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About Udi Tirosh

Udi Tirosh is the Founder and Editor in Chief of DIYPhotography, he is also a photographer, a relentless entrepreneur, a prolific inventor and a dad, not necessarily in that order

You don’t need to buy a charger for this Sony battery

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With a raise of hand, how many of you have more than one battery for your photography gear? More than 2? More than 5? More than 10? I personally have more than 20. Each with its own proprietary charger.  Actually, with all those chargers, I am not surprised that some people build a small shrine to worship all those battery maintenance devices.

With some engineering background, this seems highly inefficient. Why not make one standard to charge all batteries. Well, there is such a standard, it’s called USB-C. And Nitecore just brought a Sony-compatible battery that charges via USB-C, the Nitecore UFZ100 (announced here).  It has some other perks as well. hit the jump to learn more.

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[GIVEAWAY] We are giving away a gimbal for smooth shooting

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For this giveaway, we’ve partnered with Zhiyun to give away a Smooth-Q4 gimbal to a lucky winner.

We chose this gimbal because it is amazingly small, and it folds to fit in your pocket. This makes it perfect for those times when you travel or explore and just need something better than a selfie stick. All you have to do to enter this giveaway is to let us know what color you prefer for your gimbal (assuming you could get them in any color of the rainbow).

The giveaway ends on July 22nd!

Win a Smooth Q4 Gimbal by telling us one color

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The Orca OR-516 is a deep, easy to use roller bag for video shooters

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For the last five years, I’ve been using a ThinkTank Photo Airport International bag for my video needs, and I love it to pieces. Sadly, as the years went by and as my kit got larger, I needed more space. I did not want to carry a second case, so I was looking for a similar roller case but with more space. After looking at a few options, I got the newly announced OR-516 from Orca for $323.00.

What can I say I love it.  It has a lot of character and plenty of space and protection. For the full review hit the jump.

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Top FIVE vlogging audio mistakes (and how to fix them)

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Some things are unforgivable! Your audience will forgive a few seconds of blurry footage, a little bit of over-exposure, but kill their audio and they will flip to another channel.

Joby sent us their new line of Wavo mics (POD, AIR, and PRO) and we’re going to use them to demonstrate our top five vlogging audio mistakes to avoid, and how to fix them.

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The Crabs are the best magic arms I’ve ever used

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You know how your camera always wants friends? A monitor, a recorder, transmitters, mics, and more. (And then the friends want their own friends, like batteries, memory cards, and so on, but this is another topic). Well, all those “friends” need a place to live on your setup, and the new iFootage Spider Crabs could easily be the BFF in this group.

The Spider Crabs are a set of magic arms. Those are articulating arms with small ball heads on either side and a central knob if you are not familiar. When you tighten the central “elbow” knob, it locks the entire arm together. This makes it really easy to mount accessories and move them with ease.

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You guessed it just right

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A few weeks back, we asked you how many bubble gums we could fit inside one Lowepro PhotoSport bag—the 24-liter version. 1,198 of you made a guess, and I must say, you were pretty close!

Here is the idea, some of you are math wizards, some are bubble gum experts (huh?), and some work in candy stores. But, then, some of you have no clue about bubble gum, or bags, or volume calculations. But guess what? The results could not have been more surprising.

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Interview workflow for small teams

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Running with a small crew can be a challenge but if you are coming well prepared, it could be an advantage. Being just one person, or running with a small team means that you can keep things light, move around and generally if you play your cards right, you can set up and teardown relatively fast. While having a big crew is nice, some jobs just call for smaller, light crews.  Today, lets dive into the world of “one man” production.

Specifically in this video, I want to talk about creating cinematic interviews. A one-person team does not mean you need to give up on location, sound, or lighting. Most of it comes down to your approach and choices of gear. Hit the jump to see how I handle this.

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Cinematic workflow tips to save you time on set

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You know how you get to the end of the day and it feels like you’ve only done half of your shot list? We’re gonna fix this. Today’s episode is all about knives. Knives, and making your workflow extremely efficient.

If your video company is a one-man-band, or even a small crew, running a tight ship on set, will have a dramatic effect on your ability to deliver. And a few tricks can go a long way in terms of doing more with less. My old boss used to say that “anyone can do a lot with a ton of resources, the magic comes when you can do a lot with little“.  So today, we will look at a few things that I found over the year to really improve my workflow when I go on location.

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Tutorial: Three cinematic gimbal shots that defy physics

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If you’ve ever seen a high-budget movie, you know that some of the magic is in how the camera moves. If the Director of Photography did their job well, the camera will move seamlessly from one position to another. But when you think about it, there is actually no way that a camera could do some of those moves. Take the chase shot from The Raid 2 for example (embedded below). I mean, there is no way the camera just floats in the air like this?

And this is what we’ll do today. We will look at how to create three shots that defy physics all with a very minimal budget. All you need for these shots is a gimbal – we’ll be using the Manfrotto 300xm and some pipes and cables. For all the shots below we had our camera secured via extra cables and security cords. If you put your camera in the air, always make sure that it is well secured.

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Add a remote to any tablet teleprompter for $23

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Here at DIYP HQ, we are using a teleprompter to cut down on takes and have a more streamlined “talking head”. Using a prompter has significantly improved our workflow and cut down on recording and editing times. In this tutorial, we’ll show you how to add a remote control to almost any tablet prompter software which will streamline your workflow even more.

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