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This Pocket 6K video of a hiking family silhouetted against a rising full moon is just beautiful

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When Blackmagic announced the new Pocket Cinema Camera 6K, they did something very different from the launch of the Pocket 4K. They actually started shipping them only a couple of days afterwards. That means they’re already starting to get into peoples hands, and nobody’s complaining about being on backorder.

One filmmaker who’s managed to get his hands on one already is my friend Jesse Watson. You might remember Jesse from his stunning Space X launch timelapse last year, which was picked up by Google for their Year in Search 2018 video, garnering over 113,000,000 views. This time, he’s pointing his camera right towards the full moon.

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The FAA has banned some MacBook Pros from flights over battery recall

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A couple of months ago, Apple announced a recall for a “limited number” of 15-inch Retina MacBook Pro laptops sold between 2015 and 2017. This was due to the fact that “the battery may overheat and pose a fire safety risk”. If you own one, you can enter your serial number into this page to check if yours is affected by the recall.

If you’re not bothered about checking, don’t worry, the FAA is enforcing it for you, should you attempt to fly with it. They have alerted major U.S. airlines about the recall, and they’re banning the affected MacBooks from flights, reminding airlines to follow 2016 safety instructions for goods with recalled batteries, Bloomberg reports.

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This new “hack” to beat the Instagram algorithm seems stupid, but can it actually work?

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Many of those of us on Instagram are always trying to beat the dreaded algorithm. Introduced in 2016, it did away with the chronological feed and a lot of accounts seemed to suffer as a consequence – and I don’t mean the crazy huge spam “influencer” accounts, I mean regular accounts. Small businesses, like photographers, retouchers and other creatives.

A recent tip spotted on Twitter by Creative Bloq, though, suggests that there might be a simple way to get ahead. Whether it actually works or not, I don’t know, I haven’t tried it, but without any of us having any actual insight into what Instagram’s algorithm really favours, it’s worth a go.

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Z Cam opens up their budget full-frame 6K and 8K cinema cameras for pre-order

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Z-Cam was pretty much unheard of until relatively recently, but they made quite a big splash at NAB earlier this year. They had a pretty sizeable stand offering up some pretty big promises for the filmmaking industry with a set of 4K, 6K and 8K cameras. The 4K Z-Cam E2C was announced just over a week ago, and now the company has followed through with their full-frame E2 F6 and E2 F8 models, capable of shooting 6K and 8K respectively.

They’re both pretty bare-bones, boxy-looking cameras sold with no accessories. But when you consider that they’re priced at $5K and $6K each, with both available in either EF or PL lens mounts, one can hardly expect much more than they’re already offering.

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Nitecore solves problem nobody had with their “World’s First Smart Battery” for Sony mirrorless cameras

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Nitecore has announced its “World’s First Smart Battery” for Sony, the Nitecore NFZ100. It’s a drop-in replacement for the Sony NP-FZ100 used in the Sony A7 III, A7R III, A7R IV and A9 mirrorless cameras. At least, it is if Sony doesn’t make 3rd party batteries impossibly impractical to use again.

As a “Smart” device, the new Nitecore Smart Battery talks to an app on your phone; Nitecore NNERGY. The app will be available for both iOS and Android and lets you monitor the battery health and other details wirelessly. Obviously, it needs power to do this, and I’m not sure a battery that drains itself is necessarily a great idea.

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This insane camera rig spins a Phantom slow motion camera at 150rpm (32mph)

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Steve Giralt is pretty well known for pushing things to the extreme when it comes to super slow-motion video. This time, though, he’s gone way overboard, by making a rig that spins a Phantom VEO 4K high-speed camera around a platform at 150 revolutions per minute.

The rig was made to film Jack Daniel’s Honey. They wanted to show a piece of lime spinning as it was falling into the drink as the whole thing was rotating around in front of the camera. Naturally, they couldn’t easily spin the lime as it fell, and they couldn’t really spin the drink, so the solution was obvious. Spin the camera.

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Leica just announced their $4,500 50mm f/2 lens for L mount

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Leica has announced the newest addition to its L Mount lens lineup, the Leica APO-Summicron-SL 50mm f/2 ASPH. Priced at a mere $4,495, Leica says the new lens “sets an even higher benchmark for the Summicron-SL family” of lenses. It consists of twelve elements in 10 groups to offer what Leica describes as “natural skin tones, smooth bokeh, outstanding contrast and consistent sharpness from corner-to-corner”.

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Apple just got bumped down to 4th place in the smartphone market

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After the introduction of the iPhone in 2007, Apple’s smartphone presence just grew and grew, ultimately becoming the top dog in the market. But last year, Samsung knocked Apple from their throne to become the world’s most popular smartphone brand.

This year, findings published by IHS Markit shows that Apple has now also been overtaken by Huawei and Oppo, dropping Apple down into 4th place.

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Skylum shows off the new Luminar 4 Sky Replacement feature in action

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Sky replacements are fairly common in photography these days. Not everybody is shooting a camera with a wide enough dynamic range to always capture a well-exposed subject without a blown out sky. Or, perhaps the sky on the day you were shooting is just a bit boring. Typically, we take to Photoshop to do the sky replacement and blend it in with our foreground scene.

Luminar 4, though, is coming with a new AI Sky Replacement feature, first mentioned last month. Now, Skylum has released a video showing the sky replacement feature in action in the latest beta edition of Luminar 4.

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Nikon Coolpix W150 waterproof camera now available and it wants to get your kids into photography

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Despite the compact market largely dying to smartphones, there are a few exceptions out there that still manage to survive. You’ve got the high-end compacts like the new Canon G7X III and Sony RX100 VII, but then you’ve also got some lower end special purpose compacts that haven’t quite died off yet.

One such entry-level compact is Nikon’s range of waterproof point & shoot cameras. Now, Nikon has announced availability for the new Coolpix W150. It’s a waterproof and shockproof compact camera with a 13.2-megapixel sensor, 3x zoom, 2.7″ LCD that shoots 1080p video.

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