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This is the full budget and lighting breakdown on shooting an $8,000 commercial

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The world of commercial shooting, whether stills or video, is an attractive one. It can be a tough one to break into, but it can also be a lot of fun. But it’s not like shooting for yourself or for personal clients. There’s often big crews to deal with, time and budget constraints, venue hire, actors, and a whole host of other potential issues to deal with.

On a recent commercial shoot for Nu Skin, filmmaker Parker Walbeck documented what went into making it. He talks about the gear used, as well as how it was used. We learn about the lighting choices and setup used to film the actors. Parker also talks about the budget breakdown for this shoot.

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Sony and Fuji just released a large amount of firmware updates for cameras and lenses

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Firmware updates are kind of a mixed blessing. We like when they come out and fix issues we’ve been having or add new features. But when they come out too often, they can be a pain to keep updating. But it seems to be the way these days. Get the products out the door, and we’ll worry about fixing them later.

Well, Sony and Fuji seem to be doing a lot of firmware fixing right now. They’ve released a whole slew of firmware updates for a bunch of popular cameras and lenses. Below is a list of all the updates just released, along with the notes for each and links to the download page. Be sure to check the pages for each update to ensure successful application.

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This DIY HD drone is even smaller than the DJI Spark and weighs less than 95 grams

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Sometimes, the best option is still to just build it yourself. A few months ago, we introduced you to filmmaker Robert McIntosh. He told us how he hacked up a GoPro to cut the fat and minimise its space & weight. Now, he’s had a little while to refine his design, and taken things even smaller. And it produces fantastic results.

It’s only 5″ wide, and 3″ tall with 2″ propellers. The GoPro Hero 4 looks like it’s been stripped back even more and completely reconfigured in form to fit. And the whole thing can fly through some extremely tiny holes. Robert’s new film Muscle-Up takes us on a flight through California’s Muscle Beach, with a few sound bytes to highlight the area’s real and cinematic history.

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Conceptual photographer takes us behind the scenes on the moon’s ever changing cycle

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Swedish Photographer and retoucher Erik Johansson goes all out for his creations. They take so much work that, according to his website, Johansson aims to create only six to eight new images per year. Some of you might remember his mirrored lake project from last year. A fantastic feat of both photography and digital illustration work. Now he’s back with something equally as impressive.

Full Moon Service shows a crew in operation swapping out the moon for one showing a different phase. It’s a very cute idea, and the execution of it is absolutely superb. The project started in Summer 2016, but it’s a lot of work. There’s a lot of planning and preparation before the shoot, and a lot of post work afterwards. Johannson also released a behind the scenes video to show how it was made.

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What is “pro gear” and do you really need it to do “pro work”?

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The topic of “pro gear” comes up quite often. What is it? Does it make a difference? Will clients and other photographers look at you differently if you’re not using it? The short answer is “probably not”. It really just depends on whether the gear you’re using delivers the results you need.

In this video, Matt Granger talks about what “pro gear” means to him, and what he believes it should mean to you. As far as he’s concerned, there’s no such thing as professional gear, just gear that professionals use. And, for the most part, I don’t disagree.

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The popular Macphun photo editing software is finally coming to Windows

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I’ve been looking forward to this announcement for a while. Affinity did it last year, bringing their popular Photo and Designer apps to Windows. Now Macphun are following suit announcing that their Luminar and Aurora HDR applications are coming to the Windows platform. Their products have been Apple-only since first launching in 2008, and I can’t wait to finally give it a whirl.

Luminar is a general image editor that works with both raw and jpg files. It’s essentially a Lightroom alternative with some rather neat features. Aurora HDR is, as the name suggests, designed for working with high dynamic range images. It offers features for merging bracketed shots, or getting the most out of a single raw file.

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Use Nikon & Canon full frame lenses with Fuji GFX medium format with no vignetting

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Adapters that let you mount a lens from one camera system to a body of another are nothing new. Even so-called “Speed boosters” which allow you to get much of the benefit of full frame lenses on crop bodies have been out for a while now. The new Magic Format Converter from Laowa, though, takes things in the opposite direction. Putting smaller format lenses onto larger format sensors.

The adapter gives the ability to mount full frame Nikon and Canon lenses onto the Fuji GFX-50S medium format camera. There are a couple of other adapters out there that can also do this, too, but with one big issue. Nikon & Canon lenses don’t cover the complete GFX sensor. So, your image is cut off at the corners. This adapter compensates by expanding the image out to fill the frame.

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Microsoft’s new Surface Pro gets 13+ hours of battery life, more power, built in 4G LTE and a new pen

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Microsoft already looked to start giving Apple a run for its money with the recently announced Surface Studio. Now, Microsoft have announced the new Surface Pro.  It is compatible with the Microsoft Dial, announced with the Surface Studio. It also launches with a new pen, offering much better drawing capabilities.

With longer battery usage, better connectivity and full size USB sockets, it will be interesting to see if any make the switch from the rather disappointing 2016 MacBook Pro. It definitely looks like it’s taking aim at the creative market. But, with it also having a max RAM capacity of only 16GB, it may still put a few off picking this one up. Especially those who do video.

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Shooting with a 35 year old roll of Kodak black & white film

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Last year, Colin Wirth at This Does Not Compute inherited some old camera gear from his grandparents. Along with the usual assortment of cameras, lenses and other items, was a brand new roll of Kodak Plus-X Pan film. A Black & White Panchromatic ISO125 film containing 20 exposures. The only issue was, it expired in March 1983.

Given how long film lasts after being made, that means this roll is over 35 years old. After posting a digital photo of the roll to Instagram, the comments convinced him that it should still be good and that he should shoot it. So, he did.

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Triggertrap Mobile camera-control dongle goes Open Source

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Over the course of its life, Triggertrap has had a pretty eventful journey. Triggertrap started life as an Open Source universal camera trigger backed through Kickstarter in 2011. It tripled its goal, and was very successful. Fast forward to 2013, and along came the Triggertrap Ada, also backed through Kickstarter. It smashed its goal, of £50K, raising almost £300K (around $500K at the time).

But then various problems ensued which eventually led to the demise of the company at the beginning of this year. Triggertrap has been winding down ever since. Despite this, they’re still receiving plenty of requests from people who want to buy a Triggertrap Mobile Dongle. With no stock left, and no ability to sell even if they had, they’ve now made the Mobile dongle hardware Open Source.

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