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British insurance company turns drones into flying street lamps

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British insurance company Direct Line is getting into the drone business. More specifically, they’re getting into the “mounting lights on drones” business. Ok, so this isn’t entirely photography related but it does hold some cool potential for photographers. Direct Line have teamed up with a bunch of drone experts to come up with what they’re calling Fleetlights.

The idea is to help aid people in dark situations. Walking home late at night through areas where there are not streetlights. To aid with police response and accident investigation in the middle of the night, and other such activities. Need some illumination? All you need do is whip out your phone, load up an app and request some light. The nearest available drones will head on over to meet you and light the way.

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This photographer lit a biker doing stunts with an Elinchrom strobe mounted to a drone

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When Nikon put a couple of SB-5000 speedlights on a drone for their launch of the D500, I was pretty impressed. I was also a little jealous. It was something I’d wanted to try myself, but didn’t have access to the kind of drones I’d need to lift them. Now, photographer David Robinson has upped the stakes by strapping an Elinchrom ELB 400 strobe to an octocopter.

Such a rig has the inherent advantage of being far higher than light stands could ever go. It’s probably the most reliable method of trying to simulate bright daylight with hard edged parallel shadows. Being a drone, it also has the advantage of being able to follow a moving subject. In this case, that moving subject is pro mountain biker Matt Jones.

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Travel instagram copycat suspected to be a staged attention grabbing hoax

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For those of you who haven’t been paying much attention for the last couple of weeks, there’s been a bit of an Instagram stalking thing going on. At least, that’s the story being portrayed. Instagrammer Lauren Bullen has a very large following. She travels the world and documents her adventures. “Diana Alexa” is, apparently, following in her footsteps. Not only visiting the same places, but copying her images almost exactly.

It seems, however, that the whole thing may just be one great big hoax to promote Bullen’s Instagram account. If true, it worked. Bullen’s Instagram account has received almost 220,000 new followers in the last 11 days since the story came out. To travel around the world and reproduce somebody else’s images almost exactly is a little far fetched. Also, prohibitively expensive for the vast majority of people. But is it real? Or is the whole thing just a big promotional stunt?

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5 Photoshop mistakes photographers make that they should avoid

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It can take a while to figure out what does and doesn’t work in Photoshop for new photographers. We’ve all been there. We’ve discovered some new tool or technique, and we go overboard. We think it looks amazing, we start doing it to every image, but we’re really doing ourselves more harm than good. In the long run, it’s all part of the learning experience, but the sooner we figure this stuff out, the sooner we can move on.

This video from YouTube channel Photoshop Tutorials, highlights five of the most common Photoshop mistakes photographers make. I’m not sure I entirely agree with the first one. I do in part, though. Why do something with a dozen layers if one will do? Aside from anything else, it’s wasted time. Sometimes, you really do need 100+ layers, though (but, please, learn to group them).

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How to make a wall mounted DIY tripod holder

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When you’ve been shooting for any length of time, one thing many photographers tend to collect is tripods. Off the top of my head, I have seven (3 that I use regularly), and a monopod. Storing isn’t always easy. Most of mine are stacked up in the corner of a room (along with a dozen or so light stands of various sizes). Getting to a specific one you want can be a pain.

Our friends over at Lensvid have come up with a great DIY solution for tripod storage. It should be easily adaptable to take care of that monopod, too, and those light stands. In this video, they take us through the whole process, from cutting to loading up with tripods, as well as how to help ensure it works for your size and style of tripods.

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The ultimate guide to lenses for filmmakers and photographers

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For those new to photography or video, lenses can seem like a scary subject. There’s so many different types, and numbers and letters that all denote different things. There’s countless different mounts and adapters. So many different features and options. Is the lens even the right one for your size of sensor? It can be hard to know where to begin.

In this video from YouTube filmmaker D4Darious, we’re talking through all of the important information you need to know about lenses. Covering everything from the basics of aperture and focal length to more advanced capabilities such as built in stabilisation and macro. Even if you’ve never held a camera or lens before, this’ll be easy for you to follow.

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GoPro fights bad karma with Hero5 video telemetry overlay features

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GoPro haven’t been having a great time of things lately. Share prices are down, sales are down, the Hero4 Black was practically usurped by a competitor at half the cost. The Karma’s been recalled, and the Hero5 Black wasn’t as impressive or as revolutionary as customers might’ve hoped for. But now, GoPro have surprised us with something that’s pretty cool.

Users were initially underwhelmed by the GoPro’s long awaited built in GPS features in the Hero5. Pretty much all it did was tag where our photos and videos were shot. Well, every cellphone can do that. All that changes, today, though. GoPro are taking every single bit of data logged by the camera to let your produce a real-time on-screen video overlay to represent different aspects of your journey.

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Edelkrone adds motors and motion control from your phone to the SliderONE

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Edelkrone’s popular SliderONE is a pretty elegant and well made slider. Introduced at the end of 2015, the SliderONE is perhaps a little on the short side for some. But, when you only need to move small distances, it does its job extremely well. One thing it has lacked thus far, though, is any kind of motor or motion control system.

That all changes now with Edelkrone’s announcement of the new Motion Module. As one expect, it adds a motor to your slider, so you can get automate some of your process. Motors let you get smoother, cleaner, more even slides, and a whole bunch of other potential features. That’s where Edelkrone’s app comes into play, offering a wealth of options for both timelapse and video shooters.

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How cubes react to the laws of light

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Understanding how light and shadow falls on different shaped objects is pretty important. It gives us the ability to be able to quickly recognise problems with lighting setups in many different situations with all kinds of subjects. It also helps us to remedy them more quickly. Jay P Morgan’s recently launched new series, Laws of Light shows us these principles in action.

In the first video, Jay showed us the humble sphere. Now, we’re taking a good look at the cube. It seems like a random shape we wouldn’t need to worry about in the real world, but cubes can pop up all over the place. There’s the obvious product box photography, but there are many every day objects that fit into the general form of a cube type shape.

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Easily and cheaply record external audio for cameras without microphone sockets

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If you want the best sound in your video, you really do need an external microphone. Many cameras today offer the ability to plug a microphone into them, which you then usually mount from the hotshoe. Not all cameras, however, do. Two cameras, particularly renowned for their vlogging abilities don’t have microphone sockets, which is quite surprising. Those are the Canon G7X II and Sony RX100 V.

Ted Forbes at the Art of Photography has the Sony RX100 V and as one might expect, uses it for vlogging. The problem is that the RX100 V, like pretty much every other camera out there, has awful built in microphones. Ted solves his audio problems with the help of a bracket, a Zoom H1 and a Rode VideoMicro. In this video, Ted explains other setups he tried, and how he arrived at this one.

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