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How to shoot and edit professional interior photography

Shooting interiors can be a lot of fun but also an extremely difficult challenge. Most rooms aren’t designed to be photographed. They’re often laid out all wrong for it, there’s stuff in the way of the shot, the colours and patterns don’t really match and it can be tricky to find the right angle to shoot from. Even if all those things do fall into line, interior lighting isn’t usually geared toward photography. It’s designed to light the space for people within it.

There are some things over which you don’t have much control when photographing a room but there are plenty of things that you do. In this video from Becki and Chris, we learn a variety of tips and techniques that allow us to shoot interiors that we can be pleased with. Everything is covered from the gear to the composition with lots of great advice in between.

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SanDisk Professional launches the PRO-BLADE modular and portable SSD ecosystem for creatives

Western Digital has today announced the new SanDisk Professional PRO-BLADE modular SSD ecosystem targeted toward creatives. It comprises the PRO-BLADE SSD Mag, available in 1-4TB capacities that offer speeds of up to 3,000MB/sec, the PRO-BLADE Transport USB 3.2 Gen 2 (20Gbps) reader for speeds up to 2,000MB/sec, and a PRO-BLADE Station desktop SSD enclosure that holds four SSD Mags at once with Thunderbolt 3 (40Gbps) speeds.

Western Digital says that the new versatile NVMe SSD mag allows users to quickly scale storage on location or in the studio, with up to 3m of drop protection and 4,000lbs of crush resistance for durability in those random location environments in which we often find ourselves. They’re designed to ease the high speed and capacity demands of cameras that can record straight to USB-C.

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Portrait shooters, stop being so afraid of midday sun – It’s easy to overcome with a little bit of flash

Shooting outdoors in the bright midday sun scares the pants off a lot of portrait photographers. And for good reason. The harsh midday light when the sun’s high in the sky isn’t particularly flattering. Unless you go into open shade (and even that’s not always a guarantee), there’s really no way you can position yourself and your subject that the sun is presenting flattering light on your subject.

But it doesn’t need to be so bad and you don’t need to actively avoid it, as Jiggle Alejandrino points out in this video. He loves shooting outdoor portraits in the midday sun (and, so do I!) and explains why he loves it and how he overcomes the challenges of shooting at this time of day using flash.

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TTArtisan’s new low-budget 50mm f/0.95 APS-C mirrorless lens isn’t a limited edition this time

TTArtisan has released their new 50mm f/0.95 lens for APS-C mirrorless cameras. Like most of TTArtisan’s lenses, this is a manual focus lens and when used on an APS-C body, it offers a field of view equivalent to that of a 75mm lens on a full-frame body. The fast f/0.95 aperture allows for shooting in very low light conditions. It also offers a very shallow depth of field that’s particularly well suited to portraits.

For APS-C mirrorless cameras, this low-budget $218 lens is available in Fuji X, Sony E and Nikon Z mounts. There’s also a Micro Four Thirds version, which gives the equivalent field of view to that of 100mm on full-frame due to the 2x crop factor of the MFT system. From looking at the product page on the TTArtisan website, it appears versions will also come for Canon EF-M and RF mounts as well as L mount.

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YouTuber posts complete DJI Mini 3 Pro unboxing and first flight videos days before official announcement

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I think somebody’s probably going to get into trouble over this for breaking an embargo, but a YouTuber by the name of DM Productions has posted a complete unboxing video of the DJI Mini 3 Pro as well as a first flight and first impressions of the drone in use. The DJI Mini 3 Pro has been rumoured for quite a while with DJI finally posting a cryptic teaser on their website on Thursday.

The official announcement is expected on Tuesday, May 10th but it looks like somebody jumped the gun a little early so that they could get all of the YouTube traffic before all of the other websites and YouTubers who are sticking to the embargoes and NDAs they agreed to. I expect they’re all going to be a little pissed off right now.

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Qualcomm shows off world’s first 8K HDR footage from a smartphone but it looks kinda terrible

Qualcomm has posted a video showing what they say is “Professional-quality” 8K HDR footage from the Xiaomi 12 smartphone. It’s the world’s first phone that offers 8K HDR video capture and features the new flagship Snapdragon 8 Gen 1 processor. It all sounds very impressive until you actually look at the footage to see that, honestly, it kinda just looks like somebody took 1080p footage and scaled it up.

In fairness, all tech has to start somewhere and this is the first smartphone to incorporate 10-bit 8K HDR using Qualcomm’s new Snapdragon 8 Gen 1 processor – although it’s not the only device out there using this chip – so it’s going to take a little work. But right now, it kinda looks like somebody just took 1080p footage and scaled it up.

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12 things you didn’t know you needed to help you shoot epic toy photography

Toy photography has always been quite popular, but never more so than in the last couple of years while much of the world has been stuck at home without any human subjects to photograph. We’ve featured a bunch of them here on DIYP and they’re just as fun to look at as they are to shoot. But what tools can help you in your toy photography journey?

In this video, toy photographer Jared Middleton walks us through his list of 12 things you didn’t know you needed for toy photography, although there might be one or two on this list that aren’t really all that essential. As well as explaining what they are, though, Jared also walks us through how he uses them in his own toy photography to give you a little ispiration.

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The beginning of the end? Canon reported to have discontinued the EOS M6 Mark II with no successor announced

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It appears that Canon is set to discontinue the Canon EOS M6 Mark II. There’s been no official announcement, of course, although there never really is when Canon discontinues a product. They only make a big song and dance when new products are announced. But Canon Rumors says they’ve received reports from two different countries that the Canon EOS M6 Mark II, released in 2019, has been discontinued.

If true, and with no Mark III successor announced, this is possibly the strongest signal so far that Canon does indeed intend to kill off the EOS M line and create an APS-C version of their RF mount mirrorless system. Rumours of a high-end APS-C EOS R7 have been surfacing again lately, and it’s not the only APS-C RF mount camera rumoured to be announced this year, either. Canon is usually pretty good about announcing successors before camera models are discontinued. So, the fact that an EOS M6 Mark III has not been announced is quite telling.

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The new Sigma HQ has a library, a rooftop garden and a “lens cellar”

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Sigma opened up its new headquarters in the Kanagawa prefecture of Japan last month. It’s a pretty fancy looking building and while it looks like something of a tourist attraction, it’s not open to the general public. Luckily for us, YouTube channel Gizmomo Freaks had the opportunity to get a look inside the company’s new building for the grand tour of the facility and was able to shoot some video.

The building features some interesting areas, from the photo book library that’s built into the walls around the main staircase, the rooftop garden and even a “lens cellar”; a climate controlled room that showcases all of the cameras and lenses Sigma makes. It also has interesting open plan office areas, a very traditional office design in Japan.

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Complete DJI Mini 3 Pro specs leak confirms 48-megapixel sensor and 4K HDR video

There’s supposed to be a teaser announced later today and the official announcement is expected on May 10th, but the complete specs for DJI’s upcoming Mini 3 Pro drone have leaked, confirming that it has a 48-megapixel 1/1.3″ CMOS sensor capable of shooting 4K HDR video. It has a top speed of 34 minutes (on the standard battery) with level five wind resistance.

It has a top flight speed of 16 metres per second (~35.8mph) and a maximum flying height of 4,000 metres (~13,100 feet) and a maximum flight distance of 18km. Of course, that maximum height and distance are still governed by your local regulations. The leak, not surprisingly, comes via Jasper Ellens (otherwise known as 27 Leaks) who’s leaked much of the Mini 3 Pro information so far.

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