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John Aldred: from diyphotography.net

John Aldred

Senior News Editor

John Aldred is a photographer with over 20 years of experience in the portrait and commercial worlds. He is based in Scotland and has been an early adopter - and occasional beta tester - of almost every digital imaging technology in that time. As well as his creative visual work, John uses 3D printing, electronics and programming to create his own photography and filmmaking tools and consults for a number of brands across the industry.

Articles by John Aldred

Cameraframe is a piece of wall art made from real camera parts

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As much as we like to see cameras working and shooting images, they sometimes just die beyond repair. And when cameras become useless, what can you do? Well, for one Italian company, you can turn them into attractive wall art. Cameraframe is a company that’s turning digital and film cameras into interesting and unique wall art pieces by dismantling them and arranging them inside a frame.

Each piece is a one-of-a-kind piece of art which the company says “combines function and form in a truly unique way”. Unique, yes. Function? I’m not so sure it has much of that in its dismantled state. They do look pretty cool, though. The company has taken to Kickstarter to launch the digital Cameraframe V1 and the analogue Cameraframe V2.

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Here’s a bullet time video booth you can build yourself

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Ok, so this is going to require something of a budget. This is because of the simple fact that shooting bullet time requires a whole mess of cameras in order to pull it off. But this creation from Sebastian Staacks takes bullet time to the next level. Designed as an alternative to the standard photo booths often seen at weddings and events, Sebastian’s project is a bullet-time video booth.

As well as the usual array of stills around a subject, it also shoots video, allowing you to capture a short clip before spinning around the subject, and then it comes back to the video at the end. It’s an interesting project, with a lot of problem-solving and challenges to overcome. Sebastian walks us through the process, including everything from picking the cameras to creating the final result.

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Ricoh has discontinued the HD PENTAX-DA 21mm F3.2AL Limited silver lens

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It seems that Ricoh Japan has discontinued production of the HD PENTAX-DA 21mm F3.2AL Limited silver lens (buy here). The wide-angle HD PENTAX-DA 21mm F3.2AL Limited was released in 2013, as the replacement for 2006’s smc PENTAX-DA 21mm F3.2AL Limited. It was released as a compact wide prime for walkabout shooting with a small, lightweight APS-C camera setup.

At the moment, it seems that only the silver version of the lens has been discontinued. The Ricoh Japan online store lists it as “Completion of production” with limited (“only a few”) stock still available. Outside of Japan, stocks are still available at some online retailers.

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Strobes vs Continuous LEDs – Which is right for you?

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The strobes vs continuous debate has been going on since LED lights for video and photography became a thing. It’s a debate that’s probably not ending anytime soon, either. The latest voice in the debate is that of photographer Lindsay Adler. In this video, Lindsay walks us through the pros and cons and when she chooses one over the other. She also goes a little into the history of continuous lights and why they’re now a lot more viable than they used to be.

For most photographers, continuous is often where we start. But it’s not artificial continuous light like LEDs. It’s usually the natural ambient lighting in our environments. As we start to want to shape and control light, we go into flash. But has continuous LED lighting now gotten to the point where it can replace flash? Maybe. In some situations.

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AstrHori’s second probe lens is an 18mm f/8 2x Macro for APS-C mirrorless

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Following up on the release of AstrHori 28mm f/13 probe macro lens (buy here), AstrHori has released a second probe lens. This time, it’s the wider AstrHori 18mm f/8 probe macro lens. Don’t get too excited just yet, though. Unlike the 28mm f/13, which is a full-frame lens, this one is for APS-C cameras. So, it offers a similar field of view at around a 27mm full-frame equivalent.

While there’s no benefit to full-frame users with the new lens, it does offer APS-C shooters a wider view. On APS-C bodies, it’s wider than the previous 28mm probe or the Laowa 24mm T14 probe lens (buy here). The price is also very attractive, coming in at $719 – slightly less than the AstroHori 28 at $739 and significantly lower than the Laowa at $2,299.

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First photos of the new IRIX 65mm T1.5 cine lens

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Things seem to be growing quite nicely for Irix’s cinema lens lineup, with the short-to-standard range covered with five lenses from 11mm to 45mm and with two 150mm lenses at the longer end. Now it’s time to fill the gap in between, and Irix looks like they’re preparing to start doing just that, teasing a new Irix 65mm T1.5 cinema lens.

At the moment this is just a development announcement, so there’s no news about when the lens will be released. Given that it took four years for Irix to go from showing off a prototype of the 45mm f/1.4 (buy here) to releasing it in 2020, it could be a while. Hopefully, though, we’ll see this one a little sooner. The company says that we should hear more in the coming weeks.

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Don’t buy a Z8 directly from Nikon, customers say

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According to posts on Reddit, it seems that quite a few customers have had their Nikon Z8 (buy here) orders cancelled, some without any reason provided whatsoever. The only thing these posts have in common is that they were all ordered (or pre-ordered) directly from Nikon itself. This doesn’t appear to be an issue with other retailers – or, at least, not enough of an issue that people are posting about it.

The posts typically say that the customer placed their order, received confirmation of their order and then suddenly received emails letting them know that their orders had been cancelled. The issue appears to stem around bank or credit card authorisation, but exactly where the blame lies isn’t quite clear.

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YouTube is killing off “Stories” to focus on Shorts and Live

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YouTube is killing off a feature you probably weren’t using anyway and won’t miss. June 26th marks the death of YouTube Stories, a feature released in 2017 shortly before the company announced “Reels” – now YouTube Shorts. What made YouTube Stories different is that the videos were temporary, disappearing after a week. It also wasn’t available to users with fewer than 10,000 subscribers.

This 10K subscriber requirement almost certainly doomed YouTube Stories from the beginning. It remained in beta since its initial launch and never gained in popularity at all. In fact, I can’t recall a single time in the last six years that I’ve ever seen any of the creators I follow actually post a “Story”. Sure, there have been plenty of Shorts, but not Stories.

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Four ways to shoot epic stop motion hyperlapse with a smartphone gimbal

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There are a lot of gimbals on the market these days – with two more announced this week – but often, the humble smartphone gimbal can be the easiest to work with. This is especially true if you want to shoot hyperlapse videos for social media or YouTube. Sure, you can do these with a DSLR or mirrorless camera on a bigger gimbal, too, but they’re less strenuous with a lightweight gimbal and your phone.

There are many ways to shoot them, but in this video, content creator Winga shows us how we can make some using the Insta360 Flow (buy here). The video begins by showing us the final hyperlapse result he created, which uses a combination of stop motion and video, followed by breakdowns showing four methods used to create the different shots.

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Canon reported to be working on a “zoomable” teleconverter

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According to reports, Canon is working on a new type of teleconverter that it plans to release alongside the rumoured RF 200-500mm f/4 L IS. The announcement is currently rumoured to be coming at some point near the end of this year or early 2024. Teleconverters aren’t new to Canon – or just about any other manufacturer – but what makes this one different is that it appears to have some kind of “zoom” ability.

A Canon Rumours post says the new Canon teleconverter will be adjustable between 1.0x, 1.4x (or maybe 1.5x, but I think 1.4x is more likely) and 2.0x magnification. It means that you won’t need to keep remove or swap out teleconverters to go between your normal lens focal length range, 2.0x the range, or a stop in between.

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