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How to fire your strobes 3 different ways and when to use each one

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All the time, I see new flash and strobe owners ask “How do I fire these things?, which isn’t an unreasonable question. For speedlights, it’s fairly straightforward. You buy the one that fits your camera’s hotshoe, slide it on, and beyond that you read the manual to figure out what all the different functions do. But what if you want to get it off your camera, or you’re using studio strobes?

In this video, Jay P Morgan shows us the three main ways to fire flashes with your camera. It’s fairly simple to do using either a sync cable, optical slave or radio slave. But each method has its own advantages and disadvantages. Not all methods suit all circumstances. So, it’s good to know and understand all three, and when might suit a certain situation best.

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Sony’s new RX10 IV shoots 20.1MP stills at 24 frames per second

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The Sony A7III announcement that some were expecting yesterday never happened. Perhaps Sony simply didn’t want to compete with Apple’s new iPhone releases. Regardless, Sony did still have an announcement yesterday, which included the Sony RX10 IV; a 20.1MP bridge camera with a Zeiss 24-600mm lens that shoots up to 24 still photographs per second.

The biggest focus on the new RX10 IV seems to be on speed. Both shooting speed as well as autofocus speed. With a 315 point autofocus system boasting focus lock in 0.03 seconds, it’s sure to help those sports and wildlife fanatics.

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The iPhone 8, 8 Plus & X let you relight your subject in post and shoots 4K 60fps video

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There was a lot of speculation what the new iPhone. The strangest being what it would be called. Would it be the iPhone 8? The next logical number after the iPhone 7. Or would it be the iPhone X? To celebrate 10 years of the iPhone’s existence. Well, Apple responded by announcing THREE new phones. The iPhone 8, iPhone 8Plus and iPhone X. And boy do they look rather nice.

I’m not going to cover every single detail of these phones, but I am going to talk about the bits that are important to us. That’s primarily the display and the front & rear camera capabilities for both stills and video.

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This fancy photo booth promises high end headshots for professionals on the go

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This has to be one of the silliest things I’ve seen for a while. Not the product itself, but how it’s being marketed. Iris claims to offer professional automated headshots in a booth for $20. Your $20 gets you a “photo session” including half a dozen shots, “helpful posing tips”, and one free high res digital file (the other 5 cost an extra $5 each).

When you watch the promo video, don’t worry, your speakers aren’t broken, there’s just no audio to go with it.

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Netflix buys up Ed Harris photography drama “Kodachrome”

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Netflix has acquired the photography themed drama, Kodachrome in a deal worth $4 million. Starring Ed Harris, Jason Sudeikis and Elizabeth Olsen, it’s set during the final days of Kodachrome’s processing availability.

The film premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival on Friday at the Princess of Wales Theatre. It follows a father-son road trip to reach a Kansas photo lab before its doors close for good. If they don’t get there in time, then it’s never going to happen (in theory).

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This New York City day-to-night panorama took 4 hours to shoot

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It took Mexico based photographer Felix Hernández five years and several trips to New York City to be able to get this shot. Not being from the USA, NYC isn’t a place that Felix gets to visit very often. It took him several trips just to find the right spot from which to shoot. But when he finally did, was able to make this wonderful day to night panorama transition.

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Photoshop gets curvy with a fancy new pen tool

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The pen tool is one of the most powerful tools in Photoshop’s arsenal. For making accurate selections (excluding hair, obviously), there’s little that comes close to it. For cutting out products from their background or masking hard edges, it’s an absolute lifesaver.

Now, the pen tool is about to get curvy. In this sneak peek video posted by Adobe, we see a demo of the new “Curvature Pen Tool”. Essentially, it’s a simplified version of the pen tool. It’s for those who don’t use the pen tool often enough to learn its intricacies, and those who just want to do a quick simple cut out or selection with ease.

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Profoto teams up with Fujifilm to bring TTL & HSS to Fuji cameras

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Well, they may have been lagging a little behind Godox and Cactus, but Profoto have finally caught up. Profoto have announced a new Fuji compatible Air Remote TTL-F trigger. And whereas Cactus and Godox had to reverse engineer their compatibility, this trigger is made in collaboration with Fujifilm themselves.

The Profoto AirTTL system was first announced in 2013. It was a pretty fantastic thing back then. Now that cross-compatibility outside of Nikon and Canon is well and truly here to stay, it’s nice to see Fuji getting some love from the higher end names in flash.

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Four composition mistake every photographer should avoid

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There are lots of “rules” when it comes to composition. Guidelines that are great starting points for those just starting out. Adhering to these rules does not mean you will create a masterpiece every time, though. Nor does breaking them mean your photos will suck. But there are some aesthetic things that these “rules” often tend to not mention.

In this video, photographer Evan Ranft talks us through 4 common composition mistakes that every photographer makes. He’s made them, I’ve certainly made them. You, too, either have or will make them at some point in your photography journey. But they can be avoided, if you can spot when you’re doing them.

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Leaked Godox XPro trigger photo teases a huge LCD interface and lots of buttons

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Godox’s flash system has become extremely popular over the last couple of years. And while it now supports half a dozen different platforms one common point of complaint has been the triggers. Specifically the X1T. It works beautifully, but its user interface can be somewhat slow, clunky, and annoying.

Godox released the XT32 to help alleviate some of the UI issues, although it still leaves a little room for improvement. If a photo posted to Facebook (and then deleted) this morning offers any indication, though, Godox have made those improvements. It shows what appears to be a new XPro trigger for Canon. An XT32 style trigger with a great big LCD and a lot of buttons.

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