speedboosters and autofocus compatibility like Metabones, but they make some of the best manual lens adapters out there.
And now Nikon Rumors reports that Novoflex is going to be bringing out a dozen of them for the Nikon Z mirrorless system. Yes, twelve manual focus legacy lens mount adapters for the Nikon Z mirrorless system.
Manfrotto has today announced two new sets of Carbon Fibre Twin Leg video tripod legs. Designed to lighten the load while still being very rugged and rigid, the new tripods weigh a mere 3kg (6.6lbs) and can hold a load of up to 20kg (44lbs). They’re available legs-only, or with Manfrotto Nitrotech N12, N8 and 504 video heads.
Oh yeah, that’s a whole lotta glass! New images have come from Nokishita showing five new Sigma Art, Sport & Contemporary series lenses. Two of these I suggested we may see soon after the recent Sigma Cinema Lens announcement, and one’s a very long-awaited and much-anticipated hunk of glass. But there are also a couple of surprises.
Popular iPad Pro photo editing app Affinity Photo has just seen a pretty significant update. The updates and new features are the result of direct feedback from users. Serif, the company behind the app, says that there are now over a quarter of a million Affinity Photo for iPad users worldwide. They also say that this has kept them “inspired” to keep pushing the capabilities of the software and what’s possible on a mobile device.
Coloured filters have been popular amongst black & white film photographers for decades. Typically, these are blue, red, orange, yellow and green. They help to increase contrast in skies and reduce the appearance of blemishes on skin, but are they still useful today with black & white digital?
That’s what photographer David Bergman explores in this video. He thinks that they are still valuable.
Manual exposure. It’s probably the scariest term out there for new camera owners. Stepping out of automatic or semi-automatic exposure modes for the first time can be a daunting task. When you’ve only ever shot in the automatic modes, understanding the manual and the exposure triangle can be difficult to wrap your head around.
Well, this 26-minute video from photographer Sean Tucker should help to demystify it for you. He goes in-depth to break everything down to the basic fundamental principles. He explains what each of the three settings means, how they function, and how they all work together to create a good exposure.
If you’ve been working in Hollywood lately and noticed a piece of equipment disappearing here and there, it might currently be in Argentina. Sky News reports that a huge haul estimated to be worth around $3 million has been discovered in Argentine as part of a cooperative investigation by the FBI, US Police, US Embassy and Argentinian Federal Police.
The haul seems to be primarily Arri equipment, although there seems to be a fair bit of Canon & Sony kit, too, judging from the video posted by Sky News. Argentinian police say that the equipment was being targeted in Hollywood and other US cities before being smuggled into the country. It was then being sold to local gear rental companies.
Well, when I say “swim”, it kind of bobs around under the surface before coming back up to take off. Drones that can take off from and land in water aren’t a new idea. We’ve seen it before with the original Lily Drone, although that one never saw reality.
The SPRY drone, on the other hand, appears to be very real. And it seems to have no problems with taking off from the water, landing in it, or even dipping below the surface. It’s currently on Kickstarter with a couple of weeks to go and was fully funded within 45 minutes of going live.
Many of us thought that the big news coming from Blackmagic during IBC this year would be that the new Pocket Cinema Camera 4K would be shipping ontime this month. And while that does appear to be the case, with Pocket 4K cameras shipping from next week, that’s not the biggest news.
Blackmagic has today announced their entirely new RAW video codec, Blackmagic Raw (BRAW). Blackmagic says that the new codec was developed to get around some limitations of shooting CinemaDNG, takes up much less space than other codecs for the same level of quality, and can be edited with much lower spec computers without an external GPU.
Regardless of whether you shoot photography or video, or what kind of gear you shoot with, the one thing we all have complete control over is our composition. There’s a lot written about composition, about the “rule of thirds”, golden ratios, and leading lines, but composition can be a difficult one to grasp.
Kevin, the Basic Filmmaker talks about composition and developing your eye in this video. But not in the way you might think. He talks specifically about something I used to struggle with all the time, and occasionally still do. And that’s ignoring things in the background and edges of the shot that I should be paying attention to!
You can find out more about John on his website and follow his adventures on YouTube and Facebook.
can change a lens mid-rappel, swap a memory card while treading water, or use a camel as a light stand.
To see more of his work please visit his studio website blurMEDIAphotography, or follow him on Twitter, 500px, Google Plus or YouTube.
JP’s photography is available for licensing at Stocksy United.
Find my work on My website or follow me on Facebook or My page
