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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.

Stop asking photographers what flash power they used – it’s irrelevant

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It’s a question that’s often seen in photography groups. For some reason, people want to know all of the technical specs and exposure settings of every photo posted to those groups. In flash groups, people even want to know what flash power level you were at – as if it was actually a useful question to know the answer to.

Photographer Rob Hall sees this question all the time, so he’s decided to respond with a video. But this isn’t just a rant about why it’s a dumb question – well, not completely. Rob also tries to inject some knowledge to explain why the answer to the question is irrelevant and suggests some questions that you should be asking instead.

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This smartphone tripod mount lets you use your Apple Watch as a selfie screen

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Smartphone vlogging has gotten quite popular over the last couple of years, but it has one big flaw. Not with all phones, but most of them. And that’s that you can’t use your high-quality rear camera if you want to see your composition. You’re stuck using the selfie camera which isn’t always that great.

Well, now, thanks to the new Ulanzi ST-09, if you use an iPhone and have an Apple Watch, you can mount the two back-to-back so that you can use the better quality rear camera on your phone and see a live view preview at the same time.

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Breaking: After 70 years the Photokina trade show shuts down indefinitely

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The organisers of Photokina at the Koelnmesse have just announced that Photokina, the Biennial photography trade show in Cologne, Germany, has come to an end after 70 years. The show had sent out emails to exhibitors this morning, letting them know what was going on, and then announced the news publicly via press release.

They say that this hasn’t been directly caused by the coronavirus pandemic, although it did cause the cancellation of Photokina 2020, stating that “the imaging market was already subject to strong upheaval, with annual declines in the double digits”. 2020 simply amplified this effect and has led to their current decision.

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Don’t miss these Black Friday 2020 deals for photographers and filmmakers (bookmark as we constantly update)

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Black Friday feels a little different this year. With many parts of the world still in various stages of lockdown, I expect many of the real-world stores won’t have queues a mile long with people rushing in to fight over cheap TVs.

But that doesn’t mean you can’t find some good deals. We’ve been looking around the web to find some of the best Black Friday deals and put them all together in a single location for you. We’ll be updating this post throughout the course of Black Friday and Cyber Monday, so keep checking back!

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You can now use the Blackmagic Video Assist as a USB webcam for live streaming

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Well, this is interesting. With all the talk of cameras getting firmware updates this year in order to give them the capability to be used as a webcam, we’ve forgotten all about the other devices into which you can plug them. Devices like monitor recorders.

Blackmagic has released a new firmware update for its Video Assist monitors allowing you to use them as regular USB capture devices (like a webcam) over its Type-C connection. So, if you’ve got a Blackmagic Video Assist monitor, it doesn’t matter whether your camera has this feature or not anymore.

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This guy liquid-cooled his Canon EOS R5 and beat the 8K overheating issues

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The Canon EOS R5, despite receiving firmware update to help reduce the chances of it happening, has a thing for overheating when shooting video. Every single piece of (admittedly, circumstantial) evidence points to it being a timer that’s hard-coded into the camera and not really based on the temperature inside the camera at all. Or is it?

Matt at DIYPerks decided to have a go at liquid cooling his shiny new $3,900 Canon EOS R5. And after doing tests using the original firmware, he saw the results we all expected. The camera shut down right at the time limit, despite being cooled pretty much to the ambient room temperature. When he installed the v1.1 firmware update, though, everything changed.

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This is the surprisingly true story of Kodak Aerochrome’s origins and ultimate fate

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It’s hard to imagine that a particular film stock, especially something like infrared film, might have an origin story that’s almost as wild as a superhero. But the way Todd Dominey tells it, that’s pretty much how it sounds for Kodak Aerochrome. In this video, he goes over Aerochrome’s origins and its life until its demise in 2009.

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Comparing a $40K RED Gemini to the $1.1K iPhone 12 Pro Max

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Yeah, yeah, I know. You’re sick of seeing these. But you knew it was coming, right? And to be fair, with the iPhone 12 Pro Max, Apple finally seems to have actually developed a phone with decent camera capabilities. So, a comparison was inevitable, really.

So, in this video, Jordy and the guys at Cinecom put their $40,000 RED Gemini rig against the $1,100 iPhone 12 Pro Max to see how the two stand up against each other. Unlike most such comparisons, this one’s actually quite interesting, as Jordy talks about the advantages that both cameras might have over the other when shooting in different conditions.

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Rode has released a new range of Vlogger Kits for mobile filmmakers

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Rode has launched a new range of Vlogger Kits aimed at vloggers and smartphone filmmakers. The kit comes in three flavours. There’s a Lightning-equipped iPhone kit, a Type-C USB based Android kit, or a universal kit that works with both (although you’ll need your headphone jack adapter cable).

Each kit includes a mini tripod, a phone bracket, microphone, windshield, light, lighting gels, and all the extra cables and bits you need to get up and running quickly. As mentioned, though, if you get the universal kit, you’ll need your Lightning or Type C USB to TRRS headphone jack cable. While you might prefer to go with a kit specific to your device, the universal one is handy if you use different types of phone (or camera) and want to be able to switch between them.

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IRIX launches new range of Edge “MMS” magnetic ND, CPL and UV cine lens filters

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IRIX has launched its new range of Edge Magnetic Mount System (MMS) filters for use with IRIX Cine lenses. They’re available as either UV, CPL circular polarizer or neutral density in various strengths from 2-6 stops of reduction.

They’re designed to click right into the magnetic mount on the end of IRIX cine lenses to which you normally attach your lens hood. But they’re also stackable, meaning you can attach your hood right onto the end of them.

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